Nineteenth-century Travel Research Articles

Mapping travel writing: a digital humanities project to visualise change in nineteenth-century published travel texts

ABSTRACTThis essay introduces a project that uses data mapping and digital visualisation to gain new insights into nineteenth-century travel writing. It focuses on the case study of a bibliography of 3000 titles of travel works published in Britain between 1800 and 1900 and outlines the process of applying digital analysis to that dataset. The essay proposes that scholarly engagement with travel writing can benefit from the use of “distant reading” in two regards. First, by visualising data that has previously only been available in textual formats and in alphabetical order, the project could make apparent patterns across time and with regard to travel destinations. Second, the project is an attempt to automate the “reading” of titles in a bibliography of travel writing as a test case for adding a comparative component to examining nineteenth-century travel writing across diverse national publishing practices. By allowing scholars to see trends and differences visually, this mapping project complements literary modes of analysis and textual interpretation of travel writing.

TRAVELLING THE EMPIRE AND THE REPUBLIC IN AN ORIENTALIST CONTEXT: FREDERICK BURNABY S ON HORSEBACK THROUGH ASIA MINOR AND PHILIP GLAZEBROOK S JOURNEY TO KARS: A MODERN TRAVELER IN THE OTTOMAN LANDS

Nineteenth century British imperialism made travel a necessity as well as a possibility for British subjects. In that imperialist context Frederick Burnaby traveled through the Ottoman Anatolia from Istanbul to Kars in 1877. More than a hundred years later it was that time trying to reconstruct the structure of feeling of the nineteenth century travelers that Philip Glazebrook undertook a similar itinerary in 1980. Using Edward W. Said’s findings on the common points of the Orientalist discourse, the purpose of this study is to compare the discourses of two travelogues written on Turkey in different centuries. Considering the fact that travel writing is a highly inter-textual genre, the impact of Burnaby’s and Glazebrook’s travelogues, written on Turkey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, makes them especially helpful to us to understand how the Orientalist discourse operate through time.

Viajeros y arabistas a doble paso: Marruecos colonial y el legendario Joaquín Gatell

Este artículo compara dos ediciones dedicadas al mismo autor y obra, Joaquín Gatell y su Diario, con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la apropiación de un libro de viajes por intelectuales al servicio del Protectorado español en Marruecos. La representación del explorador decimonónico en las dos ediciones se construye desde la óptica colonial que caracterizó muchas publicaciones españolas de los años 50 del siglo XX.

The Dark Side of the Moon: Edith Wharton's Fictional Treatment of Islam inIn Moroccoand “The Seed of the Faith”

AbstractEdith Wharton's travel book In Morocco (1919) and short story “The Seed of the Faith” (1919) both resulted from her trip to Morocco in 1917. Yet ironically, the fictional short story may have come closer to the truth than the nonfictional travel book, which follows many of the orientalist patterns inherited from nineteenth-century travel writing to the Muslim east. The orientalism of In Morocco seems to hinge on Wharton's portrayal of Islam as a culture and a politics rather than as a religion, which leads to a fictionalized view. The short story, however, portrays the problematic nature of such views and their imposition on the Moroccan Muslims.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

The servant as narrative vehicle in nineteenth-century travel texts about Norway and Iceland

ABSTRACTBy focusing on the representation of the travelling servant, on whom as Clifford (1997) acknowledges there is a paucity of evidence, this essay presents a contrapuntal reading of two nineteenth-century British travelogues, Letters from High Latitudes by Lord Dufferin (1857) and A Summer and Winter in Norway by Lady Diana Beauclerk (1868). Drawing from Edward Said’s reformulation of the musical term, the essay argues that servants contributed to the textual production of the journey in these nineteenth-century travelogues. In the two texts considered here, the representation of the servant and his or her actions renders the travel more interesting and offers a counterpoint to the narratorial voice of the author–traveller.

THE FIRE CULT AND ISLAM IN THE KAZAKH SYSTEM OF BELIEFS

Abstract. In this paper, we consider various viewpoints on the extent to which the Islamic religion and pre-Islamic beliefs influenced Kazakh society. It describes the traditional religious of the Kazakh-nomads, including non-Moslem elements, such as the Fire Cult. Moreover, the paper assesses the impact of Zoroastrianism on this ritual. It demonstrates that the nomadic Kazakhs were less affected by alien ideologies because of their mode of life. During the whole period under consideration, Kazakh religiousness was distinguished by its vivid syncretism that involves the combination of traditional creeds and the Moslem faith. The analysis refers to the period when the Kazakh territories were the part of the Russian Empire. The authors rely on the historical concept of Arnold Toynbee, especially on his formula 'call-and-answer'. We were also guided by the ideas of Edward Shils and Anthony Giddens about the role of traditions. Keywords: Islamization, Russian Empire, syncretistic Muslims, geo-cultural factors, Ot-Ana, Fire Cult, evil spirits, ethnic identity 1. Introduction Kazakhs, as bearers of the knowledge of their own heritage, are once again entering the arena of world history, and they are worthy of the interest and attention of the world's mainstream cultures. An understanding of the religious beliefs and practice of the Kazakh people is essential for any analysis of their sociopolitical, spiritual, and cultural life; it lies at the spiritual and historical roots of their ethnic self-identity and national ideology. Here, we have chosen to focus on the Fire Cult traditions to reveal syncretism of Kazakh religiousness that is currently lacking in the literature. In our work, we rely on the ideas of Edward Shils and Anthony Giddens. According to Shils, tradition is anything that is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present (Shils 2006:12). Anthony Giddens, discussing tradition in relationship to modernity, regards the former as something bound to ritual, where ritual guarantees the continuation of tradition (Giddens 1994:64). However, we also share Nathan Light's belief that cultural analysts must understand the motivations that lead people to preserve or change their cultures. He writes, People transmit culture through time, but this process has to be analyzed in terms of cultural reproduction: people are actively engaged in experiencing and recreating traditional practices (Light 2007:488). Thus, as Alexandre Papas points out, one cannot understand political and religious history as a consequence of ideas and adopted from abroad: historical events arise from processes deeply rooted in local society (Papas 2005:16-9). To understand the genesis of the spiritual component of Kazakh society, Arnold Toynbee's concepts of incentives strokes, pressure and prejudice by the environment or external forces as a call and society's reaction as an answer are applicable (Toynbee 2000:120). Relying on these concepts, we assume that the spiritual component of Kazakh society was based on a combination of endogenous and exogenous factors that affected it during its historic journey. Cultural factors, operating mainly in the temporal dimension, combined with environmental factors, operating in that of space. Recent publications thus speak of geo-cultural factors. In general, modern historians, despite the deeper study of documentary material, have not formed general concepts to assess the influence of Islam on Kazakh society. A historiographical analysis of the literature on Islamic issues suggests the presence of conflicting viewpoints and polemical discourses that emerge from differing values. 2. Viewpoints on the religiosity of the Kazakhs Almost all of the nineteenth century travelers who visited the region and regions adjacent to it were unanimous in stating that the commitment of the Kazakhs to Islam was only nominal (Georgi 1799:140, Levshin 1832:53-5, Bronevsky 1830:170-71, Herman 1822:219, Sotnikov 1872:771-90, Fredericks 1869: 690-7, Gaines 1874:42). …

Sentiment and Scholarship: Hybrid Historiography and Historical Authority in Maria Graham’s South American Journals

ABSTRACTAs scholars have registered, many female-authored travel accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries need to be recognized simultaneously as exercises in historical commentary and debate. This article extends our knowledge of this intersection of genres through analysis of two striking examples of women's travel writing operating as a mode of historiography: Maria Graham's Journal of a Voyage to Brazil (1824) and Journal of a Residence in Chile (1824). In the often overlooked prefatory material used to frame the central journal sections of these books, Graham undertook a more ambitious and original historiographical exercise than is generally appreciated. The journal portions also spoke to contemporary historical enquiries in ways not always recognized by modern critics—for example, in their occasional use of sentimental idioms and motifs. Although in these and other passages, Graham's writing may seem today more “literary” than historiographical, this was not how they were received by many contemporary readers, who accepted Graham's account as a useful contribution to the history of South America. This reception demonstrates the importance of not reading nineteenth-century travel writing solely as “life writing”, but rather as a multidisciplinary and generically hybrid form which women might use to assert and display authority across a range of discourses.

‘Saved from the sordid axe’: representation and understanding of pine trees by English visitors to Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century

ABSTRACTPine trees were frequently depicted and celebrated by nineteenth-century English artists and travellers in Italy. This paper examines how British visitors gained knowledge of Italian trees through drawings, paintings and prints, before and during their visits to Italy. It considers knowledge of pines by late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authorities such as William Gilpin and John Claudius Loudon and then focuses on the representation and understanding of pines in three contrasting sites: the pines of Rome, the coastal pines of Liguria and finally the famous pine wood of Ravenna. These trees were also an important element of local agriculture and the authors combine the analysis of local land management records, paintings and travellers’ accounts to reclaim differing understandings of the role of the pine in nineteenth-century Italy.

Semiosis of intercultural cooking: The nineteenth century travel literature as a case study

AbstractMy interest in culinary dates back to approximately fifteen years ago when I collaborated with [Béatrice Fink 1999. The cultural topography of food. Special issue, Eighteenth century life 23(2)] on a special issue of Eighteenth Century Life on food topography. I proposed then a study on the reactions of an English physician to Moroccan food, mainly couscous and tea. I continued working on other studies, and I realized how much a semiotics of food could serve the history of mentalities and private lives. While doing my research, I discovered the works of Jean Louis Flandrin 1986. La distinction par le goût. In Roger Chartier (ed.), Histoire de la vie privée de la Renaissance aux Lumières, vol. 3, 267–309. Paris: Seuil and Flandrin 1992. Chronique de Platine: Pour une gastronomie historique. Paris: Odile Jacob), who had contributed to the same volume directed by Fink and also represented a great inspiration for me. I felt that I was concerned with the study of the relation with the Other, with culture shock or encounter through travelers’ reactions to the food or the culinary, the prepared dish, and the consumed product in ceremonies or in private occasions. While thinking about these points, I asked myself the following questions: in which way does the reaction to food reveal the attitude of the traveler, his prejudices on the culture, the society, the food or the dish in question? In which way would reaction to food reveal his culture? This article explores these and other related issues.

The Kano ‘Mosque-Tower’ or ḥaṣūmiyā: The creation of a myth.

The paper concerns a widely held belief that the ‘great’ Kano ‘mosque-tower’ was of considerable age when demolished in 1938 and that it dated probably from the nineteenth century, or even earlier. Apart from brief references in the Kano Chronicle (kc), (and in another Kano ‘king-list’ published by Hunwick), to the building of a ḥaṣūmiyā and mosque,during the reign of the Kano ruler, Muḥammad Runfā, (1463–1499), post-Runfā references to mosque building in the kc do not mention a ‘great’ tower, nor do nineteenth-century European travellers’ accounts. It was not remarked on at the time of Lugard’s conquest of Kano in 1903. Evidential sources are presented showing that the ‘Mosque-Tower’ was built under colonial influence around 1911/12. It was anathema to the ‘ulamā’, in the light of the recorded views of the Shēhu Uthmān ɗan Fodio, hence its ultimate demolition.

A construção do Rio De Janeiro na literatura de viagem oitocentista

Resumo: Este artigo tem por objetivo mapear a construção do Rio de Janeiro na literatura de viagem oitocentista. Partindo da análise sobre o que são os relatos de viagem e como tais descrições permitiram a formulação de uma certa ideia de Brasil que passou a circular no Mundo Atlântico, pretendo esquadrinhar que imagem do Rio de Janeiro foi construída nas narrativas desses estrangeiros. Para isso, procurei deixar as citações "falarem por si próprias", ou seja, procurei restituir a voz a estes indivíduos, com a expectativa de reconstituir - ainda que parcialmente - e interrogar o que os viajantes estrangeiros, afinal, tinham a dizer sobre os acontecimentos em que estavam envolvidos.

Little England: nineteenth-century Tasmanian travel writing and settler colonialism

Tasmania was a distinctive location for nineteenth-century travellers, and a regular feature of the rich print culture that emerged from the British Empire. Regularly dubbed a “little England” because of its physical and environmental features, the island provided an early source of imperial ideas about Greater Britain and the spread of the Anglo-Saxon race. This paper traces the emergence of the “little England” trope in travel writing, emphasising the importance of this form for knowledge formation. It argues that the contested and violent history of Tasmania, especially the treatment of Aboriginal people, complicated the trope by making explicit the violence that underpinned British imperial expansion. Debates about the morality of colonisation both in the colonial period, and in recent scholarly publications, reveal the high visibility of Tasmania and the complex inheritances of its colonial past locally and in Britain.

Afterword: Improvement and Overburden

Afterword: Improvement and Overburden Jennifer Wenzel (bio) “The mouth of this river forms the best harbour I have yet seen; being wide, deep and free from shoals, with a fine situation for a town and fortifications where ships may lie close along the shore, the land high, with a good air and fine streams of water”: so observed Christopher Columbus on November 12, 1492 (124–25). The report of this promising scene concludes Columbus’s inventory of the resources he found at the newly-named Rio de Mares: gold, spices, cotton, aloe, and mastic to be traded, as well as pliant souls to be converted. It’s a curious kind of inventory, not so much a list of current stock as a vivid projection of what could be. I take it as a seminal instance of what Mary Louise Pratt has aptly called an “improving eye,” in which a European explorer’s survey of the landscape offers a prospect both spatial and temporal: a vision of a “Euro-colonial future,” with “resources to be developed, surpluses to be traded, towns to be built” (61). What both Columbus’s inventory and Pratt’s analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth century travel writing tell us is that a resource logic is also a resource aesthetic. From the “beginning,” if you will, Columbus’s judgments—the best harbor, good air, fine streams and situation—are at once economic and aesthetic. You can just picture the scene, no? (Perhaps you’ve seen it in a vacation brochure.) The profitable and the beautiful are brought into alignment, envisioned as one and the same. This emphasis on aesthetic rather than merely economic value in the logic of improvement serves to “presuppose — naturalize — a transformative project embodied in the Europeans” (Pratt 59). Europeans might not have been the first to gaze upon these beckoning landscapes, but they were (so the logic goes) the first to discern in them what they were meant to become. The gap between the actual and the possible is bridged with a teleology. In this Afterword, I trace a kind of pre-history of (post)modernity, taking the improving impulse evident in Columbus’s prospect as a blueprint for capitalist modernity—a map of the future that, in its very immateriality, bears a complex yet instructive relation to the uneven territory of our present. Anatomizing the forms of desire and coercion at work in the improving eye, Raymond Williams puts the link between economy and aesthetics more baldly than Pratt when he observes that, in reading conventional histories of English landscape, you might almost believe—you are often enough told—that the eighteenth-century landlord, through the agency of his hired landscapers, and with poets and painters in support, invented natural beauty. And in a way, why not? In the same ideology he invented charity, land-improvement and politeness, just as when he and his kind went to other men’s countries, such countries were ‘discovered’. (120) Elsewhere in The Country and the City, Williams links the agricultural and infrastructural aspects of “improvement” or “cultivation” more explicitly with their social, cultural, or moral aspects, “which were historically linked but in practice so often contradictory” (115). He identifies the false promise in the tautology: “improvement is or ought to be improvement” but seldom is (116). Thus the anger with which Aimé Césaire tallies the murders, stolen resources, and ruined lifeworlds attributable to the European “civilizing mission” in his Discourse on Colonialism: “They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks…. I am talking about millions of men torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life (43). In the exchange from which this passage is excerpted, Césaire offers a counter-inventory of what Columbus and his successor-improvers have wrought. Although he was concerned more with morality than with aesthetics (and, above all, with economic value), John Locke was another key theorist of “improvement” in its manifold senses. “In the beginning,” Locke writes in “Of Property,” “all the world was America” (V.49), by which he means that the entire earth was unimproved waste land gifted by the Creator to humankind for them to labor upon and...

Sur les pas de Flaubert: approches sensibles du paysage

When on his first extended trip away from Normandy, to Southern France, the Pyrenees, and Corsica, Flaubert claimed in his travel notes that he wanted his sentences to smell of the leather of his shoes. This collection of essays, edited by Philippe Antoine, begins by evoking the whiff of Flaubert's travelling feet, asking questions about the connections between the ambulatory reality experienced by writers such as Flaubert, and the practice of writing. As Antoine remarks in his own article in this collection, on Par les champs et par les grèves, Flaubert's travel writing stresses the corporeal, mobilizing all the senses in its attempts to get to grips with the realities of the world experienced through the journey; Antoine suggests that in the account of his tour around Brittany, Flaubert optimistically works towards dismantling the boundaries between mind and matter, travelling and writing, sensory pleasure and the pleasure of the sentence. The essays assembled here, which focus on nineteenth-century travel writing, give prominence to the practice of walking. The walk is figured as an experience that facilitates the embrace of sensory perception. As in studies on the senses (such as The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, ed. by David Howes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), or Paul Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place (London: Routledge, 1994)), the dominance of the visual is downplayed in favour of discussion of the significance of the aural and the olfactory. Alain Guyot's article examines the presence of soundscapes in Chateaubriand's travel writing, arguing that striking examples of sonority tend to be positioned at textually significant points, such as at the end of syntactic sequences or as the climax of episodes. Sarga Moussa compares the representation of the senses in the Oriental landscapes described by Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Flaubert, privileging nocturnal experiences so as to debunk the authority of the visual. The problem lies in the somewhat misleading title of the collection and the prominence it gives to Flaubert: these heterogeneous essays deal with nineteenth-century trips to Spain, Tenerife, and Tibet, among other destinations; of the twelve articles, only two focus primarily on Flaubert. Attention is given mainly to writers whose works either predate the publication of Flaubert's travel writing or make no connection with Flaubert: Sophie Lécole discusses Théophile Gautier's Voyage en Espagne; Pierre Dufief examines the Goncourt brothers' trip to Algeria; Lauric Guillaud draws on comparison with Baudelaire in an article on Rosny Aîné's ‘wonderlands’ of travel. The essays here follow less in the footsteps of Flaubert's stinky sandals than in the wake of Jean-Pierre Richard's study of nineteenth-century writers' perceptions and sensations of the material world in his Littérature et sensation (Paris: Seuil, 1954), a work which receives surprisingly fleeting reference across the collection. Interest in this volume will lie less in the attention directed towards Flaubert, and more in the wider realms of nineteenth-century travel writing and studies of the representation of the senses.

"El tabaco se ha mulato": Globalizing Race, Viruses, and Scientific Observation in the Late Nineteenth Century

This article traces the earliest identified recorded descriptor for viral infection: the racialized Spanish expression "el tabaco se ha mulato" ("the tobacco has become mulatto"). The phrase appears in the late nineteenth-century travel writing of French colonial scientist Jules Crevaux, written as he journeyed through post-Spanish Independence Colombia and observed the demise of the once-thriving tobacco industry. I theorize the literary translations and visualizations, or what I call "visual translations," of the phrase across scientific and historical texts that cite Crevaux to track the refraction of racial, gender, and sexual discourses in virology. I argue that the phrase refers to the historically dispossessed Indigenous and Black subjects of the nascent Colombian republic and their resistance to subjection when forced to work the tobacco fields. The article historicizes virus discovery at the juncture between science, nation-building, global industrialization, and the disciplining of race and sex under the long shadow of Euro-American empire. Drawing upon Ed Cohen's concept of "viral paradox," Nayan Shah's notion of "strangerhood," and Mel Y. Chen's framework for thinking about "queer animacies," I deconstruct the visual, conceptual, and etymological roots of the phrase "el tabaco se ha mulato" to argue that the expression renders the virus as both "queer" and "strange" to the nation. The virus signifies the mulato subject as a stubborn challenge to racial hierarchies and to the host-guest-parasite relation, both of which are foundational to the social organization of the nation and polis. This signification insistently refuses the human/non-human binary that undergirds racial regimes and biological conceptions of life. In turn, I expand historical thinking about race, submit that pandemics result from global industrial resource extraction rather than merely poor hygiene, and offer a framework for "queer decolonizing."

Interacting, sharing and bonding: ‘notes of personal experience’ by nineteenth-century women travellers

As early as the seventeenth century, women have been going from one corner of the world to the other recording their experiences and reasons for publishing. Exploring, working and residing in regions of the East considered ‘safe for dynamic men only’ (Smith 1887, Through Cyprus, Author of ‘Glimpses of Greek life and Scenery, etc’. London: Hurst and Blacket), western women interacted with the peoples of Ottoman society, enjoying their warm and generous hospitality. Their gender allowed them to study, learn and become experts in areas where men had no access: the Ottoman harems, women's daily life, social gatherings and celebrations. Western and eastern women discuss harem slavery, marriage, adultery, childbirth, abortion, divorce, religion and women's rights. In reconsulting primary sources and focusing on the writings of nineteenth-century British women in Asia Minor (Turkey), this article contributes additional evidence on women's alternative representations or less degrading gaze, while revealing a patriarchal system's domestic-social reality that was founded on the institution of slavery. In other words, it differs from other studies in spotlighting the accounts that are illustrative of the polyethnic synthesis of the Ottoman households, i.e. the discourse on the multiethnic harem slavery institution, which distinguished Ottoman society, so as to provide a bigger picture and inspire new discussions.

CIVILIZING HAWAII: ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

Nineteenth-century male European travel writerssometimes romanticize their destinations and dream they have arrived in untouched lands. The Hawaii Isabella Bird visited, however, was not an idyllic land, forgotten by time. Early in the nineteenth century, steamships crossed the Pacific, carrying goods and people from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan. The trade in sandalwood and fur brought many foreign steamships into Hawaii (Kuykendall 15). It was not uncommon for American missionaries to arrive in Hawaii via whaling ships that stopped in Hawaii (Kuykendall 16, 41). Hawaii, with its position between mainland America and Asia, was a valuable and strategic piece of property. Isabella Bird Bishop's 1875 travel memoirThe Hawaiian Archipelago: Six months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islandscomments on the political situation the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) faced in the nineteenth century.

Spanish archetypes in transnational cinema: a comparative study of iconography

Bullfighting is one of the most typical icons that brings to mind Spanish culture. It served as a narrative and iconographic motif for nineteenth-century Romantic travelers and remained central to the representation of what was considered the essence of Spain for writers and artists of the twentieth century; it continues to be a significant, albeit controversial, marker of Spanish identity in the present. As a modern phenomenon, bullfighting has had a close relationship with cinema. This article aims to analyze, from a cinematic perspective, the use of symbols, iconographies and narrative themes that have served to construct a Spanish national imaginary. Beginning with the recordings of bullfights made by the Lumière company, it goes on to analyze different versions of Blood and Sand and concludes with the movie Blancanieves, moving through a wide range of phases in the historical trajectory of the filmic representation of bullfighting. The article takes a transnational perspective, paying particular attention to films and coproductions made outside of Spain and showing the tension between transnational models – in which the notion of Spanishness is endowed with exoticism and “otherness” – and specifically Spanish formulations. The article addresses cinema's contribution to the past construction of the iconic paradigm of Spain and to its continuing validity today.

Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression by David M. Wrobel

 Reviews REVIEWS GLOBAL WEST, AMERICAN FRONTIER: TRAVEL, EMPIRE, AND EXCEPTIONALISM FROM MANIFEST DESTINY TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION by David M. Wrobel University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2013. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 328 pages. $39.95 cloth. The very best historical monographs ask readers to reconsider what they believe to be true about the past and, in the process, require them to re-examine the source materials on which they formed their interpretations.David Wrobel’s latest book does both.Wrobel offers a careful examination of nineteenth- and twentieth -century travel writing to challenge the idea that writers provided homogeneously “exceptionalist visions”of the American West during that period (p. 4).While Wrobel concedes that Americans consumed a “steady diet of exceptionalist rhetoric and imagery,” he also insists that “there was another cultural diet” that he views as “equally voluminous”(p. 4). Indeed, Wrobel demonstrates that travel literature written by both Europeans and Americans over a roughly one-hundred year period, rather than celebrating notions of American exceptionalism or promoting a mythic West, frequently “offered a countercurrent of thinking about the global West during the nineteenth century, and the considerably more frontier-centric and nation-centric envisioning of the West in the twentieth century” (p. 5). Offering a close re-examination of travel literatures, Wrobel shows that this writing could be both deeply perceptive and globally contextualized. The book is organized chronologically and thematically, allowing Wrobel to explore the changing landscapes that travel writers encountered and the ways in which they differently reflected on the West. Chapter 1 demonstrates that nineteenth-century travel writing challenged “the common notion of the American West as an exceptional place, one without parallel” (p. 22). Wrobel shows that travel writers were likely to “place the West in a broader, comparative global context, viewing it as one developing frontier among many.” Moreover, despite historians’ tendency to view travel writers as“architects of imperial visions” and “agents of empire,” at least some writers offered careful — and sometimes critical —considerationof American’sexpansionist impulses (p.21).In this chapter,as in Chapter 2 (which together constitute Part I of the book), Wrobel persuasively demonstrates the ways in which travel writers described a truly “global West.”German writer Friedrich Gerstäcker,for example, envisioned California as a multicultural “global stage” where actors from around the world met and often struggled.His writing thus “put the world into the West.” For Gerst äcker, Wrobel argues, California’s gold rush was not an exclusively western or American story, but, rather, a world story (p. 40–41). Wrobel similarly demonstrates that many nineteenth-century travel writers brought a global sensibility to their accounts.Where British travel writer Isabella Bird began to consider how her experiences in theWest might provide a “defining frame of reference for encounters all across the globe,” Mark Twain joined a “growing chorus” of writers concerned with imperialism (p. 61, 71). These writers were among the many, as Wrobel’s close readings of their texts suggests, who invited readers to both see the “world in the West and the West in the world” (p. 48). The book’s second section considers the twentieth century and demonstrates what Wrobel takes to be an important shift in travel writing.Where many nineteenth-century writers had offered a view of the West within its “broader and largely deexceptionalized global context, their twentieth-century counterparts  OHQ vol. 116, no. 3 often, in contrast, looked persistently inward while searching for a distinctively American frontier, a place like nowhere else on earth” (p. 85). Wrobel places this shift at the precise momentwhenAmericansbeganto perceive the American frontier as closed.Thus,travelers like John Muir, Jack London, and Theodore Roosevelt sought “new frontiers of adventure well beyond the geographic borders of their newly frontierless nation” (p. 86). Where Wrobel argues that London was a culturally sensitive traveller, one who acted more as a “cultural ambassador than as an agent of empire,” he notes the “imperial tone” characteristic of Roosevelt’s writing (p. 91, 99). Yet Wrobel’s keen analysis links Roosevelt’s accounts of his travels in Africa with his earlier writings about theAmericanWest to show how Roosevelt connected these as like “frontiers.” Wrobel also smartly develops...