| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Susan Scott Parish. American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History. 2006. Pp. xvi, 321. Cloth $49.95, paper $22.50.

It is in the nature of the so-called new historicism to take the anecdote and make of it differences that are fundamentally rhetorical, including, of course, the ubiquitous "other." Erased by a taxonomy of distinctions, the narrative disappears in favor of the fragment and the incidental. Susan Scott Parish's book is full of fascinating moments and of telling intersections, in the vein that has informed the literary archaeology of scholars like Stephen Greenblatt. Unfortunately, it is also overburdened by them. Even the opening tale of Kwasi, a slave in Surinam at the end of the seventeenth century, soon disappears into a structure of exploitation, manipulation, and profit. His story of "unmitigated betrayal" (p. 2) momentarily introduces us to the "making of Enlightenment knowledge in both imperial centres and in American colonies" (p. 3). Unfortunately, we soon lose sight of Kwasi switching between ingratiation and intimidation, trapped between European and African codes of conduct.

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