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Reviews
| Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776. By Alden T. Vaughan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. xxv + 337 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $50.00 (cloth).
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From 1500 to 1776, over one hundred American Indians are known to have visited the British Isles. The durations of and reasons for their visits varied widely, as did the reception they enjoyed upon their arrival. A tragically high number died en route or in Britain, but more returned home. Many of those who survived the journey returned in possession of legal concessions, regal gifts, English proficiency, or enhanced status among their own people. All were richer in anecdote and impression, and their experiences had significant if divergent impacts on future interactions between Indians and English. |
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Alden T. Vaughan's Transatlantic Encounters is a study of the "approximately 175 Indians and Inuits" (p. xi) who visited England and Scotland in this era. While some Indian visitors have received a great deal of scholarly attention, there has been no attempt since 1943 at a general survey. Vaughan's book is unique and important as a comprehensive examination of this topic that combines painstaking research with great insight. Its stated goal is "to put a human face on the Americans' experiences before and after, but especially during, their overseas ventures" (p. xvi). This is a tall order, given the dehumanizing effects of some of these journeys and the difficulty of locating the Indians' perspectives in situations that often reduced them to public spectacles. Through scrutiny of texts ranging from letters and treaties to ballads and portraits, Vaughan is able to present most of these travelers as people with complex motivations for and responses to their journeys. Beginning with the Inuits who were captured and exhibited by Bristol merchants around 1500 and ending with Joseph Brant, the warrior and polished diplomat who did much to ensure Mohawk loyalism during the American Revolution, Vaughan develops a surprisingly coherent narrative from a frustratingly incomplete documentary record. |
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The payoffs of such a broadly framed study are significant. Individual visits that when viewed in isolation amount to historical oddities are revealed to be elements of important trends in cross-cultural interaction. A dramatic, generation-long increase of Indian slaves in England is a poignant indicator of the harsh outcomes of late seventeenth-century Anglo-Indian wars. While sixteenth-century explorers kidnapped Indians with stunning casualness and thought nothing of exhibiting them for profit at home, eighteenth-century officials, knowing how important Indians' goodwill was to Britain's military success, were quick to punish similar enterprises. The successful endeavor of a Nipmuck named John Wampas to seek the king's intervention in a land dispute began "a new pattern of transatlantic encounters by circumventing colonial governors, legislatures, and judges" to obtain rulings sympathetic to Native peoples (p. 105). In these petition visits, as in a series of diplomatic sojourns from nations such as the Iroquois and Cherokee, Indians' affection for and hopes of Britain's monarchs played an important role in their responses to whites on both sides of the Atlantic. The final chapter is especially worth reading for the significance Vaughan is able to locate in the patterns that emerge from the ebb, flow, and tenor of these eastward journeys. |
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This book has been needed for a long time. Transatlantic Encounters is groundbreaking in the range and thoroughness of its coverage. With lucid prose and vivid images that Cambridge Press did well to reproduce, it could work well, at least in extracts, for undergraduate classes. For years to come it will serve as an indispensable resource for the study of Indians in Britain and of Indian-English contact, not to mention of the many individuals treated in its pages. Vaughan's analysis of these encounters also promises to have substantial influence on the burgeoning field of Atlantic history.
Laura M. Stevens
University of Tulsa
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