Enlightenment Orientalism in the American Mind, 1770-1807

This study examines early American orientalism as a means of self-reflection in a time of disorienting change. It explores specifically the period’s popular oriental-observer tales as a way to conceptualize and critique the new ideas of identity, history, and nationality accompanying a growing protoindustrialization and consumer culture.

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This study engages with the emerging field of energy humanities to provide close readings of several early American oriental-observer tales. The popular genre of orientalism offered Americans a means to critique new ideas of identity, history, and nationality accompanying protoindustrialization and a growing consumerism. The tales thus express a complex self-reflection during a time when America’s exploitation of its energy resources and its engagement in a Franco-British world-system was transforming the daily life of its citizens. The genre of the oriental observer, this study argues, offers intriguing glimpses of a nation becoming strange in the eyes of its own inhabitants.