Reviews True Yankees: The South Seas & The Discovery ofAmerican Identity by Dane A. Morrison (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2014, 257pp, illus, notes, index, ISBN 978-1-4214-1542-0; $34.95hc) Dane Morrison's True Yankees calls attention to a very important topic: the significance of the Asia-Pacific trade to the fortunes and identity of the early American republic. Morrison argues that American participation in trade voyages to the East did nothing less than establish the United States as a bona fide nation in the eyes of the world, and was instrumental in creating the American Yankee identity-commercially shrewd, autonomous, and confident, by turns global, then insular, in vision. Morrison elucidates his story by considering the travel narratives of several Americans who journeyed to Asia and the Pacific between 1784 and 1844. The stories of Samuel Shaw, Amasa Delano, and Edmund Fanning provide material to describe and assess the first generation of Americans in the East; those of Harriet Low and Robert Bennett Forbes the second. The reason to so organize the material is to show the progress from the Enlightened worldliness of the first generation developing into the Yankee, often nativist, self-assuredness of the second, all in great measure attributable to the experiences of the China and India trade. In focusing on the travel narratives, Morrison shows us two important things: 1) the information about the South Sea travels has been available to those who might have incorporated it more fully into the histories of the early United States, and 2) the travelers were entirely conscious of creating an identity and reputation as they visited cosmopolitan ports (and it was this effort that in fact created the standard image of the energetic Yankee devoted to republican ideals). Morrison has done his homework. In addition to his familiarity with his main topic and with early American history, he has presented detailed information about the China trade and Macau, contemporary wage structures, the Icelandic volcanic eruption, the era's other scientific voyages, and other related matters. He is aware of the relevance of Franklin, Wilkes, Melville, industrialization, Humboldt, Orientalism, SEA HISTORY 152, AUTUMN 2015
Manifest Destiny, the concept of imagined community, and other topics to his story. He explains that such items might have been given greater consideration, but their relegation to the margins does not diminish the significance of his essential point, nor of the narratives of his five travelers. I concur.
Morrison's book is important and impressive. Its point is accurate and significant. It is a work of skillful research, analysis and vision, as well as one that tells an under-appreciated story. I'll let the author have the last word: "What the Americans found in the Great South Sea challenged their colonial assumptions about the world; it bound them closer together as one people; and it legitimized their status according to the criteria of their age-as an independent nation and men of character." WILLIAM
J. McCARTHY
Wilmington, North Carolina
The South Seas & The Discovery of American Identity
s. DANE A. MORRISON
Another thing he does well is present the Asia trade as a complex process that was not uniformly successful. It is welcome to see such hyperbole dispelled by the stories he presents, such as that of Delano, who became something of a tramp merchant across the region as misfortune dogged his most ambitious efforts. He was unable to become wealthy, or even solvent, from his myriad adventures. Still, for all the achievements of this book, I'd like to see more from one who has thought carefully and extensively about these matters. The topics of intercultural contact, racism, the significance of the printed book, and the creation of national identity are broad and are addressed in a growing body of literature that does not fully make its way into this book. Contemporary literary figures such as Cooper, Irving, and Poe also went to some length to consider and create an American identity, and might be discussed. The topic of historical travel literature itself has become a bona fide field of scholarly endeavor over the past decade or two, and many of its practitioners publish work that could be profitably considered here.
Battle Ready: The National Coast Defense System and the Fortification of Puget Sound, 1894-1925 by David M. Hansen (Washington State Univ. Press, Pullman, 2014, 16lpp, illus, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-0-87422-320-0; $32.95pb) It's still hard to believe that just over a hundred years ago the United States' coastal defense system was predicated on standing on the edges of the continent with
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