Eastward of Good Hope: Early America in a Dangerous World

How did news from the East―carried in ship logs and mariners' reports, journals, and correspondence―shape early Americans' understanding of the world as a map of dangerous and incoherent sites?
Freed from restrictions of British mercantilism in the years following the War of Independence, Yankee merchants embarked on numerous voyages of commerce and discovery into distant seas. Through the news from the East, carried in mariners' reports, ship logs, journals, and correspondence, Americans at home imagined the world as a map of dangerous and deranged places. This was a world that was profoundly disordered, hobbled by tyranny and oppression or steeped in chaos and anarchy, often deadly, always uncertain, unpredictable, and unstable, yet amenable to American influence.
Read more