Cultural Economies of the Atlantic World

Objects and Capital in the Transatlantic Imagination

Victoria Barnett-Woods, Victoria Barnett-Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000055672
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Cultural Economies explores the dynamic intersection of material culture and transatlantic formations of "capital" in the long eighteenth century. It brings together two cutting-edge fields of inquiry—Material Studies and Atlantic Studies—into a generative collection of essays that investigate nuanced ways that capital, material culture, and differing transatlantic ideologies intersected. This ambitious, provocative work provides new interpretive critiques and methodological approaches to understanding both the material and the abstract relationships between humans and objects, including the objectification of humans, in the larger current conversation about capitalism and inevitably power, in the Atlantic world. Chronologically bracketed by events in the long-eighteenth century circum-Atlantic, these essays employ material case studies from littoral African states, to abolitionist North America, to Caribbean slavery, to medicinal practice in South America, providing both broad coverage and nuanced interpretation. Holistically, Cultural Economies demonstrates that the eighteenth-century Atlantic world of capital and materiality was intimately connected to both large and small networks that inform the hemispheric and transatlantic geopolitics of capital and nation of the present day.

Part I

Capitalized Bodies and the Imperial Imagination

1 “Venereal Distemper”

Illicit Trade and Contagious Disease in the Journals of Captain James Cook

Lisa Vandenbossche

You are likewise to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives and Inhabitants, where you find any; and to endeavor, by all proper means to cultivate a friendship with them; making them Presents of such Trinkets as you may have on board, and they may like best; inviting them to Traffick; and shewing them every Civility and Regard.¹

—Instructions from the British Admiralty to Captain James Cook

As there were some venereal complaints on board both the Ships, in order to prevent its being communicated to these people, I can order that no Women, on any account whatever were to be admitted on board the Ships, I also forbid all manner of connection with them, and ordered that none who had the veneral upon them should go out of the ships.²

—Journal of Captain James Cook, Third Voyage

Often referred to as the Second Age of Exploration, the second half of the eighteenth century saw Great Britain (amongst other European powers) turn its attention to the Pacific, as the British Admiralty sent explorers from the Atlantic to the Pacific in search of scientific and geographic discovery. In order to control the Pacific, and new trade routes and lands promised by this space, one first had to use new technology to map it and its people, which became part of the goal of the British Admiralty and gained the attention of groups like the Royal Society. As part of this mission, Captain James Cook led three voyages on behalf of the British Admiralty: one from 1768 to 1771, one from 1772 to 1775, and a final one from 1776 to his death in 1779. These voyages were a mix of naval exploration and scientific discovery: Cook’s public instructions for his third voyage included returning a visiting native back home to the Society Islands, whereas his secret instructions included searching for a Northwest Passage, as well as interacting with and documenting native populations, in order to “with the consent of the Natives … take possession in the name of the King of Great Britain, of convenient situations in such Countries you may discover.”³ Ultimately unsuccessful in finding a Northwest Passage, Cook was successful in geographically mapping unknown worlds of the Atlantic and Pacific and culturally mapping the peoples he discovered in his written accounts of these places as he took possession.

Written in part based on these secret instructions from the British Admiralty, Cook’s published journals served as a guide to understanding the diverse people and places that the explorers encountered. They detailed the establishment of the purposed “Traffick,” tracing goods moving on and off the ships and formal relations between natives and Europeans in order to chronicle successful patterns of interaction and “friendship” that might be followed by those who came next. These accounts thus intentionally made visible systems of exchange between European states and Atlantic and Pacific peoples. Less visible in Cook’s writings, however, were the informal systems of economic and cultural exchange between sexes that were enacted between common sailors and indigenous individuals. Concentrating on journal accounts from Cook’s final voyage, this chapter considers how depictions of native women in Cook’s journal from his last voyage obscured these informal exchange networks. Looking specifically at moments where relationships between members of his crew and native women are described, I suggest the published journal accounts use language of contagious disease to describe the relationship between common sailors and native women. Whereas European and indigenous men participate in “Traffick” encouraged by the Admiralty’s instructions, women are rhetorically figured as objects of this trade. I argue that these accounts thus divert a reader’s attention to the spread of disease, or “Venereal complaints,” on board ships and within island populations and mask systems of illicit trade in which women’s bodies are commodified as objects of material exchange. Disease in these accounts is the material manifestation of alternative systems of capital and exchange established by natives and sailors outside formal networks supported by those in authority. Tracing this use of “disease” in describing the relationship between common sailors and native women illustrates how “disease” in these accounts functions at material and metaphorical levels: it is both a physical consequence of the economic exchange of bodies for goods and a representative figuration of cultural exchange between European/non-European, Christian/non-Christian actors. Language of contagious disease linked with cross-cultural material exchange in Cook’s journals works to then frame later reform discourse in the Pacific, eventually driving larger social and political changes in this part of the world.

Cook’s writings from his first voyage were mainly envisioned as military reports for the British Admiralty. When they were compiled with other writings by scientists and sailors on board and published in an official account by Dr. John Hawkesworth, however, they met with controversy that sparked public interest and a more popular readership.⁴ This official published account included descriptions of women the explorers encountered in Tahiti, particularly Oberea⁵ who “at the time was supposed to be queen of the island [Tahiti]” and whose eyes held “uncommon intelligence and sensibility.”⁶ This first description of Oberea remains fairly positive, but the text follows it with more explicit details of Oberea’s sexual practices and sexual customs of the island in general. Recounting a visit made the next day by the ship’s naturalist Mr. Banks, Hawkesworth tells readers that when looking into Oberea’s chamber, Banks “found her in bed with a handsome young fellow about five and twenty.”⁷ Rather than condemn this action, the text normalizes it, explaining that Banks “was soon made to understand that such amours gave no occasion to scandal, and that [the fellow] was universally known to have been selected by her as the object of her personal favors.”⁸ This is followed in the next chapter by a description of a sexual rites of the Arioi in which Cook observes a

young man, near six feet high perform[ing] the rites of Venus with a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people, and a great number of natives, without the least sense of it being indecent or improper.⁹

In fact, the text goes on to suggest that “several women of rank, particularly Oberea,” coached the girl in her duties.¹⁰ As before, Hawkesworth’s account does not explicitly condemn this practice but instead questions the relativity of morality in general, asking “whether the shame attending certain actions which are allowed on all sides to be in themselves innocent, is implanted in Nature, or superinduced by custom.”¹¹ Rather than censor the text along Anglo-Christian norms, in translating the experiences of the explorers for a British reading audience, Hawkesworth’s text invited questions about moral and religious norms more broadly.

For British moralists, Hawkesworth’s writing about these sexual encounters was an act in and of itself that would spread contagious ideas about alternative models of sexual expression and female agency when it was read in England. This sparked outrage amongst British readers who feared the text might elicit similar sexual behavior in the homeland. As Anne Maxwell explains, “at stake was the possibility that an Edenic vision of the South Sea Islands might encourage domestic attempts to rebel against the established gender and political order.”¹² Being too complimentary toward Pacific culture and sexual expression in narrative was dangerous in that it might encourage readers to rethink established order in the homeland and “the tendency to ‘go native’ observable in the plebeians of Cook’s crew might be repeated by the susceptible maidens, matrons, and mobs of the metropolis.”¹³ Social conservatives, amongst others, called for censorship of the text, inspiring questions about the relationship between exploration and documentation. Maxwell suggests this intense negative reaction encouraged Cook to rethink his own role as literary writer and Nicholas Thomas describes this shift during the second voyage as a change in both thinking and emphasis, when “Cook’s ambitions had turned from geographic to literary accomplishments.”¹⁴ While Thomas admits that Cook “never says so in so many words,” he convincingly shows Cook’s “greater attention to his writing, his redrafting, his expansion, his reflection and his address to his reader, say so again and again.”¹⁵ The publication of writings from the voyage taught Cook a lesson that would impact his later writings; he gained concern for both what he was saying and how he was saying it. As Cook became aware of the cultural significance of his words and the larger scope of his published work in the third voyage, descriptions of native women and sexual contact become censored through discourses of trade and contagious disease that obscure (rather than compliment) female actors and condemn these sexual practices. Descriptions of female actors and sexual practices disappeared into a language of disease prevention and reform.

This shift in Cook’s understanding of his role as explorer and writer between his first and third voyages reflected a shift in the relationship between art and subject in terms of documenting voyages of exploration in the Pacific more broadly. By his third voyage, both Cook and the British Admiralty had become more familiar with the Pacific, Cook having already mapped parts of the southern Pacific and reported these findings from his first two voyages. The first two voyages were focused on mapping spaces; however, the rise of ethnography as a valid mode of scientific inquiry placed a greater importance on mapping people. Tracing this shifting focus through visual art, Bernard Smith notes,

important advances were made in these sciences continually throughout the three voyages, but there were differences in emphasis … the first voyage is the botanical voyage, par excellence, the second is the meteorological voyage, and the third, the ethnographic voyage.¹⁶

According to Cook’s secret instructions, the goal of the voyage was to locate a Northwest Passage. The unofficial scientific objective that Cook also undertook was to produce ethnographic data (visual and written) of the people and cultures encountered in order to establish connections with them. In order to do so, Cook’s accounts often focused on how best to build and maintain relationships with the people he and his crew encounter to establish a “Tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Graphs
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• Part I Capitalized Bodies and the Imperial Imagination
• Part II Representation and Power in the Contact Zone
• Part III Consuming Cultures in the Colonial Atlantic
• Part IV Labor and Identity in Early American Probates
• Part V Capital Networks, Capital Control
• Contributors
• Index