Foreign History and Travel
As suggested by titles included in booksellers' and library
catalogs, works of foreign history and travel were very
popular with the American reading public during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. While the American Antiquarian Society
does not attempt to be comprehensive in this area and does not
regularly add to this classification, it does house a well-established
collection that includes most of the standard works of history
reprinted in this country prior to the Civil War, among which
are numerous editions of Rollin's Ancient History, Lectures on
Modern History by William Smyth, as well as copies of many of the
original editions imported from Europe, among which is the forty-four
volume set of The Modern Part of an Universal History, from the
Earliest Account of Time (London, 1759-66). The collection includes a
preliminary section encompassing general works of history and
travel as well as secondary sources on historiography. Following this
are separate classes for ancient history, each of the European
countries, and other countries and regions.
Because of the close ties between English and American
history, the collection is particularly strong in the area of English
history and description. Students of British colonial history can find at
AAS such primary source materials as the Calendar of State
Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies (London,
1893-1969) and the Journal of the Commissioners for Trade &
Plantations (London, 1920-38). Other useful sources of British history
and description are the many parish registers and travelers'
guidebooks.
The China trade aroused considerable interest in Chinese history and
culture. One unusual item in the AAS collection relating to
China is A Guide to, or Descriptive Catalogue of the Chinese Museum,
in the Marlboro' Chapel, Boston by John R. Peters, Jr. (Boston,
1845). During the antebellum period, the movement for the
colonization of Liberia gave rise to a body of literature describing that
country and Africa in general. In 1852, for example, the American
Colonization Society published Information About Going to
Liberia, with Things Every Emigrant Ought to Know.
The missionary movement was also responsible for producing a
variety of works on some of the more remote regions of the world. In
1836, the second edition of David Abeel's Journal of a Residence in
China was published in New York. And during the 1870s Samuel
Colcord Bartlett wrote a series of historical and descriptive
sketches of the missions under the control of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, including those in Africa,
Ceylon and India, and Turkey. Like the missionaries, British
officers wrote accounts of their experiences and many of these
narratives were reprinted in the United States. Examples
included in the Society's collections are Cabool, a Personal Narrative
of a Journey to, and Residence in That City in the Years 1836, 7,
and 8, by Lieut. Col. Sir Alexander Burnes (Philadelphia, 1843) and
The Opium War, Being Recollections of Service in China, by
Capt. Arthur Cunynghame (Philadelphia, 1845). The American seaman James
Riley's An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig
Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of
August, 1815 which gives an account of the enslavement of the
survivors by
the Arabs, was first published in 1817 and remained popular until
mid-century.
Of particular interest, and actively collected by the Society,
are the accounts and journals of American travelers
abroad. Unusual examples of this genre include Running Sketches of Men
and Places, by George Copway, chief of the Ojibway Nation (New York,
1851), David F. Dorr's A Colored Man Around the World (Cleveland,
1858), Correspondence of Palestine Tourists (Salt Lake City, 1875),
a series of letters describing the pilgrimage of a party of
influential Mormons, among whom were George A. Smith and
Lorenzo Snow, and United States Girls Across the Atlantic
(Syracuse,
1876), by Maria Welch Harris, of Homer, N.Y.
About 5,550 titles are included in the Society's collection of foreign
history and travel. Additional and related materials are found
in the Early American Imprints, the Reserve, the Latin American, and
the Canadian collections. Also of interest are a series of catalogs
issued by the governments of Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany,
Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and
Switzerland that describe their exhibits at the Centennial Exhibition at
Philadelphia in 1876. Although these catalogs are classified
and shelved with other materials relating to that exhibition,
rather than with the history and description of the countries they
represent, they are a wonderful source of historical and
descriptive information. In all cases, subject access is provided by the
geographic place name followed by the subdivisions "Description and
travel" and "History."
- Doris O'Keefe, Senior Cataloger
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Correspondence of Palestine Tourists: A Series of
Letters
Winter and Spring on the Shores of the
Mediterranean by J. Henry Bennet, M.D.
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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