A history and analysis of European colonizers’ relationship with and literary depiction of the aborigines of the Lesser Antilles. Philip Boucher analyzes the images—and the realities—of European relations with the people known as Island Caribs during the first three centuries after Columbus. Based on literary sources, travelers’ observations, and missionary accounts, as well as on French and English colonial archives and administrative correspondence, Cannibal Encounters offers a vivid portrait of a troubled chapter in the history of European-Amerindian relations. Winner of the French Colonial Historical Society’s Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize “A strong contribution to our understanding of the interplay not only between France and Britain in the struggle for the Antilles but also between the colonizers and the indigenous people fighting to maintain their independence from both European powers.” —American Historical Review “Welcome evidence that historians are willing to rewrite the history of the colonial era in the Caribbean with a clearer eye to the part the indigenous population played.” —Peter Hulme, William and Mary Quarterly “Boucher’s research is thorough and his contribution to the historiography of the Caribbean and of colonialism is valuable.” —Ethan Casey, Magill Book Reviews “An intelligent, well-informed discussion of French and English contacts with Island Caribs in the West Indies from the pre-colonial era until the end of the Seven Years War.” —Kenneth Morgan, English Historical Review “A new and important contribution to the efforts of historians and anthropologists to understand the history of the Caribs.” —Jalil Sued-Badillo, Journal of American History “A lucid and terse examination of direct interactions between Island Caribs and Europeans in the Lesser Antilles, and the indirect influence of literary images of Island Caribs (and other Native Americans) on the emergence of Western philosophical traditions.” —William F. Keegan, Journal of Interdisciplinary History “No one has mined the French National Archives to this extent on this topic. Boucher renders valuable information accessible to English readers.” —Robert A. Myers, Alfred University

"In this comparative history of cross-cultural encounters in the early North Atlantic world, Kelly L. Watson argues that the persistent rumours of cannibalism surrounding Native Americans served a specific and practical purpose for European settlers. As they forged new identities and found ways to not only subdue but also co-exist with native peoples, the cannibal narrative helped to establish hierarchical categories of European superiority and Native inferiority upon which imperial power in the Americas was predicated."--Cover.

Objects of fear and fascination, cannibals have long signified an elemental "otherness," an existence outside the bounds of normalcy. In the American imagination, the figure of the cannibal has evolved tellingly over time, as Jeff Berglund shows in this study encompassing a strikingly eclectic collection of cultural, literary, and cinematic texts. Cannibal Fictions brings together two discrete periods in U.S. history: the years between the Civil War and World War I, the high-water mark in America's imperial presence, and the post-Vietnam era, when the nation was beginning to seriously question its own global agenda. Berglund shows how P. T. Barnum, in a traveling exhibit featuring so-called "Fiji cannibals," served up an alien "other" for popular consumption, while Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan of the Apes series tapped into similar anxieties about the eruption of foreign elements into a homogeneous culture. Turning to the last decades of the twentieth century, Berglund considers how treatments of cannibalism variously perpetuated or subverted racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies rooted in earlier times. Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes invokes cannibalism to new effect, offering an explicit critique of racial, gender, and sexual politics (an element to a large extent suppressed in the movie adaptation). Recurring motifs in contemporary Native American writing suggest how Western expansion has, cannibalistically, laid the seeds of its own destruction. And James Dobson's recent efforts to link the pro-life agenda to allegations of cannibalism in China testify still further to the currency and pervasiveness of this powerful trope. By highlighting practices that preclude the many from becoming one, these representations of cannibalism, Berglund argues, call into question the comforting national narrative of e pluribus unum.

Sailing the uncharted waters of the Pacific in 1830, Captain Benjamin Morrell of Connecticut became the first outsider to encounter the inhabitants of a small island off New Guinea. The contact quickly turned violent, fatal cannons were fired, and Morrell abducted young Dako, a hostage so shocked by the white complexions of his kidnappers that he believed he had been captured by the dead. This gripping book unveils for the first time the strange odyssey the two men shared in ensuing years. The account is uniquely told, as much from the captive’s perspective as from the American’s. Upon returning to New York, Morrell exhibited Dako as a “cannibal” in wildly popular shows performed on Broadway and along the east coast. The proceeds helped fund a return voyage to the South Pacific—the captain hoping to establish trade with Dako’s assistance, and Dako seizing his only chance to return home to his unmapped island. Supported by rich, newly found archives, this wide-ranging volume traces the voyage to its extraordinary ends and en route decrypts Morrell’s ambiguous character, the mythic qualities of Dako’s life, and the two men's infusion into American literature—Dako inspired Melville’s Queequeg, for example. The encounters confound indigenous peoples and Americans alike as both puzzle over what it is to be truly human and alive.

The extraordinary story of Captain Cook's encounters with the Polynesian Islanders is retold here in bold, vivid style, capturing the complex (and sometimes sexual) relationships between the explorers and the Islanders as well as the unresolved issues that led to Cook's violent death on the shores of Hawaii. (History)

Full of colorful details and engrossing stories, Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles shows that the aspirations of individual Americans to be recognized as people worthy of others' respect was a driving force in the global extension of United States influence shortly after the nation's founding. Nancy Shoemaker contends that what she calls extraterritorial Americans constituted the vanguard of a vast, early US global expansion. Using as her site of historical investigation nineteenth-century Fiji, the "cannibal isles" of American popular culture, she uncovers stories of Americans looking for opportunities to rise in social status and enhance their sense of self. Prior to British colonization in 1874, extraterritorial Americans had, she argues, as much impact on Fiji as did the British. While the American economy invested in the extraction of sandalwood and sea slugs as resources to sell in China, individuals who went to Fiji had more complicated, personal objectives. Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles considers these motivations through the lives of the three Americans who left the deepest imprint on Fiji: a runaway whaleman who settled in the islands, a sea captain's wife, and a merchant. Shoemaker's book shows how ordinary Americans living or working overseas found unusual venues where they could show themselves worthy of others' respect—others' approval, admiration, or deference.

Winner, 2020 Association for the Study of Food and Society Book Award, Edited Volume Long before the founding of the Jamestown, Virginia, colony and its Starving Time of 1609–1610—one of the most famous cannibalism narratives in North American colonial history—cannibalism played an important role in shaping the human relationship to food, hunger, and moral outrage. Why did colonial invaders go out of their way to accuse women of cannibalism? What challenges did Spaniards face in trying to explain Eucharist rites to Native peoples? What roles did preconceived notions about non-Europeans play in inflating accounts of cannibalism in Christopher Columbus’s reports as they moved through Italian merchant circles? Asking questions such as these and exploring what it meant to accuse someone of eating people as well as how cannibalism rumors facilitated slavery and the rise of empires, To Feast on Us as Their Prey posits that it is impossible to separate histories of cannibalism from the role food and hunger have played in the colonization efforts that shaped our modern world.