The Conquest of Antiquity: The Travelling Empire of John Lloyd Stephens
The Conquest of Antiquity: The Travelling Empire of John Lloyd Stephens
This chapter, which examines the travelogues of nineteenth-century American archaeologist adventurer John Lloyd Stephens, argues that a postcolonial perspective illuminates the dialectics between domestic issues within American political and scientific discourse and American interests abroad. Stephens' trip to Central America took place in the years between the Indian Removal and the annexation of Texas that led to the Mexican War. While providing rhetorical continuity to these acts of internal colonialism and imperial expansion, Stephens' texts may also be seen as part of the larger intellectual project of spelling out an American cultural identity independent from that of Europe. In doing so, Stephens' travelogues deserve attention within a second framework of inquiry: the analysis of the particular ideological circumstances of the institutionalization of the new historical sciences of archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology.
Keywords: travelogues, travel writing, Central America, colonialism, imperial expansion, American cultural identity
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.