Sale!

Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain

Amazon.com Price:  $28.20 (as of 23/04/2019 13:23 PST- Details)

Description

In 1758 Peter Williamson gave the impression on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, dressed as a Native American and telling a remarkable tale. He claimed that as a young boy he had been kidnapped from the city and sold into slavery in The usa. In performances and in a printed narrative he peddled to his audiences, Williamson described his tribulations as an indentured servant, Indian captive, soldier, and prisoner of war. Aberdeen’s magistrates referred to as him a liar and banished him from the city, but Williamson defended his story.

Separating fact from fiction, Timothy J. Shannon explains what Williamson’s tale says about how working people of eighteenth-century Britain, so regularly depicted as sufferers of empire, found how you can create lives and exploit opportunities within it. Exiled from Aberdeen, Williamson settled in Edinburgh, where he cultivated enduring celebrity as the self-proclaimed “king of the Indians.” His performances and publications capitalized on the curiosity the Seven Years’ War had ignited some of the public for news and information about The usa and its native inhabitants. As a coffeehouse proprietor and printer, he gave audiences a plebeian standpoint on Britain’s rise to imperial power in North The usa.

Indian Captive, Indian King is a history of empire from the bottom up, showing how Williamson’s American odyssey illuminates the real-life experiences of on a regular basis people on the margins of the British Empire and how those experiences, when repackaged in commute narratives and captivity tales, shaped popular perceptions about the empire’s racial and cultural geography.

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » Colonial Period » Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain

Recent Products