A cultural history of British accounts of travel to México : 1589-1900

Abstract

What follows is a study of British accounts of travel to Mexico, from the first ever published (1589) until those published at end of the nineteenth century. The focus throughout the research has been less on the texts themselves than on what they can tell us about British cultural history. Chapter I is based on a comprehensive and comparative reading of these accounts of travel in an attempt to identify their recurrent themes. A pervasive interest in religion and wealth, and the need to explain the foreign in terms of the familiar are the most conspicuous topics discussed here. A second chapter moves away from textual analysis and into the history of the books themselves. I have concentrated on the production and reception of geographical information, in general, and books about Mexico in particular, making use of some of the methods commonly employed by bibliographers and cultural historians to sketch a general outline of this very specialised segment of the book market. In a third chapter, I have complemented this overarching historical description with a specific case-study -the analysis of production, distribution and readership of accounts of travel to Mexico in 1820s London-for which I have drawn heavily on original documentary material.