American Travelers on the Nile

Andrew Oliver

Description

A fascinating study of the early American experience in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean
The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Göttingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travelers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, traveling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Naval officers off ships of the Mediterranean squadron visited Cairo to see the pyramids. Two groups went on business, one importing steam-powered rice and cotton mills from New York, the other exporting giraffes from the Kalahari Desert for wild animal shows in New York. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travelers themselves.
Introduction
1 Americans in Eighteenth-Century Egypt
2 Napoleon and the French Savants in Egypt
3 Mehemet Ali's New Egypt
4 American Trade and the Navy in the Mediterranean
5 Americans Return to Egypt
6 The European Presence in Egypt from 1815 to 1825
7 American Missionaries on Tour
8 The Eastern Question
9 The Lure of Egypt
10 The US Naval Squadron: Egyptian Curios and Civilian Passengers
11 Keepers of Diaries: 1833 to 1835
12 Traveling in Egypt
13 John L. Stephens and Fellow Tourists of the Mid-1830s
14 Steamship Travel
15 Professional Visitors
16 Mills, Giraffes, and Skulls, and even the Telegraph
17 Shall We Meet in Egypt?
18 Philip Rhinelander and His Friends
19 After 1839

Sujets

• Egypt
• Travel
• Middle East

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617976322
• Langue: English

Extrait

AMERICAN TRAVELERS ON THE NILE
AMERICAN TRAVELERS ON THE NILE
Early U.S. Visitors to Egypt, 1774-1839
Andrew Oliver
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo New York
First published in 2014 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
Copyright 2014 by Andrew Oliver
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 977 416 667 9
e-ISBN 978 161 797 632 2
Version 1
Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-l seuls qui partent
Pour partir; coeurs l gers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalit jamais ils ne s cartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours : Allons!
But the real travelers are those who just go
To go; their hearts as light as balloons,
They never turn aside from their destiny,
And, without knowing why, say simply, Let s go!
Charles Baudelaire, Le voyage (1859), 17-20
CONTENTS
Map of Egypt
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. AMERICANS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EGYPT
Ward Nicholas Boylston
John Ledyard
European Travelers of This Period and Their Accounts
Boylston in London and His Return to Boston
2. NAPOLEON AND THE FRENCH SAVANTS IN EGYPT
3. MEHMET ALI AND HIS NEW EGYPT
Francis Barthow
4. THE AMERICAN NAVY AND TRADE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
The Barbary Pirates and the American Navy
Merchants in Smyrna and Constantinople
American Merchants in Yemen
Alexandria
Tourists Only as Far as Sicily
Tourists in Greece and Turkey before 1820
The War of 1812
5. THE EUROPEAN PRESENCE IN EGYPT FROM 1815 TO 1825
European Diplomats
Europeans Working for the Pasha s Enterprises
European Merchants
European Collectors and Researchers
The British Passage to and from India
Tourists
6. AMERICANS RETURN TO EGYPT
A Gentleman of Boston
The Alligator Episode
Cleopatra s Barge
George B. English, Luther Bradish, and George Rapleje
Egyptian Mummies
7. AMERICAN MISSIONARIES ON TOUR
Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons: Mission Postponed in Search of Health
The Reverend Eli Smith in Egypt in 1826
8. THE EASTERN QUESTION
Americans and the Greek War of Independence
The Greek Boy
American Diplomacy
Greece, Egypt, the Sublime Porte, and the European Powers
American Shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1820s
9. THE LURE OF EGYPT
Egyptian Revival and the Description de l gypte
Henry Oliver
Cornelius Bradford
Allen, Oakley, and Ferguson
The Obelisk from Luxor to Paris
Mendes Israel Cohen
John Gliddon, United States Consular Agent
John Warren
Americans Who Almost Went to Egypt
Champollion and Pariset in Egypt
10. THE US NAVAL SQUADRON: EGYPTIAN CURIOS AND CIVILIAN PASSENGERS
The United States Squadron in the Mediterranean
The First Encounter of the Squadron and Egypt
The Warren, Charles W. Skinner, in 1829
The Concord, Matthew C. Perry, and the Kirklands in 1832
The Delaware and Daniel T. Patterson in 1834
The Constitution, the United States, the John Adams, and the Shark in 1836
The Constitution, Jesse D. Elliott, the Hon. Lewis Cass, and Henry Ledyard in 1837
11. KEEPERS OF DIARIES: 1833 TO 1835
Eli and Sarah Smith
John W. Hamersley
J. Lewis Stackpole and Ralph Stead Izard, Jun.
William B. Hodgson
Rush and Rittenhouse Nutt
John Lowell
Two Brigs from Boston Reach Alexandria
12. TRAVELING IN EGYPT
Travel in Europe
Passports and Letters of Introduction
Guidebooks
Funds
Hotels
Dress
Food
Guides and Security
Health
13. JOHN L. STEPHENS AND FELLOW TOURISTS OF THE MID-1830S
John L. Stephens
The Haights and the Allens
Mr. Dorr and Mr. Curtis
James McHenry Boyd
A New Yorker in 1837
Henry McVickar and John Bard
14. STEAMSHIP TRAVEL
15. PROFESSIONAL VISITORS
Rev. Edward Robinson, Biblical Archaeologist
Dr. Valentine Mott, Surgeon
Valentine Mott s Arabic Manuscript
Henry P. Marshall, US Consul to Muscat
16. MILLS, GIRAFFES, AND SKULLS (AND EVEN THE TELEGRAPH)
Giraffes: From Sudan to Broadway
Morse s Telegraph: From Paris to the Pasha
17. SHALL WE MEET IN EGYPT?
Aaron Smith Willington, Publisher of the Charleston Courier
Mr. L. and Miss H.
Simeon Howard Calhoun, Native of Boston
A Nameless American Tourist in May
18. PHILIP RHINELANDER AND HIS FRIENDS
Rhinelander and His Friends on the Nile
Dreadful Accident on the Danube
Rhinelander and His Friends Leave for Vienna
19. AFTER 1839
Illustration Credits
Endnotes
The Nile
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
O ver a period of some five years, a great many individuals and institutions provided assistance, information, and access to letters and diaries, and furnished photographs and permissions. I would like to acknowledge them in the order in which the results of their help appear in this book. The staff of the Library of Congress has been unfailingly helpful. In particular I owe thanks to Thomas Mann for his longstanding interest in my work. Electronic databases available at the Library revealed a wealth of information: travelers initials became full names, passport applications provided dates of departure from the United States, newspapers carried accounts of their travels, and ships manifests gave the names of those returning from abroad. I turn now to the individual chapters of this book.
Americans in Eighteenth-century Egypt: On two visits to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, Jeremy Dibbell and other members of the staff made available to me the journal, notebook, and letters of Ward Nicholas Boylston as well as photocopies of two letters of Boylston s traveling companion, the young James Bowdoin. And I thank Elaine M. Heavy, Head of Reader Services, for permission to quote extensively from Boylston s diary. John W. Tyler of the Groton School, who had addressed the travels of Mr. Boylston before I had done so, read a draft of the chapter and offered useful suggestions. Janet L. Comey, curatorial research associate at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provided information on Stuart s portrait of Boylston. To Wim Pijbes, general director of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and to Eveline Sint Nicolaas, curator in the Department of History at the museum, I owe permission to illustrate the 1771 group portrait of the Van Lennep family whom Boylston met in Smyrna. The original letters written to Thomas Jefferson by John Ledyard, the other American to visit Egypt in the eighteenth century, are owned by the New-York Historical Society, and I thank the staff there for letting me see them.
Mehmet Ali and His New Egypt: Jay G. Williams of Hamilton College made available to me a complete transcript of the diary of Edward Robinson, still owned by the Robinson family, on one page of which Robinson recounts seeing the Egyptian students sent to Paris in 1826 under the aegis of Mehmet Ali.
The American Navy and Trade in the Mediterranean: Cynthia Gilliland and Deborah T. Haynes of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College provided information on the ledger listing the souvenirs given to Dartmouth by Silas Dinsmore. On a visit to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York, the staff brought out the recently acquired letter books of Thomas Appleton, United States consul in Leghorn from 1799 to 1824, in which the names of significant contacts appeared. At the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Charles Greifenstein and Earle Spamer provided a photocopy of Samuel Hazard s meteorological log. By generously providing selected scans of an anonymous journal kept on board a ship in the Mediterranean, a journal owned by the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Heather Cole and Emily Walhout allowed me to identify the author as Samuel Hazard.
Americans Return to Egypt: Christine Bertoni at the Peabody Essex Museum kindly provided a digital image of George Ropes watercolor of Cleopatra s Barge and information as to where it has been published. Sarah Puckitt, collections information specialist at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, arranged for photography of their portrait of Luther Bradish, while Pamela Bransford, registrar at the museum, furnished me with details on the provenance.
American Missionaries on Tour : I am grateful to the staff of the Burke Archives at Union Theological Seminary for making available to me during a visit to the library the Pliny Fisk papers in their possession. Danielle M. Rougeau, assistant curator of Special Collections & Archives at the Davis Family Library, Middlebury University, sent me digital versions of the diaries of Pliny Fisk in their possession. Jackie Penny, rights and reproductions coordinator at the American Antiquarian Society, provided a digital version of the single volume of the diary of Jonas King owned by the society.
The Eastern Question: Harvard Student Services provided a staff member to make copies of one of Pliny Fisk s journals owned by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, now on deposit at the Houghton Library at Harvard, microfilms of which are housed and available for inspection in Lamont Library