Romantic Niagara: Environmental Aesthetics, Indigenous Culture and Transatlantic Tourism, 1776-1850

£6.99

Symbiosis 12.2
Author: Kevin Hutchings
Pages: 17

'Romantic Niagara: Environmental Aesthetics, Indigenous Culture, and Transatlantic Tourism, 1776–1850' by Kevin Hutchings, explores the interplay between the environmental aesthetics of Niagara Falls, indigenous culture, and the rise of transatlantic tourism from 1776 to 1850. Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay examines the transformative impact of Niagara on European and American visitors, as well as its cultural and spiritual significance for indigenous peoples. Hutchings delves into the complex relationships between nature, culture, and tourism, providing a nuanced analysis of how Niagara became both a symbol of sublime natural beauty and a site of colonial and commercial exploitation. This scholarly work is essential for readers interested in environmental literature, cultural studies, and the history of tourism.

Essay Excerpt

"In Book IV of his influential History of America (1777), the Scottish Enlightenment historian William Robertson—the most influential European theorist of Native American cultural identity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—offered the following description of nature in North America’s Great Lakes watershed, a description that was itself gleaned from the writings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travellers: ‘The lakes of the New World are no less conspicuous for grandeur than its mountains and rivers. There is nothing in other parts of the globe which resembles the prodigious chain of lakes in North America. They may properly be termed inland seas of fresh water; and even those of the second or third class in magnitude, are of larger circuit than the greatest lake of the ancient continent’."