The Opened Letter. Lindsay O'Neill
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Название: The Opened Letter
Автор: Lindsay O'Neill
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
Серия: The Early Modern Americas
isbn: 9780812290189
isbn:
The maps these letters create reveals a British world centered and embedded in England with numerous anchors on the European continent, deep ties to the North American colonies, and a smattering of connections throughout the rest of the globe. The majority of letters, 85 percent to be exact, hailed from the British Isles themselves (Figure 4). These letters deeply bespeckle the south of England and cluster around urban centers like Bristol and Bath, with an especially dense showing around London. The letters then climb their way north, clustering in places like Lancaster, and then finding their way over the border into Scotland. Westward the letters make their way to Ireland, especially to Dublin and Munster, where over a quarter of the letters originated since the group of correspondents examined had strong ties to that isle. Moving in the other direction, across the English Channel, we find that another 10 percent of the letters came from the European continent (Figure 5). These letters hailed from multiple European countries: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Papal States, and even Russia, but they cluster around the Low Countries and France. Fewer letters, only 5 percent, came from beyond Europe, but as we will see in many ways these links were stronger than many closer to home (Figure 6). Writers penned most of these distant letters, 79 percent, from the North American colonies, and almost 90 percent of the letters sent from beyond Europe arrived from British-ruled colonies or outposts of British trading companies. This epistolary world reached across the globe, but as the maps reveal it had its own centers and peripheries.
These letters cluster around urban centers. About 30 percent of all the letters examined originated from cities of over 100,000 inhabitants and 40 percent from cities of over 40,000.6 Europe as a whole was not becoming increasingly urbanized during this period, but the nature of that urbanization was changing. Urban inhabitants were living in larger cities and those cities were increasingly located in the north of Europe with London, Paris, and the Dutch Randstad leading the way.7 The distribution of letters reflects this shift. The letters cluster around London, Paris, and the Dutch Randstad, and then surface around the larger cities of the Italian Peninsula: Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Letters also came to and from other centers, such as Madrid, which was a growing administrative center, and Lisbon, an Atlantic port. In fact, letters originated from 68 percent of the forty-four cities on the Continent with populations of over 40,000.
Figure 4. Number of letters originating from locations in the British Isles from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within the British Isles, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated.
Figure 5. Number of letters originating from locations in Europe from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within Europe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Those emanating from the British Isles only show places from where more than twenty letters originated.
Figure 6. Number of letters originating from locations worldwide from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from all over the globe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Only locations with more than twenty letters originating from the British Isles and the Continent are shown for those areas of the globe.
This pattern holds in the British Isles as well. As the largest city in Europe and the lodestar of the British world, London dominated this epistolary world. Every correspondent sent or received a letter from the city on the Thames and half of their English letters came from there. Letters from the capital helped their receivers keep track of political occurrences, their economic well-being, and the social whirl of the season. Urban life was becoming intensified for the British elite: most spent some time in the West End of London, participated in activities that nurtured elite ties, and remained in contact with their urban connections after they left.8 These letters also reveal England’s growing polycentric nature. Social, commercial, administrative, and industrial centers were all expanding and letters flowed in from these locations.9 Seventy-five percent of the correspondents received or sent a letter from Bath, “the queen of the spas.”10 Over half the correspondents sent or received letters from Dublin and Bristol, cities that owed their expansion to the British state’s need to rule Ireland, in the case of Dublin, and the expansion of Atlantic trade, in the case of Bristol.11 Having urban connections was important to most Britons and letters provided them with a way to keep track of these bustling centers.
These maps reflect the view contemporaries had of their own world. Writers complained when they were far from urban centers. William Byrd II of Virginia declared, “Tis a mighty misfortune for an Epistolizer not to live near some great city like London or Paris, where people play the fool in a well-bred way, & furnish their Neighbours with discourse.”12 A correspondent of Hans Sloane harrumphed that he was “buried alive” in Castle Rising, Norfolk, about one hundred miles from London.13 Often they described their position in relation to the traditional country and city divide, popular in literary works, where the vibrant, but dangerous city was contrasted with the dull, but innocent country.14 Authors sending letters within England put this literary device to work by referring to their residence as being generally in the city or the country. John Perceval’s cousin compared John’s letters to a beneficial tonic and reminded his London relative not to “neglect your Country Patient,” and when Perceval resided in London his tutor hoped that he and his brother or the “court Politicians” would “have pitty on the Country ones” and provide him with news.15 Others simply referred to their location as “the Country” rather than mentioning the specific place. When complaining about a lack of news and an excess of time, they knew that referencing their position in “the Country” was enough to explain their slim letters.16 Thus, in their letters, writers constructed an England divided into two zones: the urban, which buzzed with people and conversation, and the rural, which only echoed with lone birdcalls. However, besides a few laments about distance and a few comments about the problems and benefits related to being in the country, place is not discussed very often in letters that stayed within English borders. The distance between rural England and urban England was not great, and it was, especially for the elite, easily traversed.
For those who saw themselves as members of a wider British elite, but lived in Scotland and Ireland, such descriptions of place surfaced more often. While both locations had flourishing urban centers, when their writers spoke of their location they usually detailed their rural isolation. While the idea of the virtuous and bucolic countryside surfaces at times, as when John Boyle declared Ireland “the СКАЧАТЬ