Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

Click on the title to examine the digitized book

Patterson, Samuel. Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Samuel Patterson, Experienced in the Pacific Ocean, and Many Other Parts of the World, with an Account of the Feegee, and Sandwich Islands. Palmer, MA: From the press in Palmer, 1817.

Samuel Patterson. Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Samuel Patterson, Experienced in the Pacific Ocean, and Many Other Parts of the World, with an Account of the Feegee, and Sandwich Islands. Palmer: From the press in Palmer, 1817. Title page.

A sailor having spent six years circumnavigating the world, Patterson came home with reinforced contempt for the sundry “uncivilized” peoples inhabiting that world.

Read a passage from the book

After a passage of about five months and a half, from China, round cape Good Hope, we arrived safe at Newport in Rhode Island. We tarried here one day and then pressed up the river to Providence, and arrived there on the ninth of June.

Thus, after an absence of almost six years, I once more beheld the land of Fredonia; having seen numerous, distant, and extremely different regions of this world, with thousands of their inhabitants. The field for reflection, arising from but a little acquaintance with the state of many such parts of the earth is great: how many of our fellow beings, with the exception of speech, scarcely can be said to be before the beasts of the wilderness in improvements: — naked, uncivilized, and preying on their own flesh. What a change, when the holy principles of the religion of Jesus shall possess the hearts of all men!

My return being by cape Good Hope, with some others I can say, “I have been round the world.”