Abstract:

This article explores encounters between U.S. tourists and British imperial actors in the British West Indies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Drawing on published traveller accounts from the period, it argues that literary cross-fertilization and practices of colonial sociability encouraged shared understandings of the Caribbean framed around visions of global white supremacy. Although these supported the Anglo-Saxonist project that underpinned the geopolitical rapprochement between the two powers between the 1890s and First World War, there were also tensions and disagreements, especially over which nation was best placed to defend the racial order in the Caribbean in the new century. As the volume of U.S. tourists grew, these disagreements became clearer, as revealed in the accounts given of the aftermath of the diplomatic crisis that followed the Kingston earthquake of 1907. Traveller accounts on the ground contrasted with efforts in Washington and London to resolve the crisis amicably. In this sense, the cultural politics of inter-imperial sociability did not always perfectly align with geopolitical imperatives.

摘要：

本文探讨了 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初在英属西印度群岛的美国游客与英国帝国演员之间的遭遇。借鉴这一时期已发表的旅行记述，它认为文学交流和殖民地社交活动促进了围绕全球白人至上主义愿景对加勒比地区的共同理解。尽管这些支持了盎格鲁-撒克逊主义项目，该项目为 1890 年代至第一次世界大战期间两个大国之间的地缘政治和解奠定了基础，但也存在紧张和分歧，尤其是在新时代哪个国家最适合捍卫加勒比地区的种族秩序这一问题上世纪。随着美国游客数量的增长，这些分歧变得更加明显，正如对 1907 年金斯敦地震后外交危机后果的描述所揭示的那样。旅行者在实地的描述与华盛顿和伦敦为友好解决危机所做的努力形成鲜明对比。从这个意义上说，帝国间社交的文化政治并不总是与地缘政治要求完全一致。