Guest Lecture Juliane Braun (Rheinisch Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität)

How Early Modern Print Culture Almost Killed the Sea Otter

On July 12, 1776, Captain James Cook and his crew left England in search of the Northwest Passage, which was thought to link the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and promised to open up a new, more direct trading route with Asia. Although Cook never found the passage, his voyage nonetheless transformed the trade relations between Europe, the United States and Asia and irrevocably changed the natural environment of the North Pacific. By examining the published records of Cook’s voyage, Dr. Braun’s paper investigates the role of print culture in these transformations.

Detailing the rich natural resources the crew encountered in the North Pacific, the published records of Cook’s last voyage alerted a vast reading public, both in Europe and the early United States, to the commercial opportunities emerging from the exploitation of these resources. Using the example of the sea otter, Dr. Braun’s talk looks at contemporary ecological problems in the North Pacific through the lens of eighteenth-century voyages of discovery and explores how new knowledge about the natural world in the Pacific and its dissemination through print culture not only sparked intense rivalries between European colonial powers, but ultimately also helped the newly independent United States establish itself as a transoceanic empire.

Juliane Braun is the Gielen-Leyendecker postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bonn. She has received an M.A. in American Studies and Romance Studies from the University of Mainz (2006), and a Ph.D. in American Literature and Culture from the University of Würzburg (2013). Juliane is currently completing her first book manuscript, tentatively titled “Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans,” which explores the transnational, political, and social reach of French Louisianian theatrical culture. Her second book project, from which this paper is drawn, investigates the connections between nature writing, translation, and print culture in the eighteenth-century Pacific.

University of Graz   
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