Throughout the seventeenth century, there was a large amount of cultural exchange taking place between the British, the Ottoman Empire, Africa nations, and the so-called New World as expressed in varying (and sometimes conflicting) ways by Sandys, Shakespeare and other writers. Early modern England was expanding its taste for foreign commodities, emerging as a transatlantic colonizer, and intensifying its enslavement of Africans, originally begun in 1555. By 1621, Sandys himself became treasurer of the Virginia Company, just a mere two years after the first enslaved Africans arrived there in 1619. And his Travailes also traveled; one such text that draws upon Sandys’s work is the The Vertues of Coffee (London 1663). This text takes bits of Sandys’ writing combined with other travel narratives and demonstrates a particular British interest in a globalized economy reliant on enslavement and driven by desires for international commodities. Using EEBO, examine this text, but then find contemporaneous texts (try to find five or so) that seem invested in travel, trade, or might bear the traces of enslavement. Document what you find bibliographically, and take some notes on what you find.
The Vertues of Coffee can be found here.
Sandys Travailes can be found here.
