Crusoe's Island

Crusoe's Island

Author: Andrew Lambert

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0571330258

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From an acclaimed naval historian, Crusoe's Island charts the curious relationship between the British and an island on the other side of the world: Robinson Crusoe, in the South Pacific.The tiny island assumed a remarkable position in British culture, most famously in Daniel Defoe's novel. Andrew Lambert reveals the truth behind the legend of this place, bringing to life the voices of the visiting sailors, scientists and artists, as well as the wonders, tragedy and violence that they encountered.


Rape and Sexual Power in Early America

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America

Author: Sharon Block

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-12-01

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0807838934

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In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Sharon Block exposes the dynamics of sexual power on which colonial and early republican Anglo-American society was based. Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap between reports of coerced sex and incidents that were publicly classified as rape, Block demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. She challenges conventional narratives that claim sexual relations between white women and black men became racially charged only in the late nineteenth century. Her analysis extends racial ties to rape back into the colonial period and beyond the boundaries of the southern slave-labor system. Early Americans' treatment of rape, Block argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.