From the author of 'Britons', the story of the exceptional life of
the intrepid Elizabeth Marsh - an extraordinary woman of her time
who was caught up in trade, imperialism, war, exploration,
migration, growing maritime reach, and new ideas. Linda Colley's
new book breaks the boundaries between biography, family stories
and global history. This is a book about a world in a life. An
individual lost to history, Elizabeth Marsh (1735-85) travelled
farther, and was more intimately affected by developments across
the globe, than the vast majority of men. Conceived in Jamaica and
possibly mixed-race, she was the first woman to publish in English
on Morocco, and the first to carry out extensive overland
explorations in eastern and southern India, journeying in each case
in close companionship with an unmarried man. She spent time in
some of the world's biggest ports and naval bases, Portsmouth,
Menorca, Gibraltar, London, Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta and the Cape.
She was damaged by the Seven Years War and the American
Revolutionary War; and linked through her own migrations with
voyages of circumnavigation, and as victim and owner, she was
involved in three different systems of slavery. But hers is a
broadly revealing, not simply an exceptional, life. Marsh's links
to the Royal Navy, the East India Company, empire and international
trade made these experiences possible. To this extent, her career
illumines shifting patterns of British and Western power and
overseas aggression. The swift onset of globalization occurring in
her lifetime also ensured that her progress, relationships and
beliefs were repeatedly shaped and deflected by people and events
beyond Europe. While imperial players like Edmund Burke and Eyre
Coote form a part of her story, so do African slave sailors,
skilled Indian weavers and astronomers, ubiquitous Sephardi Jewish
traders, and the great Moroccan Sultan, Sidi Muhammad, who schemed
to entrap her. Many modern biographies remain constrained by a
national framework, while global histories are generally
impersonal. By contrast, in this dazzling and original book, Linda
Colley moves repeatedly and questioningly between vast
geo-political transformations and the intricate detail of
individual lives. This is a global biography for our globalizing
times.
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