Figurative Surveying: National Space and the Nantucket Chapters of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer

In Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur figuratively surveys various regions of the fledgling United States and rhetorically manipulates geographic spatial categories in an attempt to define what he sees as exceptional about the American project. What Crèvecoeur engages in is a kind of demarcation of American space similar to that which David Harvey describes in the chapter of The Condition of Postmodernity entitled “Time and Space of the Enlightenment Project.” Harvey argues that, according to the theoretical practices of some Enlightenment thinkers, “the conquest and control of space . . . first requires that it be conceived of as something usable, malleable, and therefore capable of domination through human action” (254). Harvey’s claim is useful for my purposes here because Letters represents just this, a particular way of what Harvey would call “conceiving” of and “dominating” American space. My argument is that Crèvecoeur’s specific method of theorizing and controlling American geography begins by generating a figuratively descriptive spatial hierarchy of the United States’ margins and centers. Then, he turns to assessing the value or usefulness of these regions in terms of the kinds of work those who live there perform. In his analysis, Crèvecoeur finds Pennsylvania farmers and Nantucket whalemen to be two groups of exemplary Americans, and he claims that their dedication to their work, their inventiveness, their independence, and their ability to succeed perfectly characterize the American spirit.

Harvey’s explanation of Enlightenment thought patterns insofar as geographic space is concerned focuses specifically on the commodification of space as private property and the nation-state’s attempts to control the organization and distribution of this property. As an example, he mentions the United States government’s early plans for the buying and selling of public lands on the Western frontier (255). Harvey’s scholarship provides a way of understanding why Crèvecoeur so admires the hardy agriculturalists who, via some investment of physical labor, transformed public lands into privately owned, lucrative working farms. However, it does not necessarily help to explain why Crèvecoeur devotes five chapters of Letters to demonstrating why the Nantucket whalemen are the embodiment of American values and ideals, for they live and work on the ocean, a space which is virtually impossible to conceive of as private property. Quite simply, there is no way to survey, buy, or sell sectors of ocean water; no way to subdue, control, and master the sea; and, before the days of aquaculture, no way to plant, grow, or harvest crops in it. Surprisingly, it is Harvey himself who provides a possible solution to this rather baffling question, for, in a caveat to his main argument, he admits that the practice of dominating and controlling space by turning it into private property existed “within a sea of social activities in which all manner of other conceptions of space and place—sacred and profane, symbolic, personal, animistic—could continue to function undisturbed” (254). The interesting sea metaphor aside, I want to emphasize that private property, land-based conceptions of space, co-existed with other “symbolic” ones. Crèvecoeur’s attempt to survey American space is importantly figurative, and it is ultimately based on an already existing, but still developing ideological fantasy of manly American physical labor that metaphorically positions the Nantucket Islanders as representative of the American spirit precisely because of the kind of physical labor they perform.

Crèvecoeur’s interest in geography is not all that surprising given that he was both an accomplished surveyor and a cartographer. As a young man, Crèvecoeur served the French militia in Canada in these capacities and continued surveying well after leaving the military (Ben-Zvi 78). Furthermore, Crèvecoeur lived during a time in which, according to Martin Brückner’s scholarship in The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity, the language of geography permeated almost every facet of American culture, including its literature (15). Although Brückner does not specifically address either Letters or Crèvecoeur, Yael...