Picturesque grave yards and the visual aesthetics of Free Trade in Commodore Matthew Perry's 'Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China Seas and Japan' (1856)

Abstract

During the course of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's three-year expedition (1852-1855) to open Japan to free trade, several sailors in the fleet under his command died in Lew Chew (Okinawa), Yoku-hama (Yokohama), Simoda (Shimoda), Hakodadi (Hakodate) and Macao. This talk considers verbal descriptions and illustrations depicting the 'the melancholy duty' of burying the squadron's American dead. In the massive three-volume account of Perry's adventure, these graveyard sites are particularly interesting for the way in which their narrative description invokes for American readers extra-territorial sites of mourning for the loss of fellow sea-faring citizens. Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate how Perry's 'Narrative' re-works conventional rhetoric of British landscape description (i.e. the picturesque) in order to build a romance that heralds the rise to global prominence of a distinctively American form of corporate power.