Hybrid Britons: West Indian colonial identity and Maria Riddell's natural history

摘要

This essay examines the national implications of natural history in Maria Riddell's Voyages to the Madeira, and Leeward Caribbean Isles: with Sketches of the Natural History of these Islands (1792). Riddell engages with the nationalism and theories of hybridity espoused by contemporary naturalists to question imputations of degeneration in the West Indies and to gesture instead toward the colonies' potential to foster a hybrid “British” national identity. This potential, however, is significantly undermined by instances of self-censorship in Riddell's text. At a time of increasing tension between Britain and its Caribbean colonies, Riddell's selective elisions of well-known aspects of West Indian society, such as slavery, register her efforts to reconcile these colonies with British values.