Srinivas Aravamudan is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington.

“Tropicopolitans might initiate a school of “tropicalization” studies. In the emerging field of what we have learned to name Black Atlantic writing, Aravamudan has made substantial contributions in his chapters on Equiano and Toussaint Louverture, in which each figure is richly, contextually read. The wrenching from a Euro-Christian framework into a tropicalizing one opens up these figures to new critical investigations instead of merely freezing their heroic status for all time. Aravamudan’s book should go some way toward helping us maintain our vigil against premature orthodoxies.”-Donna Landry, author of The Muses of Resistance: Laboring Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 “Tropicopolitans is the most theoretically sophisticated study yet of colonialist texts in the eighteenth century.”-James Thompson, author of Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel

• Acknowledgments Introduction Virtualizations 1. Petting Oroonoko 2. Piratical Accounts 3. The Stoic's Voice Levantinizations 4. Lady Mary in the Hamman 5. The Despotic Eye and the Oriental Sublime Nationalizations 6. Equiano and the Politics of Literacy 7. Tropicalizing the Englightenment Conclusion Notes Index

Srinivas Aravamudan is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington.

“Tropicopolitans might initiate a school of “tropicalization” studies. In the emerging field of what we have learned to name Black Atlantic writing, Aravamudan has made substantial contributions in his chapters on Equiano and Toussaint Louverture, in which each figure is richly, contextually read. The wrenching from a Euro-Christian framework into a tropicalizing one opens up these figures to new critical investigations instead of merely freezing their heroic status for all time. Aravamudan’s book should go some way toward helping us maintain our vigil against premature orthodoxies.”-Donna Landry, author of The Muses of Resistance: Laboring Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 “Tropicopolitans is the most theoretically sophisticated study yet of colonialist texts in the eighteenth century.”-James Thompson, author of Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel

• Acknowledgments Introduction Virtualizations 1. Petting Oroonoko 2. Piratical Accounts 3. The Stoic's Voice Levantinizations 4. Lady Mary in the Hamman 5. The Despotic Eye and the Oriental Sublime Nationalizations 6. Equiano and the Politics of Literacy 7. Tropicalizing the Englightenment Conclusion Notes Index

Srinivas Aravamudan is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington.

“Tropicopolitans might initiate a school of “tropicalization” studies. In the emerging field of what we have learned to name Black Atlantic writing, Aravamudan has made substantial contributions in his chapters on Equiano and Toussaint Louverture, in which each figure is richly, contextually read. The wrenching from a Euro-Christian framework into a tropicalizing one opens up these figures to new critical investigations instead of merely freezing their heroic status for all time. Aravamudan’s book should go some way toward helping us maintain our vigil against premature orthodoxies.”-Donna Landry, author of The Muses of Resistance: Laboring Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 “Tropicopolitans is the most theoretically sophisticated study yet of colonialist texts in the eighteenth century.”-James Thompson, author of Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel

• Acknowledgments Introduction Virtualizations 1. Petting Oroonoko 2. Piratical Accounts 3. The Stoic's Voice Levantinizations 4. Lady Mary in the Hamman 5. The Despotic Eye and the Oriental Sublime Nationalizations 6. Equiano and the Politics of Literacy 7. Tropicalizing the Englightenment Conclusion Notes Index