The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History | Linda Colley

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History | Linda Colley | for people who love history

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The Ordeal of Eliz...

	The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History Linda Colley Pantheon, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This is a book about a world in a life. Conceived in Jamaica and possibly mixed-race, Elizabeth Marsh (1735-1785) traveled farther and was more intimately affected by developments across the globe than the vast majority of men. She was the first woman to publish in English on Morocco, and the first to carry out extensive explorations in eastern and southern India. A creature of multiple frontiers, she spent time in London, Menorca, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Africa. She speculated in Florida land, was caught up in the French and Indian War, linked to voyages to the Pacific, and enmeshed as victim or owner in three different systems of slavery.
She was also crucially part of far larger histories. Marsh?s experiences would have been impossible without her links to the Royal Navy, the East India Company, imperial warfare, and widening international trade. To this extent, her career illumines shifting patterns of Western power and overseas aggression. Yet the unprecedented expansion of connections across continents occurring during her lifetime also ensured that her ideas and personal relationships were shaped repeatedly by events and people beyond Europe: by runaway African slaves; Indian weavers and astronomers; Sephardi Jewish traders; and the great Moroccan sultan, Sidi Muhammad, who schemed to entrap her.
Many biographies remain constrained by a national framework, while global histories are often impersonal. By contrast, in this dazzling and original book, Linda Colley moves repeatedly and questioningly between vast geopolitical transformations and the intricate detail of individual lives. This is a global biography for our globalizing times.

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The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh

Being a history buff, I was particularly intrigued by (1) the research that Colley put into this, and (2) the actual description of March's happenings. It is an easy read if you don't mind some extraneous detail. I heartily recommend it to others interested in obscure history.

for people who love history

A great book -- I discovered it from my History Book Club, before the great reviews poured in from the critics. I think the New York Times had it as one of its ten best at the end of the year. For all persons interested in women's history, biography, India, Caribbean. Shows how much certain intrepid souls traveled in days of yore. And a rarity in those days--tales written by a woman. The author has done her research carefully & thoroughly; text is easy to follow, not boring. Loved the fact that she was related to Edmund Burke.

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Who is Elizabeth Marsh?

Elizabeth Marsh, daughter of a ship's carpenter, was conceived in Jamaica, was born in England in 1735, and died in Calcutta in 1785.

Between these dates, Elizabeth Marsh travelled extensively lived a full (albeit unconventional) life and saw more of the world than most of her contemporaries.

At twenty, as the sole female passenger aboard a merchant ship bound for Lisbon, she was captured by pirates and taken to Morocco. In order to escape, she pretended to be married to her sailing companion, James Crisp.

Ms Colley has written a book that portrays an unconventional life and the backdrop of the times in which Elizabeth Marsh lived.

Highly recommended to those interested in history through the lives of individuals.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

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Neither biography nor history but a curious speculation, of sorts

Professor Colley has done a lot of research on Britain's 18th century world, and this book has come out of that. She presents an extraordinary interweaving of naval history, commerce, the status of women, slavery, and the emergence of the USA, among other subjects. I like the way she is upfront about her speculation about Elizabeth Marsh. As she goes along she makes it clear what is in the record, what she believes would have been typical of the era, and what she is only guessing at. Very admirable. But I found the book dry in places. A little more scholarly than I was in the mood for.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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