Chapter 1 - Discovering Britain and Ireland

Summary

1. James Watt’s ‘Discovering Britain and Ireland: Goldsmith’s Grand Tours’ focuses on Oliver Goldsmith’s sophisticated use of tourist personae, notably an ‘English gentleman’ in rural Ireland and the Chinese philosopher Lien Chi Altangi in London. The works which feature these imaginary travellers in different ways explore the connection between Britain, Ireland, and the wider world, and The Citizen of the World (1762) uses Altangi to reckon with the effects of British expansion in North America. Albeit that Goldsmith met the Cherokee warrior-chief Ostenaco when the latter came to London on a diplomatic mission, Goldsmith made no attempt to imagine an Indigenous perspective on Britain. His writings are primarily concerned with the domestic impact of British colonization overseas and offer little commentary on the relationship between Britain and Ireland, although as Watt shows here, Goldsmith’s ‘Description of the Manners and Customs of the Native Irish’ (a discussion of which bookends the chapter) suggestively performs, for critical purposes, the insouciance of an English ‘discoverer’ of Ireland.