Document Type
Article
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publication Title
Biography - An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
Volume
32
Publication Date
Winter 2009
Abstract
Seventeenth century mercantilist economics is based on "translating": foreign wealth changes meaning or value in becoming domestic property. The Pocahontas story manipulates biographical evidence to mercantilist ends: she is "translated" by love and marriage into a British subject, "domesticating" her Indian lands into British/American property. Retelling this story keeps American mercantilism alive, reaffirming the mythic belief that the US is the inevitable end-product of all translation.
Publisher's Statement
Copyright 2009 University of Hawaii Press.
Citation
Tratner, Michael. "Translating Values: Mercantilism and the Many 'Biographies' of Pocahontas." Biography 32, no. 1 (2009): 128-136.