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Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier
Moral Geography traces the development of a moral basis for American expansionism, as Protestant missionaries, using biblical language and metaphors, imaginatively conjoined the cultivation of souls with the cultivation of land and made space sacred. While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been much studied, this is the first major study of the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Moral Geography provides a fresh approach to understanding nineteenth-century Protestant home missions in Ohio's Western Reserve. Through the use of maps, letters, religious tracts, travel narratives, and geographical texts, Amy DeRogatis recovers the struggles of settlers, land surveyors, missionaries, and geographers as they sought to reconcile their hopes and expectations for a Promised Land with the realities of life on the early American frontier.
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Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier
Moral Geography traces the development of a moral basis for American expansionism, as Protestant missionaries, using biblical language and metaphors, imaginatively conjoined the cultivation of souls with the cultivation of land and made space sacred. While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been much studied, this is the first major study of the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Moral Geography provides a fresh approach to understanding nineteenth-century Protestant home missions in Ohio's Western Reserve. Through the use of maps, letters, religious tracts, travel narratives, and geographical texts, Amy DeRogatis recovers the struggles of settlers, land surveyors, missionaries, and geographers as they sought to reconcile their hopes and expectations for a Promised Land with the realities of life on the early American frontier.
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Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier

Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier

by Amy DeRogatis
Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier
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Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier

Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier

by Amy DeRogatis

Overview

Moral Geography traces the development of a moral basis for American expansionism, as Protestant missionaries, using biblical language and metaphors, imaginatively conjoined the cultivation of souls with the cultivation of land and made space sacred. While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been much studied, this is the first major study of the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Moral Geography provides a fresh approach to understanding nineteenth-century Protestant home missions in Ohio's Western Reserve. Through the use of maps, letters, religious tracts, travel narratives, and geographical texts, Amy DeRogatis recovers the struggles of settlers, land surveyors, missionaries, and geographers as they sought to reconcile their hopes and expectations for a Promised Land with the realities of life on the early American frontier.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231127899
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 03/17/2003
Series: Religion and American Culture
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Amy DeRogatis is assistant professor of religious studies at Michigan State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Benevolent Design: Mapping the Landscape
2. Models of Piety: Protestant Missionaries on the Frontier
3. The Moral Garden of the Western World: Bodies, Towns, and Families
4. Geography Made Easy: Geographies and Travel Literature
5. A Beacon in the Wilderness: Moral Inscriptions on the Landscape
Conclusion: Moral Geography

What People are Saying About This

Matthew Edney

There is much to recommend in this innovative and important study. DeRogatis overturns our understanding of the spatial organization, from personal to regional scales, of the post-Revolutionary American frontier. She makes a significant contribution to the on-going critical reevaluation of maps and map making, tearing down still further the false divide between graphic and literary maps. And, she reveals a new dimension to the complex historical construct that is 'New England.' Moral Geography is profitable reading for geographers, historians, and literary scholars, as well as students of religion and American studies.

— Matthew Edney, professor of geography, University of Southern Maine

Belden C. Lane

An insightful study of the historical landscape religiously mapped by missionaries operating under the Plan of Union in the early nineteenth century. The spatial perspective she employs, making use of missionary reports and travel literature alike, helps to illuminate tensions between the ideals of the missionary societies and the realities of frontier life. The result is a provocative and interdisciplinary work that will engage church historians, historical geographers, and others interested in the movement of the American frontier. I recommend it with enthusiasm.

— Belden C. Lane, Hotfelder Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Saint Louis University

Patricia O'Connell Killen

Moral Geography is sure to provoke reassessment of the relationship between religion and space across all regions of the United States.... [It] brings to life the emergence of regional religion in the contest between the physical and moral 'maps' of missionaries and the real land and people of the early nineteenth-century frontier. This book raises important questions about relationships among power, meaning, religion, identity, national expansion, and colonialism. Clearly, Amy DeRogatis has demonstrated the fruitfulness of approaching space as a 'readable text.'

— Patricia O'Connell Killen, professor of American religious history, Pacific Lutheran University

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Related Subjects

Bibles & Christianity
Religion
Christianity
General Christianity
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Bibles & Christianity
Religion
Christianity
General Christianity
Christianity - General & Miscellaneous

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