The Iceberg and the Cathedral: Encounter, Entanglement, and Isuma in Inuit London

• Published in: Journal of British Studies
• Main Author: Thrush, Coll
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2014
• Subjects: The Cathedral; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2013.212; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021937113002128

Abstract In 1772, entrepreneur George Cartwright brought five Inuit people to England from Nunatsiavut (Labrador). Most of their time was spent in London, where they encountered many of the city's sights and experienced its social divisions and environmental conditions. This article explores their voyage, challenging the notion that “primitives” such as the Inuit visitors were necessarily awed into submission by the urban landscape. Rather, they understood it according to their own cultural logics and even articulated critiques of the city. Illustrating the entanglement of urban and Inuit spaces and places across the Atlantic, and ending by telling the story of the death of four of the five visitors from smallpox in 1773, the article argues for a new kind of scholarship that shows connections between Indigenous and urban histories at the transoceanic and imperial levels.