„Ich bin es aber einem inneren moralischen Gefühleschuldig …“ Neue Dokumente und Hintergründe zum Humboldt’schenProtest gegen J. S. Thrashers The Island of Cuba

Authors

  • Vera M. Kutzinski Vanderbilt University, Department of English
  • Ingo Schwarz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18443/394

Keywords:

J. S. Thrasher, Kuba, Sklaverei, Sklavenhandel

Abstract

In 1856 Alexander von Humboldt felt compelled to publish a short article in German, English, French, and American newspapers, in which he protested against J. S. Thrasher’s mutilation of his Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba. Thrasher had published an English-language version of this text in New York, in which he falsified and omitted Humboldt’s sentiments about slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Our article offers a closer look at Thrasher’s unauthorized infringements and Humboldt’s reaction to them, including briefly the impact Humboldt’s protest had on the 1856 U.S. presidential elections. A second section focuses on Thrasher and his advocacy of Cuba’s annexation to the United States as yet another slave state.

Author Biographies

  • Vera M. Kutzinski, Vanderbilt University, Department of English

    Vera M. Kutzinski is the Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University. With Ottmar Ette, she is co-editor of the Alexander von Humboldt in English (HiE) series at the Chicago University Press, which has published new English translations and critical editions of three of Humboldt’s major writings on the Americas: Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (2010), Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (2011), and Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (2019). A new German translation of the Cuba-Essay, on which Kutzinski collaborated with Ingo Schwarz, is forthcoming from Metzler. In addition to her translations of Alexander von Humboldt: The Complete Drawings from the American Travel Diaries (2018) and Writing-between-Worlds: TransArea Studies and the Literatures without a Fixed Abode (by Ottmar Ette, 2016), Kutzinski has edited and co-edited the collections Alexander von Humboldt’s Transatlantic Personae (2012), Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas (2012), and Langston Hughes in Context (2023). Having published widely on the literatures of the Americas, Kutzinski is the author of Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (1993) and The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas (2012).

  • Ingo Schwarz

    Ingo Schwarz (geb. 1949) war wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter und zeitweise Leiter der „Alexander-von-Humboldt-Forschungsstelle“ der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sein Arbeitsschwerpunkt war die Edition von ausgewählten Briefwechseln Alexander von Humboldts. Eine Publikationsliste und weitere Informationen zur Biographie in: HiN, Internationale Zeitschrift für Humboldt-Studien XV, 29 (2014).

Downloads

Published

2026-06-19

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 51 (2026)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Vera M. Kutzinski, Ingo Schwarz

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

HiN operates under a Creative Commons-Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits the reproduction of articles, free of charge, for non-commercial use only and with the appropriate citation information. All authors publishing with HiN accept these terms of publication.

Authors retain the copyright for their articles and reviews. Copyright of the layout and design of HiN articles remains with the journal and cannot be used in other publications.

How to Cite

Kutzinski, V. M., & Schwarz, I. (2026). „Ich bin es aber einem inneren moralischen Gefühleschuldig …“ Neue Dokumente und Hintergründe zum Humboldt’schenProtest gegen J. S. Thrashers The Island of Cuba. HiN - Alexander Von Humboldt in the Net. International Review for Humboldt Studies, 27(51), 110–128. https://doi.org/10.18443/394

Most read articles by the same author(s)

<< < 1 2 3 4 5