’The Feelings of an Officer’: John Stedman in Suriname

Abstract

In the Preface to the 1790 manuscript for his ‘Narrative of a Five Year’s Expedition, Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam’, John Stedman introduces his complex travel text with several references to Laurence Sterne and to the sentimental aspects of his writings. Claiming to ‘write from the feelings of an officer’,¹ he alludes to Sterne’s sentimental soldier, Uncle Toby, in Tristram Shandy (1759–67) and he ends by asking his reader to feel along with him: ‘at intervals throw down the Book – & with a sigh exclaim in the language of Eugenious – Alas poor Stedman —² This latter reference invokes Sterne’s sentimental traveller, Yorick, in A Sentimental Journey (1768) and clearly casts Stedman as a contemporary man of feeling. The influence of Sterne on the ‘Narrative’ goes beyond character, though: throughout, Stedman makes use of dashes, apostrophes and Shandean turns of phrase, highlighting, as Sterne himself does, his ‘disconnected method’.³ Thus Stedman’s ‘experience of empire’ is rendered through a form of Sternean sentimentalism, offering his readers a real-life narrative cast in the mould of the early novel. This chapter explores in depth the impact of the sentimental novel on Stedman’s history, showing the ways in which he utilises the mode to ensure that his text has a reforming impact: the reader must ‘feel’ with the empirical hero, and this sympathy is a crucial element of Stedman’s argument for the relief and better treatment of the slaves of Suriname.