Sanctifying the Settler-Colonial Gaze: Nineteenth-Century American Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Abstract

American Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land started within a historical and ideological context shaped by American territorial expansionism. The settler-colonial impulses informing that expansionism were carried to Palestine, where Palestinians were encountered as “savages” compared explicitly to American Indians. Erasure of the Holy Land’s Indigenous inhabitants is thus sanctioned. Herman Melville’s Clarel and Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad record this encounter. We must be aware of this history if it is not to be repeated in contemporary pilgrimage practices.