In this well-researched overview of a virtually ignored topic, Alden Vaughn provides valuable new material on the experience of the first British Empire, if not much in the way of ideas. Originally intending to focus only on the handful of famous visits by Americans (his preferred term for those of Native extraction pre-1776) to Britain, such as those of Pocahontas and Joseph Brant, Vaughn thankfully expanded his research to include all the Americans he could find that had ever spent time in Britain (mostly England) before 1776. The many virtually unknown stays he discovered prevented him from the easy generalizations one could make referring to the famous cases alone. Ranging from the occasional Mohawk duped into serving as a virtual sideshow freak to at least twenty-five Americans held as slaves—known almost exclusively from the advertisements posted when they ran away—their experiences are a sober reminder of the exploitation surrounding all Americans’ experience of Britain and Britons. Carefully documenting each case with primary sources ranging from baptismal records to travelers’ journals, Transatlantic Encounters will serve as a valuable resource for many years to come.

Vaughn's primary task was to organize his material into a coherent body from which certain generalizations could be made. These appear in his final chapter, or “retrospect,” which summarizes the earlier chapters and draws some cautious conclusions. Here, as well as in the initial chapter, some comparisons to the broader European habit of carrying Americans back to Europe are made. The English phenomenon, with approximately 175 Native visitors (willing and unwilling), is dwarfed by the hundreds taken by the French and the thousands taken by the Spanish and Portuguese—many of them as slaves. In that respect, the English come off somewhat better. The vast majority of American Natives who went to Britain did so of their own volition, usually on some sort of diplomatic errand, and then returned home. Like Christopher Columbus, early explorers brought back (or tried to bring back) Americans as proof of their discoveries—especially when little else of value was found. Across Europe they served as spectacles for everyone from the monarchs down to paupers in the streets. And everywhere the trip was a dangerous one for Americans to make. The sickness that was only occasionally brought over to their homelands by ships was endemic in Europe, and roughly 25 percent of the visitors died in England, often within weeks of their arrival.

Other comparisons could be made. There are some revealing parallels to the Black experience with England. Americans, like Africans, spent most of their time in London, and more arrived in the eighteenth century than earlier. Those who were enslaved bore this out particularly, often being referred to as “Black Indians” in the runaway advertisements. But little is made of this in the book, though Vaughn does note that Olaudah Equiano was so disturbed by the heathen nature of several Americans from the Moskito Coast that he tried to proselytize their “prince.”

Vaughn's secondary concern is “to put a human face on the Americans’ experiences before and after, but especially during, their overseas ventures” (xvi). This works best for the famous ones like Sansom Occum and Joseph Brant, for whom the trip to England was a career high point. This is clear even for lesser-known figures, like Tomochichi and Osteneco, who milked their voyage for political clout for the rest of their days. But this also gives the book an antiquarian feel. One is confronted with one individual's story after another, with very little reflection on what these experiences might mean for our understanding of the British Empire—or even the histories of Britain or Native America.

There is a wealth of material for reflection here. As Vaughn notes, many Native visitors experienced something of “celebrity” and were regularly associated with spectacles—be it sixteenth-century cabinets of curiosity, seventeenth-century fairs, or eighteenth-century theaters. Vaughn, who has worked on Shakespeare before, is particularly fascinated by the Americans’ encounters with British plays. “Shakespeare's plays, and a few others, initially benefited disproportionately” (241). There follows a list of the performances seen, but no thoughts on why the British thought it so important to make Mohawks watch Hamlet and Macbeth. There seems to be a great opportunity here for future reflections on the ideological construction and personal political experience of British expansion.

Vaughn's occasional comparisons indicate that there is something peculiar about the Americans in Britain worth further exploration. The abundance of individual and group portraits of Americans reaching from Martin Frobisher's first Inuit captive of 1576 to Joseph Brant in 1776 is not matched by a similar fascination with Africans or Asians. While a few “likenesses … were drawn or painted, they pale in comparison to the number made and copied for widespread distribution of Americans, even the relatively humble” (242). This suggests a number of things—perhaps Britons’ more intimate, possessive relationship to America? This also raises a variety of questions. Did Native Americans (as opposed to Anglo-Americans) offer Britons a useful way to think about their empire? Was it more appealing to focus on those one could theoretically “civilize” rather than those one could not (Asians) or those one did dehumanize (Africans)?

The questions stimulated by the material Vaughn has gathered will, I imagine, prove the enduring usefulness of his work. No doubt with time a few more Native Americans in Britain will be found—sailors from New England, for example. But Vaughn's research will remain foundational. His framework notes the different ways people from different times and places came to Britain and were treated there, from “Ralegh's American Interpreters” to the “Delegations from the Lower South,” catching the changing phases of this Anglo-American experience. The pan-American perspective is laudable. The 1776 cutoff date reveals Vaughn's origins as an historian of Colonial America. But his footnotes will be of interest to a wide range of scholars of the United States, Britain, Native America, and the wider Atlantic world that tied them together.