Looking at a diverse series of authors - Herman Melville, Richard Henry Dana, JR., Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard and Jack London - The Colonizer Abroad claims that as the U.S. emerged as a colonial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the literature of the sea became a literature of imperialism. This book applies postcolonial theory to the travel writing of some of America's best-known authors, revealing the ways in which America's travel fiction and nonfiction have both reflected and shaped society.