'Colonia': Irving, Postcolonialism, and the American Pursuit of 'History,' 1800-1812

Irving's vision of the "Dutch" origins of the New York in History of New York reminds readers that since post-colonial New York, and the United States, were heavily financed by Dutch loans, the past was still present. Beyond this financial reminder, though, Diedrich Knickerbocker’s narrative commitments to would-be imperialism and knee-jerk provincialism signal Irving’s parodies of the Jeffersonian version of post-colonial imperialism that emerged after the Louisiana Purchase. While Irving uses Knickerbocker’s conflicted narrative stance to lampoon the colonial imperialism of American texts including Federalist histories of New England, he primarily pillories Jeffersonian-Republican attempts, especially those of De Witt Clinton and Joel Barlow