Exploring Enlightenment attitudes toward things and their relation to human subjects, this collection offers a geographically wide-ranging perspective on what the eighteenth century looked like beyond British or British-colonial borders. In highlighting trends, fashions, and cultural imports of truly global significance, the contributors celebrate the logic of serendipity that transforms the object into some-thing else when it is placed in a new locale.

Introduction: Peregrine Things: Rethinking the Global in Eighteenth-Century StudiesIleana BairdIntroduction: Through the Prism of Thing Theory: New Approaches to the Eighteenth-Century World of ObjectsChristina IonescuPart I Western European Fads: Porcelain, Fetishes, Museum Objects, Antiques1 Caution, Contents May Be Hot: A Cultural Anatomy of the Tasse TrembleuseChristine A. Jones2 Cultural Currency: Chrysal, or The Adventures of a Guinea, and the Material Shape of Eighteenth-Century CelebrityKevin Bourque3 Feather Cloaks and English Collectors: Cook's Voyages and the Objects of the MuseumSophie Thomas4 Imagining Ancient Egypt as the Idealized Self in Eighteenth-Century EuropeKevin M. McGeoughPart II Under Eastern Eyes: Garments, Portraits, Books5 Frills and Perils of Fashion: Politics and Culture of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Court through the Eyes of La ModeVictoria Ivleva6 From Russia with Love: Souvenirs and Political Alliance in Martha Wilmot's The Russian JournalsPamela Buck7 "The Battle of the Books" in Catherine the Great's Russia: From a Jousting Tournament to a Tavern BrawlRimma GarnPart III Latin American Encounters: Coins, Food, Accessories, Maps8 From Peruvian Gold to British Guinea: Tropicopolitanism and Myths of Origin in Charles Johnstone's ChrysalMauricio E. Martinez9 Eating Turtle, Eating the World: Comestible Things in the Eighteenth CenturyKrystal McMillen10 The Fur Parasol: Masculine Dress, Prosthetic Skins, and the Making of the English Umbrella in Robinson CrusoeIrene Fizer11 Terra Incognita on Maps of Eighteenth-Century Spanish America: Commodification, Consumption and the Transition from Inaccessible to Public SpaceLauren BeckPart IV Imagining Other Spaces: Trinkets, Collectibles, Ethnographic Artifacts, Scientific Objects12 (Re-)Appropriating Trinkets: How to Civilize Polynesia with a Jack-in-the-BoxLaure Marcellesi13 Images of Exotic Objects in the Abbé Prévost's Histoire Générale des VoyagesAntoine Eche14 Souvenirs of the South Seas: Objects of Imperial Critique in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's TravelsJessica Durgan