At the end of the sixteenth century, England was making its first attempts to build a tradition as a nation of travellers and unsuccessfully attempting to establish colonies in north America. By the end of the Eighteenth century the European Grand Tour was a standard part of a British aristocratic education, and the British Empire was a global force actively participating in the international slave trade. This module looks at both literary and non-literary records of and responses to: the relationship between the ‘old world’ or the Mediterranean and the ‘new world’ of the Americas; the encounter with unfamiliar people and lands; the rise of and debate about the international slave trade, from the perspective of both the enslaver and the enslaved; the literary and cultural importance of these developments for the city of Liverpool.