“I promise nothing complete,” says Ishmael in Moby-Dick (1851), “because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty” (Melville 117). Notwithstanding this disavowal of comprehensiveness, Melville's novel offers a number of quite capacious portraits of the modern world. Consider, for instance, the global vision that emerges as Ishmael compares geopolitical conquest to the taking of “loose-fish,” whales apparently unclaimed by others and thus available for seizure: “What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish” (356–57). This censure of imperial acquisition is striking for its broadly scaled perspective, extending from the Americas across Europe to Asia, and...
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