During the summer of 1794, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge planned to establish an egalitarian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. It was Coleridge who invented the name for this ideal community, ‘Pantisocracy’, meaning ‘government by all’. The historical origins of Pantisocracy have been thoroughly scrutinized by Coleridge scholars; an especially insightful, biographical overview is provided by Richard Holmes, who gives a sympathetic account of the project as a major intellectual enterprise that left Coleridge with an enduring sense of his political and poetic vocation. A more detailed historical perspective is afforded by Nicholas Roe, who elucidates the role of Pantisocracy within the intricate discourse of contemporary, radical politics. However, the intellectual significance of Pantisocracy within the larger context of British maritime exploration and the colonization of the New World has not been adequately examined.

This essay will discuss two previously unrecognized narrative sources for the Pantisocracy scheme: Edward Christian's pamphlet concerning the mutiny on the Bounty (1794) and George Keate's Account of the Pelew Islands (1788). Pantisocracy arises from an imaginary representation of America that assimilates it to the South Sea Islands, with their fabled luxuriance and remoteness from European politics. Coleridge was especially intrigued by the figure of Fletcher Christian, whose imaginary adventures he intended to write. Christian was regarded by many English radicals as a flawed, but noble, revolutionary hero, having led a bold mutiny against the tyrannical Captain Bligh and subsequently departed with his comrades on board the Bounty for a voyage of discovery and settlement in uncharted waters.