Westward the course of empire takes its way
Westward the course of empire takes its way is a quote from the poem On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America (1726) by the Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley , written in the USA has become a household word. Berkeley originally dreamed of setting up a model university in Bermuda. In the 19th century his lines became one of the ideological foundations of the country's territorial expansion and thus of the concept of Manifest Destiny in the United States .
Thomas Cole named a cycle of paintings from 1833 to 1836 The Course of Empire . Historian George Bancroft prefixed the quote to his History of the United States in 1834 . Emanuel Leutze chose it as the title of his monumental mural in the Washington Capitol , and David Foster Wallace in 1990 for a novella in the volume Girl with Curious Hair . The university town of Berkeley (California) , located on the western edge of the continent, is named after Bishop Berkeley because of the famous poem.
literature
- George Berkeley: On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America . In: The Works of George Berkeley. Edited by Alexander Campbell Fraser. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1871. Second edition 1901, here vol. 4, p. 365f.