What America’s First Board Game Can Teach us about the Aspirations of a Young Nation
The Conversation
Posted May 13, 2024
This growing cardboard empire was on the mind of Matthew Sivils, professor of American Literature and director of the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (CEAH) at Iowa State, when he visited the American Antiquarian Society in August 2023 to research its collection of early games.
As he sat in that archive, which houses such treasures as the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British America, Sivils beheld another first in American printing: a board game called “The Travellers’ Tour Through the United States.”
This forgotten game, printed the year after Missouri became a state, has a lot to say about America’s nascent board game industry, as well as how a young country saw itself.
Read Sivils’ full article published in The Conversation here.