The researcher uses historical methods to argue that local scientific knowledge in the southeast borderlands--Lower Louisiana, Mississippi, and East and West Florida--had a major impact on science and expansion in the early United States. Local science in this region was multinational, well established, and very closely aligned with circum-Caribbean networks. As the U.S. worked to incorporate this region, officials and scientific institutions drew on the area's multinational local science to expand both their knowledge and their nation. This hypothesis challenges Anglo-centric historical narratives that European science and technologies of power followed the American flag across the continent. U.S. officials and scientific institutions did not create the scientific practices used to dominate and profit from the southeast borderlands. They developed them by consulting and incorporating local experts. The project focuses particularly on natural history, meteorology, hydrology, and agronomy, sciences that produced knowledge valuable at both the local and national level. The researcher will investigate these sciences in archives in New Orleans, Jackson, Philadelphia, and Seville, Spain. The broader impact of this project is that demonstrates the importance of local scientific knowledge in the borderlands to the growth of U.S. science and expansion across the continent.
Improvement Grant enabled archival research needed for the Co-PI’s Ph.D. dissertation, "Entangled Knowledge, Expanding Nation: Local Science and the United States Empire in the Southeast Borderlands, 1763-1842." The grant built on the Co-PI's previous archival work in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Jackson, MS, Gainesville, Fla., and Madrid by supporting eight months of research at the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Library of Congress. This research confirmed the central hypothesis of the dissertation, that local knowledge in the southeast borderlands--Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida--shaped science and expansion in the early United States. Local knowledge in this region was multinational and very closely aligned with that of the circum-Caribbean. As the U.S. incorporated this region, officials and scientific institutions in the Atlantic states actively drew on local knowledge to expand both their knowledge and their nation. Local science gave U.S. officials and men of science both practical and ideological tools for controlling and profiting from the southeast borderlands. This dissertation focuses particularly on natural history, astronomy, ethnography, and agronomy, sciences that produced knowledge valuable at both the local and national level. While the Co-PI had expected to find many sources on the importance of agronomy and natural history, he was surprised by the significance of astronomy and ethnography and the wealth of sources on these topics. US officials and men of science worked to emulate the example of the Spanish Empire in the circum-Caribbean in developing an imperial astronomy for the early republic. This new perspective on early republican astronomy helps decenter British influence on early American science while arguing that astronomy in the early US was not just post-colonial, but was also imperialistic. In the field of ethnography, the Co-PI uncovered much new material on the collection and analysis of skulls in the southeast borderlands. In particular, he found that the collections and descriptions of Native American skulls conducted during the Second Seminole War shaped race-making sciences on the national level. This project demonstrates the importance of local scientific knowledge in the borderlands to key narratives of U.S. history, such as the growth of U.S. science and expansion across the continent. Too often, the non-Anglo peoples living in border regions are seen as either passive observers of U.S. "progress" or, worse, as impediments to this process. This dissertation argues that Hispanic Americans, Amerindians, French Creoles, and African Americans living in the borderlands contributed greatly to U.S. science during its formative period. This project is a step towards recovering the scientific contributions of American groups that have been relegated to intellectual and geographic peripheries.
