Travel and Exploration at the American Geographical Society: A Postcolonial Interpretation

Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA

Investigators

Abstract

Many, if not most, geographical organizations in the Euro-American world are now understood as having supported colonial or imperial relationships of power in the 19th century. They did this by activities such as by cataloguing data or mapping colonies for territorial acquisition or military control, extracting resources, or opening trade routes for home goods. This study examines the historical geography of the American Geographical Society (AGS) from 1851 to 1912, questioning whether and how geographical knowledge produced by the AGS aided in specifically American expansionism, imperialism, and 'empire building'. The study questions whether the strong (and explicit) business and commercial orientation of the AGS produced for it different programmatic interests compared with other geographical organizations of the period (such as the Royal Geographical Society and National Geographical Society) whose primary purpose was articulated more as advancement of scientific knowledge or education in geography. While the project brings much needed attention to relationships between geographical knowledge and American imperialism (both globally and within what came to be its own borders in North America), the study furthers analysis of a little-studied but highly influential geographical society that, unlike others, was explicitly concerned with the commercial or 'practical' value of geography. The project focuses on programmatic activities of the AGS as read through archival sources - e.g., financial and other support of expeditions; collection and dissemination of explorers' and travelers' reports; lectures; and an AGS-sponsored transcontinental railroad tour of the United States by American and European geographers in 1912. This study builds upon, and contributes to, research that has theorized relationships between the history and development of science and scientific knowledge and the expansion of 'empires'. Most significantly it directs much needed attention to the 'colonial science' of geographical organizations in the American context, where such analysis is especially lacking. Through a postcolonial reading of AGS documents and activities, the study reveals the manner and extent of AGS complicity or resistance to American imperial expansion; and brings into view the actions, voices, and contributions of colonial underclasses to both the histories and historical geographies of North America, and to western geographical knowledge production. In that way the study outlines the critical and productive uses to which postcolonial thought might be put in American studies more broadly.