Dissertation Research: The Impact of War and Nationalism on Knowledge Exchange and Cultureal Practices of Scientists During the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant in the history of science will support a student in traveling to archives in England and France to collect data which will help in his completion of the Ph.D in the history of science. The dissertation investigates the impact of war, nationalism, and national interests on knowledge exchange and the cultural practices of scientists during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Utilizing transnational scientific correspondence as its source base, it illuminates how late Enlightenment scientists at once invoked and challenged the ideal of scientific cosmopolitanism to accommodate the increasingly systematic use of science in the service of national interests. It sheds light on the historiography's paradoxical portrayal of the late eighteenth century as an era characterized, on the one hand, by the apex of scientific internationalism and, on the other hand, by emergent scientific nationalism. This dissertation's intellectual merit lies in its identification of the origins of a central aspect of modern science: the tension between science's transnational aspirations and its de facto practice in national contexts. Two well-established characteristics of the transition to modern science around 1800 are professionalization and specialization. This dissertation adds a crucial third aspect to this discussion: the tension between science's transnational ambitions and national character. Employing a transnational framework, it illuminates the complex ways in which late Enlightenment scientists grappled with national and transnational loyalties. It asks how the increased interest of the modern state in scientific affairs altered the contours of scientific internationalism. This dissertation is innovative because it asks new questions about the character of scientific cosmopolitanism. This approach is much needed due to recent research on science and nationalism in France and Britain that challenges a Cold War era historiography that exaggerated the amicable character of eighteenth-century science. The broader impacts of this project are several. By demonstrating how the late eighteenth century scientific community addressed the challenges that warfare and national interest posed to its ideal of open knowledge, the project will provide a useful model of how scientific communities balance their international and national commitments in moments of political exigency. In addition to contributing to scholarly and public understanding of the history of science, it has implications for scholarly understanding of the Enlightenment. The existing literature on the Republic of Letters is remarkably silent about the fortunes of this transnational community after the outbreak of the French Revolution. The contribution of this study is to offer a model for understanding how a cosmopolitan community reacted to the pressures of national interest. It will be a starting point for comparing and contrasting how other cosmopolitan communities, namely literary, religious, and philosophical, reacted to the demands of nationalism and national interest in this period. Finally, it's historical perspective on how scientists grappled with issues of scientific openness and secrecy has resonance for twentieth-century science studies and for early twenty-first century policy debates.