Doctoral Dissertation Research

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

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.