Emily Pawley. The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North.

Abstract

We live in an era where the mistrust of science is widespread. In The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North, historian Emily Pawley transports readers to a time and place where the reception of scientific experimentation and the circulation of expert knowledge were less encumbered by politically driven skepticism. Although her agenda is far-reaching, Pawley confines her scope and scale to antebellum New York State between the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. During these four tumultuous decades, the rural communities of North America’s agricultural epicenter were connected to a sprawling network of agrarian expertise. The architects of this knowledge were “improvers,” a diverse array of scientifically informed agriculturalists who dedicated their careers to the creation of landscapes that could produce colossal yields for far-flung capitalist markets. As Pawley succinctly puts it, “‘Improvement’ or ‘agricultural improvement’ was by this period a powerful system of knowledge making that manifested itself most clearly in the agricultural journals and fairs where agricultural monsters were displayed” (5). These “monsters” included a 975-pound pig, a 2,546-pound ox, and a strawberry with a girth of 8.5 inches. Agricultural prodigies of this magnitude were the realized ambitions of human efforts to transform nature into a storehouse of commodities.