Ezra Stiles and North America in the Early Modern Republic of Letters

Abstract

For over two decades, historians of the early modern world have been charting the practices, principles, and ideologies of the “Republic of Letters,” an intellectual community forged via paper, not place. Few, however, have ever ventured to consider America's place in this scholarly republic. This article charts in new detail the aspirations—and shortcomings—of eighteenth-century American efforts to participate in a truly transnational, intellectual community. Focusing on the life of Ezra Stiles (1727–95), it will dig into hundreds of unpublished, untranslated manuscripts, as well as scores of overlooked early modern periodicals and publications. What emerges is a glimpse into how Stiles especially strove to place America on the intellectual map of the early modern world. Stiles's plan was to lay the academic groundwork for his new nation by forging connections between universities and promoting a unified intellectual front to the Republic of Letters abroad. In one sense, this vision was remarkably shrewd, standing out as one of the first efforts to connect colonial universities. On the personal level, however, this (over)emphasis on institutions came at a cost. Too preoccupied with the colonial American universities and too little focused on publication, Stiles would ultimately struggle to be recognized as a citizen of the scholarly republic.