Science and the Atlantic World

Abstract

A remarkably interconnected collection of people spread science across the Atlantic World throughout the Applied Enlightenment (1760–1850). Scientific traffic included emblematic items (hot-air balloons and steam engines) and unheralded cargo (merino sheep, chemical apparatus, and libraries). Americans motivated by political and scientific interests visited Europe. Europeans, identifying America as a Land of Liberty, traveled seeking asylum, or to establish utopian colonies. Natural philosophers and savant-fabricants, buoyed by cosmopolitanism and multidirectional traversals of the Atlantic Ocean, were proponents of Enlightenment science. Many of these travelers were connected through a bourgeois network. Several of its members, experienced in working with steam power, envisioned various mechanical means by which this technology would be applied to transportation. Transatlantic cosmopolitanism facilitated exchange and expansion of late-Enlightenment science, notwithstanding extraordinary obstacles. Exchange continued despite—or occasionally was spurred by—wars, revolutions, and climatic shifts impacting the Atlantic World. Limits also resulted from communication challenges; nevertheless, scientific travelers relied on epistolary correspondence for cultural currency. Letters, a transmission medium, facilitated scientific diffusion—in both intellectual and physical forms—enabling needed improvements in important fields like agriculture, chemistry, and education. This helped transatlantic travelers circumvent trade embargoes and dangerous threats, including the Napoleonic Wars and the Year without a Summer of 1816. Late-Enlightenment technological innovations were foundational for later developments of rapid mass transportation and communication networks. These savant-fabricants were, additionally, connected through international bourgeois networks. Transatlantic cosmopolitanism facilitated exchange and expansion of science throughout the Enlightenment, notwithstanding the extraordinary obstacles occasioned by revolutions, wars, as well as the challenges created by great distance, slow travel and communication, and climatic shifts.