The Navy Before Darwinism: Science, Exploration, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America

Abstract

tury in the United States an era of nationalism and maintain that Americans focused on internal developments. Such continental orientation has led scholars to emphasize topics like the Mexican War, the Oregon Question, and the extent to which slavery affected the external relations of Young America. Naval historians have usually ignored the antebellum period, defining maritime activity in narrow, strategic terms and concluding that aside from debates over appropriations for national defense, nothing of much importance occurred.' At the turn of the twentieth century, of course, the new navy emerged