An End to National Science: The Meaning and the Extension of Local Knowledgeh

Brodersen Arvid , “National character: An old problem re-examined”, Diogenes, xx (1957), 84–102, p. 99.

Albisetti James , “Commentary”, in Science in Germany , ed. by Olesko Kathryn M. (Osiris, v; Chicago, 1989), 285–90, pp. 286–7.

A current case in point is the Save British Science Society, for which there is no hint of a special character to science done in the British Isles. Its five tests for whether British science has been “saved” all relate to government funding for scientific activity. “Science week begins: Prospect of British science being saved five scientific tests must be met”, SBS PR02/07, document released 8 March 2002. I am grateful to Rob Iliffe for pointing to the relevance of the Society.

This sense of local knowledge does not betray the cautions offered by Geertz Clifford in an address to the Law School at Yale University: “Local knowledge: Fact and law in comparative perspective”, in Geertz , Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (New York, 1983), 167–234. Geertz alludes to the insights that may be obtained in history of science by comparing local instances, but he does not sustain a thesis in radical relativism.

Ben-David Joseph , The scientist's role in society: A comparative study (1971; Chicago, 1984), 88–107; cf. Nye Mary Jo , “Scientific decline: Is quantitative evaluation enough?”, Isis, lxxv (1984), 697–708.

Crosland Maurice , The Society of Arcueil: A view of French science at the time of Napoleon I (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), makes a case, however, for Napoleon as a patron of science.

Nye Mary Jo , Science in the provinces: Scientific communities and provincial leadership in France, 1860–1930 (Berkeley, 1986); Geison Gerald , The private life of Louis Pasteur (Princeton, 1995); Beaulieu Liliane , “Bourbaki's art of memory”, Osiris, xiv (1999), 219–51.

Woolf Leonard , “Citizens of the world”, in The modern state, ed. by Adams Mary (New York, 1933), 76–86, pp. 77, 81.

Hobsbawm Eric , “From social history to the history of society”, in Hobsbawn , On history (London, 1997), 71–93, p. 92.

Siegfried André , Switzerland: A democratic way of life, transl. by Fitzgerald Edward (London, 1950), 199–200.

Muşat Mircea Zaharia Gheorghe , “Romania”, in Assertion of unitary independent national states in Central and Southeast Europe (1821–1923), ed. by Moisuc Viorica Calafeteanu Ion , transl. by Lazarescu Mary Ionescu-Parau Adriana Alkalay Alexandru (Bucharest, 1980), 15–55, p. 15.

Tilly Charles , “Reflections on the history of European state-making”, in The formation of national states in Western Europe, ed. by Tilly (Princeton, 1975), 3–83, p. 12.

Langewiesche Dieter , “Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven”, Neue politische Literatur, xlv (1995), 190–236, p. 219.

Leerseen Joep , “Caractères des nations et imagologie”, Dix-septième siècle, li (1999), 119–23.

Vessuri Hebe M. C. , “¿Estilos nacionales en ciencia?” Quipu, xi (1994), 103–18.

Peckham Morse , Man's rage for chaos: Biology, behavior, and the arts (New York, 1961), 21–22.

Pyenson Lewis , “Uses of cultural history: Karl Lamprecht in Argentina”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, to appear.

Duhem Pierre , The aim and structure of physical theory , transl. by Wiener Philip P. (1906; New York, 1962); Merz John Theodore , A history of European scientific thought in the nineteenth century (1904; New York, 1965).

Broder Albert , “Enseignement technique et croissance économique en Allemagne et en France, 1870–1914: Quelques éléments en vue d'une analyse approfondie”, in Frankreich und Deutschland: Forschung, Technologie und industrielle Entwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Cohen Yves Manfrass Klaus (Munich, 1990), 66–91, pp. 66–67, where Broder discusses national stereotypes in the writings of Jules Verne.

Guerlac Henry , “Science and French national strength (1951)”, in Guerlac , Essays and papers in the history of modern science (Baltimore, 1977), 491–514, p. 492.

Nye Robert A. , “The history of sexuality in context: National sexological traditions”, Science in context, iv (1991), 387–406.

Harwood Jonathan , “National styles in science: Genetics in Germany and the United States between the World Wars”, Isis, lxxviii (1987), 390–414.

Anderson Benedict , Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 1983).

Jordanova Ludmilla , “Science and national identity”, in Sciences et langues en Europe, ed. by Chartier Roger Corsi Pietro (Paris, 1996), 221–31, pp. 225, 227.

Neill Anna , “Bucaneer ethnography: Nature, culture, and nation in the journals of William Dampier”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxiii (1999–2000), 165–80.

Watanabe John M. , “Culturing identities, the state, and national consciousness in late nineteenth-century Western Guatemala”, Bulletin of Latin American research, xix (2000), 321–40.

Daston Lorraine , “The ideal and reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment”, Science in context, iv (1991), 367–86.

Goode George Brown , The origins of natural science in America, ed. by Kohlstedt Sally (Washington, 1991).

Jamison Andrew , “National styles of science and technology: A comparative model”, Sociological inquiry, lvii (1987), 144–58. See also Premfors Rune , “National policy styles and higher education in France, Sweden and the United Kingdom”, European journal of education, xvi (1981), 253–62.

For one example: Pyenson Lewis , “Pure learning and political economy: Science and European expansion in the Age of Imperialism”, in New trends in the history of science, ed. by Visser R. P. W. Bos H. J. M. Palm L. C. Snelders H. A. M. (Amsterdam, 1989), 209–78.

Hughes Thomas Parke , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983). For broad strokes in policy: Freeman Gary P. , “National styles and policy sectors: Explaining structured variation”, Journal of public policy, v (1985), 467–96.

Persuasive narrative dominates a volume devoted to the first director of the Conseil National de Recherches Scientifiques in France, Henri Laugier en son siècle, ed. by Crémieux-Brilhac Jean-Louis Picard Jean-François (Paris, 1995).

Beyerchen Alan , Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the physics community in the Third Reich (New Haven, 1977), p. ix.

Weart Spencer R. , Scientists in power (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), p. vii.

Crawford Elisabeth , Nationalism and internationalism in science, 1880–1939: Four studies of the Nobel Population (Cambridge, 1992), 35–37. Also: Crawford Elizabeth Shin Terry Sörlin Sverker , “The nationalization and denationalization of the sciences: An introductory essay”, in Denationalizing science: The contexts of international scientific practice , ed. by Crawford Shin Sörlin (Dordrecht, 1993), 1–42. The editors herald the views expressed in the present text, but contributors to the volume do not appear to contest the notion of national science.

Struik Dirk J. , Yankee science in the making: Science and engineering in New England from colonial times to the Civil War (1948; New York, 1991), 277. For the comparison: Fee Elizabeth Brown Theodore M. (eds), Making medical history: The life and times of Henry E. Sigerist (Baltimore, 1997).

Struik Dirk J. , “The sociology of mathematics revisited: A personal note”, Science and society, 1 (1986), 280–99, p. 293.

Pannekoek Antonie , A history of astronomy (London, 1961).

Struik Dirk J. , Het land van Stevin en Huygens (1958; Nijmegen , 1979).

van Berkel Klaas , “Introduction”, in A history of science in The Netherlands: Survey, themes and reference, ed. by van Berkel Klaas van Helden Albert Palm Lodewijk (Leiden, 1999), 3–11, p. 1.

Van Berkel , Science in The Netherlands (ref. 40), 10.

The matter is elaborated in Heilbrunn Jacob , “The news from everywhere: Does global thinking threaten local knowledge? The Social Science Research Council debates the future of Area Studies”, Lingua Franca, vi (1996), 48–56.

de Rezende Martins Estevão , “Lateinamerika: Eigenweg oder Labyrinth?”, Geschichte und Gegenwart, xiv (1995), 15–32, p. 19.

Saldaña Juan José , “Marcos conceptuales de la historia de las ciencias en Latinoamérica: Postivismo y economicismo”, in El perfil de la ciencia en América , ed. by Saldaña (Mexico City, 1986), 57–80, pp. 63–65 for the universalist historiography; and Saldaña, “Wissenschaft und kulturelle Identität: Die Geschichte der Wissenschaft in Lateinamerika”, in Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Lateinamerika, ed. by Guntau Martin (Rostock, 1992), 7–23, pp. 9–12 for how Latin American writers copied European notions of science.

Among the most useful volumes: Ducloux Enrique Herrero , Las ciencias químicas (Buenos Aires, 1923); Dassen Claro Cornelio , Las matemáticas en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1924); Loyarte Ramón G. , La evolución de la física (Buenos Aires, 1924); Chaudet Enrique , La evolución de la astronomía durante los últimos cincuenta años (1872–1922) (Buenos Aires, 1926).

de Azevedo Fernando , (ed.), As ciências no Brasil (Saõ Paulo, 1955).

Babini José , La evolución del pensamiento científico en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1954); Mariscotti Mario , El secreto atómico de Huemul: Crónica del origen de la energía atómica en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1985), on Ronald Richter as a mountebank.

Bateman Alfredo D. , Paginas para la historia de la ingeniería colombiana (Bogotá, 1972), appearing as vol. cxiv of the Biblioteca de Historia Nacional of the Academia Colombiana de Historia.

de Gortari Eli , La ciencia en la história de México (Mexico City, 1980).

Feri Mário Guimarães Motoyama Shozo , (eds), História das ciências no Brasil (São Paulo, 1979); Quevedo V. Emilio Vasco Carlos Eduardo Obregón Diana Orozco Luis Enrique (eds), Historia social de la ciencia en Colombia (Bogotá, 1993).

Among the most significant volumes: Santaló Luis A. , Evolución de las ciencias en la República Argentina 1923–1972, I: Matemática (Buenos Aires, 1972); Westerkamp José Federico , Evolución de las ciencias en la República Argentina 1923–1972, II: Física (Buenos Aires, 1975); Mazoti Luis B. Hunziker Juan H. , Evolución de las ciencias en la República Argentina 1923–1972, IV: Genética (Buenos Aires, 1976); Cabrera Angel L. , Evolución de las ciencias en la República Argentina 1923–1972, VI: Botánica (Buenos Aires, 1979).

Schwartzman Simon , Formação da comunidade científica no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1979); Magalhães Gildo , Força et luz: Eletricidade e modernização na República velha (São Paulo, 2000).

Duchesne Raymond , La science et le pouvoir au Québec (1920–1965) (Quebec, 1978); Ministre d'Etat du Développement culturel, La politique québécoise du développement culturel (2 vols, Quebec, 1978). Both books appear with the official publisher of the Province of Quebec. Consider Bergeron Léander , Petit manuel d'histoire du Québec ([Montreal], 1970), 4–5: “The histories told to us [by our élites] about our past were conceived to keep us, the Québécois people, outside history…. We Québécois live with colonialism. As a people, we are prisoners. To change our situation it is first necessary to understand it.”.

Saldaña Juan José , (ed.), Los orígenes de la ciencia nacional (Mexico City, 1992). Beltrán's commanding presence is reflected in his editing of the Memorias del Primer Coloquio Mexicano de Historia de la Ciencia (2 vols, Mexico City, 1964), a collection that compares favourably with all subsequent volumes of the kind on science in Latin America, and also in his editing of the first five numbers of the Anales de la Sociedad Mexicana de Historia de la Ciencia y de la Tecnología (1969–79), which compare favourably with periodicals in Europe and the United States.

Lopes María Margaret , O Brasil descobre a pesquisa científica: Os museus e as ciências naturais no século XIX (São Paulo, 1997); Montserrat Marcelo , Ciencia, historia y sociedad en la Argentina del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires, 1993); Montserrat Marcelo , Usos de la memoria: Razón, ideología e imaginación históricas (Buenos Aires, 1996).

Pruna Pedro M. , “National science in a colonial context: The Royal Academy of Sciences of Havana, 1861–1898”, Isis, lxxxv (1994), 412–26; Rodriguez-Sala Luisa , “Científicos y técnicos en la Nueva España del siglo XVI, sus roles socio-profesionales como raíces de una ciencia nacional”, Quipu, x (1993), 319–34, an assertion in advance of evidence; Fitzell Jill , “Cultural colonialism and new languages of power: Scientific progress in nineteenth century Ecuador”, Journal of historical sociology, ix (1996), 290–314. Fitzell's postmodernist rhetoric is unpersuasive, and her conclusions are questionable: “Beginning in the mid-1880s, there was a general hiatus in European scientists' accounts of visits to Ecuador for approximately 40 years” (p. 310). Cf. Pyenson Lewis , Civilizing mission: Exact sciences and French overseas expansion, 1830–1940 (Baltimore, 1993), 310–29, for extended European visiting and reporting.

Iggers Georg G. , “The decline of the classical national tradition of German historiography”, History and theory, vi (1967), 382–412, p. 383. In France, “the role of leaders of the national conscience, played by the great German historians, has no equivalent”, although Ernest Lavisse has been identified as “the pope and the marshal of the academic world”. Nora Pierre , “Ernest Lavisse: Son rôle dans la formation du sentiment national”, Revue historique, ccviii (1962), 73–106, pp. 74, 85.

Iggers , “Decline” (ref. 57), 385.

Iggers Georg G. , “Nationalgeschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft: Einige Bemerkungen zu zeitgenössischen historiographischen Entwicklungen”, Bohemia, xxxii (1991), 90–98, p. 97.

Porter Roy Teich Mikuláš , “Introduction”, in The Scientific Revolution in national context, ed. by Porter Teich (Cambridge, 1992), 1–10, pp. 2, 6.

Iliffe Robert , “Foreign bodies: Travel, empire and the early Royal Society of London, part II. The land of experimental knowledge”, Canadian journal of history, xxxiv (1999), 23–50, Oldenburg to Samuel Hartlib cited on p. 30, Sprat summarized on p. 39.

Stroup Alice , Royal funding of the Parisian Académie Royal des Sciences during the 1690s (American Philosophical Society, Transactions, lxxvii/4; Philadelphia, 1987), 128.

Ben-David , Scientist's role (ref. 5).

Basalla George , “The spread of Western science revisited”, in Mundialización de la ciencia y cultura nacional , ed. by Lafuente Antonio Elena A. Ortega Maria Luisa (Madrid, 1993), 599–603, p. 601. In the contributions to the Mundialización volume, ‘national science’ generally signifies ‘science in a small, administratively centralized, independent or quasi-independent state’. See Ten Antonio E. , “Ciencias puras y prestigio nacional: Astronomía colonial y astronomía republicana en Sudamérica”, pp. 715–24.

Crosland Maurice , “History of science in a national context”, The British journal for the history of science, x (1977), 95–113, p. 111.

Hauge Hans , “Nationalizing science”, in Sciences et langues en Europe, ed. by Chartier Roger Corsi Pietro (Paris, 1996), 159–68.

Reingold Nathan , Science, American style (New Brunswick, 1991), 6.

Crombie Alistair C. , Styles of scientific thinking in the European tradition (3 vols, London, 1994), i, pp. x–xi, 48, 58, 39–40, 43, 88, in sequence.

Crane Diana , The transformation of the avant-garde: The New York art world, 1940–1985 (Chicago, 1987), 19, 21.

Crane Diana , Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing (Chicago, 2000), 2, 136, 236, 248.

Wessely Anna , “Transposing ‘style’ from the history of art to the history of science”, Science in context, iv (1991), 265–78, p. 276.

Violante , cited in Lónne Karl-Egon , “Regional- und Nationalgeschichtsschreibung in Italien”, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte, cxxx (1994), 13–29, p. 15.

Applegate Celia , “A Europe of regions: Reflections on the historiography of sub-national places in modern times”, American historical review, civ (1999), 1157–82, pp. 1166, 1170–1, 1173, 1177, 1181.

There is also a local character to national military laboratories, whether a naval observatory in Washington or a nuclear-bomb facility in Los Alamos.

Turnbull David , “Reframing science and other local knowledge traditions”, Futures, xxix (1997), 551–62, pp. 552–3.

Hooykaas Reijer , “Science in Manueline style”, in Obras completas de D. João de Castro, iv, ed. by Cortesão Armando de Albuquerque Luís (Coimbra, 1982), 231–426, pp. 422–4, 426.

María José Piñero López Brotons Víctor Navarro , Història de la ciència al país Valencià (Valencia, 1995). The argument is elaborated in the authors' “Estudio histórico” of their collection, La actividad científica valenciana de la Ilustración (2 vols, Valencia, 1998), i, 13–108, where they observe the precipitous decline of science in early nineteenth-century Valencia.

Miller Roberta Balstad , “Science and society in the early career of H. F. Verwoerd”, Journal of southern African studies, xix (1993), 635–61, for Verwoerd's views that the state should be “a tool of the institutions and organisations of civil society” (p. 657).

Numbers Ronald L. Numbers Janet S. , “Science in the Old South: A reappraisal”, in Science and medicine in the Old South, ed. by Numbers Ronald L. Savitt Todd L. (Baton Rouge, 1989), 9–35, pp. 11, 22–23, 25–35; the object of scrutiny: Johnson Thomas Cary Jr. , Scientific interests in the Old South (New York, 1936).

Geiger Roger L. , “Introduction”, in The American college in the nineteenth century, ed. by Geiger (Nashville, 2000), 1–36, pp. 19–21.

In The American college in the nineteenth century, ed. by Geiger (ref. 80): Geiger Roger L. , “The rise and fall of useful knowledge”, 153–68; Sugrue Michael , “‘We desired our future rulers to be educated men’”, 91–114; Turner James Bernard Paul , “The German model and the graduate school”, 221–41.

Short John Rennie , “A new mode of thinking: Creating a national geography in the early republic”, in Surveying the record: North American scientific exploration to 1930 , ed. by Carter Edward C. II (American Philosophical Society, Memoirs, ccxxxi; Philadelphia, 1999), 19–50, p. 50. Short emphasizes that Jedidiah Morse, a late eighteenth-century geographer called the “father of American geography”, expressed intense distaste for “a dissipated, slave-owning south”, which he contrasted to “an idealization of his home state of Connecticut” (p. 35).

In his fine study, Science and the ante-bellum American college (American Philosophical Society, Memoirs, cix; Philadelphia, 1975), Stanley M. Guralnick focuses overwhelmingly on Northeastern institutions.

O'Brien Michael , “On observing the quicksand”, American historical review, civ (1999), 1202–7, p. 1203.

Dawson John Charles , Lakanal the regicide: A biographical and historical study of the career of Joseph Lakanal (University, Ala., 1948), 123, citing the opinion of Edward Laroque Tinker in 1932; Tinker also for the reported stay of Jerôme Bonaparte as a tutor in Louisiana.

Duffy John , (ed), The Rudolph Matas history of medicine in Louisiana, i (Baton Rouge, 1958), 160 for Masdevall; Lamontagne Roland , “L'influence de Maurepas sur les sciences: Le botaniste Jean Prat à la Nouvelle-Orléans, 1735–1746”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xlix (1996), 113–24. Duffy claims that the Masdevall work is the first to be published in Louisiana. Printers were active under the Spanish regime, however, and it has been contended that the first volume to appear was a 21-page folio mémoire, addressed to the French king, asking France to depose the new Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa and retake the colony. Tebbel John , A history of book publishing in the United States, i: The creation of an industry, 1630–1865 (New York, 1972), 126.

It is instructive to consider the powerful scientist-administrators of our own time, the chemist Margaret Thatcher and nuclear-submarine officer Jimmy Carter, in the light of Ulloa and Franklin.

The secondary literature on these matters is extensive. See Dictionary of scientific biography, xiii, s. v. “Ulloa”; Lafuente Antonio Mazuecos Antonio , Los caballeros del punto fijo: Ciencia, política y aventura en la expedición geodésica hispanofrancesa al virreinato del Perú en siglo XVIII (Barcelona, 1987); Lafuente Antonio Sellés Manuel , El Observatorio de Cádiz (1753–1831) (Madrid, 1988), in which, however, Ulloa hardly figures; Arroyo Manuel López , (ed.), Astronomía y cartografía de los siglos XVIII y XIX (Madrid, 1987); Chandler R. E. , “Ulloa's account of the 1768 revolt”, Louisiana history, xxvii (1986), 407–37; Martínez Miguel Molina , Antonio de Ulloa en Huancavélica (Granada, 1995). A major new study is by Francisco de Solano Pérez-Lila, La passion de reformar: Antonio de Ulloa, marino y científico 1716–1795 (Seville, 1999). I follow the title of the Noticias americanas from the Buenos Aires reprint of 1944.

Dawson , Lakanal (ref. 85), 121–9. Within living memory, Cajuns (the name taken in English by descendants of Acadians transported from Nova Scotia to Louisiana after the British conquest of French Canada) have referred to English-speakers as “Americans”. The history of French Louisiana is rich and complex, with French-speaking immigrants arriving from many shores over the past 250 years. An orientation may be found in Brasseaux Carl , The founding of New Acadia: The beginnings of Acadian life in Louisiana, 1765–1803 (Baton Rouge, 1997).

Hahn Roger , The anatomy of a scientific institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), 234–9, 245–9.

Dawson , Lakanal (ref. 85), 133.

See Gauvin Jean-François , “Brief international inventory of Jean Antoine Nollet type scientific instruments”, in Pyenson Lewis Gauvin Jean-François (eds), The art of teaching physics: The eighteenth-century demonstration apparatus of Jean Antoine Nollet (Sillery, Quebec, 2002), 175–201.

Hislop Codman , Eliphalet Nott (Middletown, Conn., 1971), 226. Other collections of scientific apparatus and their value are given in Guralnick, Ante-bellum American college (ref. 83), 72–74.

Dyer Thomas G. , “Science in the antebellum college”, in Numbers Savitt (eds), Science and medicine in the Old South (ref. 79), 36–54, pp. 42, 45.

Sellars Charles Coleman , Dickinson College: A history (Middletown, Conn., 1973), 168.

Peckham Howard H. , The making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967 (Ann Arbor, 1967), 20.

Morison Samuel Eliot , Three centuries of Harvard, 1687–1936 (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), 217.

Ellis William Arba , Norwich University, 1819–1911: Her history, her graduates, her roll of honor, i (Montpelier, Vt., 1911), 9–10.

McCormick Richard P. , Rutgers: A bicentennial history (New Brunswick, 1966), 44, 46.

Rudolph Frederick , Mark Hopkins and the log: Williams College, 1836–1872 (New Haven, 1956), 10, 136.

Reingold Nathan , “Introduction”, in Papers of Joseph Henry, ii, ed. by Reingold (Washington, 1975), pp. xiii–xxxi, see pp. xvii–xviii.

Lakanal mentions the academic provenance of his successor in a letter to Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire of 1 May 1830. Jouin Henry , Lakanal en Amérique d'après sa correspondance inédite (1815–1837) (Besançon, 1904) [reprinted from the Revue idéaliste], 29.

Dawson , Lakanal (ref. 85), 155.

Dyer John P. , Tulane: The biography of a university, 1834–1965 (New York, 1966).

Lyons Henry , Record of the Royal Society of London (London, 1940); Institut de France (Pierre Gauja), Index biographique de l'Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1979).

The passages of Sylvester and Secchi resemble the passage of Octavio Mossotti in Buenos Aires (1827–35) and Jean-Baptiste Boussingault in New Granada (1821–32). In Argentina around 1900, Italians who immigrated temporarily were called golondrinos, or swallows (the word also designates military deserters); the term seems appropriate here, too. Máximo Barón, Octavio F. Mossotti: En el amanecer de la ciencia Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1981); William Frederick McCosh James , Boussingault: Chemist and agriculturist (Dordrecht, 1984).

Corgan James X. , (ed.), The geological sciences in the antebellum South (University, Ala., 1982), Wilkinson Norman B. , E. I. Du Pont, botaniste: The beginning of a tradition (Charlottesville, Va., 1972), and Walsh James J. , “Catholic achievements in science”, in Catholic builders of the nation , ed. by McGuire C. E. (Boston, 1923), 353–87, pp. 356–9, for informative discussions. A significant survey, still fresh, is: Leroy Jean F. (ed.), Les botanistes français en Amérique du Nord avant 1850 (Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, lxiii; Paris, 1957), providing information on several score of French naturalists. French explorers in the United States are absent from Numa Broc's survey, “Les explorateurs français du XIXe siècle reconsidérés”, Revue française d'historie d'Outre-Mer, lxix (1982), 237–73, 323–59.

Duffy , Rudolph Matas history (ref. 86), 488–95 for the separate communities of English-speaking and French-speaking physicians and for the domination of the French speakers.

Archives of the Province of New Orleans, Loyola University. Two maps: “Missiones Provincae Lugdunensis” and “Missio Neo-Aurelianensis”, undated but prior to 1900; Clancy Thomas , “The antebellum Jesuits of the New Orleans Province, 1837–1861”, Louisiana history, xxxiv (1993), 327–43; Bangert William V. , A history of the Society of Jesus (St Louis, Mo., 1972); Baudier Roger , The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1939); Biever Albert Hubert , The Jesuits in New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley: Jubilee memorial (New Orleans, 1924). A summary of administrative history in Schmandt Raymond H. , “An overview of institutional establishments in the antebellum southern Church”, in Catholics in the Old South: Essays on church and culture, ed. by Miller Randall M. Wakelyn Jon L. (Macon, 1983), 53–76.

Schmandt , “Overview” (ref. 109), 72.

Kenny Michael , Catholic culture in Alabama: Centenary story of Spring Hill College, 1830–1930 (New York, 1931), for an exhaustive history; here pp. 69–70, 97, 104.

Kenny , Catholic culture (ref. 111), 135, 139, 142.

Farrell Allan P. , The Jesuit code of liberal education: Development and scope of the Ratio Studiorium [sic] (Milwaukee, 1938), 385–6, 389–90.

Buckley Cornelius M. , (ed.), A Frenchman, a chaplain, a rebel: The war letters of Pere Louis-Hippolyte Gache, S.J. (Chicago, 1981); Gache and Cornette entered the Society of Jesus together at Avignon, and Buckley reproduces a number of letters from Gache to Cornette. The available accounts of Cornette conflict with Frank Safford, The ideal of the practical: Colombia's struggle to form a technical elite (Austin, 1976), 119–20, where the governor of Antioquia Province, Mariano Ospina, reported in 1845 that the Jesuits were unwilling to convert a colegio into a university at Medellín because “the old fathers do not know anything more than their Latin and their Spanish theology, and perhaps Greek and metaphysics, things of little profit to us…. They find the teaching of modern languages, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. distasteful”. The evident inaccuracies of Ospina's assessment suggest a deeper antipathy to the Jesuits.

St Paul George A. , “Menology of New Orleans Province”, typescript in the library of St Charles College, Grand Coteau, Louisiana, p. 61 for Cornette's death and for the affiliation with Paris.

Kenney , Catholic culture (ref. 111), 275, 222, 226–7, 235, 261.

Kenney , Catholic culture (ref. 111), 128–9.

Kenney , Catholic culture (ref. 111), 136.

Buckley Cornelius M. , Nicolas Point, SJ: His life and Northwest Indian chronicles (Chicago, 1989), 13, 21, 41, 52–53, 128.

Buckley , Nicolas Point (ref. 119), 137, 146; Paz Daniel G. , The priesthoods and apostasies of Pierce Connelly (New York, 1986); Flaxman Radegunde , A woman styled bold: The life of Cornelia Connelly 1809–1879 (London, 1991).

Fleming James Rodger , Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Baltimore, 1990), 179.

Biever , Jesuits in New Orleans (ref. 109), 98 for the observatory; Baudier , Catholic Church (ref. 109), 423 for the years. No doubt the telescope did not rival the 18-inch-aperture instrument constructed in 1861 by Alvan Clark for the University of Mississippi and delivered to the University of Michigan. Johnson, Scientific interests (ref. 79), 29.

Sinclair Bruce , “Americans abroad: Science and cultural nationalism in the early nineteenth century”, in The sciences in the American context: New perspectives, ed. by Reingold Nathan (Washington, 1979), 35–53, pp. 35, 48.

Johnson , Scientific interests (ref. 79), 172, 174; Ewan Joseph , “The growth of learned and scientific societies in the southeastern United States to 1860”, in The pursuit of knowledge in the early American republic: American scientific and learned societies from colonial times to the Civil War, ed. by Oleson Alexandra Brown Sanborn C. (Baltimore, 1976), 208–18, p. 213.

Stephens Lester D. , “Scientific societies in the Old South: The Elliott Society and the New Orleans Academy of Sciences”, in Numbers Savitt (eds), Science and medicine (ref. 79), 55–78, p. 75.

The present focus ignores spontaneous enrolment of Southern, especially Louisiana students at secular institutions of higher learning in France, notably the Ecole Central des Arts et Manufactures. Guillet Léon , Cent ans de la vie de l'Ecole Central des Arts et Manufactures (Paris, 1929), 413. The school's archives at Châtenay-Malabry await inquiry.

Anderson , Imagined communities (ref. 23), 64.

For example, in Shapin Steven , The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1996), a work contending “there was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution” (p. 1), the section “Natural knowledge and state power”, 123–35, is remarkable for not addressing in any way how the state marshalled science for political ends. Examples are limited to circumstances like Galileo's naming the moons of Jupiter after the family who would pay his bills (not, significantly, after the family's nation-state, for it was a gesture to secure future funding from a particular patron), Francis Bacon's allusive writings about “taking all knowledge to be my province”, and the equally vague desire of the inmates of “Solomon's House” in the New Atlantis to labour for “enlarging the bounds of Human Empire”. It seems to me that notwithstanding the gratuitous use of the word “state” in the pages just cited, this postmodernist work has the state and the nation quite receding in favour of regional élites who reside in London, Florence and Paris and participate in autonomous, interdiscursive groups for discussion and experimentation, the scientific academies.

Craig Theresa , Edith Wharton, a house full of rooms: Architecture, interiors, and gardens (New York, 1996), 14.