Increasing Entanglements: Jefferson’s Empire of Liberty and the Spanish and Mexican Southwest (1776-1846)
Book project in preparation
Humboldt’s Empire of Knowledge: From the Royal Spanish Court to the White House
University of California Press, 2025 (in press)
My book project “Increasing Entanglements” seeks to study the Southwest as an area of strategic rivalries of local and global interests, leading to processes of knowledge generation and circulation that have not yet been studied comprehensively. It claims that the increasing entanglements and interconnections between the developments on both sides of the North American continent, from the American Revolution onwards, require thorough analysis. In particular, it argues that so far, Jefferson’s relentless pursuit of intelligence on the Southwest, and the broader historical frame in which this happened, including the security concerns and reactions to which this led, has not received the attention it deserves.
This important research gap will be addressed by connecting both my areas of expertise – Jefferson, the Founding Fathers, and the US nation-building process on one side, and Spain, the Spanish Empire, and New Spain on the other. The overall goal of this book project is to illustrate how, from the American Revolution onward, the U.S. nation-building process and the events in the Spanish and later Mexican Southwest became increasingly intertwined until the U.S. annexation of this region in 1848. It does so by analyzing Jefferson´s policy and strategies concerning the Southwest, focusing on how his political pursuits were interconnected with his commercial goals and scientific interests. The project seeks to unveil the global reach of the developments in the Southwest and weave early U.S. history into the larger fabric of world history by placing it in a global trans-imperial context. Furthermore, it addresses the urgent need to better understand the Hispanic presence in the U.S. today by tracing the historic legacy of the Southwest as a space that has generated a common culture, identity, and history, still visible in this area, within and beyond the U.S. border.
The key research questions are: What were the reasons for Jefferson´s pursuits in the Southwest, and Alta California in particular? Which means did he have to pursue his strategic vision before his nation had achieved any military or economic power? How did he react to Russian, British, or French strategic endeavors in North America? And how did Jefferson position himself regarding the perspectives of the incipient U.S.-China trade from 1784 onwards? And how did he react to the first military encounter with Spain in the so-called Battle of San Diego Bay (though rather a little skirmish), which occurred in 1803 while he was President? And even later, what was his justification for his expansionist vision at the cost of Mexico, now an independent nation, just shortly before the Monroe Doctrine, expressed in 1823, was meant to redefine the Atlantic relationships? To which reactions did the early U.S. imperial pursuits lead, in the Spanish Empire and later in Mexico? Last but not least, what role did local indigenous knowledge play in the context of the imperial pursuits on both sides of the continent?
In March of 1799, the Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt presented himself to King Carlos IV, together with his plan for a scientific voyage of exploration through the Spanish colonies in the New World. This meeting took place in the royal palace in Aranjuez, a picturesque little town south of Madrid, where Humboldt had gone with the firm hope of obtaining official authorization that would allow him to travel through those distant dominions. Although the crown hardly ever granted such privileges to a foreign citizen, at least not to this extent —and not for a scientific enterprise that fell outside the government’s control —his mission proved successful: the young traveler, of not even thirty years of age, was conceded an unprecedented and extremely generous passport as well as several letters of introduction and recommendation which would, over the next five years, open the doors to important people and institutions in the New World.
Five years later, in spring of 1804, at the end of this expedition, shortly after the purchase of the Louisiana territory, Humboldt found himself talking to the American President Thomas Jefferson, as a guest at the White House – then still known under the name President’s House – in the newly established capital of Washington. Between these two crucial moments he had carried out his famous journey of exploration of the extended territories of the Monarquía Hispánicain America, which at the time of his travels were divided into the viceroyalties of New Spain, New Granada, Peru, and the island of Cuba, devoting his time to the study of all facets of natural history. This ambitious venture and its far-reaching outcome laid the foundations of his incomparable success and fame that would increase continuously over the next half-century. The form of the enterprise was clearly aimed at the progress of science, but undertaken in a historical context marked by imperial interests, which had an impact on the way the knowledge produced by Humboldt would be used.
This book project discusses Humboldt’s specific role between the declining Spanish empire and the rising American nation at the time of his visit to the United States. It analyzes the delicate balance that Humboldt struck between science and politics: the way he made use of the political connections offered by Jefferson’s cabinet on the one hand and monarchical Spain on the other while they, in turn, used his scientific work for strategic purposes. It also discusses the information Humboldt provided to the US government and the usefulness of these documents for Jefferson’s vision for the West at that time.
Being caught between the interests of these two empires, besides those of other governments, Humboldt created what we have come to call in an allegorical sense his Empire of Knowledge, the widely extended and elaborate network through which he controlled and freely circulated the information he had acquired.
Expanding the Frontiers of American Science: Alexander von Humboldt's Networks of Knowledge
Book project in preparation
This book project seeks to answer the question as to why Alexander von Humboldt’s six-week visit to a geographically limited part of the U.S. East Coast in 1804 led to his unprecedented impact on the development of American sciences across the expanding nation. How did he become one of the most prominent global intellectuals of the nineteenth century, a success attested to by the number of U.S. place-names and geographical features which still bear his name? My argument is that this exceptional fame resulted from his being extremely well-connected at several important layers of American society and thus he became a conduit for the production, circulation and implemetation of knowledge across multiple fields. The book will show how the Prussian explorer created the conditions for how we do science today, with a strong eye on collaborative science, the globalization of knowledge and the constant exchange of knowledge through scholarly networks? It furhermore discusses why his visit to the United States in 1804 happened to ocurr at the perfect moment, not only when after the Lousiana purchase the government was in need of precise geographical and statistical data about the newly acquired territory, but also at a moment when the nation was ready start its ascend as a leading power in the field of sciences. However, the goal of this book is not only to explain his importance for the past, but also to show the modern implications of Humboldtian science, and to tie him to several important topics of our modern interconnected world, such as social media or open science.