Travel and Exploration at the American Geographical Society: A Postcolonial Interpretation

现在人们认为，在19世纪，欧美世界的许多（如果不是大多数的话）地理组织都曾支持过殖民地或帝国主义的权力关系。 他们这样做的活动，如编目数据或绘制殖民地的领土收购或军事控制，提取资源，或打开国内商品的贸易路线。本研究探讨了历史地理的美国地理学会（AGS）从1851年至1912年，质疑是否以及如何地理知识产生的AGS援助，特别是美国的扩张主义，帝国主义和“帝国建设”。该研究的问题是否强烈（和明确）的业务和商业导向的AGS产生了不同的程序利益与其他地理组织的时期（如皇家地理学会和国家地理学会），其主要目的是阐述更多的科学知识的进步或地理教育。虽然该项目带来了非常需要注意地理知识和美国帝国主义之间的关系（全球范围内和在什么来是自己的边界在北美），研究进一步分析了一个很少研究，但高度影响力的地理社会，不像其他人，是明确关注地理的商业或“实用”价值。该项目的重点是通过档案来源阅读AGS的方案活动-例如，探险的财政和其他支持;收集和传播探险家和旅行者的报告;讲座;和美国和欧洲地理学家在1912年赞助的美国洲际铁路之旅。这项研究建立在，并有助于，研究已经理论化的科学和科学知识的历史和发展与“帝国”的扩张之间的关系。最重要的是，它将迫切需要的注意力集中在美国背景下的地理组织的“殖民科学”上，而这种分析尤其缺乏。通过对AGS文件和活动的后殖民阅读，本研究揭示了AGS共谋或抵制美国帝国扩张的方式和程度，并将殖民下层阶级的行动、声音和贡献带入了北美历史和历史地理学以及西方地理知识生产的视野。通过这种方式，这项研究概述了后殖民思想可能在更广泛的美国研究中的重要和富有成效的用途。

Many, if not most, geographical organizations in the Euro-American world are now understood as having supported colonial or imperial relationships of power in the 19th century. They did this by activities such as by cataloguing data or mapping colonies for territorial acquisition or military control, extracting resources, or opening trade routes for home goods. This study examines the historical geography of the American Geographical Society (AGS) from 1851 to 1912, questioning whether and how geographical knowledge produced by the AGS aided in specifically American expansionism, imperialism, and 'empire building'. The study questions whether the strong (and explicit) business and commercial orientation of the AGS produced for it different programmatic interests compared with other geographical organizations of the period (such as the Royal Geographical Society and National Geographical Society) whose primary purpose was articulated more as advancement of scientific knowledge or education in geography. While the project brings much needed attention to relationships between geographical knowledge and American imperialism (both globally and within what came to be its own borders in North America), the study furthers analysis of a little-studied but highly influential geographical society that, unlike others, was explicitly concerned with the commercial or 'practical' value of geography. The project focuses on programmatic activities of the AGS as read through archival sources - e.g., financial and other support of expeditions; collection and dissemination of explorers' and travelers' reports; lectures; and an AGS-sponsored transcontinental railroad tour of the United States by American and European geographers in 1912. This study builds upon, and contributes to, research that has theorized relationships between the history and development of science and scientific knowledge and the expansion of 'empires'. Most significantly it directs much needed attention to the 'colonial science' of geographical organizations in the American context, where such analysis is especially lacking. Through a postcolonial reading of AGS documents and activities, the study reveals the manner and extent of AGS complicity or resistance to American imperial expansion; and brings into view the actions, voices, and contributions of colonial underclasses to both the histories and historical geographies of North America, and to western geographical knowledge production. In that way the study outlines the critical and productive uses to which postcolonial thought might be put in American studies more broadly.