Planting Improvement: The Rhetoric and Practice of Scientific Agriculture in Northern British America, 1670-1820 By Anya Zilberstein B.A., History University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2001 Submitted to the Program in Science, Technology, and Society in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2008 ©2008 Anya Zilberstein. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signaturec of author: AnyýiaZilbersteii HiSfo ,Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society / -August 15, 2008 Certified by: Certified a-Ir•et Rtvo, hi. Conne'r PAo'fessor of History Theyis Supervisor / Certified by: Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Pr sor of History of Technology, Dean SHASS Committee member MASSACHUSETTS INSTTUTE Certified by: OF TECHNOLOGY Christol•] evap zo'a, Wssoc 66Professor, History Committee Mem er SEP 09 2'8 i Accepted by. / */StefanHelmreich, Associate Professor, Anthropology LIB7A F Direqtor of Graduap Studies, History, Antp~plogy, and STS Accepted by: Daf idhTl fDibner Professor of thiehltory of Engineering and Manufacturing Professor of Engineering tystems Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Society ARCHIVES Planting Improvement: The Rhetoric and Practice of Scientific Agriculture in Northern British America, 1670-1820 By Anya Zilberstein Submitted to the Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society on August 15, 2008 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, STS. ABSTRACT: "Planting Improvement: The Rhetoric and Practice of Scientific Agriculture in Northern British America, 1670-1820," explores the history and cultural politics of environmental change in the British empire through a focus on rural land-use practices and the construction of scientific expertise in the cold temperate colonies of New England and Nova Scotia, from the late seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries. Improvement was an abiding mode of and justification for British imperialism through territorial expansion and early modern economic development. British American and anglophone colonists of a range of status positions embraced agricultural improvement, though to different degrees and in different ways. For all settler-farmers, improving extra-European land meant transforming native environments into neo- European agricultural landscapes that were aesthetically familiar. For elites in northern North America, agricultural improvement was additionally a science of the practical Enlightenment, which encompassed husbandry and horticulture, stadial theories of progress, and the objectives and methods of natural history, geography, and economic survey. By exchanging farming advice, botanical literature, and seeds, plants, and livestock with other naturalists and improvers in the republic of letters and scientific institutions in the region as well in England, Scotland, Sweden, Russia, and France, elites in New England and Nova Scotia took a uniquely scientific approach to colonial property development. By employing the rhetoric of science and flaunting their privileged access to transatlantic, European, and imperial networks, northern elites who formed agricultural societies, supported natural history professorships, and private, academic, or colonial botanical gardens, distinguished their land improvements from those of their neighbors. Moreover, they believed that scientific improvement could ameliorate the troublesome disadvantages of the region's nature-especially its climate, seasonal weather extremes, short growing seasons, uneven topography, and thin soils. Scientific improvement would erase the geography of difference which made their lands marginal to the real estate market, staple-crop economy, and migration flows of the British empire and the early United States. Because improving the landscape and environment promised to improve the people inhabiting them, agricultural improvement was also a program for social reform: northern elites crafted projects to employ 'surplus laborers'--especially Indians, Acadians, Jamaican Maroons, women, children, criminals, and the poor-in silk production or in the region's small farms. Yet the limits of the northern environment challenged the regional practicability of scientific agriculture as well as enlightened improvers' pretensions to universalism. I conclude by analyzing these broad ambitions in relation to northern improvers' allegations of widespread indifference (or their own failure to popularize) a scientific approach to agriculture. The study bridges the 'First' and 'Second' Empires in British imperial historiography and the colonial and early national periods in the field of United States history, emphasizing instead the solidarities that persisted among elite Americans, Loyalists, and Britons, through kin, friendship, and scientific networks, despite conflicting allegiances to the Crown or to the republican causes of the American and French Revolutions. Thesis supervisor: Harriet Ritvo Title: Arthur J. Conner Professor of History For Baba Acknowledgements My research and travel was generously supported by the following institutions and grant committees: Michael Kraus Grant in Colonial History, American Historical Association, 2006; Graduate Student Scholarship, International Council for Canadian Studies, 2006; Starr Travel Fellowship, Center for International Studies, MIT, 2006; Graduate Student Summer Travel Grant, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 2005; and a Graduate Student Fellowship, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Cambridge, MA., 2004-2006. I also acknowledge the permission of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II for granting me access to the Georgian Archive in the Royal Archives, Windsor. In London, Jennifer Kane kindly hosted me and Margaret R. Hunt showed me around. Neil Chambers graciously gave me an orientation to Sir Joseph Banks's huge and scattered correspondence. In Halifax, Gordon McOuat helped with academic contacts; Celery Kovinsky made living there fun. At MIT, the staff of the STS and History Departments were always helpful and supportive, especially Karen Gardner, Kris Kipp, Debbie Meinbresse, Mabel Chin, Margot Collett, and Judy Spitzer. I am very lucky to have Harriet Ritvo as my advisor. With her exceptional intellect, insight, and wit-not to mention her sharp editorial eye and the example of her own scholarship-she shaped this project from the beginning. Without her counsel and warm encouragement, I might not have finished or, at least, getting through it would have been a drearier prospect. Deborah Fitzgerald knew me when I was an undergraduate and has helped and taught me since then in countless ways. I am very grateful to Christopher Capozzola, who provided advice and encouragement in the middle of my research and then, crucially, agreed to join my committee at the very end. Joyce E. Chaplin gave me my first introduction to the history of early America and the early modern Atlantic world and offered criticism and suggestions for the dissertation at several stages. In addition to their teaching and scholarship, conversations with Daniel Gordon, Margaret R. Hunt, Leo Marx, Anne McCants, Peter Perdue, Meg Jacobs, Merritt Roe Smith, Loren Graham, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pauline Maier, David Armitage, and Brian Donahue, influenced my thinking as a historian. The series of scholars invited to speak in the MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History that Harriet Ritvo and Deborah Fitzgerald organized beginning in my first year of graduate school gave me an extraordinary window into the field and the profession. William Turkel, Jenny Smith, Shane Hamilton, Etienne Benson, Nick Buchanan, and Rebecca Woods have been friends who shared their interest in and many conversations about agricultural and environmental history. Frederik A. Jonsson, Danny Samson, and Sarah Gibson shared with me their interest and thinking about northern improvement. Frederik Jonsson's eloquent work on the Scottish Highlands in particular provided many insights and points of contrast that helped sensitize me to aspects of my own research. Many friends old and new, but especially Rachel Price, Hilla Rose, Alex Moore, Krishana Collins, Esra Ozkan, Gavin Taylor, Peter Quigley, David White, Meg Hiesinger, Wilson Jacob, Andrew Ivaska, Delphine Mauger, Rachel Berger, Khalid Medani, and Elena Razlogova-have heard about this dissertation at one point or another and encouraged me despite myself. Esra Ozkan, Rachel Price, and Gavin Taylor knew what I was going through and gave me all the right things I needed (and sometimes more)--whether local or long-distance-to keep writing. My family deserves more than thanks and definitely more than I can record here. The dissertation is dedicated to my grandmother. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters I. Introduction ................................................................... 9 II. Networks of Improvement.................................................. 38 III. The Discourse of Colonial Improvement ................................ 94 IV. Cold Comfort: The Improvement of a Northern Climate........... 157 V. Planting Improvement .................................................. 212 VI. Conclusion: The Face