Gesa Mackenthun
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318900
- eISBN:
- 9781846319983
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318900.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines a ‘tropical’ geographical site that has largely been forgotten by the historiography of America while being mythologized in popular history. Gesa Mackenthun argues that while ...
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This chapter examines a ‘tropical’ geographical site that has largely been forgotten by the historiography of America while being mythologized in popular history. Gesa Mackenthun argues that while Central America, due to its transitional political status and its important geopolitical position at the isthmus of the Western Hemisphere, was definitely a US interest zone in the period both before and after the Mexican War, the study of this (post-)colonial contact zone also exposes a convergence of various socio-economic and discursive strands which link Central America, and Yucatán in particular, to a much wider cultural sphere. The chapter discusses personal and textual relations between US American and European protagonists visiting Yucatán in the 1840s and 1850s, such as John Lloyd Stephens, George E. Squier, and the French aristocrat Arthur de Morelet. It shows that the discursive field was characterized by antagonistic attitudes toward nature and indigenous culture, including the ideological ‘uses’ of the indigenous past. While sharing the volume's attention to an extended sense of the “tropics” as a geopolitical region, it suggests broadening our understanding in regarding Mesoamerica as a global center of various interests, as well as one of the engines of the emergence of institutionalized geography and archaeology.Less
This chapter examines a ‘tropical’ geographical site that has largely been forgotten by the historiography of America while being mythologized in popular history. Gesa Mackenthun argues that while Central America, due to its transitional political status and its important geopolitical position at the isthmus of the Western Hemisphere, was definitely a US interest zone in the period both before and after the Mexican War, the study of this (post-)colonial contact zone also exposes a convergence of various socio-economic and discursive strands which link Central America, and Yucatán in particular, to a much wider cultural sphere. The chapter discusses personal and textual relations between US American and European protagonists visiting Yucatán in the 1840s and 1850s, such as John Lloyd Stephens, George E. Squier, and the French aristocrat Arthur de Morelet. It shows that the discursive field was characterized by antagonistic attitudes toward nature and indigenous culture, including the ideological ‘uses’ of the indigenous past. While sharing the volume's attention to an extended sense of the “tropics” as a geopolitical region, it suggests broadening our understanding in regarding Mesoamerica as a global center of various interests, as well as one of the engines of the emergence of institutionalized geography and archaeology.
Marc Flandreau
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226360300
- eISBN:
- 9780226360584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226360584.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies ...
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This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies launched in the mid-1860s, the chapter shows the structure of the science and finance nexus. It also shows how anthropology was embedded in financial engineering. In particular, taking the example of the competition between US anthropologist George Ephraim Squier and anthropologist Bedford Pim as a case in point, the chapter shows how statements about race and racial identity were ultimately tied to alternative financial concerns. The result was the plasticity of racial beliefs, which could be adjusted depending on financial logic. An intellectual history of racism that would ignore its financial underpinning and the problem of scientific credibility would miss some essential ingredients that shaped the contours of the “science of man.”Less
This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies launched in the mid-1860s, the chapter shows the structure of the science and finance nexus. It also shows how anthropology was embedded in financial engineering. In particular, taking the example of the competition between US anthropologist George Ephraim Squier and anthropologist Bedford Pim as a case in point, the chapter shows how statements about race and racial identity were ultimately tied to alternative financial concerns. The result was the plasticity of racial beliefs, which could be adjusted depending on financial logic. An intellectual history of racism that would ignore its financial underpinning and the problem of scientific credibility would miss some essential ingredients that shaped the contours of the “science of man.”
