Citation:
Date Presented:
February 9, 2013Abstract:
My project centers on the Thayer Expedition, a scientific undertaking led by Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz that traveled to Brazil during the closing months of the United States Civil War. In Brazil, Agassiz collected fish specimens, performed geographical analysis of glacial drift, and, most infamously, photographed the “racial hybrids” that he encountered in the Brazilian Amazon. Agassiz and his research assistants – among them a twenty-three-year-old William James – received extensive support from Brazil’s government and elite classes as they journeyed up the Brazilian coast and, eventually, deep into the Amazon rainforest. My thesis tells the story of the Thayer Expedition by placing it firmly in the context of Brazilian history, describing how the Expedition was shaped by nascent Brazilian ideas about science, nation, and race. In doing so, I also reconstruct the pre-Darwinian worldview espoused by Agassiz, a worldview that viewed ichthyology, glacial study, and race relations as intimately linked. In order to understand the way that Brazil shaped – and was shaped by – the Thayer Expedition, it is necessary to understand how Agassiz’s notorious photographs emerged from an expedition that was concerned chiefly with the collection of undiscovered fish species. As I enter the final phase of this project, it remains necessary to narrow my exploration of Agassiz’s influence in Brazil, and to specify precisely how Agassiz engaged with both scientists and politicians in imperial Brazilian society.