Changes

During the Eighteenth Century, European technological advances, nation-building agendas and philosophical debates combined to produce an era of expedition and state-sponsored social and scientific classification. Harry Liebersohn identifies the years between 1750 and 1850 as a “distinctive era” in overseas-exploration, scientific ethnography, and the development of the human sciences.<ref>Porter, Theodore, Ross, Dorothy, ed, <I>The Modern Social Sciences, Vol 7</i>, Cambridge University Press. 2003</ref> What was this “distinctive era” and the transitions within it from exploration to anthropology, as people tried to reconcile their philosophical and religious beliefs with evidence of unimagined human variety. This transition was complex, and took different forms in Europe and North America, and themes inherent to each will be addressed below. In order enrich the interpretation of this era, the career contributions of an American traveler, diplomat, and politician, Joel Poinsett, need to be explored.

===Europe===

Liebersohn examined several high-profile European naturalists and explorers in The Traveler’s World. He argues for the significance of networks of global travelers and European scholars who influenced state policy and informed conceptions of empire and race. He profiles the experiences of: Philbert Commerson, on the 1766-1769 voyage to Tahiti with Louis de Bougainville; George Forster, on the 1772-1775 voyage with Captain Cook, also to Tahiti; and, finally, Adelbert von Chamisso on the 1815-1818 voyage to the Hawaiian Islands aboard the Russian vessel the “Rurik”. Liebersohn discusses the accounts written by these men, integrating their stories into a well developed historical interpretation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanual Kant and others, and the far-flung implications of the cultural exchange intrinsic to colonialism. Liebersohn paid serious attention to the networks of relationships between the naturalists, the political intentions and conditions of the states that sponsor their expeditions, the Pacific Islanders that they encounter, and the community of philosophers and scholars who used their travel accounts to construct and support their theories on human nature.

===Mexico===

Mexico has been the object of foreign observations since the early 1800s. Mexico Otherwise examines the content and impact of traveler’s accounts of Mexican people, culture and politics. Employing concepts of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said, and applying it to the literary and intellectual treatment of Mexico, Buchenau argues that travel accounts of Mexico have not only constructed international perceptions of Mexico and Mexican people, but also influenced memory and meaning within Mexico. Buchenau argues powerful nations saw Mexico as a “single undifferentiated other”, just as colonial powers saw India. Traveler and foreign observer accounts of Mexico helped “invent categories”, creating “an essentialist discourse that subsumed a wealth of cultural difference.”<ref>Buchenau, <I>Mexico Otherwise</I>, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, pg 3.</ref> Buchenau features excerpts from many foreign observer accounts of Mexican culture, environments and people. The first two traveler’s accounts of this vast land, Alexander von Humboldt and Joel Poinsett illustrate both Orientalist themes, and the implications and implementations of the human sciences in new North American republics.