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.

During the early 1800s, Poinsett moved in the same European social circles with some of the first naturalists and travelers to explore the Pacific Islands. He explored Mexico in the early 1820s and published both popular and official descriptions of the new nation. During the 1830s and 1840s, Poinsett worked as both the US Secretary of War, and a patron of the human sciences, and was involved in the foundation of the organization that would become The Smithsonian Institute.

Poinsett’s career reflects the complexities that distinguish this era. As travel accounts became foundational to ethnographic and anthropological sciences, his career turned from exploration to scientific patronage and institution-building. As questions of human nature became fundamental to definitions of republicanism, natural rights, and national identity, Poinsett went to Mexico, as both a liberal influence, and imperial investigator. As explanations for human variation became integral to debates over race, slavery and American Exceptionalism, Poinsett published an article defining innate differences between civilized people and barbarians, and, as Secretary of War, carried out widespread Indian removal.

===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.