HERALD

When we pronounce the word science many things come to our minds: the theories and the experiments, the laboratories and places of research, the scientific communities and congresses, the journals and the manuals, the academies and scientific societies, the institutions and the languages of science.

Sometimes, when we speak of science in reference to Bacon or Mersenne or Galilei we are drawn to forget that that which we call science (in the form in which we know it) did not exist in the first half of the seventeenth century. The two great historic processes which gave life to our science, and which the sociologists have called institutionalization and professionalization of science, took place between the middle of the seventeenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries. The question that the historians of philosophical and scientific thought ask themselves (must ask themselves) is the following: what idea or what image of science made those processes possible? On what terrain were they born?

Francis Bacon was a politician and a statesman for most of his life. He received an education designed to train him for an active life and he sat in the House of Commons for the first time at the tender age of 20. He considered himself first a “bonus civis” - which amounted to being “a good and true servant to the Queen ” -and only after a “bonus vir, that is an honest man” (M, 132, 190-1). Up to the time of his unexpected fall in 1621, Bacon was actively involved in high politics at the court of James, and he never abandoned hope of a political comeback. A month after his impeachment he was already planning to offer instruction in politics (XIV, 285), and his History of Henry VII, written in 1621 and published in March 1622, was partly intended to show his abilities as a counselor. At the same time he planned to ask the king to employ him again “publicly upon the stage” and, in 1624, he declared himself ready to travel to the Continent to negotiate a league with France (XIV, 349, 443-4).

An important aspect of Bacon's “total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge” (IV, 8) was the organizational and institutional restructuring of natural philosophy. His rhetoric of a revolution in learning was similar to that employed by a number of his near contemporaries, but his vision of how it would be achieved differed. Unlike Descartes, for example, who retained the traditional philosophical emphasis upon the power of individual reasoning, Bacon sought to institute a new method for the investigation of nature, based upon the cooperative efforts of a large workforce.' Bacon's advocacy of cooperative research was in part responsible for his sharp criticism of traditional learning.

(SALISBURY)

The coming generation of basic reference works on Native American history is in the process of publication. When complete, the twenty volumes of Handbook of North American Indians, gen. ed. William C. Sturtevant (9 vols. to date, Washington, DC, 1978-), will provide exhaustive coverage by region and topic. Especially relevant for economic history are many of the essays in Vol. 4: History of Indian—White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn (1988). The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Vol. 1: North America, ed. Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn (Cambridge, England, in preparation), will consist of chapters covering the entire span of Native American history, from the earliest arrivals via the Bering land bridge to the present. Two valuable historical atlases are: R. Cole Harris, ed., Historical Atlas of Canada, Vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1800 (Toronto, 1987); and Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman, 1987). The best overviews of precontact archaeology are Brian M. Fagan, Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent (London, 1991) and Stuart J. Fiedel, Prehistory of the Americas, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, England, 1992). See also Michael Coe et al., eds., Atlas of Ancient America (New York, 1986), and Lynda Norene Shaffer, Native Americans Before 1492: The Moundbuilding Centers of the Eastern Woodlands (Armonk, NY, 1992). For a brief but illuminating discussion of exchange in pre-Columbian North American, see William A. Turnbaugh, "Wide-Area Connections in Native North America," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1:4 (1976), 22-8

Francis Bacon has always had a central but controversial place in historical accounts of early modern philosophy. For some, he was the first spokesman of modern science in general and the father of its inductive method in particular. For others, he was an immoral charlatan who had nothing original to say. In the seventeenth and especially in the eighteenth century, when Bacon's reputation was at its peak, he was widely seen as the originator of modern science and philosophy. In the middle of the nineteenth century William Whewell could still bestow fulsome praise on Bacon - “the supreme Legislator of the modern Republic of Science.” The tide, however, was turning apace, and it soon became a commonplace to ridicule Bacon's philosophy and criticize his moral outlook.

Both of these negative assessments have proven surprisingly tenacious. While moral denunciation continues, the main contemporary criticism of Bacon concerns the shortcomings of his grand philosophical schemes and methodological views. But there has been little consensus as to where precisely Bacon's philosophical failure lay. For some present-day epistemologists, Bacon was a spokesman for a hopelessly naive induction by enumeration, and had thus nothing to do with the development of modern science. In striking contrast, the Frankfurt School criticized Bacon for being the very epitome of the modern scientific domination of nature and humankind However, although these censures are still occasionally repeated, tremendous strides have been made in Bacon scholarship. New and important material has been turned up and anachronistic criteria for assessing Bacon's philosophy have been abandoned. Several ghosts of nineteenth-century interpretation have been exorcised and a new detailed account of Bacon's philosophy has started to emerge. There has been, in fact, something of a transformation in Bacon studies during the last few decades.

INTRODUCTION

Francis Bacon set forth his idea for reforming the entire realm of knowledge in The Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Human (first published in 1605), which he offered as a “fixed memorial” and “immortal monument” to the magnificence of James I (111, 261-4). It was divided into two books, the first dealing with the merit of augmenting learning, and the second with mapping out parts of knowledge, indicating which parts were extant, absent, or in need of revision in order to facilitate the advancement of learning explained in the first book. It is in the second book that we find Bacon's classification of knowledge. He revised parts of it in 1612 (Description of the Intellectual Globe V, 503-44)) and further in 1623, when he translated The Advancement of Learning into Latin as the De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (The Dignity and Advancement of Learning). Bacon now reviewed the entire scope of learning in eight books.

THE SOUTH ON THE EVE OF INDEPENDENCE

At the eve of the American independence movement, the idea of the South is an anachronism, a concept whose time is yet to come. If by the colonial South one means the area bounded on the north by (roughly) the Ohio and Susquehanna rivers, at the west by the Mississippi, and at the east and south by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, there is little to tie the region together. Even under more restricted definitions confined to territory long-claimed by the British (excluding, that is, the newly acquired Floridas and the French settlement at Louisiana) or the more limited region actually colonized by the British (excluding the trans-Appalachian west), the area has little unity. In 1775, there was no “South” with a single, integrated economy, a unifying culture, or a cohesive ruling class with a shared vision of the future. We are best served by recognizing diversity from the start and rejecting the notion of a “South” in favor of a concept of “Souths,” four proximate but separate regions with distinctive characteristics: the tobacco colonies around Chesapeake Bay; the rice and indigo districts of the Carolina–Georgia lowcountry; an area of mixed farming or “common husbandry” in the backcountry and around the periphery of the plantation districts; and a frontier zone dominated by cross-cultural trade. However, if the South was not yet a region, the factors that would give it greater unity and define its character during the early nineteenth century were firmly in place: an expansive plantation agriculture, African slavery, and an emerging planter class with a sense of purpose.

GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

The vast majority of the Africans who came to populate the English colonies of North America and the Caribbean came from a region we can designate as Atlantic Africa. It stretched from the Senegal River in northern Africa to the Angolan port city of Benguela in the south. A few African Americans did come from outside this region – inventories and shipping records reveal some people from Madagascar, the areas around the Zambezi basin and perhaps from the east coast of modern-day South Africa – but they were not numerous and came relatively late in the trade.

This region was denned first and foremost by the Atlantic Ocean, because the ease of access to the African coast was dictated not only by the presence of water transport routes but also by the fact that once mastered, the wind and current regime of the south Atlantic made fairly easy linkage for sailing ships between African and American destinations. It was also defined on the north and south by desert regions. North of the Senegal, the Sahara desert and its barren coast made for little trade or navigation; to the south, the Namib desert formed a similar barrier. Even though the Portuguese had a colony in Angola since the late sixteenth century, they had barely explored the region south of Benguela by the 1780s.

Given the important place occupied by rhetoric in Bacon's career, one might imagine that by this late date an abundance of serviceable studies would exist. But, perhaps as another proof of his observation that “the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want” (111, 327-8)) such is not the case. There are three book-length studies frequently cited: Karl R. Wallace's pioneering study, Francis Bacon on Communication and Rhetoric, Lisa Jardine's revised Cambridge dissertation, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse, and the overall history by W. S. Howell, Jr., Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700. There are also some shorter essays, of varying value.' But it is not being unkind to say that none of these offers a satisfactory account of either Bacon's theory or practice of rhetoric. In some cases major emphases in Bacon's theory have simply not been registered, or were misunderstood. In others, the writers' evaluation of Bacon was adversely affected by their general conception of rhetoric, and the place it held in European intellectual life.

Induction and Form belong to the most “technical” core among the concepts elaborated by Francis Bacon in his reflections on human knowledge, as counterdistinct from the more “ideological” tenets concerning his ideal of collective utility or his desideratum of a state-sponsored model for scientific research. Yet, a mere glance at Bacon's fortunes reveals a profound discontinuity between the reception of inductivism and experimentation on the one hand and of his theory of Forms on the other. Though not paramount among the canonical version of Baconianism presented by Thomas Sprat in his History of the Royal Society of 1667 (where the notions of natural history and theory-free experimenting seem to enjoy pride of place), reflections on inductive processes have been traditionally linked to the doctrines expounded in the Novum organum and, more generally, to the overall orthodox mapping of modern physical science.

The first thing that needs to be said about Bacon's ideas on morality and moral knowledge is that they do not constitute a systematic moral philosophy. Primarily, this is because the project of initiating a great lnstauration of learning represented for Bacon not a new philosophy but a new task: “a work to be done,” as he put it, “not an opinion to be held” (IV, 21). Such an opposition of works to words, of action to contemplation, entails a dismissal of all that is merely philosophy on the grounds that the relief of man's estate depends less on philosophical belief than on rigorous investigation. Only in the sweat of our brow could we reap the fruits of science.

THE REVOLUTION

Although a fundamental economic transformation took place in America only after the Revolutionary and Constitutional periods, many colonists expressed heightened expectations for rapid international and internal development even in the 1750s. Their expectations derived largely from the accelerated pace of economic change in the late colonial years, as well as from the visible signs of material improvement. Although predominantly a rural people, the revolutionary generation experienced aspects of a trans-Atlantic “consumer revolution” affecting the colonial cities and coastal villages before the Imperial Crisis. The aggressive market behavior of importing dry goods merchants connected colonists to British sources of textiles, sewing notions, agricultural implements, glassware, pottery, and other finished goods. By the 1740s, tea, coffee, citrus fruits, sugar and candy, snuff, and smaller quantities of exotic foodstuffs were common in coastal cities. More diverse consumption was made possible by the positive benefits of imperial membership, including naval protection, easy and long credit from British firms, inexpensive British manufactures, and the many unregulated export commodities that could be marketed competitively and without duties. Expanding consumption among “middling” colonists was also made possible by greater agricultural productivity in the mid-Atlantic and Chesapeake regions, as well as by increased staples exportation from southern colonies.

INSTITUTIONS OF SETTLEMENT

In the years following its establishment of a settlement at Jamestown in 1607, the Virginia Company set out to build an agricultural colony that would earn profits for investors. Toward this end, beginning in 1609 it raised both capital and labor through the device of a commercial company organized as a joint-stock venture. Shares in the company could be acquired either through a subscription of capital or through the pledge of one’s labor in America for a period of seven years. The excitement created in England by earlier explorations in North America, fueled by optimistic reports sent back by early settlers in Jamestown, enabled the Virginia Company to raise one of the largest sums ever invested in an English maritime venture.

An early failure of the settlement at Jamestown, marked by extremely high rates of mortality and shortages of food and fresh water that resulted in debilitating illness among many of those who survived, was met by a response from the company that would not have surprised English employers of the day. The colony’s governor attributed the infamous starving time to the idleness of Virginia’s labor force, and during the following years the company moved to eliminate this problem with sterner measures. From 1611 to 1618 the colony was ruled with iron discipline, with a detailed plan for all economic operations. All land was to be owned by the company and farmed collectively. The workers, all men, were to be treated as bound servants of the company for their specified terms.

IN WHAT SENSE DID EUROPEAN ORIGINS MATTER?

Originally the colonial American economy was constructed from European materials. It cannot be questioned that the predominant influence among the European traits was British, or more accurately English, and that until the War of Independence this became ever more firmly established. The admixture of other Europeans does not gainsay this fact, even though their role has been played down in a literature of early Americana that is inordinately concerned with the Pilgrim Fathers. The other major influences on what became a Euro-American way of life were the distant location of the colonies, together with their lavish resource endowment, and the slowly fading aboriginal culture.

The Native Americans had been present since prehistory, and the uses they had made of the land created capital improvements subsequently taken over by the immigrants from across the ocean. These “capital works” included cleared openings in the forest cover; burning to produce browse for their prey, the deer, thus encouraging sprout hardwoods, reducing fire-sensitive species (especially the understory); introducing from farther south crop plants like maize; and pioneering tracks and pathways. There were hundreds of semipermanent Indian villages in the northeast of the future United States, some with up to 150 acres cleared for crops and larger areas ecologically modified for hunting.

For most of the sixteenth century, the landholding and trading classes of northwestern Europe imagined the New World, based on the example set by the Spanish and Portuguese empires, as a field for conquest, plunder, and dominion. When English, French, or Dutch adventurers trained their minds on the Atlantic and its western shores, they dreamt of precious metals seized from Spanish galleons and conquered Indian peoples, rich estates worked by Indian or European subjects and supervised by transplanted gentlemen, or lucrative trading posts where willing and naive Indians would trade away their high-valued wares for next to nothing. Such projects would reward their promoters, less in the hard-won profit margins of competitive trade than in booty, rents, swindle, royal favor, and sometimes in the sense of having done one’s duty for king, country, or the true faith. With a few magnificent exceptions, however, most of these adventures came to nought. They did not repay their investors, nor did they establish any of the north European countries as a significant colonial power. By the turn of the century, therefore, a new generation of adventurers – first in England and then more gradually on the continent – began to consider a change in strategy. Listening to the arguments of men such as Richard Hakluyt, they planned and promoted overseas settlements where Europeans would support themselves by raising staple commodities for sale in the Atlantic marketplace. This principle – that colonies could be sustained and investors rewarded from the profits of trade – remained the common denominator within all the successful overseas undertakings in the decades to come.

Mercantilism was the guiding doctrine behind the attempts of regimes and peoples of the early modern Atlantic World to organize their economic existence. The aim of mercantilism was to structure the financial foundation of the nation-state – the emerging postmedieval governmental mode that rapidly replaced feudal localism in northern and western Europe after the mid-fifteenth century – so that the state could survive and prosper. Nationalism held the promise of political stability and a better life for all, a considerable improvement over the chaos of an earlier era. Mercantilist policies were thus meant to be the economic means to larger political and social ends.

Like similar economic belief systems – socialism and capitalism, for instance – mercantilism had its faithful few and its querulous many. Nevertheless, all of early modern Europe recognized and conformed, in various degrees, to the doctrines of mercantilism. It became “the unchallenged assumption that … government had the right and responsibility to regulate economic activities in the interest of the common good.” Mercantilism attracted a following because it seemed to work. Relative to the earlier era, there was more peace and greater prosperity. Yet the success of the nation-states of early modern Atlantic Europe encouraged dissenters as well as the faithful. Inherent in a system that promised all a greater good – and more goods – was the potential that, in its success or in its failure, it might encourage the expression of alternative voices and other doctrines.