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The last four decades of the 18th century were a time of momentous change in North America. Towards the beginning of this period, in 1763, British victory over France in the Seven Years War seemingly ensured its status as a dominant power on the Atlantic seaboard. By the end of the century, though, the United States of America was an independent country forging its own path. A crucial milestone on this journey from colonial rule to self-determination came on 4 July 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was unanimously adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The 250th anniversary year of this pivotal event has been celebrated and marked in many ways, including by an exhibition at the Science Museum in London (see ‘Further information’ below). Becoming America is shining a spotlight on an aspect of this story that is perhaps less well known. It considers how the disciplines that we now collectively call ‘science’ were at the forefront of shaping the land, the peoples, and the identities during this transformative period. Here, we will introduce just a selection of the subjects examined in the exhibition.
Land of science
‘We’re looking at a very particular part of what people now think of as the USA’, says Elissavet Ntoulia, exhibition curator at the Science Museum. ‘The exhibition really focuses on the East Coast of America, which is part of the wider Atlantic world that encompasses Europe and Africa. The East Coast was home to the strip of land where the 13 British colonies were. During the period that the exhibition focuses on, we’re already 250 years into colonisation, so things have really developed. There are established routes of communication between the colonists and the indigenous populations. At the same time, there are struggles being caused by movement into the interior of North America. From the 1600s onwards, millions of enslaved people had also been trafficked into the Americas more generally, from Africa and especially West Africa.’
‘When it comes to thinking about science – which at the time would have been viewed as subjects ranging from natural philosophy to mathematics – all of these groups had their own approaches and their own science and technologies. So we can look at how they interacted with each other, and how their sciences and their applications of science changed as a consequence. From a European point of view, we’re in the period of modern science, which is based on rationality, reason, observation, and experiment. It’s rooted in the idea of doing things in the world in order to understand that world. But the application of this scientific expertise in North America is very practical. It’s about survival and claiming land and sovereignty. It’s not just some abstract theory.’
A practical approach to science is also apparent among the numerous indigenous nations that existed across North America. While there was a diversity of approaches to science technology among them, the exhibition focuses in on six nations that formed the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in the Great Lakes region. Although much of North America was densely forested at this time, indigenous groups were skilled at manufacturing sophisticated canoes to take full advantage of the waterways connecting this world. Trails across land were created as well, with trees sometimes made to grow in particular ways, so that they could act as markers. An understanding of the heavens supplemented these signs on the ground, with the movement of the stars aiding navigation and allowing observers to keep track of the passing of the seasons. This helped ensure that the harvest was gathered at the correct time, while knowledge of plants was essential, too, for everything from medicine to construction.
A key area of contact between indigenous groups and Europe concerned the North American beaver fur trade. The lucrative nature of this trade is still reflected by a building on Oxford Street in London that is decorated with images of beavers. While such connections had a major impact on European fashion, they also brought change to the indigenous groups. One of the commodities that they exchanged the beaver pelts for was metal blades, which started to be used instead of stone or bone in an important object known as a ‘pipe tomahawk’. This object had a dual role as a pipe and axe, which symbolised peace and war respectively. Pipe tomahawks eventually became status symbols. ‘In a sense, these artefacts became hybrid objects’, says Elissavet. ‘I find the way this interplay manifests quite fascinating. It’s not static – it’s very adaptable, and keeps changing through these interactions.’
Change crossed the Atlantic in the hands and minds of enslaved peoples as well. Many were sent to places like Georgia and South Carolina, which have humid climates comparable to those in West Africa. It is now widely accepted that enslaved people can be credited with introducing rice to North America. They brought not only the seeds, but also the knowledge necessary to cultivate, process, and cook it. This know-how ranged all the way from the necessary tools to the engineering that enabled canals to be created in wetlands where rice was grown. An understanding of such environments was also of vital importance to some enslaved people who escaped from their plantations. One area where they managed to create a place of refuge and freedom was the Great Dismal Swamp, a vast expanse of wetlands on the borders of Virginia and Carolina. ‘It was quite a hostile place’, says Elissavet, ‘but communities of escaped enslaved people were able to live and thrive there. One thing they did was find and repurpose tools and artefacts that indigenous groups had left behind, sometimes millennia earlier. Ancient ceramic fragments, for example, were used as foundations to elevate cabins above the swampy ground.’
By land and sea
When Benjamin Franklin contemplated the Atlantic in the 1760s, it was in his role as a colonial postmaster. He was curious about why letters travelling to Britain would arrive faster than those being shipped in the opposite direction. He roped in the assistance of his cousin Timothy Folger, who was a ship’s captain, and together they made a series of observations concerning the specific nature of this phenomenon. The fruits of this enquiry were then sent to the British Post Office, who overlaid them on an existing chart to publish the first map of the Gulf Stream in about 1768. The work of Franklin and Folger was so ahead of its time, though, that their findings were largely ignored for a century, until interest in the Gulf Stream was piqued once again in the mid-19th century, before systematic observation of the phenomenon.
While Franklin was captivated by the sea, two Englishmen – astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon – had been tasked with setting knowledge of the interior on a surer footing. Although the indigenous groups in North America had borders that could be considered quite fluid from a Western perspective, the colonial administration preferred to create more precise lines. In the aftermath of the 1763 victory in the Seven Years War, the Proclamation Line was drawn, running roughly north–south down the Appalachian Mountains, to create the edge of permitted settler expansion. While the east–west line that Mason and Dixon were sent to survey would later become hugely significant as the division between the North and the South in the United States, their original remit was to solve a land dispute between two colonial families.
‘It was the Penns, who were the proprietors of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and the Calverts, who were the proprietors of Maryland’, Elissavet explains. ‘So Mason and Dixon had to undertake this large-scale survey through difficult terrain in a contested landscape. They worked as part of a large team with indigenous guides and wagons. In the exhibition, we have the compass that we believe Jeremiah Dixon used. These instruments were commonly employed in North America, because the long sight-lines you need for theodolites were interrupted by the forest. The Mason-Dixon surveying expedition started in 1763 and finished in 1767. They didn’t want to finish where they did, but they had to. Their expedition had pushed beyond the Proclamation Line into what is now Ohio. This was a heavily contested region that was claimed by Haudenosaunee and Lenape people. So what we see is a fascinating example of science being dictated to by the realities of the American frontier, for want of a better word.’
A nation is born
Science finds expression in the Declaration of Independence, too. ‘It’s such a famous document, with such famous lines’, says Elissavet, ‘and there are many layers to it. One of those layers is the scientific influence, which comes in different ways. The document was mainly written by Thomas Jefferson, but within a committee of five, and heavily edited by the Continental Congress. Jefferson was himself really interested in science, and the text uses language comparable to that found in scientific writings of the time. So the case for independence is presented like a legal case, but also a scientific case, which is underpinned by rationality, reason, and observation. One of the phrases used is “self-evident” truths, which has been employed since Euclidean times to present axioms that can be taken for granted. In such cases there is no need for proof: they are part of nature. And this is one of the senses in which independence has become necessary. This type of language shows a real awareness of the scientific discourse at that time.’
Ater the British were defeated and independence was secured, technology continued to play a leading role in the new nation. One example concerns George Washington’s personal interest in farming. Throughout the war, he maintained a keen interest in the running of his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Afterwards, he remained in correspondence with agriculturalists across the Atlantic. From them, Washington ordered a innovative new kind of plough, called the ‘Rotterdam plough’, which he had specially modified for the lighter soils in America. There’s also a handwritten document by George Washington in the exhibition, which lays out his plan for crop rotation over a decade at Mount Vernon, to ensure that the cycles of different crops would enable him to maximise the yield from the soil. Such care is a fine illustration of how agriculture remained the backbone of national economies during this era.
Science and technology could be employed to learn more about the natural world, too. Since the 1730s, bones belonging to a large, mysterious animal had been periodically found in North America. Eventually, Thomas Jefferson and Charles Willson Peale formed a committee to try to locate more complete remains of this animal. Their chance came in 1801, when a farmer in upstate New York reported the discovery of more bones. Peale jumped at the opportunity this presented, and organised an excavation. A huge painting captures the resulting scene, with a pulley system being used to remove the water from a marl pit, where the remains of much of the creature were successfully recovered. This big, powerful animal went on public display, and is now known to be an extinct mastodon. At the time, it became something of an early scientific symbol of US national identity.
When taken together, then, the decades charted by the exhibition provide a fascinating opportunity to scrutinise the role of science at a turning point in world history. At the same time, they clearly testify to the influence of applying these methods and technologies in North America having been so great that science itself was changed forever in the process.
Becoming America: how science shaped a nation will run from 23 October 2026 to 25 April 2027 at the Science Museum in London. Access to both the museum and the exhibition is free, and exhibition tickets can be booked at http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/becoming-america.
