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Abstract
Between 1860 and 1914, the breeding of animals for meat, milk, wool, and work underwent significant changes in the United States and Germany. New organizational forms, record-keeping methods, and strategies of improvement were adopted, and some progressive agriculturalists called for the direct application of biological theories to animal production. Through the analysis of archival sources, agricultural and scientific journals, breeders' handbooks, animal registries, and government reports, this dissertation explores the interplay between the craft practices and knowledge associated with the business of livestock breeding and the scientific study of heredity in both countries. Cross-national comparison over time reveals that German breeders exhibited greater receptivity to scientific theory than their American counterparts and were less concerned with protecting their intellectual property in living organisms. This dissertation argues that these differences can be explained through an examination of the traditions of higher education and the activities of the state in the respective national contexts. The comparison also points to similarities between the two cases that suggest that animal breeding, and agricultural improvement more generally, was an international phenomenon involving the widespread exchange of ideas and practices. Working from these points of convergence, this dissertation argues that craft laid the foundations for and contributed to the development of biological theories of animal heredity and that the use of science in practice involved ongoing mutual exchange between practical breeders and academics. It also argues that evolving market and economic circumstances, including a felt need to protect intellectual property in living organisms in the absence of patents, brought animal breeding in step with a broader transition to modernity exemplified by standardization, precise measurement, statistical thinking, and objectivity.
This study has implications for the discipline of the history of science more generally. Its findings suggest that the borderlands between craft and science offer intriguing and largely unexplored terrain for scholars. The production of knowledge within practical contexts can be seen in a wide variety of historical settings and across scientific disciplines and epistemic frames of reference. Examining these individual cases and comparing them cross-nationally can provide significant insights into the history of knowledge production and its place in the wider culture. In addition to bringing the field into conversation with broader national and transnational narratives, these kinds of projects bring important institutions, ideas, and historical actors into view that have hitherto escaped our attention.
