Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century

Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century. By Axel Jansen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2011. Pp. 352. $49.

Alexander Dallas Bache is well known to historians of science for his leadership roles in the Franklin Institute, the U.S. Coast Survey, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.While Axel Jansen's main title might suggest that he has written a biography, it is the subtitle that is most illustrative of the contents of the book. Jansen does examine biographical and even genealogical details of Bache's life, but only to the extent that they support the larger argument. Through Bache, Jansen maps out a network of engineers and scientists who, Jansen argues, worked to use the authority of science and rational discourse as a means of consolidating an American nation and building an American nation state.

The idea of a modern state using the authority of science to strengthen its authority is well recognized by historians of science and technology. In antebellum America, however, engineers and scientists were still struggling to professionalize and are generally seen as not having had much authority...