How science built — and divided — the US

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":6.96,"text":"No subheads, no bullet points, a tiny font: from a PowerPoint perspective, the Declaration of Independence now on show at London’s Science Museum is a disaster. But despite — or because of — all that, it is a thrilling document. One reason is that it is one of only 200 copies printed in Philadelphia on the evening of July 4 1776 to spread the word about the momentous decision that had just been made a few streets away in what is now Independence Hall: this is history hot off the press."}],[{"start":39.44,"text":"Another reason for its potency is the clarity and inexorability of its argument. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” — and it inevitably follows that Britain’s 13 American colonies must renounce their allegiance to the mother country and become the independent United States."}],[{"start":55.72,"text":"Yet what Becoming America, the new show in which it features, skilfully shows is the complex world it came from. Subtitled How Science Shaped a Nation, the exhibition explores the ways in which not just white colonists but also enslaved and Indigenous people deployed their scientific knowledge in the decades around the nation’s founding 250 years ago. If the Declaration, with its implicit appeal to universal reason, is a core Enlightenment document, it’s given a post-Enlightenment context here, with due attention paid to groups whose stories were once marginalised."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":88.4,"text":"It begins, though, with two rich white Georges: the last king of America and its first president. George III, painted in his early twenties by Allan Ramsay in 1761-62, just after his accession to the throne, is resplendent in golden satin and ermine, brimming with regal vigour and confidence. George Washington is portrayed — in a 1915 copy of Charles Willson Peale’s 1772 original — as his loyal subject, an army officer during the seven years’ war (1756-1763), when he fought for the British against the French. His expression as he gazes off to his right is thoughtful: perhaps he’s musing about the possibilities of the Ohio River Valley land behind him, some of which he took as a bounty for his service."}],[{"start":134.64,"text":"Facing them on the opposite wall are the representatives of Indigenous nations, depicted in contemporary prints during diplomatic visits to London. One of them, based on a 1770s George Romney painting, is Mohawk leader Thayendanegea, looking appraisingly out at us in white shirt and plumed headdress. Like Washington, he has a silver gorget round his neck — a crescent-shaped badge of rank worn by officers, and a token of his service to the King."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":163.92,"text":"Indigenous peoples were valuable allies as Britain tussled with France and Spain for control of North America. The first of the exhibition’s many maps is a large 1763 chart showing the Line of Proclamation. This marked the western boundary of Britain’s territory after the seven years’ war, with settlement beyond it forbidden by royal decree."}],[{"start":184.5,"text":"The aim was to avoid costly conflict with Indigenous groups, but the show argues that the same minutely surveyed and quantified concept of land that underpins the map was antipathetic to their worldview. “Indigenous inhabitants saw the land as a fellow living being,” declares a wall text. “American colonists and British authorities saw American land as a valuable political and economic resource to be claimed.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":208.88,"text":"Washington was among many who chafed against the Line of Proclamation and, once independence had been secured, all restraints were off. A 1796 chart shows land west of the Ohio River divided into a vast grid for sale, a rectilinear tide that ultimately swept all Indigenous impediments aside."}],[{"start":227.56,"text":"How land was surveyed and used is accordingly a key theme. Among the many intriguing objects here are a surveyor’s compass used in the 1760s to help determine the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary that came to represent the frontier between slave-holding southern states and the anti-slavery north; a dugout Wampanoag canoe, specially commissioned for the show; and a display detailing Washington’s attempts to apply the latest agricultural techniques to his estate, including a chart in his own hand detailing crop rotations."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":257.52,"text":"Not, of course, that he did the heavy work. Becoming America devotes significant space to his slaves, noting that five Washington family members on Mount Vernon were served by 17 hired white servants and their families, and 317 enslaved people, whose names, as recorded by Washington in 1799, the year he died, are listed on a panel."}],[{"start":276.4,"text":"What is also made clear is that Black and Indigenous people had deep agricultural knowhow — a matter of survival for slaves, who had to supplement their meagre diets with produce from the small plots they were allowed to cultivate. Medicinal plants helped them relieve common complaints and even resist the slave owners. Herbs that could induce miscarriages, for example, prevented new generations being born into slavery: even for the apparently powerless, knowledge is power."}],[{"start":303.68,"text":"It is also soft power. For the emerging US, being able to contribute to mainstream scientific debates built credibility overseas. Benjamin Franklin — an editor of and signatory to the Declaration, as well as a scientist, inventor and diplomat — is a key figure. His groundbreaking studies of electricity, represented here by a glass cylinder used to generate static charges, made him a celebrity in Europe as well as in America."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":330.72,"text":"The country’s rich natural history also attracted international attention. Vivid watercolours by the English naturalist Mark Catesby, made in the 1720s, show such novelties as the passenger pigeon, the rattlesnake and the now emblematic bald eagle, seen swooping down, claw extended, to capture a fish. Later, the discovery of the bones of a mastodon — a kind of extinct elephant — helped disprove French naturalist the Comte de Buffon’s theory that animals (and humans) in the New World were smaller, “degenerated” versions of their Old World counterparts; an 1807 canvas by Peale dramatises the bones’ excavation from a flooded pit under a stormy sky."}],[{"start":372.6,"text":"By the end of the show — and of the 18th century — the new country is powering ahead. Models of a steamboat and cotton mill (drawing on proprietary English technology) and a design for a high-speed elevator point to its burgeoning industrial prowess."}],[{"start":387.44,"text":"Where all this led can be seen in the museum’s main collection, which includes a moon rocket engine and capsule: superpower artefacts. Where it all came from — the multiple strands making up the emerging nation and the scientific knowledge that it drew on — is fascinatingly illuminated by this thought-provoking (and free) exhibition."}],[{"start":405.82,"text":"To April 25 2027, sciencemuseum.org.uk"}],[{"start":411,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":425.84,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793368558_6353.mp3"}