“American Amazon”? - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 118

sics. American and British readers today are largely unaware of the imperial context of
their travels, though Brazilian analysts have not hesitated to place these writers squarely
in the literature of empire and territorial conquest. To many in Brazil, they were New
World “Stanleys”: precursors to imperial acquisition. 4
Maury, a dedicated Confederate, was an eminent scientist and, like Agassiz, was head
of an important institution, the US Naval Observatory, whose equivalent today might be
NASA. Both were men of science and believed profoundly in God's design, in scientific
racism, and in the virtues and the necessity of American colonization of the Amazon. In
Maury's view, this was the best way to develop the riches lying fallow under the louche
energies of Brazilian dominion. The mechanisms to achieve this change would include
freetrade,opennavigation,steamtravel,andAmericanentrepreneurialspiritintheform
of colonization. 5 And slave labor. For Maury, black labor and white management would
be key to transforming this immense region.
Born in Tennessee to a prestigious but downwardly mobile Virginian family, Maury
was a brilliant autodidact. He wrote what many considered to be the foundational work
in oceanography, one of the seminal practical maritime texts of the nineteenth century,
The Physical Geography of the Seas , a tome credited with expanding American mari-
time dominance at midcentury and founding the new scientific discipline of oceano-
graphy. Maury's technique involved promoting widespread observations from various
fleets, whalers, and merchant ships on position, water temperature, prevailing winds,
pressure, and other elements of interest and having them sent to him at the Naval Ob-
servatory. He then assembled this mass of data into a system of maritime maps of wind
and water flow. This strategy of information collection was rather like today's Audubon
Society Christmas Census 6 or a kind of wiki avant la lettre . By coordinating thousands
of disparate observations, Maury was to see surprising connections in practical naviga-
tionsandtocollateimmenseamountsofobservationalknowledgeintosubstantivemari-
time charts, creating navigational tools so powerful that he was described as a kind of
ConfederateNewton. 7 Hepassionatelybelievedthatthephysicalphenomenahewasob-
serving were manifestations of divine intelligence and godly design. Lovingly and poet-
ically he described the movement of winds and waters, the subtle machinery that direc-
ted the globe, as the handiwork of the “Architect of Creation.” Even for the times this
wasnotaparticularly trenchant analysisintherealmsofphysicsorastronomy;nonethe-
less his prestige and popular reach were great.
MaurywasoneofthemostdecoratedAmericanmenofscienceofthenineteenth cen-
tury and received numerous awards and accolades in Europe. 8 He was an initiator of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and helped found what later
came to be known as the Virginia Institute of Technology. Maury was well placed with-
in Virginian and Washington politics, and in his role as the top navy scientist he was