Ester Nelly Abuter Ananías - Fachbereich Philosophie und ...

Vera Candiani ( Princeton University, New Jersey, u sa )
Traveling Technicians : Military Engineers, Water and Colonialism
Without workers, craft speople and technicians the Americas could not have been
drawn into the Atlantic sphere. Yet, of all travelers whose currency was knowledge,
they are the most overlooked. Emigrating builders, tanners, masons, horticulturists,
millers, carpenters, blacksmiths, cooks, engineers and others were unlike the morestudied
chroniclers and early ethnographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century,
or eighteenth century scientifi c travelers. Although they conveyed a European way
of knowing and working to the Americas, their universe was more material than
theoretical : they neither gathered information about the New World for Europeans
nor consciously tried to diff use European cultures, scientifi c or otherwise. Rarely
would they or the products of their knowledge and labor ever return to Europe. In
this paper, I use one group of European technicians in water management in Mexico
to see how technical and scientifi c knowledge actually took residence aft er migrating
with people. Royal military engineers were a hybrid among this cohort of traveling
technicians : they were mostly itinerant, their training was grounded in science, and
they oft en used this culture as an off ensive weapon for technological change in
New World public works and fortifi cations, diff using European scientifi c views to
unexpected quarters. I argue that the engineers’ culture diff used through contact,
collaboration and confl ict between these royal “traveler” technicians and creole
technicians and authorities, and that these working and social relationships were as
or more important than the techno-scientifi c merits of engineers’ proposals when it
came to actual implementation of projects.
Email candiani@princeton.edu
Section Travel Cultures, Practices and Economies : Discoveries, Expeditions,
Tourism
Panel 53
Date July 30
Time 9 :00
Location l 113