Focused on expertise in science, engineering, and technology, this outstanding book shows how novel institutions connected ideas to effective practices in antebellum America. Combining rich research, analytical verve, and fresh thought, The Scientific-Military State reveals how effective national power and military capacity could develop in a democracy that sought to confine illiberal forms of state formation. -- Ira Katznelson, coauthor of Time Counts: Quantitative Analysis for Historical Social Science Historians have long sought to define an American Way of War. Johannesson offers a convincing new approach. Abandoning both the republican militia and the fiscal-military standing army, Enlightenment Jeffersonians built a scientific-military complex centered on French mathematical training. By the end of the 1840s, West Point-trained officers had built the first generation of American defenses, engineered canals and railroads throughout the country, and organized a virtually instantaneous projection of force against Mexico that shocked the great houses of Europe. Science, not simply money, would be the sinew of American power. Johannessons interpretation will dramatically shift our understanding of the rise of the antebellum American national state, and its deep connections with slavery, with implications that reach down to the present. -- John L. Brooke, coeditor of State Formations: Global Histories and Cultures of Statehood
