John M Dixon is a historian of early America and the early modern Atlantic world. He currently works as an assistant professor at the College of Staten Island. His research interests include intellectual and cultural history, the enlightenment, New York history and Jewish history. His prize-winning 2016 work, The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York, explores the intellectual, cultural, and social settings of 18th century British New York. Dixon uses Cadwallader Colden, a conservative member of the intellectual elite in colonial New York, as the vehicle to drive his narrative. From issues concerning the use of print culture for science and politics, to discourse surrounding Newtonian or Berkleyian thoughts on active matter and gravity, Dixon shows that the Enlightenment in the American colonies was far from the radical hotbed popular narratives depict it as.
The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden is separated into three parts; the first two parts have three chapters, and the last has two. Dixon’s work, far from being a biography of Colden, approaches the intellectual and political milleu of transatlantic British imperialism chronologically, using the life of Colden to guide the reader through the changes to intellectual and political culture throughout Colden’s life. Dixon makes excellent use of epistolary evidence, as well as evidence from intellectuals publications, and pamphlets from popular political movements to present his arguments. In essence, Dixon asserts that the liberal enlightenment so often manifested in figures like Franklin and the Sons of Libery in historiography has overlooked a significant conservative and royalist element present in the colonies even at the eve of the American revolution.
Chapter 1 follows Colden during a period of rapid change in Scotland. During his formative years Colden witnessed a rabid theological politicization of British intellectual developments stemming from figures like Newton and Boyle. Colden’s father, a presbytarian minister, used connections with minor nobility to give Colden a minister’s education. It was here, in a university climate of rapid change and rabid discourse, that Colden became enamored with science, natural philosophy, and medicine, ultimately forgoing his father’s wishes and moving to London to practice as a physician despite no formal medical training. This shift from potential minister to failed physician is endemic in late 17th and early 18th British culture, as young men like Colden who endeavored to build wealth and fame, saw the enlightenment as a progression of humanity towards a more civil, intelligent, and moral state.
Chapter two follows Colden as he builds his transatlantic communication network before he ultimately decides to settle in Manhatten, an area he considered to be the locus of high-minded intellectualism in the colonies. Many of Colden’s contacts both in the colonies and in the British isles were fellow Scots, who took advantage of the benefits of the 1707 unification. Despite his failings as a physician in London (which Colden attributed to elitism and snobbery), Colden was able to perform quite well as a physician in the colonies, becoming quite renowned for his practice in Philadelphia. Colden’s success at medicine is indicative of the breadth of intellectual pursuits of both colonial and British gentlemen during the early 18th century enlightenment. Medicine, botany, natural history, mathematics, and philosophy were all seen as intimately related, and discussions such as these frequently permeated into theology as well.
Chapter three concerns Colden’s time spent in New York as a young man. Colden’s efforts to establish himself as colonial gentlemen were far more successful than his efforts in London. This chapter concerns Colden’s successful attempt to integrate himself within the Colonial government of New York, an endeavor that ultimately succeeded after he was appointed surveyor general by Governor William Burnett, a protégé of Newton and a man engrossed in the transatlantic intellectual milieu of the early 18th century. Burnett played a large part in invigorating the scholarly and intellectual pursuits past the colonial borders and throughout the transatlantic British world. New York politics and intellectualism blended during Burnett’s tenure as governor, and has a lasting impact on Colden, who would adhere to this style of conservative modernist enlightenment ideology for the rest of his life.
Chapter four discusses British concerns surrounding French expansionism, the importance of cartography to imperial success and colonial security, and the political relationship between the colonies and the Haudenosaunee. Colden’s history of the Haudenosaunee, History of the Five Indian Nations, became a work of great interest to London’s board of trade and the greater objectives of Britain’s expansionism in the early part of the 18th century. Despite being a work produced to critique the political situation in New York, Colden’s History was his most disseminated work and earned him a reputation as an authority on Indian affairs and policy. Though Dixon provides little textual evidence of Colden’s work, readers to get to see how information disseminated from the colonies to Europe through exchange networks, gifts, and a knowledge production system uniquely transatlantic. Though current readers might immediately see the issues with Colden’s History, it was so well regarded in Europe that it even was referenced in Diderot’s reference to the Iroquois in the Encylopedie.
Chapter five is one of the more interesting chapters in Dixon’s work. Titled “Otium” this chapter explores the philosophies behind the cultural image of the colonial intellectual elite. Inspired by neo-Stoic ideals of rural environments being the ideal laboratories for high intellectualism, colonial intellectuals self-fashioned themselves in the neo-Stoic fashion to give their intellectual publications more merit in the transatlantic scientific community. In addition, this chapter goes into great detail about the theological and philosophical implications of Newtonian thought, with Colden straddling materialist and immaterialist positions as he published polemic mathematical and philosophical musings against Berkleyianism and other anti-Newtonian schools of thought. Colden’s effort to secure prominence within the intellectual transatlantic community took the form of a work on theories of matter and gravity, The Principles of Action in Matter, though this was not well received by European intelligentsia. Colden complained bitterly in letters to his network that European snobbery was to blame for the lack of reception for his publication, but the earlier reception of his Indian history shows that European scholars were not hostile toward colonial knowledge production. This duality in Colden’s publications shows that transatlantic knowledge production was a collaborative effort between colonials and Europeans.
Chapter six concerns Colden’s efforts to secure prominence within the intellectual transatlantic community, which took the form of a work on theories of matter and gravity, The Principles of Action in Matter, though this was not well received by European intelligentsia. Colden complained bitterly in letters to his network that European snobbery was to blame for the lack of reception for his publication, but the earlier reception of his Indian history shows that European scholars were not hostile toward colonial knowledge production. This duality in Colden’s publications shows that transatlantic knowledge production was a collaborative effort between colonials and Europeans.
Chapter seven discusses the politics of New York in the two decades leading up to the American revolution. Partisanship was rife within New York during this time, and Colden was quick to defend the conservative, modern enlightenment principles he cherished against what he viewed as an upstart, illegitimate enlightenment championed by lawyers and pamphleteers. This chapter also details how colonial elite intellectual culture had widened political divisions in the mid-18th century, with crown appointed officials and agents being characterized as intrusive and obstructive by local colonial politics.
Chapter eight focuses on Colden during the end of his life, when he was the de facto governor of New York in the immediate years before the revolution. By this time New York has become a cultural center for the colonies, with Shakespeare being put on in local theaters and intellectual elites appraised of all transatlantic developments. The development of New York made it a essential locale for British imperialism in the Americas, but this had the effect of making it a hotbed of revolutionary fervor. Polemics and journals heaped criticism onto Colden and the governors that preceded him, with mobs burning effigies of Colden in the streets and threatening violence against the lt. governor. The radical enlightenment displayed in the activities of the Sons of Liberty was a far-cry from the conservative intellectualism Colden had tried to foster in the colonies.
Dixon’s work is an excellent history that quite rightly elucidates the discrepancy between narratives of colonial enlightenment and how it was perceived by colonial actors. The discussions of cultural development and intellectual history are well received, as are the several instances where Dixon points out the gender and socioeconomic issues surrounding colonial knowledge production. Far too often, narratives about American colonial enlightenment are presented as teleological, so it was refreshing to see a good history rebuke these arguments with such an important figure as Colden.
Of course, there is still much to be desired. While ostensibly a history of Science, The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden contains much more theorizing and scientia than historia and experimentation. In fact, the experimentation we do see in the work is merely directed by Colden, with his slaves and laborers actually performing the experiment. Colden’s lack of experimenting is contrasted with Benjamin Franklin, who is noted in the work as doing many hands on experiments himself, though no doubt the same gender and socioeconomic critiques levied here against Colden likely apply to Franklin as well, just at a lower level of intensity. Certainly, Dixon’s book can be read as a history of colonial scientific thought, but Colden’s lackluster theorizing and scant experimentation leave more to be desired for me to call this a history of science, though cultural and intellectual history definitions are much more appropriate.
