Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with George D. Oberle III, author of Creating an Informed Citizenry: Knowledge and Democracy in the Early American Republic
What inspired you to write this book?
I have been intrigued by the idea of the creation of a national university since I was a graduate student. I was interested in how a new country with almost no national institutions dealt with the need to establish vibrant and responsive knowledge institutions in a diffused and diverse republic. After reading many books on knowledge creation in the early republic from various subdisciplines (political history, history of education, history of science and technology, social history, and institutional histories), it became clear that these fantastic examples of scholarship did not really talk to each other. I also became increasingly interested in how authority over information creation was established in a democratic polity. How could a project be devised to bring together all of these scholarly conversations? Ultimately, I realized that the most effective means of exploring this topic was to examine the debates surrounding the failed attempt to establish a national university. These debates provided an opportunity to explore the plethora of different knowledge institutions that early Americans established to help promote the organization and dissemination of new information.
What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book?
I want people to understand that being an informed citizen was and remains a critical piece of having a functioning republic. The founders agreed that there was an urgent need to found new knowledge institutions in their new republic. Since they believed that government derived its power from the people, a knowledgeable citizenry was necessary for active participation in the public sphere. However, they held divergent opinions about the types of institutions that the federal government itself should develop and about who should use them. What kind of information should be studied? Who should participate in the study and creation of new knowledge? Would a revolutionary expansion of access to information to commoners result in chaos? How could information circulating in the public sphere be verified amid expansive access to tools to publish new content? These early debates concerning information creation and dissemination mirror those in our society. What it meant to be an informed citizen was up for debate around 1800 and is shifting again now. Although most commentators see our present digital revolution as a force for democratizing knowledge, the ease of creating and disseminating information also offers the opportunity for many people to claim the title of expert without traditional credentials. In short, the struggles in the early republic were very much like the struggles over knowledge we see happening right now.
What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book?
The most surprising thing I learned was just how contentious the idea of establishing a national university was to so many different people, despite the fact that almost everyone engaged in discussions about it thought that it was an essential and valuable institution that was needed in the new country. In the end, no one could agree as to what was the proper function of a national university. Who was it for? What would instructors teach and in what way would that information be best spread across a huge geographic area? The diversity of ideas as to what constituted “useful knowledge” was fascinating for me to unravel. If having an educated citizenry was critical to the success of a new republic, then why could early American politicians and opinion makers not get it together to decide what type of institution should be built and even where it should be built?
What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?
There are several fascinating stories, but I have to say that the one that still amuses me the most is the story of the conflicting ideas between Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans about the importance of natural history museums. Federalists mocked Jefferson and his colleagues in the American Philosophical Society (APS) for their fascination with the “bony treasures” excavated in digs and subsequently displayed in Charles Willson Peale’s Museum in Philadelphia. Federalists especially ridiculed the massive undertaking of excavating a mammoth; they believed that the members of the APS were charlatans and undeserving of the status of learned men. They became even more aghast when they found out that Peale and twelve other men had sat underneath the thorax of the extinct beast where they ate dinner and offered a series of ten toasts celebrating mankind’s advancement of scientific knowledge and understanding of nature. Federalists saw this as further evidence of the mental instability of these men, writing that Jefferson & Co. emphasized the wrong kinds of knowledge and learning and were simply unfit for public life.
What’s next?
My next project is focused on the development of archival institutions throughout the nineteenth century. I am interested in exploring the diverse kinds of institutions that evolved in the United States to help collect, organize, and make our archival legacies available to the public. Who did budding U.S. archivists collect for? What were their goals, and who used these early institutions? There is a lot of good work coming out now, so I want to build on that scholarship (like Derek O’Leary’s Archival Communities, also from UVA Press) but I am especially interested in the development of what I am calling counter archives. I am exploring the emergence of state libraries, state archives, house museum archives, archives of scientific learned societies, and local court archives. Some interesting people I am exploring include William Smith Shaw, Peter Force, and Arturo Schomburg. These institutions all have a particular audience of users that allows historians to build different kinds of historical narratives. In short, I am interested in exploring the connections between these archive creators and the archival users.
