Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676

Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

Joyce Chaplin’s Subject Matter examines the relationship between colonialism, science, and racialism in the Anglo-American frontier between 1500 and 1700. This work challenges traditional historiographic trends that focused on the “cultural dimension of colonial history.” (21) Instead, her work situates “the history of science at the heart of the early English colonizing process.” (8) Chaplin argues that the way in which Europeans understood the relationship between climate, technology, and Indians bodies changed from first contact to conquer. The English admired native bodies but that view shifted and they began to understand native bodies as fundamentally inferior. The English “began to believe that because they colonized America” natives were inferior. (34) This change is fundamentally linked to the way the English understood theories of natural science. She argues that this change took place as a result of “the emergence of concepts of race,” the European view that technology was a distinction function of Western culture, and the disenchantment of the world that distanced mystical view of nature from the material world. (14-15) These correlated measures of colonial power that to displayed embodied strength, situated European technology in contrast to Indian technology, and saw natural science as the antitheses of Indian superstition. (15)

Subject Matter is split into three parts: Approaching America, Invading America, and Conquering America. Part 1 examines the first period of contact (1500-1585) and points out that the English had great respect for native technology and bodies. In regards to the Inuit, the English were amazed that they were able to stay alive in such frigid temperatures and were so quickly able to adapt to English technology. (51) The English admire native bows and arrow technology so much, that they compared it to their own longbows and even insisted on using them. (101) Both the English and natives developed new technologies and used traditional technologies in warfare.

Part 2 examines the changing English discourse on native bodies. They suggested that because English children born in America looked like the English and acted English, that it was proof that there was something fundamentally superior about English bodies. This is markedly different from traditional views that placed bodily difference in the American climate because of an imbalance of humors. Most significantly, they argued that massive endemics of European diseases on the native populations were proof that their bodies were inferior. This is exemplified in the English refusal to intermarry with the natives, as so many other empires had done, because they feared that inferiority would be transmitted through amalgamation. In order to argue for their superiority, they used theories of nature and science. Thus, colonist asserted that they had “corporeal affinity” with the New World, making them fit to conquer it based on natural law. (157)

Lastly, Part III illustrates that between 1640 and 1676 the English discourse on native bodies contributed to the gradual loss of respect for Indian technology (9). Eventually, the English used their Western technology to distance themselves from natives. This led to English arguments about the intellectual inferiority of natives based on “failed” technology. If natives beat the English in war, it was because they artificially strengthened their bodies with herbs and practices during infancy. (255) Thus, culture provided a “second nature.” She argues that we need to understand this as racialism and racialization rather than full-on racism of the Darwinian variety. (256) Because they were insecure about the nature of their own superiority, they often humiliated Indians during war. In an attempt to further prove their superiority, they “participated in actions that did not simply kill Indians but destroyed their bodies.” (270)

Chaplin’s argument is both unique and impressive. Her analysis utilizes sources and makes connections that have never been made. She utilizes structuralist methodology without ignoring post-structuralism or ethnicohistorical analysis. The ability to move racialization away from the 18th century and towards native bodies, rather than just African bodies, is significant. Her argument that the English understood Indian bodies as artificial is interesting because it combined racial and cultural elements. However, as an intellectual history, Subject Matter is too repetitive. Chaplin often goes off on tangents and it detracts from her argument.