Séminaire | Modern North American History

24 March 2025, 
5:00 pm-6:30 pm (CET) - Online

Forests, water and the sciences in assembling empire in the Intermountain West, 1901-1915

Evan Bonney 
(Centre for History of Sciences Po)

Evan Bonney is a PhD candidate at the Centre for History of Sciences Po and is due to complete his dissertation by June 2025. His dissertation focuses on the introduction of forestry into federal administration highlighting that U.S. foresters were uniquely versatile agents of empire to settle the Intermountain West between 1891 and 1914. Consequently, his work examines the creation of the U.S. "administrative state", environmental management and the history of the sciences in State and federal policy making. 

Whether forests generate precipitation or if they mechanically influence water distribution remains up for debate even today. This presentation examines the origins of this debate in the United States, demonstrating that it served as a stage to define who was most apt to inform Congress at the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, the future of forestry as a federal practice hinged on the lack of conclusive evidence that could close the debate, allowing the foresters of the Forest Service to continue to build a presence in the Intermountain West. By experimenting with what this paper terms the "forest-water link", U.S. foresters transformed the region into the prime laboratory to explore the potential for and limits of federal power between 1901 and 1914. 

Seminar organized jointly with the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (Leiden University).