Land surveys and fortification design were key activities in the formation of engineering practices in the Early American Republic. These projects were federally-overseen and, thus, provide a window on the changing ideals of the nation. Yet, local knowledge and conditions mattered profoundly, too. I suggest that thinking about borderlands should be expanded to include not only geographic borderlands and their interesting socio-cultural-political-economic exchanges, but also to locations where different forms of knowledge came into contact and conflict, in order to consider how technical know-how was also traded in the context of nation-building.

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The Newberry Library Seminar on Technology, Politics, and Culture is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roosevelt University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University's School of Communications