ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Birth of Scientific Pan-Americanism: The First Pan-American Scientific Congress of 1908-9

• In Event: Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 1

English Abstract

This paper examines the history of the First Pan-American Scientific Congress, held in Santiago between December 25, 1908, and January 5, 1909, as a contribution to the geographic and temporal expansion of science diplomacy. Over the course of two weeks, the Congress convened a wide range of specialists from across the Americas in the Chilean capital, supported by several national governments that saw in the discussion of scientific problems a real opportunity to imagine continental unity through knowledge and to position science as a vehicle for international cooperation. Yet these transnational conversations were shaped and constrained by national contexts and disciplinary boundaries. Efforts to standardize scientific instruments, practices and nomenclature, including proposals such as the adoption of Esperanto as an auxiliary scientific language, coordinated responses to social ills like alcoholism and prostitution, and even the construction of a transcontinental railway from Chile to Alaska, met with limited success. By analyzing shared political and social concerns among scientists in fields such as public health, engineering, and pedagogy and philosophy, this study argues that Pan-Americanism was not simply an extension of U.S. foreign policy, but rather a complex, bidirectional space of negotiation in which Latin American scientists actively shaped knowledge production and public reform. This paper examines how this international gathering, which featured, for the first time, U.S. intellectuals representing both the federal government and major U.S. universities in dialogue with Latin American peers, marked the onset of a new phase in hemispheric relations. This moment signaled the growing role of academic expertise in diplomatic relations and inaugurated a dual dynamic of collaboration and competition over scientific standards among American states.

Author

• Diego Hurtado-Torres, Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile.