Into A New World: Peter Kalm in North America, 1748-1750

Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm traveled from 1748 to 1750 through the colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Quebec. As one of the students of Carl Linnaeus, inventor of the binomial nomenclature system, Kalm spent considerable time with the members of an international network of natural philosophers including Peter Collinson in London, Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram in Philadelphia, and the Jesuits in Quebec. Kalm identified plant life, and recorded how the colonists changed the landscape. He speculated on the geological forces that created the Hudson River Valley, may have recorded the first known description of wind chill, and most likely handled what were later identified as dinosaur bones. No other journal from the American colonies in the eighteenth century matches his in depth and richness of information on their physical environment and material world. Kalm was one of the few students of Linnaeus to return to the University of Uppsala alive. He published his journal Travels in North America after his return and settled down to a family life as a college professor. He never traveled or published again. His journal, however, was soon translated and published in German and English. Other works written before 1800 were mainly about curiosities. Kalm offered an extensive scientific description of the North American colonies. Into A New World presents an analysis of Kalm’s journal and scientific contributions that makes them more comprehensible to modern scholars, describes the contacts among mid-eighteenth century natural philosophers, especially in North America, and begins to fill a substantial gap in the history of science. Furthermore, Kalm made social observations about the colonists, their health, relative wealth or poverty, methods of agriculture and commerce, religious freedom, education, demographics, and systems of government. This study presents an opportunity to shed useful light on the period prior to the Seven Year’s War and offer some insights into the root causes of the American