Science as Diplomatic Camouflage for Empire

"Jefferson started by inviting Spain’s diplomat, Carlos Martínez de Irujo, to the White House. This was surprising. While Jefferson and Irujo were friendly—the diplomat had helped him find a chef for his White House dinners—Madison handled most of these meetings. But Jefferson wanted to do this one himself. On December 1, Irujo arrived and found the president in a shockingly good mood. They talked briefly about New Orleans, but Jefferson seemed more interested in sharing his new idea for an expedition. The president confided in Irujo, explaining that the mission would be framed as a commercial one, for constitutional reasons, but that his real hopes—he could be honest with Irujo—were science and geography. As he talked, Jefferson grew excited, even agitated. Then he paused and asked if Spain would have any objections. Spain certainly would, Irujo said. Jefferson was trying the same trick he always saw in others—emphasizing the Enlightenment to deflect from the colonizing. The diplomat didn’t buy it. After leaving the White House, he sent a report to Madrid. “The president,” he wrote, “has been all his life a man of letters, very speculative and a lover of glory.” But Irujo sensed a different motive. The expedition, he believed, was a step “by which the Americans may someday extend their population.”"

"While Jefferson had been wrong on the specifics—so far, at least—he was right on the approach. Under the law of nations, colonizing was a gradual process. A successful claim to a region’s preemption rights might start with a nation sending out scientific explorers, to be followed by privately funded fur traders, a few trading posts, and eventually permanent settlements, ideally on rivers so the claim would include the full watershed. By 1802, British ships, Spanish ships, American ships, even Russian ships were trading along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They were probing the rivers that snaked into its interior, with the Columbia as the most promising. Jefferson knew what would happen next. So far, he told a senator, “no European nation claimed either the soil or jurisdiction.” But soon someone would try to advance the colonizing process: discovery, then occupation; commerce, then empire; furs, then farms."

"Jefferson borrowed the next part of his plan from Gallatin. For only the second time in his presidency, he wrote a secret message to Congress. This choice hinted at his urgency, but Jefferson focused the text on a popular and bipartisan policy, a policy he wanted Congress to continue: Native trading posts. These posts, he wrote, provided America with a peaceful way to acquire land, “which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for.” They could even help with New Orleans by lining the Mississippi’s American side with “the means of its own safety.”"