Staff View
Ventilating the empire: environmental machines in the British Atlantic world, 1700-1850

Descriptive

TitleInfo
Title
Ventilating the empire: environmental machines in the British Atlantic world, 1700-1850
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Sampson
NamePart (type = given)
Paul E.
NamePart (type = date)
1988-
DisplayForm
Paul E. Sampson
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
author
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Delbourgo
NamePart (type = given)
James
DisplayForm
James Delbourgo
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
chair
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Bellany
NamePart (type = given)
Alastair
DisplayForm
Alastair Bellany
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Pietruska
NamePart (type = given)
Jamie
DisplayForm
Jamie Pietruska
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Festa
NamePart (type = given)
Lynn
DisplayForm
Lynn Festa
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Albritton Jonsson
NamePart (type = given)
Fredrik
DisplayForm
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
outside member
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
School of Graduate Studies
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
school
TypeOfResource
Text
Genre (authority = marcgt)
theses
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
OriginInfo
DateCreated (qualifier = exact); (encoding = w3cdtf); (keyDate = yes)
2020
DateOther (type = degree); (qualifier = exact); (encoding = w3cdtf)
2020-10
CopyrightDate (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact)
2020
Language
LanguageTerm (authority = ISO 639-3:2007); (type = text)
English
Abstract (type = abstract)
This dissertation provides a scientific and social history of ventilation in the British Atlantic World during the long eighteenth century. Emerging amidst the enlightened craze for improvement, the first ventilating machines, or “ventilators,” aimed to extend the providential balance of particles in the atmosphere into enclosed and crowded spaces. These machines were widely adopted in the Royal Navy and in English prisons, where their use was promoted as a cornerstone of institutional reform. Early advocates of ventilation like the experimenter and clergyman Stephen Hales promised that his ventilators would thoroughly refresh these dank, putrid spaces and preserve the health of sailors, slaves and prisoners. In ships, ventilators were proposed as a means of mitigating the dangers of transition between climates, thus preserving the valuable labor resource of skilled sailors. In prisons, ventilation was proposed as a means of excluding and curing both moral and physical contagion in the new “perflated” and strictly disciplined prisons. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the failures of ventilation to fully extinguish epidemic disease was accompanied by the emergence of tropical medicine, which essentialized hot, humid environments as unhealthy and impossible to ventilate. This led to claims by abolitionists that slave ships constituted such an irredeemable space, and to claims by prison reformers that both the moral and physical environments of prisoners had to be completely controlled. Contemporaneously, the rationale for ventilation was changing as new chemical conceptions of air proposed by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier emphasized the quality and temperature of air over its free circulation. These developments, and the commodification of ventilating devices by the Marquis de Chabannes and others led sanitary reformers and chemical experts like David Boswell Reid to prioritize comfortable temperatures and air purification rather than open access to the external air. These developments led to ventilation devices becoming luxury goods that aimed to provide a comfortable atmosphere insulated from the miasma and filth of the emerging industrial city.

In summation, I argue that while ventilating machines were initially designed to mitigate the negative environmental and social effects of empire through free circulation of air, the fear of hot, humid, putrid, “tropical” environments transformed ventilation into an infrastructural technology which ultimately aimed to insulate certain elements of society from others. By tracing the history of ventilating devices, Ventilating the Empire provides a cautionary tale of how racial and class dynamics can exert a strong influence on technological projects to avert environmental danger.
Subject (authority = local)
Topic
Ventilation
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
History
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_11063
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (ix, 219 pages) : illustrations
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
NjNbRU
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/t3-r2et-3051
Back to the top

Rights

RightsDeclaration (ID = rulibRdec0006)
The author owns the copyright to this work.
RightsHolder (type = personal)
Name
FamilyName
Sampson
GivenName
Paul
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent
Type
Permission or license
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = start)
2020-07-29 15:01:07
AssociatedEntity
Name
Paul Sampson
Role
Copyright holder
Affiliation
Rutgers University. School of Graduate Studies
AssociatedObject
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
RightsEvent
Type
Embargo
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = start)
2020-10-31
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = end)
2021-05-02
Detail
Access to this PDF has been restricted at the author's request. It will be publicly available after May 2nd, 2021.
Copyright
Status
Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
Back to the top

Technical

RULTechMD (ID = TECHNICAL1)
ContentModel
ETD
OperatingSystem (VERSION = 5.1)
windows xp
DateCreated (point = end); (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact)
2020-11-07T00:35:00
CreatingApplication
Version
1.7
Back to the top
Version 8.5.5
Rutgers University Libraries - Copyright ©2024