Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century America

Matthew Hannah’s book focuses on late nineteenth-century America, the period of transformation which followed the Civil War and gave birth to the twentieth century. This was a time of industrialization and urbanization. Immigration was on the increase and traditional hierarchies were being challenged. Using a combination of empirical and theoretical material, Hannah explores the modernization of the American federal government during this period. Discussions of gender, race and colonial knowledge engage with Foucault’s ideas on ‘governmentality’. The empirical strands of the narrative surround the career and writing of Francis A. Walker. A hugely influential figure at that time, Walker was Director of the 1870 and 1880 US censuses, Commissioner of Indian affairs and a prominent political economist and educator. Through an analysis of his work, Hannah enriches previous interpretations of the period, demonstrating that the modernization of the American national state was a thoroughly spatial and explicitly geographical project.