D. Graham Burnett

In Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature, D. Graham Burnett examines James Maurice v. Samuel Judd (1818), a three-day trial in which Judd, an oil merchant, argued that Maurice, the inspector, did not have the authority to collect his fee on fish oil since whale oil came from a whale, not a fish. Burnett argues that the case affords "a valuable opportunity to contribute to a growing revisionist literature show more that has called into question a dominant narrative in the history of science - a narrative that considers the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the 'golden age' of classificatory sciences" (pg. 194). According to Burnett, from the perspective of those claiming lay expertise in the natural world, "the early nineteenth century looked less like a taxonomic calm before the Darwinian storm..., and more like an era of instability and change, when established orders were under siege and taxonomic expertise various and hotly contested" (pg. 194). The laypeople struck back at the threat they perceived from the social and political elites, deciding after a three-day trial that whales were fish. Burnett writes, "The verdict, by these lights, struck a blow for plain folk everywhere" (pg. 179). These same conflicts parallel the issues modern American society currently faces. As Burnett argues, "the case provides...a compelling example of the perennially reciprocal constitution of natural and social orders" (pg. 146). Burnett draws upon a wide breadth of background, including the backgrounds of the principals in the trial, various writings about whales and marine life from the period, and sources examining the social changes occurring in turn of the century Manhattan. Burnett offers a fascinating look at this period, but loses focus at times. Despite this, the volume is required reading for anyone interested in the history of science. show less

Did you know that a New York jury in 1818 determined that a whale was a fish? I didn't, but I do now, thanks to D. Graham Burnett's Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007). Burnett takes as his subject the notable case of Maurice vs. Judd, in which an inspector of fish oil sued a merchant for $75, the cost of inspecting three barrels of whale oil. Judd, the merchant, claimed show more that the statute mandating inspections didn't cover his oil, since the law read "fish oil" and his came from whales. A trial ensued over whether the statute applied (and hence, whether "fish oil" included whale oil or not, and thus, whether whales were fish or not).

Featuring the testimony of taxonomists, whalers, merchants and legal experts, the trial offers a great example of the conflict between science, government, and common perception (some things never change). As Burnett writes, this case provides a look into the "contested territory of zoological classification," and he offers a brief but deep look at the problematic nature of cetacean classification through history. He also examines the question from the point of view of whalers (those "on the ground," so to speak), using evidence from logbooks, diaries, and, naturally, Moby-Dick, and he also digs into the question from the perspective of oil merchants and leather manufacturers (those most directly concerned with the practical issues at hand).

Burnett did his homework in writing this book, and it shows. The footnotes (positioned right at the bottom of the page where they belong) are both complete and instructive, and the bibliography is rich (my "to read" list expanded greatly just with the titles from this book). A readable and excellent book which brings an important but forgotten moment to life in fine style.

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Trials are a "retelling, in a string of words . . . a distressing distortion of the cluttered thickness of things as they happen."

Burnett is a Princeton history professor who writes of his experience as the foreman of a jury for a murder trial. He became foreman, when the original foreman just disappeared, just before the deliberations were to begin. Burnett considered the experience "the most intense sixty-six hours [hours of jury deliberation; the entire experience lasted seventeen days] show more of my life."

The case itself was not famous, albeit with some sensational aspects involving rape, transvestitism, and male prostitution, but it's a fascinating story of intense clashes between personalities in the jury room and an honest recollection of how a jury came to its conclusion. The various personalities on the jury come to life, and Burnett soon realizes that his stereotypical assumptions about some of them are drastically wrong. He comes across as somewhat stuffy and aloof, making a fetish of bringing his own food to eat (apples, nuts, etc.), rather than be stuck eating the restaurant food (which he admits doesn't look too bad) and reading in a corner - "Academics cultivate a certain pomposity, most of them" - rather than socializing - something I can easily relate to. He assumed he would not be chosen for the jury: "I promised to give any healthy prosecutor hives. I brought along a copy of The New York Review of Books just in case."

The jury is beset by frustration almost from the beginning. The judge's instructions are maddeningly unclear or confusing. The jurors have the choice of finding the accused guilty of first degree murder, second degree murder, or a variety of manslaughter charges, depending on their perception of his intent. And what of self-defense? Did they need to decide whether a murder had been committed first? Each time they send a question out to the judge, they learn that the entire courtroom must be reassembled, taking considerable time, and this colors their willingness to ask questions.

The truth can be elusive. "We associate truth with knowledge, with seeing things fully and clearly, but it is more correct to say that access to truth always depends on a very precise admixture of knowledge and ignorance." The jury puzzles over what they might not be allowed to see. The Simpson trial is a good example of the audience knowing much more about the evidence and assorted witnesses than the jury, which was excluded from the room often. In this case, the jury is deliberately not permitted to learn about the background of the defendant or others related to the case, information the jury would have liked to have. Searching for the truth haunts Burnett. "I realize now that for me - humanist, an academic, a poetaster - the primary aim of sustained thinking and talking had always been, in a way, more thinking and talking. Cycles of reading, interpreting, and discussing were always exactly that: cycles. One never 'solved' a poem, one read it, and then read it again - each reading emerging from earlier efforts and preparing the mind for future readings."

The trial, contrarily, demanded a solution and Burnett's account of the intense deliberations of the jurors recalls Twelve Angry Men.

The jury, in its inability to reach a verdict, quickly begins to debate the very nature of what constitutes justice. Adelle, one of the jurors, another academic, said on the third day of deliberations, after a contentious second day, "We've been told that we have to uphold the law. But I don't understand what allegiance I should have to the law itself. Doesn't the whole authority of the law rest on its claim to be our system of justice? So, if the law isn't just, how can it have any force?" Burnett "sensed that people were starting to perceive the law as overly clumsy, somehow that it was a blunt tool - and that the higher principle, justice, had cast a kind of spell in the room." In this case, the "dictates of justice demanded that we circumvent the law."

Ultimately, what the jurors came to realize was that the burden of proof for the prosecution is very high because the power of the state is so strong. The jurors themselves had been subject to this power. They had been refused the right to go home [ they were refused phone calls home, were forced to stay in a moth-eaten motel and were refused the ability to have a a prescription refilled, ultimately sending one of the jurors to a hospital], sent "men with guns to watch you take a piss, it [the state] could deny you access to a lawyer [one of the jurors wanted to know her rights as a juror], it could embarrass you in public [the judge upbraided Burnett in public for standing at slow moments to exercise a bad leg] and force you to reply meekly, it could, ultimately, send you to jail - all this without even accusing you of a crime." show less

A pretty good book. You learn how to correctly spell Sir Walter RALEGH (not Raleigh) and you learn much more than you ever dreamed about British Guiana, now Guyana. Burnett is a bit full of himself and he throws too many first person references into his work, but he tells an intriguing story. He ties El Dorado, the Victoria regia, traverse surveys, borders, explorers, and the like together to discuss what Guiana IS. He peppers the book with some Harleyesque postmodernish theories about show more exploring means "possessing" the land and such.

In Masters of All They Surveyed, D. Graham Burnett explores the colonial investigations and delimitations of the boundaries of British Guiana. Burnett’s primary character is the explorer Sir Robert Schomburgk, who mapped parts of Guiana over multiple expeditions in the 1830s and 1840s. Burnett uses Schomburgk’s traverse surveying treks through the wilderness of South America to illustrate the transitory nature and cultural makeup of boundaries and the imaginary frontiers of mapmakers. This echoes an epigram of the Roman Seneca’s that Denis Cosgrove draws attention to: “How ridiculous are the boundaries of mortals.”

Burnett’s wide-ranging work touches on many fields of knowledge and walks through many centuries of history. To buttress his historical and cartographic arguments, he brings in science and even literary criticism to put Schomburgk’s works into context. Burnett begins with the explorations of Sir Walter Ralegh and his attempt to discover the fabled land (or city, or kingdom, or empire) of El Dorado. Burnett pins much of British Guiana’s development and history on El Dorado, as various attempts to prove its location lead to the founding, exploration, and boundary-making of the colony. Schomburgk considered himself a sort of Humboldtian successor to Ralegh and Burnett thinks it is important to understand Schomburgk’s movements in the interior through this light. Burnett’s second and third chapters discuss Schomburgk’s expeditions and the various attempts by himself and others to prove the location of El Dorado. In the introduction he states that, “Myths overwrote terra incognita with significance.” And Burnett makes it clear that Schomburgk was trying to bolster the claims and reputation of Ralegh while at the same time superseding and, in a sense, “out-Raleghing Ralegh.” Burnett claims that: “Schomburgk had the privilege of tracing Ralegh’s route across his own map,” and further states that “Ralegh legitimizes Schomburgk; Schomburgk exculpates and restores Ralegh. Schomburgk walks Ralegh’s path, but Ralegh walks on Schomburgk’s map.” As Cosgrove emphasizes in Apollo’s Eye, maps can tell historians much about their author and the author’s society, and must be understood in to better interpret the map’s meaning.

Besides Schomburgk’s desire to emulate and better Ralegh, he was a scientific man of his time and attempted to bring science to the art of border making. Like his “mentor” Alexander von Humboldt, Schomburgk used the same sort of traverse survey method in which accurate and multiple measurements were made between fixed geographic landmarks. By choosing visible landmarks, and thus imbuing them with significance, the manmade concept of a border can be placed in its “natural” context, that is, a boundary can be made into a “natural boundary.” Only by using this Humboldtian method of traverse surveying “could the map be reconciled with the ground; only then could the map become a testable proposition.” One of the hallmarks of the scientific method is its testability and repeatability, and by fixing maps and borders to physical localities attempts to lend cartography these scientific attributes. Schomburgk, true to the times, even went into an area that was known to be under Venezuelan sovereignty in order to link his traverse surveys to Humboldt’s. This would tie his maps of British Guiana to Humboldt’s maps, and because Humboldt was held in high esteem among scientific circles of the day, make Schomburgk’s map all the more reliable and scientific.

Schomburgk’s work on delineating the borders of British Guiana illustrates the absurdity of finding “natural boundaries.” As Schomburgk moved across and around the colony, he chose natural objects that suited his traverse surveying method such as rivers and mountains. Burnett notes, however, that selecting natural objects in no way makes the border a natural one, as Schomburgk has multiple motives for moving his objects, and thus his border, as he sees fit. Burnett gives a striking example:
Over the four years the boundary had moved from the right bank of the Rupununi, to that river’s western watershed (a line between the Rupununi and the Takutu), and then again right up to the right bank of the Tukutu itself. All were abundantly natural; none was a natural boundary.

Burnett is drawing attention to the fact that precise boundaries are strictly an invention of Europeans beginning in the Enlightenment. The phrase, “All were abundantly natural; none was a natural boundary,” illustrates that natural boundaries are as imagined as those lines that separate political entities. Even the most “secure” of natural boundaries, coastlines, are illusory when translated onto a map as Paul Carter so ably demonstrates in his essay “Dark with Excess of Bright.”

The deceptively shifting and figmental borders of British Guiana are a central theme of Burnett’s work; he shows them to be every bit as mythical as Ralegh’s El Dorado. The concluding chapter of Masters of All They Surveyed discusses how the border disputes of British Guiana’s history were settled (albeit temporarily) not by new expeditions, but through the manipulation of cartographic history. Schomburgk’s imaginary lines were used (see the map below), new expeditions were not mounted. Burnett even notes that the boundary disputes linger today, and are part of modern Guyana’s culture. Burnett’s work, lively and informative, serves to illustrate just how ridiculous the boundaries of mortals are. Borders and boundaries are transitory and imagined objects, and are not tied to the physical reality of the earth. Maps that pictorially depict these boundaries are one more step removed from reality – they represent a representation, an imaginary portrayal of an imaginary line. The Penguin Dictionary of Geography ambiguously and cryptically defines a boundary as, “a line of demarcation, real or understood, visible or invisible, natural or artificial, of legal or of no legal significance, which may be perceived from either side (or both sides) of it….” Schomburgk’s romps through the South American jungles, mountains, and savannahs were important to creating the myth of a British Guyana discretely separate from the nations surrounding it. show less