Climate Change and the Retreat of the Atlantic: The Cameralist Context of Pehr Kalm’s Voyage to North America, 1748–51

Pehr Kalm’s voyage to America in 1748–51 produced a treasure trove of observations about climate, soil, and other matters of natural history. A close reading of Kalm’s travel journal, published writings, and correspondence reveals a deep ambivalence about the operation of the natural order in the New World. Kalm’s fieldwork and interviews with settlers charted processes of species extirpation, degeneration, soil exhaustion, and climate change. This interest in the environmental impact of settlement reflected in great part Kalm’s commitment to cameralist science. Kalm’s American voyage was a direct extension of his earlier biosprospecting tours in the Old World. He and his Swedish contemporaries hoped to transform the natural order of the nation through schemes of acclimatization and internal colonization. Such ambitions were in turn framed within a universal history of climate change. Kalm’s experience in the New World confirmed the global scope of these processes, while stressing the risk and uncertainty associated with projects of climate improvement. In this sense, Kalm’s voyage offers an important yet neglected entry point into the history of climate science.