In 2016, during a visit to the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia (now the Science History Institute), I and Carin Berkowitz, then director of the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Foundation, discussed possible topics and themes for future research workshops, one of which was ‘Chemistry in the early Americas’. I was thus gratified when I was invited to organize a programme on this topic for the Foundation’s annual Cain Conference in 2017. A call for papers duly followed, emphasizing the broad connotation of chemistry for the purposes of the conference: qualitative transformations of material substances. This was designed to include the practical arts such as smelting and refining, metallurgical knowledge more generally, pharmacy, distilling and decoction, alchemy, archaeological and environmental trace evidence, Atlantic transactions in an age of exploration, colonization and plant and mineral prospecting, interaction between indigenous, creole and European knowledges and skills, chemically-based manufacture, education, use and adaptation of European chemistry, and critical reflection upon narratological and interpretive frameworks of relevance to our topic. My own motivation was ignorance. Whereas much is known concerning the presence of chemistry, widely construed, in ancient and early modern cultures in Asia, the Middle-East and Europe, the Americas seemed different: not wholly unstudied, but equally not studied as intensely or regularly with respect to history of chemistry before 1800. The intention thus was to start to open out a topic for historians of chemistry in ways which might invite further research. Our geographical framework does not however come without attending and basic issues. Historians, it used to be said, have two eyes, chronology and geography. But geography on its own, and especially with such a large unit as the American continent, does not guarantee any unity of actions which can attain degrees of narrative cohesion satisfactory for historians. Nor does the addition of chronology, a dated succession of events, guarantee it, for chronology per se, which can posit a historical temporality, does not of itself necessarily provide the kinds of sequences enabling narrative cohesion across a substantial period of time. The conference might in principle produce only a scattered set of

中文翻译：

---

大西洋化学，1600–1820

2016 年，在访问费城的化学遗产基金会（现为科学历史研究所）期间，我和时任该基金会贝克曼化学史中心主任的 Carin Berkowitz 讨论了未来研究研讨会的可能主题和主题，其中之一是“早期美洲的化学”。因此，当我被邀请为 2017 年基金会的年度该隐会议组织一个关于这个主题的项目时，我感到很高兴。 论文征集及时跟进，强调了化学对会议目的的广泛内涵：物质物质的定性转化。这旨在包括实践艺术，如冶炼和提炼，更广泛的冶金知识，药学，蒸馏和汤剂，炼金术，考古和环境痕迹证据，探索、殖民和植物和矿产勘探时代的大西洋交易，土著、克里奥尔和欧洲知识和技能之间的相互作用、基于化学的制造、教育、欧洲化学的使用和适应，以及对相关叙事学和解释框架的批判性反思到我们的话题。我自己的动机是无知。尽管在亚洲、中东和欧洲的古代和现代早期文化中，人们对化学的存在有很多了解，但美洲似乎有所不同：并非完全没有研究，但同样没有对历史进行深入或定期的研究1800 年之前的化学。因此，其目的是开始以可能邀请进一步研究的方式为化学史学家开辟一个主题。然而，我们的地理框架并非没有关注和基本问题。过去常说，历史学家有两只眼睛，年代学和地理。但是地理本身，尤其是像美洲大陆这样一个庞大的单位，并不能保证任何行动的统一性，可以达到历史学家满意的叙述衔接程度。加入年代学，即一系列有日期的事件，也不能保证这一点，因为年代学本身可以设定历史时间性，它本身并不一定提供能够在相当长的时间段内实现叙事凝聚力的序列类型。会议原则上可能只产生一组分散的 尤其是像美洲大陆这样一个庞大的单位，并不能保证任何行动的统一性能够达到历史学家满意的叙述衔接程度。加入年代学，即一系列有日期的事件，也不能保证这一点，因为年代学本身可以设定历史时间性，它本身并不一定提供能够在相当长的时间段内实现叙事凝聚力的序列类型。会议原则上可能只产生一组分散的 尤其是像美洲大陆这样一个庞大的单位，并不能保证任何行动的统一性能够达到历史学家满意的叙述衔接程度。加入年代学，即一系列有日期的事件，也不能保证这一点，因为年代学本身可以假定历史的时间性，它本身并不一定提供能够在相当长的时间段内实现叙事凝聚力的序列类型。会议原则上可能只产生一组分散的 本身并不一定提供能够在相当长的一段时间内实现叙事凝聚力的序列类型。会议原则上可能只产生一组分散的 本身并不一定提供能够在相当长的一段时间内实现叙事凝聚力的序列类型。会议原则上可能只产生一组分散的