In this lecture, “An Empire of Remedy: Medicine and Manifest Destiny in the Era of Indian Removal”, Isenberg uncovers a historical narrative of vaccination, through which Americans hoped to convince themselves, in the midst of Indian removal and their encroachments into Mexican territory, of the safety, certainty, and benignity of United States expansion.

Professor Andrew Isenberg is an environmental historian and a specialist in the encounter between natives and settlers in North America. This talk is drawn from his current project, which challenges the notion of American Manifest Destiny in the first half of the nineteenth century.