Approximations between Brazil and the United States through science
solar eclipses, diplomacy and the Second World War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/2525-5649.2024.259373Keywords:
total solar eclipse, scientific expedition, scientific diplomacyAbstract
The aim of this article is to analyze the historical process of the partnership between the National Geographic Society (NGS) and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) for the organization and dispatch of scientific expeditions to observe total solar eclipses in various locations around the world in the 1930s and 1940s. Through documents from these institutions, we investigate the actions of the expeditions sent to Patos (PB), Brazil. The evidence allows us to assert that the NGS and the NBS acted on behalf of U.S. political, commercial, scientific, and military interests in a historical circumstance where Brazil was emerging as a geopolitical actor to be co-opted in the 1940s.
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