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 Clare Byers investigates how information about North America circulated, changed, and retained its influence through eighteenth-century books, maps, and other printed materials. Focusing on six French travel and natural-history texts, she traces how Indigenous and local knowledge was recorded, reshaped, reproduced, and sometimes obscured as it moved through European and American networks. Manuscript annotations in surviving copies reveal readers actively correcting, adapting, and repurposing older information, demonstrating how books functioned not simply as repositories of knowledge but as tools for knowledge-making, exploration, and imperial power. Clare's research highlights the material and environmental dimensions of information circulation and considers why outdated knowledge continued to matter long after its original publication.
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