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Ricardo Salvatore’s aptly named Disciplinary Conquest is a welcome contribution to the recently revitalized subfields of intellectual history and the history of the human sciences in Latin America. Salvatore provides intriguing accounts of the work of five early-twentieth-century US social scientists who worked in South America: Hiram Bingham, who led the Yale Peruvian Expedition and “discovered” Machu Picchu; historian Clarence H. Haring of Harvard University; political scientist Leo S. Rowe, best known for his role as director of the Pan-American Union; geographer and statesman Isaiah Bowman; and Columbia University sociologist Edward A. Ross.

Salvatore’s main, and quite provocative, argument is that the social sciences furthered a two-fold US “conquest” of South America. Building on the work of James C. Scott, Salvatore suggests that the disciplines themselves “conquered” through their totalizing and …