Why does the American flag contain stars? Why do we call actors and sportspeople ‘stars’? Eran Shalev argues the answers lie in what he calls ‘political astronomy’.
His book, The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation, is about American politics, from the Revolution to just beyond the Civil War, and its connections with astronomy.
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Shalev’s thesis is that politicians in this period routinely used astronomical metaphors when talking about their country. This, in turn, helped shape how they saw themselves.
The story is told in three main chapters.
The first explores astronomy’s place in 18th and 19th-century America: almanacs, instrument-makers’ lectures, Maria Mitchell’s groundbreaking work and the famously intense 1833 Leonid meteor shower.
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Shalev also briefly touches on Native American sky knowledge and the ‘fugitive science’ of African-Americans.
The second chapter deals with how astronomical metaphors changed over time, from Europe’s Sun Kings to the constellations of state stars in the American Republic.
The final chapter turns to the US flag itself, where each star represents a state and signals this shift from centralised monarchy to egalitarian union.
An epilogue expands this to look at how the ‘star’ is now used for actors, sportspeople and ratings.
This book made me curious to learn more about the many historical concepts discussed, such as almanacs and ‘fugitive science’.
It’s also full of quotes showing just how often astronomical metaphors were used by American politicians and commentators in the 19th century.
We got the chance to ask Shalev more about his theory on the intertwining of the cosmos and the history of the United States.
How did you conceive of the 'political astronomy' metaphor to describe early US political thought?
By a happy accident. While reading a colleague’s paper on early modern European cosmology, I recalled the phrase 'the New Constellation', which I had come across in revolutionary-era American newspapers.
Intrigued by it, I returned to the library to learn more about its meaning, but found nothing.
That search, however, led me to uncover a whole world of cosmic metaphors and meaning in early American political writing, which I came to call political astronomy.
How does astronomy tie in with the way early Americans perceived their country and national identity?
Early modern Europeans, particularly after the rise of absolutism, repeatedly described their monarchical regimes in astronomical terms, portraying the king as a sun holding together a political-solar system.
Revolutionary Americans adopted this powerful metaphor but turned it on its head, republican style.
Looking up at the night sky, they now saw not a single dominant Sun but rather countless stars: evidence, they believed, that nature favoured peaceful republicanism over repressive monarchy.
This celestial model harmonised perfectly with their innovative federal structure of a plurality of state-stars.
What have been America's greatest achievements in the field of astronomy?
Like in other scientific ventures, America was slow to catch up in astronomy.
Early Americans observed the transit of Venus (David Rittenhouse, 1769) and discovered comets (Maria Mitchell, 1847).
The 19th-century observatory movement signaled growing scientific ambition, paving the way for major 20th-century breakthroughs: Hubble’s expanding universe (1929), Pluto’s discovery (1930), and the Apollo Moon landings (1969–72).
Today, the US leads in astrophysics and space exploration, as shown by the James Webb Space Telescope expanding humanity’s cosmic vision.
Do we still see elements and echoes of political astronomy in the US today?
Of course! Once you recognise the Star-Spangled Banner for what it is, a visual statement of political astronomy expressing republican harmony among state-stars, you begin to notice the resonance of political astronomy everywhere.
In an age when real stars have all but vanished due to light pollution, the American pentagram (a shape that has little resemblance to actual stars) has leapt from political astronomy into the broader culture.
The American star has arguably become the most prominent and enduring of all American symbols, even though its astronomical origins have been all but forgotten.
