Reading the Past on the Mountainsides of Colombia: Mid-Nineteenth-Century Patriotic Geology, Archaeology, and Historiography (2013)
The mid-nineteenth-century Colombian Chorographic Commission drew on geology, archaeology, and history to project a patriotic past onto the Andean landscape of the young republic then known as New Granada. This geographic expedition, led initially by Agustín Codazzi and Manuel Ancízar, explored and mapped the country from 1850 to 1859. For the commissioners and their associates among the creole elite, the history of past epochs was written on the mountainsides for scientific travelers such as themselves to read. They portrayed disparate historical and prehistoric events as overlapping and interrelated. The commission's texts and images linked a catastrophic interpretation of geologic origins to historia patria (patriotic history). The commissioners merged the wars of conquest and independence into a two-act drama enacted on a singular territorial stage. Their reading of geologic, archaeological, and historical evidence endowed the impoverished young Republic of New Granada with a grandiose territory, a great precursor civilization, and a legacy of patriotic resistance to imperialism. Their interpretations, however, would prove controversial. During the second half of the nineteenth century, debates over geology, archaeology, and history reflected conflicting Liberal and Conservative political projects. Moreover, the midcentury intellectuals failed to incorporate contemporaneous indigenous and poor citizens into an imagined national community based on the ideal of a shared historical memory embedded on a readable landscape.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Quintero Toro, Camilo;
(2012)
Birds of Empire, Birds of Nation: A History of Science, Economy, and Conservation in United States--Colombia Relations
(/isis/citation/CBB001321260/)
Chapter
Fornasiero, Jean;
West-Sooby, John;
(2011)
Naming and Shaming: The Baudin Expedition and the Politics of Nomenclature in the Terres Australes
(/isis/citation/CBB001201512/)
Chapter
Etherington, Norman;
(2011)
Recovering the Imperial Context of the Mid-Victorian Exploration of Northern Australia, 1855--57
(/isis/citation/CBB001201515/)
Chapter
Elzinga, Aant;
(2013)
The Nordic Nations in Polar Science: Expeditions, International Polar Years and Their Geopolitical Dimensions
(/isis/citation/CBB001421159/)
Book
Starbuck, Nicole;
(2013)
Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001201503/)
Book
Morin, Karen M.;
(2011)
Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860--1890
(/isis/citation/CBB001200648/)
Chapter
Penman, Leigh T. I.;
(2011)
The Wicked and the Fair: Changing Perceptions of Terra Australis through the Prism of the Batavia Shipreck (1629)
(/isis/citation/CBB001201516/)
Article
Smith, Jason W.;
(2013)
The Bound[less] Sea: Wilderness and the United States Exploring Expedition in the Fiji Islands
(/isis/citation/CBB001320303/)
Book
Francesco Luzzini;
(2022)
Quando il mondo scalò il Sublime. Scienza e storia nel primo Memoriale dell'Hotel Nave d'Oro di Predazzo (1820-1875)
(/isis/citation/CBB828950191/)
Book
Federica Millefiorini;
(2020)
Creato e creatività letteraria. La prosa di Antonio Stoppani
(/isis/citation/CBB102450085/)
Book
Nancy P. Appelbaum;
(2016)
Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia
(/isis/citation/CBB880949404/)
Article
Stefan Pohl-Valero;
Mónica García;
(2016)
Styles of Knowledge Production in Colombia, 1850–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB679132426/)
Book
Day, David;
(2013)
Antarctica: A Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB001421625/)
Article
Mizuno, Hiromi;
(2012)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001251518/)
Chapter
Sommer, Ulrike;
(2008)
Choosing Ancestors: The Mechanisms of Ethnic Ascription in the Age of Patriotic Antiquarianism (1815--1850)
(/isis/citation/CBB000952391/)
Article
Kolesnikova, M. E.;
(2010)
The Beginnings of Research on the Caucasus Region: Expeditions to North Caucasus in the Second Half of the 18th--Early 19th Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001211352/)
Article
Colia, Elliot;
(2004)
The Measure of Egypt
(/isis/citation/CBB001030075/)
Article
Goldhill, Simon;
(2012)
A Writer's Things: Edward Bulwer Lytton and the Archaeological Gaze; or, What's in a Skull?
(/isis/citation/CBB001320017/)
Book
Effros, Bonnie;
(2012)
Uncovering the Germanic Past: Merovingian Archaeology in France, 1830--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001452036/)
Article
Krzysztof Ludwik Birkenmajer;
(2017)
Polskie badania polarne (zarys) / Polish Polar Research (Outline)
(/isis/citation/CBB963951811/)
Be the first to comment!