Copyright by Maria José Afanador-Llach 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Maria José Afanador-Llach Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Political Economy, Geographical Imagination, and Territory in the Making and Unmaking of New Granada, 1739-1830 APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Susan Deans-Smith Lina del Castillo Nancy Appelbaum Bruce Hunt Political Economy, Geographical Imagination, and Territory in the Making and Unmaking of New Granada, 1739-1830 by Maria José Afanador-Llach, B.A; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements I am grateful with countless people and institutions for supporting me during the long and often difficult road of doctoral life. They supported me in different ways during my first years of graduate school, during archival research and in the writing process. First and foremost I wish to thank the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin which throughout the years supported me with funding and professional development resources to successfully complete my dissertation. I am also grateful with the Liberal Arts College and its writing support groups which were very beneficial during my last year in graduate school. I want to thank the staff at the Benson Latin American Collection, the library in which I spent endless hours during my graduate studies. The following institutions and their staff members proved crucial in helping me put together my archival material and in some cases provided funding: the Archivo General de la Nación in Bogotá, the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, the John Carter Brown Library, the Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, the Archivo del Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid, the Archivo del Jardín Botánico de Madrid and the Huntington Library. I was able to travel to Spain thanks to the support of the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia (ICANH). I am also grateful for the community of scholars that I met in those places some of which remain my friends. I am indebted with my professors in the History Department at UT Austin. First, I want to thank my mentor Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra. His generosity, patience and engagement with my work proved decisive for helping me complete a rather ambitious project. I am very grateful because his mentorship helped me become a better writer and researcher, pushed me to think creatively about my research questions and primary iv sources, and constantly encouraged me to read outside my own historiographical comfort zone. I also want to thank Bruce Hunt for whom I worked twice as a teaching assistant. His lectures about the study of nature in the early modern world inspired my own work and his insights in the various conversations we held at his office helped me in different ways. I also wanto to thank him for reading my manuscript meticulously, which helped me polish the prose. I am also grateful for the feedback, comments, suggestions and questions from my other committee members Lina del Castillo, Nancy Appelbaum and Susan Deans-Smith. I also want to thank Marilyn Lehman and Allison Frazier at the History Department for their support and the Institute of Historical Studies for allowing me to present my work and get invaluable feedback from my colleagues. My Latin Americanist colleagues in the Department of History were an invaluable source of support during the early years in graduate school and during the final stretch of dissertation writing. I am very proud of having finished the PhD at the same time with my writing partners and friends Susan Zakaib and Chris Heaney. I am glad that we got to share several hours of writing during the past year and that we all made it together to the other side. I am also grateful for having shared several years in graduate school with my colleagues Alexis Harasemovitch Truax, Felipe Cruz and Hadi Hosainy. I also want to thank the younger generation of historians at UT Austin for their support and friendship. I am also grateful for the large number of people who helped proofread and edit my work in the last years. I am indebted to my closest friends in many ways. I could not have completed this dissertation without their support. I want to thank my dear friends Blake Scott, Ran Segev, Pablo Mijangos and José Barragán. You all read or talked with me about my work and the challenges of graduate life. Along with their friendship, José and Blake helped me proofread several sections of my manuscript for what I am very thankful. I also want v to thank my friend Manuel Salas for his friendship and support. Karin Sánchez with whom I started together this long journey has been my unconditional friend. I am very grateful for her friendship. I am also thankful for the support that I received from my kind, affectionate and wise dear friend Franz Hensel. To my friends and colleagues in Neogranadina thank you for inviting me to form part of this amazing project and for hours of inspiring and exiting collaborative work. To Juan Cobo, thank you for helping me proofread crucial parts of the manuscript. My thanks also go to my zacapista friends who made my time in Austin an unforgettable experience: Lindsey Carte, Álvaro Quezada, Marcelo Somos, Juan Sequeda, Eva Hershaw and Jorge Derpic. To another zacapista, dear friend and roommate Edwin Román, thank you for your support, long hours of “nerdy” conversations and interest in my research. To my dear friend Maria Isabel Prieto, thank you for your friendship and for our walks, conversations and yoga time together. To my former roommate and friend Riitta Koivumaeki thank you for your friendship and support. I also want to thank my dearest friend in Colombia Juliana Atuesta for her friendship and encouragement. To Andrés Lombana, my partner in life and friend, thank you. Your patience, encouragement, and love made this trip less burdensome and helped me realize that I could make it. My sister Camila was close to me at every step of the way. I am infinitely indebted to her for listening and encouraging me so many times. I also want to thank her for helping me out with map-making endeavors as well as with formatting the final draft. My gratitude also goes to my cousin Daniel Cardoso Llach who inspired me to pursue this path and read and provided feedback on a part of this work. I can only thank my parents, Ingrid and Miguel for being loving, encouraging and supportive all along the way. This same gratitude goes to my amazing sisters Claudia, Maria Clara and Andrea. vi To the little ones in the family, Matias, Dante and Lucas, thank you for making the childlike sense of wonder a main part of my life again. vii Abstract Political Economy, Geographical Imagination, and Territory in the Making and Unmaking of New Granada, 1739-1830 Maria José Afanador-Llach, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra This dissertation interrogates the intersections between political economy and territoriality during the transition from colony to republic in New Granada—modern day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panamá. It proposes a framework to analyze the discursive and on-the-ground impacts of early-modern political economy in pre-, and post-colonial politico-geographic debate. This dissertation sheds light on the territorial shifts and political debates between 1739 and 1830. First, it traces the imperial reform that led to the establishment of the viceroyalty of New Granada in 1739 and its territorialization over the course of the eighteenth century. Second, it analyses the fragmentation of New Granada into autonomous sovereign states starting in the 1810s. Third, it studies the Spanish military recovery of New Granada during the Reconquista wars. Lastly, it explores the unification of the Gran Colombian republic and its separation in 1830. To fully comprehend the political and territorial outcomes of the era, it is viii essential to understand that the coexistence of different spatial conceptions within colonial territories shifted both along geopolitical contingencies and spatial political economies that were long in the making. The rearrangement of territories from the eighteenth century to the republican era implied negotiations among often opposing ideas and interests over how to economically and politically organize and connect different spaces. Geographical imagination and ideas about nature played a central role in these processes. Throughout the eighteenth century and beyond, this tradition informed debates involving rights over municipal, imperial, and national spaces advancing conceptions of territory that shaped political debate. Because of its distinctive position, New Granada provides a useful perspective from which to explore key themes in the history of eighteenth-century imperial reform, the revolutionary period, and the early republican era. ix Table of Contents List of Tables ....................................................................................................... xiii List of Illustrations ............................................................................................... xiv Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Political Economy and Chorography: Imagining the Geographies of Imperial Wealth in the Viceroyalty of