Indigenes, Enlightenment, and Exploration

Neil Safier. Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 428 pp. $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-226-73355-5. Reviewed by Jorn Seemann Published on H-HistGeog (October, 2009) Commissioned by Robert J. Mayhew (University of Bristol) I have always wondered how travelers from eighteenth-century France and Spain. Neil Safier’s the Enlightenment period organized and executed study is a tour de force through a large number of their voyages to South America and how they archives and libraries in Europe and the New (re)presented their fndings after their return to World where he was able to dig up forgotten Europe. The official travel accounts, reports, and maps, personal correspondences, notebooks, and expensive portfolio books contained detailed and other unpublished material that shed light on polished descriptions of land and life, and how ideas, concepts, and myths crossed the At‐ painstakingly accurate measurements of dis‐ lantic in both directions. The book is a successful tances, coordinates, and river depths, but left out attempt to reveal how explorers, scientists, and more explicit reference to the explorers them‐ editors described, inscribed, and even selves--what they did when they were not busy un(sub)scribed South American landscapes calculating angles or writing down their musings, through their own social and material practices and how they proceeded to publish their results. that “served to efface a far wider range of actors For me, it is difficult to imagine how French, than has previously been recognized” (p. 9).[1] Spanish, and British gentlemen in appropriate at‐ Whereas the erudite audience in eighteenth-cen‐ tire, the mandatory wigs on their heads, penetrat‐ tury Paris or Madrid may have deemed these ed the humid Amazon lowlands or climbed the travel accounts as edifying objective narratives, ragged Andes, accompanied by heavy and bulky the present-day historian of science will fnd evi‐ wooden trunks that contained sophisticated in‐ dence of selective and partial observations that struments and indispensable literature. suppressed and silenced other voices and Measuring the New World offers a refreshing “scraped away the record of how such knowledge perspective on some of the hidden layers of was derived” (p. 9). knowledge production and truth-making in mid- H-Net Reviews Reading between the lines of the smooth and pean intellectuals, like La Condamine, who dis‐ impeccable surface of written texts and searching guised their own ethnocentrism by accusing for the deeper meanings and impacts of material South American scholars of a “high degree of prej‐ culture and its ephemeral by-products, Safier udice” in favor of their own country (p. 108). points out that Enlightenment science entailed In a later section of the book (chapter 5), Safi‐ not only the mapping of the world and the show‐ er deals with the Spanish version of the South casing and cataloguing of knowledge, but also the American expedition, the Relación histórica del imposition of European values and thoughts.[2] viage a la America Meridional (1748) by Jorge However, travelers did not simply pass the “sa‐ Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, the two representa‐ cred fre” of Old World science to the South Amer‐ tives of the Spanish Crown who accompanied La ican nations, but also actively manipulated their Condamine on his voyage to Ecuador. Similar to findings for the European audience and for the La Condamine’s Relation abrégée, the authors sake of their own self-promotion. were confronted with a wide variety of reactions, The starting point for Safier’s scanning of sci‐ from praising the book as a “triumph of Spanish entific practices and truth-making is Charles- empiricism” to challenging the taken-for-granted Marie de la Condamine’s voyage to South America idea of the Spanish rulers as natural (and better) between 1735 and 1744 whose principal mission successors of the Incas (p. 168). was to calculate the length of the meridian at the Safier does not forget the native voices, ei‐ equator in order to determine the true shape of ther, although some may complain about the rela‐ the terrestrial globe. In the seven chapters of the tively meager yield of indigenous testimonies. Suf‐ book, the reader is taken “from man-made mark‐ fice to remember that the author’s point of depar‐ ers on a plain in Quito to a raft on the Amazon ture (which is far from ethnocentric) is European River, from copperplates in a cartographic print‐ Enlightenment science and not the “native’s point ing house to the hothouses of European gardens” of view.”[3] Within this perspective, chapter 6 is (p. 8). Material records, such as manuscripts, dedicated to the “History of the Incas” written in maps, and monuments, serve as hangers for each the early 1600s by Garcilaso de la Vega, a mestizo chapter of Safier’s thick description of Enlighten‐ and descendant of the defeated Inca rulers. The ment science. French translation of de la Vega's account was Four chapters of the book deal with written published in 1744 with abundant corrective foot‐ accounts from different national and ethnic view‐ notes and “adapted” to the social and political points that present aspects and ideas of South needs in prerevolution France. The seeds, fruits, American cultures and landscapes. Chapter 3 and fowers that La Condamine brought from the presents the reception history of La Condamine’s New World to the botanical garden of Paris were Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’intérieur literally transfigured into textual descriptions, a de l’Amérique méridionale (1745) in which he reg‐ “virtual hothouse in print” that highlighted the istered his journey from the Andes to the South potential of South American species for French American coast and represented himself as a “tri‐ stomachs (p. 222). umphant conquistador of geographic and intellec‐ The last chapter of the book describes how tual territory” (p. 96). Safier discusses the reac‐ the knowledge of South America underwent an tions and rejoinders to this report throughout Eu‐ even more radical process of abridgement on the rope and raises the question about who had the pages of Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751-72) legitimization to discourse about the New World-- that reduced complex topics to shorter more gen‐ apparently not Creoles and mestizos, but Euro‐ eralized entries in alphabetical order. As a 2 H-Net Reviews philosopher and sedentary man, Diderot con‐ suggestions, probably due to their own arbitrari‐ ceived of the explorers and travelers as “ignorant ness or even laziness, to Maldonado’s bad hand‐ liars,” though he still needed their contributions writing, and to a lack of communication skills. for the publication of his Dictionnaire Raisonné The Carta de la Provincia de Quito is both a fl‐ (1751-72). Once again, La Condamine enters the tered representation of “information that success‐ stage, this time not as a protagonist, but as the fully traversed the Atlantic from Andean peaks” contributor of four minor keywords and as the and a battlefield for personal conflicts and territo‐ potential author of a longer article on the plains rial and intellectual appropriation (p. 126). La of Quito that he never happened to write. Condamine supervised the map production and Besides the interpretation of textual testi‐ even published his own version of the map after monies, Safier includes two chapters that deal Maldonado’s untimely death in 1748. with maps and their production processes. Chap‐ The most bizarre episode of this Enlighten‐ ter 2 describes how La Condamine elaborated his ment adventure is described in the frst chapter of own map of the Amazon River basin after his de‐ the book. Safier narrates La Condamine’s attempt scend from the lofty Andes to the treacherous wa‐ to inscribe his successful measurement of the ters of the Amazon lowlands. A closer look at La meridian into the Ecuadorean landscape. To hon‐ Condamine’s correspondence shows that he com‐ or this accomplishment and eternalize his work, piled his Carte du course du Marangnon (1745) the Frenchman gave the order to erect two stone from a “latticed assortment of diverse sources” pyramids in the plains of Yaruquí where the com‐ rather than from accurate data (p. 59). He mission had conducted the crucial calculations. smoothed out his travel account by omitting Each monument was adorned with a heavy com‐ sources and creating an imaginary system of geo‐ memorative plate in Latin that mentioned the graphic facts that were perfectly acceptable for Frenchman’s name, but left out the names of his his highbrow audience in Paris. La Condamine Spanish collaborators (we must not forget that La transformed his map into an enactment of unbi‐ Condamine executed his work in a Spanish ased and objective scientific discourse that he pre‐ colony). In a long juridical battle, judges in the sented as the “first graphic representation of the colonies and in Europe failed to reach an agree‐ entire navigable length of the Amazon based ment with regard to the future of the pyramids. upon measurements drawn from astronomical in‐ While one court ruled the feur-de-lis, the symbol struments and celestial observations” (p. 59). In of the French monarchy, as offensive and ordered addition to this, he astutely discredited the previ‐ its erasure, another suggested the inclusion of Ul‐ ous mapping attempts by the French cartographer loa’s and Jorge Juan’s names. However, the verdict Nicholas Sanson and the Jesuit father Samuel by the Spanish court fnally decreed the destruc‐ Fritz to promote his own scientific capacities. tion of the monuments in 1747. Safier cleverly Chapter 4 presents insights into the different points out that La Condamine’s more powerful stages of the production process of the Carta de la and everlasting accomplishments were not his Provincia de Quito (1750) at a French printing pyramids erected on the Quito plain, but his house.

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