Natural History and the Salvation of the Spanish Empire in the Age of Enlightenment

The Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, contains a series of documents that attest to the widespread investigation and collection of natural history specimens by colonial officials in Spanish America in the eighteenth century.  These natural history collections, overlooked by most historians of the period, are of crucial importance to understanding the relationship between science, imperial politics, and economic goals in Enlightenment Spain.  Although they grew out of a centuries-long tradition of bureaucratic information-gathering within the Spanish Empire, these collections also demonstrated innovation in they way they were administered and in the types of specimens sought.  This paper will examine the types of specimens collected by colonial bureaucrats in order to show the importance of the connection between natural history and political economy made by a number of key reformers of the period, who believed that these specimens were the key to Spain’s economic and political rejuvenation in the Age of Enlightenment.