French-Trained Naturalists Map out an Early Colombian Republic’s Interiors, 1820s–40s

This paper examines the geo-referenced visual materials produced by the Parisian-trained engineers and naturalists hired by the Colombian government in the 1820s. These images include: the watercolors and prints by French physiologist and illustrator, Francois Désiré Roulin; the geo-referenced scientific findings of Peruvian-born Mineralogist Mariano Rivero, and French Chemist, Jean Baptiste Boussignault. The Colombian government had initially hired these men so they could display the natural wealth of the country, and, in doing so, under the auspices of Colombia’s Revolutionary regime, the enlightened nature of pro-independence leaders. By the 1830s-1840s, it was the picturesque landscapes originally drawn by Roulin and reproduced in collections for popular audiences by M. Alcide D’Orbigny that may have had the most significant impact for French imaginaries not just of Colombia, but of an emerging “Latin” American region.

As such, this paper forms part of a larger project, one that addresses a deceptively simple, Janus-faced question: what can maps tell us about processes of early nation-state formation, and what can processes of nation-state formation tell us about maps, mapping, and map production in early 19^th century? Asking this question of Colombia’s early republican period raises new ways of understanding the significance of internationally produced maps of a national space. Weaving together the broad scientific network of people involved in the making geo-referenced materials such as these helps us see how images of Colombia produced in the 1820s were disseminated less to generate a national identity for ‘Colombians’, and more to influence international geo-political and scientific imaginations.