6 - Independence and Useful Nature

Summary

Chapter 6 demonstrates that projects for managing the natural world established in the colonial period enjoyed continued relevance after independence from Spain in 1821, as the new states of the federal republic of Central America embarked on renewed efforts to study nature. Focusing on the case study of Guatemala, the new republic maintained ‘useful patriotism’ as an ideal of citizenship and re-established colonial institutions such as the Economic Society. Even while undertaking self-consciously ‘modern’ mapping and surveying projects, statesmen drew heavily on the models of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moreover, despite the economic importance of Britain in Central America at this time, and despite the often negative opinions that British scientists and governments expressed of Spanish American (colonial and independent) knowledges, British investors and geographers were heavily reliant not just on the new maps of the independent state, but colonial geographical material from Spanish archives too. Colonial-era reform projects, often through a material legacy of plans in an archive, had laid the groundwork for imagining a Central America built on ideas of useful knowledge, patriotic dedication, and connected scientific networks around the world.