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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
We can better measure the contributions of the Spanish travelers and historians who penetrated the jungles of the Chaco, crossed the pampas of the Plata region, scaled the Andes and followed the course of the Amazon, the Orinoco and the Paraná if we pause to consider that the vast American continent, even today, presents great, physical barriers to research. Most of the works here studied are the direct result of firsthand observation. An appreciable number, however, do not fall into this category. All of them, nevertheless, offer a rich variety of themes for they abound in descriptions of the land and climate of the United States, the region of the Californias, Mexico, Venezuela, the Guianas, the Gran Chaco, the lands of the Orinoco, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, the countries of the Río de la Plata and the region of the Strait of Magellan. Interest in the flora and fauna of America, so prevalent during this century, is reflected in the numerous chapters devoted to detailed descriptions of plant and animal life. The study of the natural history of America, which had absorbed the interest of so many Spanish writers in preceding centuries, enjoyed a remarkable development under royal patronage during the eighteenth century. The scientific missions sent to America by the Spanish Crown, resulted in the monumental works of Hipólito Ruiz and José Pavón, Florae peruvianae et chilensis prodromus (1794) of which only three of twelve manuscript volumes have been published; Martín Sessé, Flora mexicana, unpublished, and the unpublished Flora de Santa Fe de Bogotá of José Celestino Mutis whom Baron Humboldt called the illustrious patriarch of American botanists.
1 Interest in the English colonies or what was later to become the United States was limited to the latter part of the century.
2 We refer to the works of Azara, Boturini Benaduci, Burriel, Caulín, Doblas, Fernández, Juan, Ulloa, Gumilla, Granados y Gálvez, Ibáñez de Echevarri, Lorenzana, Lozano, Vargas y Ponce.
3 Alcedo Ugarte y Herrera, Alvárez, Covarrubias, Garcés de Marcilla, Giraldo, Muñoz, Nuix, Quintana, Salazar y Olarte.
4 The major Spanish American contributions to this field are those of Molina, P. Ignacio, Historia geográfica y natural de Chile (Madrid, 1788)Google Scholar and José Mariano Mociño, Flora de Guatemala (MS, unpublished).
5 Cf. my article “ Hipótesis españolas en el siglo XVIII sobre el origen de los indios ” in Ciencias Sociales [Unión Panamericana], V (1954), 28, 146–151.
6 Patricio Fernández, P. Juan , Relación historial de las misiones de los indios que llaman Chiquitos, que están a cargo de los Padres de la Compañía de Jesús de la provincia del Paraguay (Madrid, 1726).Google Scholar
7 Lozano, P. Pedro, Descripción corográfica del Gran Chaco Gualamba (Tucumán, 1941), Prólogo, pp. xiv-xv.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., p. 106.
9 Ibid., p. 389.
10 Gumilla, P. José, Historia natural, civil y geográfica de las naciones situadas en las riberas del río Orinoco (Barcelona, 1791), pp. viii-ix.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., p. ix.
12 Ibid., p. 103.
13 Ibid., p. 4.
14 During this same period there also appeared the Teatro americano, descripción general de los reinos y provincias de la Nueva España (México, 1745) written by a Mexican, Villaseñor, José Antonio y Sánchez, .Google Scholar
15 Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci was an Italian who became a naturalized Spanish subject and rose to the position of chronicler of the Indies.
16 Its publication in London in 1826 may possibly be explained by the fact that the French frigate, on which Ulloa was making the return trip to Spain, was captured by English corsairs. Ulloa was taken a prisoner to London where all his papers were confiscated.
17 Juan, Jorge y de Ulloa, Antonio, Relación histórica del viaje a la América Meridional (Madrid, 1748), Libro I, pp. 58–59 Google Scholar. See Merino, Luis, “The Relation between the Noticias Secretas and the Viaje a la América Meridional ” THE AMERICAS, XIII (October, 1956), 111–125.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., Libro III, pp. 163–164.
19 Ibid., Libro IV, pp. 377–378.
20 Ibid., Libro I, p. 42.
21 Juan, Jorge y de Ulloa, Antonio, Noticias secretas de América (London, 1826), II, 96–98.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., 11,98.
23 Ibid., I, 248.
24 Ibid., II, 143.
25 Ibid., II, 195–196.
26 Ibid., II, 169–170.
27 Relación, Libro V, p. 375.
28 Noticias secretas, II, 341–343.
29 Ibid., II, 325–326.
30 Relación, Libro VI, pp. 541–542; Noticias secretas, II, 306–311.
31 Ibid., II, 288–289.
32 Relación, Libro VI, p. 562.
33 de Ulloa, Antonio, Noticias americanas; entretenimientos físico-históricos sobre la América Meridional y la Septentrional Oriental (Buenos Aires, 1944), Introducción, p. 1.Google Scholar
34 Ibid., p. 267.
35 Ibid., p. 277.
36 In this same year a native of Lima, José Eusebio Llano y Zapata, wrote the Memorias histórico-físico-apologéticas de la América meridional which remained unpublished until 1904. The Memorias were the result of a long, intensive study of the natural history of South America. They were to be divided into three books—the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. Only the first book on minerals was published. In it, besides the description of the mineral resources of the New World, Llano y Zapata vigorously defended America and attacked the “ black legend.”
37 We have consulted the Mexican edition of 1943.
38 Marcos Burriel, P. Andrés , Noticia de la California (México, 1943), I, 71.Google Scholar
39 Ibid., III, 58–63.
40 The Italian translation, Regno gesuitico del Paraguay (Lisbona, 1770), has been consulted since we were unable to see the original Spanish edition of 1760.
41 Cf. Gonzalo de Doblas, Memoria histórica, geográfica, política y económica sobre la provincia de Misiones de indios Guaranís in de Angelis, Pedro, Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1836)Google Scholar; and de Azara, Félix, Descripción e historia del Paraguay y del Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1943).Google Scholar
42 Antonio Lorenzana, P. Francisco, Historia de Nueva España (México, 1770), p. 398 Google Scholar.
43 Antonio Lorenzana, P. Francisco, Cartas pastorales y edictos (México, 1770), p. 39.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., p. 44.
45 Ibid., p. 98.
46 Alvarez, Francisco, Noticia del establecimiento y población de las colonias inglesas en la América Septentrional (Madrid, 1778), pp. 156–158.Google Scholar
47 Published as Vida del Dr. Benjamín Franklin (Madrid, 1798).
48 The works of Aranda and Foronda will be discussed in subsequent pages.
49 Joaquín Granados, P. José y Gálvez, , Tardes americanas (México, 1778), pp. 77–108.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., pp. 254–270. Cf. my article on “ America in Feijóo ” to be published in Hispania, the magazine published by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
51 Feijóo, P. Benito, Teatro crítico universal, 4, 110–126.Google Scholar
52 Granados y Gálvez, op. cit., p. 419.
53 Cf. my article “ The land, people, and problems of America in eighteenth-century Spanish literature,” in THE AMERICAS, XII (Apr., 1956), 363–384.
54 P. Nuix was an exiled Spanish Jesuit who like many others found refuge in Italy and there wrote in Italian.
54 While the peninsular Spaniard defended Spain’s role in America, many Spanish Americans of this same period defended America against the attacks of the “ philosophes,” de Pauw and Buffon. We refer principally to the Historia antigua de México (Cecena, 1780–1781) of the Mexican historian, P. Francisco Xavier Clavijero and to the works of the Santo Domingan, Valverde, Antonio Sánchez, La América vindicada de la calumnia de haber sido madre del mal venéreo (Madrid, 1785)Google Scholar and Idea del valor de la Isla Española (Madrid, 1785). Though it does not fall into this category of polemical writing we should like to mention an encyclopedic work of value written in this epoch by a native of Quito, de Alcedo’s, Antonio Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales (Madrid, 1786).Google Scholar
56 Azara was sent to America in 1781 to study the question of boundaries between the Portuguese and Spanish possessions.
57 Cf. “ Introducción ” to de Azara, Félix, Descripción e historia del Paraguay y del Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1943).Google Scholar
58 Azara, , Descripción, p. 15.Google Scholar
59 Ibid., p. 32.
60 de Azara, Félix, Memoria sobre el estado rural del Río de la Plata en 1801 y otros informes (Buenos Aires, 1943).Google Scholar
61 Azara, , Descripción, p. 99.Google Scholar
62 Ibid., pp. 161–163, 188–189, 196–197.
63 Ibid., pp. 197–203.
64 Ibid., p. 202.
65 Cf. de Morvillers’, N. Masson article “Espagne” in Encyclopedie methodique (Paris, 1782)Google Scholar which can be said to be representative of this type of thinking.
66 Cf. Juderías, Julián, La leyenda negra (Barcelona, 1917), pp. 209–315.Google Scholar
67 Cf. del Río, Angel, Historia de la literatura española (New York, 1948), II, 37–38.Google Scholar
68 Muñoz, Juan Bautista, Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Madrid, 1793), p. 16.Google Scholar
69 Ibid., pp. 8–9.
70 Ibid., p. 17.
71 Ibid., p. 73.
72 Cf. Gerbi, Antonello, Viejas polémicas sobre el Nuevo Mundo (Lima, 1946), pp. 168–172 Google Scholar. In these pages, Gerbi studies the work of Iturri, P. Francisco, Carta crítica sobre la Historia de América del señor Juan Bautista Muñoz (Roma, 1797).Google Scholar
73 de Ustáriz, Jerónimo, Teória y práctica de comercio y de marina (Madrid, 1724), pp. 7, 45, 67–68, 79–80, 411.Google Scholar
74 de Ulloa, Bernardo, Restablecimiento de las fábricas y comercio español (Madrid, 1740), pp. 118–120.Google Scholar
75 Ibid., p. 3.
76 Ibid., pp. 222–223.
77 Campillo, Joseph del y Cosío, , Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico de América (Madrid, 1789), p. 284.Google Scholar
78 Ibid., p. 8.
79 Ibid., p. 42.
80 Ibid., pp. 54–55.
81 Ibid., pp. 88–89.
82 Ibid., pp. 132–137.
83 Cf. Sempere, Juan y Guarinos, , Ensayo de una biblioteca de los mejores escritores del reinado de Carlos 3 (Madrid, 1789), VI, 179.Google Scholar
84 Ward, Bernardo, Proyecto económico (Madrid, 1779), pp. xxiii-xxiv.Google Scholar
85 The best study and, in fact, the only one published thus far on this theme is Pérez, José Muñoz, “La idea de América en Campomanes,” in Anuario de Estudios Americanos, [Sevilla], X (1953), 209–264.Google Scholar
88 All these ideas are contained in the last chapter of Discurso sobre la Educación Popular (Madrid, 1775) and a MS, Apuntaciones relativas al comercio de las Indias para resolver la cuestión sobre él suscitada (1778). Cf. the Muñoz Pérez article cited above.
87 Muñoz Pérez, op. cit., pp. 260–264.
88 Cf. Whitaker, A.P., “ The Pseudo Aranda Memoir of 1783,” in Hispanic American Historical Review, 17, 3 (1937), 287–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wright, Almon R., “The Aranda Memorial; Genuine or Forged? ” in Ibid., 18, 4 (1938), 445–460.Google Scholar
89 Foronda’s work exists in manuscript form in the Rich Collection of the New York Public Library. It was published with a critical introduction by de Onís, José in The Americas, 4, No. 3 (January, 1948), 351–387.Google Scholar
90 de Foronda, Valentín, “Apuntes ligeros sobre los Estados Unidos de la América Septentrional,” in THE AMERICAS, IV, No. 3 (January, 1948), 364–367.Google Scholar
91 Ibid., pp. 386–387.
92 Ibid., p. 382.
93 Ibid., p. 380.
94 Cf. my article “ América en la literatura española del siglo XVIII,” in Anuario de Estudios Americanos [Sevilla], XI 9(1954), 3–23. The arricie contains a long bibliography of American themes in the literature of imagination—prose, poetry, and drama—of the eighteenth century.