Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian New World (review)

In this new collection, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra defends the originality of science in the Spanish New World in a reasoned, well-argued format. Despite being a collection of essays, some of which appeared previously, Cañizares-Esguerra has effectively reworked them so that a coherent argument emerges and the book can be enjoyed cover to cover.

Cañizares-Esguerra’s notes Spain’s long overlooked role in the history of botany. Among the major works he cites are Francisco Hernández’ massive accumulation of Aztec botanic and pharmacological knowledge, originally published as Rerum medicarum Noavae Hispaniae thesaurus; Juan de Cardena’s Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias; Baltazar Dorantes de Carranza’s Sumaria relación de las cosas de Nueva España; and Antonio de Léon Pinelo’s El Pariso en el Nuevo Mundo, which remain little studied even today. Francisco Hernández’s compendium, for example, found Nahua classifications as an alternative to that of the ancient writer Discorides. One of the pioneers of modern botany, Carolus Clusius drew upon these and other Iberian treatises for his own work, and the extent of these contributions is rarely acknowledged. Alexander von Humboldt’s geobotany emerged from his encounter with Colombian naturalist, Franciso José de Caldas.

During the eighteenth century, the Spanish Crown invested heavily in compiling botanical knowledge, an effort welcomed in the colonies. American creoles, such as Colombian Pedro Fermín de Vargas, favored the idea of the Americas as having unlimited commercial agricultural potential. Creoles from Buenos Aires saw new ecological niches in their predominantly cattle grazing land. Mexican Juan Manuel Venegas envisioned new cures for diseases emerging from native plants. Unfortunately for Spain, their eighteenth-century studies of botany failed to yield the desired commercial success. But Cañizares-Esguerra argues the project provided new cultural capital for the increasingly self-aware creoles.

In a final chapter, Cañizares-Esguerra describes the efforts of Mexican artists “to find the nation in representations of nature” (p. 132). Chapultepec, the beautiful forested hill on the outskirts of Mexico City, appeared in scores of nineteenth-century paintings as did the towering Mexican cypress. Panoramic views of the once beautiful and now smog-draped mountains ringing the Valley of Mexico became another popular theme. Landscapes also fill the pages of Vicente Riva Palacio’s classic, México a través de los siglos. Unlike the nineteenth-century U.S. landscapes, many Mexican landscape paintings focus on the estate buildings, or contain a town or city. One of Mexico’s better-known nineteenth-century artists, José María Velasco, largely portrayed his country as urban.

Cañizares-Esguerra convincingly argues for the importance of incorporating Iberian and Ibero-American information into the long history of the discipline of botany. In so doing, he shows how narrow the traditional stories of natural history have become, and why a look at Spain and the Americas could stimulate a re-examination of the history of a discipline.