Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Although Enlightenment thinking spread slowly in Spanish America, a growing interest in technocratic governance attended the Bourbon Reforms and the Age of Revolution.Progress beckoned through the noble pursuit of truth and reason and the eradication of ignorance.1 A "more scientific and more exact cartography" came into the ascendant.2 Systematic geographical questionnaires, sent to local officials of New Spain for centuries, began requesting not just descriptions but quantitative measurements.3 The development of accurate geographical knowledge had become central to nation-building across the Americas.4 Maps are symbolic tools for fixing political authority, and in the words of Raymond Craib, "the state and cartography are reciprocally constitutive".5 From the eighteenth century, most Spanish cartographers of America were military engineers or naval officers.6 Due in part to their work, state control was strong along the well-mapped principal routes of New Spain, but the tenuously controlled border regions were known only through sketchier information.Alta California, at the northwest corner of the viceroyalty, was the epitome of its peripheral and underdocumented areas.A century and a half had elapsed in
Source: Revista de Historia de América
Author: Aaron Brick
Institution: City College of San Francisco
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7127058938