Beyond Maximilian’s Empire: French Travelers and Explorers Throughout Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Introduction

We are pleased to present a special issue on French travelers and explorers in nineteenth-century Mexico, with an added bonus of a review essay on France’s broader nineteenth-century imperial expansion across the globe, including Mexico and Latin America. We are confident that our readers will find this issue of great interest, especially since it fills a void in the literature. France had substantial involvement in nineteenth-century Mexico, including commercial ties, diplomatic engagement, imperial schemes (i.e. the gunboat diplomacy of the so-called “Pastry War” of 1838, French filibusters in Sonora in the 1850s, and the failed French Intervention in Mexico of the 1860s), and more. French travelers—who could wear several “hats,” e.g. that of explorer, scientist, merchant, missionary, etc.—played important roles in France’s involvement in Mexico. However, in contrast to the robust literature on French diplomatic ties with Mexico and the ample coverage of the French Intervention and Maximilian’s short-lived Empire,¹ the literature on French travelers and explorers in Mexico is rather thin.²

This special issue helps fill that lacuna. Another appeal of this special issue is that the articles in it focus on travelers’ explorations of distinct regions of Mexico, thereby making a contribution to the regional history of French exploration in Mexico.³ Mexico’s northeast is examined in José Enrique Covarrubias’s article about Emmanuel Domenech; Mexico’s northwest is examined in Gerardo Manuel Medina Reyes' article about Gabriel Ferry; Mexico’s southeast is examined in Julieta Martínez’s article about Désiré Charnay. Along with enhancing the study of regional French exploration in Mexico, this special issue also makes a contribution to cultural history by highlighting the impact that intellectual trends had on French explorers’ travelogues, especially Romanticism and, in the case of one article, sentimental exoticism.⁴ Finally, since Ferry, Domenech, and Charnay—in one way or another—were involved in the French imperial enterprise in Mexico, the special issue makes a contribution to the scholarship on the ties between exploration and empire, even if the topic does not take center stage.⁵

After Mexican independence in 1821, there was a large influx of foreigners, inspired by perceived opportunities in the fledgling nation and Mexican elites’ desire to attract foreign immigrants (notwithstanding legislation that imposed some restrictions).⁶ Reflecting this high level of interest, Mexico was in the top tier of Latin American nations when it came to foreign engagement (along with Brazil and Argentina). In keeping with this great interest, travelers and explorers published more travelogues about Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina than other Latin American nations.⁷

While foreigners from numerous countries migrated to Mexico, the French were especially visible. Historian Nancy Barker—in her study of the French in nineteenth-century Mexico—maintains that there was “evidence of a visible and significant French presence on the Mexican scene.”⁸ As Medina Reyes’ article that appears in this special issue illustrates, many of the French traveled as individuals or as part of extended family networks, migrations inspired by commercial interests, rather than being part of a state-sponsored migration. French geographical societies, which formed in the early nineteenth century, motivated by scientific, cultural, and economic interests, also reflected France’s growing interest in the world, including Mexico.⁹ French public interest also increased, with reviews of new travelogues appearing in “French gazettes and newspapers,”¹⁰ and coverage of the exploits of “heroic” explorers in the so-called “new journalism,” i.e. the popular inexpensive dailies that emerged at mid-century.¹¹ Mexico was clearly one of the regions of interest; French travel accounts about Mexico were reported in the French press.¹²

French interest in Mexico is unsurprising given New Spain’s famed colonial-era silver mines. Nevertheless, Alexander von Humboldt’s early-nineteenth-century publications heightened interest about Mexico in France and elsewhere. Humboldt spent approximately one year in Mexico during his five-year trip to Spanish America (1799–1804), which he ended with a brief visit to the United States. He published his findings on Spanish America in dozens of publications over the following decades; his opus on Mexico, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, originally published in French (1811) and quickly translated into English, Spanish, and German, was the study he became best known for in Europe.¹³ Furthermore, Humboldt’s work proved influential in French studies of Mexican geography for over half a century.¹⁴ Some influential French accounts of Mexico, such as some of Michel Chevalier’s publications, cited Humboldt extensively.¹⁵ Interestingly, in the case of the three French travelers examined in this special issue, Humboldt does not appear to have been very influential, a topic we will elaborate on shortly, as part of the preview of the articles we provide for our readers below. We also provide additional information about the three travelers that will be of interest to our readers, who are discussed in the chronological order they arrived in Mexico. Finally, we concisely document French exploration of Latin America, creating a context for a summary of Noah Glaser’s aforementioned review essay on France’s informal global empire.

Gabriel Ferry Explores Mexico’s Northwest

Gerardo Manuel Medina Reyes' fascinating article—entitled “A Nineteenth-Century French Migrant and Traveler in Northwestern Mexico: Gabriel Ferry’s Romantic Impressions of Landscapes, Economy, and Society”—makes an important contribution to the literature on Ferry by highlighting a specific region he visited. Indeed, while Ferry traveled throughout Mexico and wrote about the entire country, Medina Reyes focuses on his publications that highlight the northwest, especially Scènes de la vie sauvage au Mexique [Wildlife Scenes in Mexico]; Le coureur des bois ou les chercheurs d’or [The Nomadic Hunter or the Gold Prospectors]; and Impressions de voyages et aventures dans le Mexique, la Haute Californie et les régions de l’or [Impressions of Travel and Adventures in Mexico, Alta California and the Gold Regions], a piece that has rarely been cited. Additionally, by utilizing information from Mexico’s General Archive of the Nation (AGN), Medina Reyes provides new biographical information about Ferry and his family, included in an informative preliminary section of his article.

As Medina Reyes explains, when Ferry explored the northwest in the 1830s, it was populated with Indigenous peoples and dotted with presidios and missions (remnants of the colonial-era frontier policy); the region had not been significantly developed under Spanish rule or by the fledgling Mexican nation by the time Ferry arrived in 1831. Nonetheless, there had been considerable interest in exploring and developing the region since the colonial era. During the Bourbon Reforms, Visitor General José de Gálvez had an ambitious colonization and development project (including the rejuvenation of the silver mining industry) for Sonora.¹⁶ Furthermore, foreigners also had considerable interest in the Pacific region. Humboldt wrote about the region in Political Essay, targeting the Pacific Coast as an area of economic promise ripe for colonization. Despite the fact that Ferry discussed some of the industries examined by Humboldt, the Frenchman did not cite him, even if he had probably read some of the German’s publications. The fact of the matter is that Ferry cited few authors, one being the famous American novelist James Fenimore Cooper.¹⁷ The link between Humboldt and other individuals interested in exploration of the northwest was more explicit, however. At the end of his journey to the Americas, Humboldt traveled briefly to the United States and met President Thomas Jefferson, who was also interested in the west (and Humboldt’s maps of the region), a preoccupation that manifested itself in the 1804–06 Lewis and Clark Expedition.¹⁸ Russians and Canadians were also interested, reflecting foreign competition in the area, which would continue beyond Ferry’s travels in the region in the 1830s.¹⁹

Medina Reyes’ article—which examines Ferry’s writings about California and Sonora, including the towns of Hermosillo, Arizpe, Bacoachi, Tubac, coastal ports, and more—is informative and engaging. Medina Reyes shows that notwithstanding the fact that Ferry was interested in precious metals (and commercial activity more generally) that he provided a wide panorama of the region, one that also covered nature and society, an inclusive approach not uncommon in travelogues of the period.²⁰ To capture Ferry’s broad commentary and observations, Medina Reyes divides his article into three sections: landscapes, economic activities, and social relations. In the landscape section, we learn about Ferry’s commentaries not only about the natural world (e.g. the countryside and waterways, such as the Gila River) but also on Pacific ports (e.g. San Francisco and Guaymas) and government (e.g. Arizpe, the capital of Sonora). Turning to economy, Medina Reyes summarizes Ferry’s coverage of mining (including his interesting account of gambusinos, i.e. vagabond miners), the cattle industry (including Ferry’s description of cowboys), and the fur industry (including Ferry’s observations about Mexican and foreign hunters). In the section on society, Medina Reyes explains that Ferry commented on all echelons of society and articulated social critiques (e.g. the poor living conditions of resident peons on haciendas). Ferry departed Mexico before the so-called “Pastry-War” between France and Mexico in 1838. Nonetheless, Medina Reyes suggests that perhaps Ferry’s descriptions of Sonoran mining riches had an enduring impact and documents some later French engagement and writings about Sonora, including French filibusters in the 1850s.

Emmanuel Domenech in Mexico’s Northeast, the United States, and the French Scientific Commission

French priest Emmanuel Domenech came to Mexico about a decade after Ferry departed, serving in missions in Texas and Tamaulipas from 1846 to 1852 and later during the French Intervention of the 1860s. Even if he did cite Humboldt on some matters, Domenech was similar to Ferry in the sense that the priest, too, did not refer to the German when discussing geography, in this case the Mexican northeast and the United States.²¹

Covarrubias’s article, entitled “Humans and Nature in Texas and Tamaulipas Shaded by Sentimental Exoticism: Emmanuel Domenech’s Depictions of North America,” examines not only Domenech’s writings about Mexico but also the United States. The article is divided into three sections, each of which examines a different travelogue. The first section examines Domenech’s Voyage dans les solitudes américaines. Voyage au Minnesota, a narrative about his travels to Minnesota from the Mississippi River. Domenech mostly focuses on Native Americans’ artistic expression, including their literary and musical styles, which he finds much to admire in. The second section examines Domenech’s Seven-Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, which documents his travels on the Red River; Covarrubias highlights Domenech’s picturesque descriptions of his journey. The final section analyzes Domenech’s Journal d’un missionaire au Texas et au Mexique, in which he narrates his journey on the Rio Grande, a trip he mostly took on the Mexican side of the border.

Covarrubias skillfully utilizes the three texts to develop his central argument, namely, that Domenech’s writing style was heavily influenced by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and François-René de Chateaubriand (the latter had an especially strong impact on French writings about the Americas), a genre of writing that scholars have termed exotic sentimentalism. Covarrubias’s article is lucid and informative; it does an excellent job of explaining the ideas of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and François-René de Chateaubriand and showing their influence on Domenech’s writings. Covarrubias makes a convincing case that exotic sentimentalism remained influential for a longer time frame than scholarship has generally acknowledged, which is one of the important contributions that the article makes to the scholarship. Furthermore, Covarrubias maintains that scholars have overlooked the overall importance of this intellectual trend. Perhaps his captivating article will inspire scholars to reexamine exotic sentimentalism

Covarrubias mentions Domenech’s later involvement in the French Intervention, even if a detailed account of it is beyond the scope of his article. Here, we take the liberty to briefly elaborate, starting with a brief summary. In February 1864, the French set off on a scientific expedition that was one component of their intervention in Mexico. The initial inception of the scientific commission, established by Napoleon III, can be credited to the geographer Victor-Adolphe Malte-Brun who reported to the Paris Geographical Society that in France’s military intervention, they should also attempt to “bring back to light an indigenous civilization that the Spanish conquest brought to an end.”²² The expedition had its area of operation loosely mapped across a massive area, ranging from the Gulf of Darien, which is off the coasts of Panama and Columbia, to the headwaters of the Colorado River and Rio Grande. That is, the whole of Central America, let alone Mexico, was chosen as a “possible” location for the expedition.²³ It also received support from the French Ministry of War, meaning that the scientists could work even in areas not directly controlled by the military itself. The commission consisted of various types of scientists—paleontologists, geologists, cartographers (who were attempting to prove a French accusation of Mexican maps being inaccurate), and even an architect. The commission had three overarching objectives: first, it sought to make Mexico and its neighbors “known from all points of view”; second, it was partially seen as a possible means toward commercial gain, and indeed one of the missions of the commission was to prospect various mineral deposits across the landscape; finally, it was also seen by some French as an attempt to “promote civilization and regenerate Mexico.” In the view of the Commission, they would be able to assist Mexico in a transformation from a “perennially unstable country into a prosperous modern nation.”²⁴ (This was not unlike more general justifications for the French Intervention that asserted that Mexico was rich in resources but France was needed to exploit them since Mexicans were not up to the task.²⁵) Ultimately, however, in spite of the lofty goals presented by the French, it ended far short of its mission. The Commission only stayed as long as the military did, and the military aborted its mission after three years. It was not a complete failure and did feature some fresh contributions to French and Mexican science, such as a new map of Mexico drawn by French military officers and edited by General Gustave-Leon Niox.²⁶ The French Scientific Commission ultimately did not fulfill its major goals which it had set out to accomplish, but given the truncated timeframe it operated under, a general failure—save for the handful of less prioritized contributions it made—seems to be a logical end to its work.

Let us now briefly recount Domenech’s involvement. It is worth noting that we can see a rationale for his involvement in the French Intervention in his earlier writings, in which he characterized French involvement as a means to strengthen Mexico’s sovereignty, a critical endeavor because he feared that the United States would not stop after annexing half of Mexico’s territory. From this perspective, French support for Mexico was a bulwark against U.S. imperialism.²⁷ During the French Intervention, Domenech performed anthropological work in Tlatelolco, where he excavated some terracotta urns that contained ancient human remains.²⁸ He also performed some work as a negotiator of sorts alongside his scientific duties. Edison notes that in his work for the Commission scientifique, Domenech “arrived in Mexico in January 1865 with plans to study ethnography, but also as a representative of ‘European capitalists to negotiate with the Mexican government’ for mining concessions.”²⁹ He performed more roles than initially expected of him, serving in multiple different positions in the structure of the military, in a “public relations” role negotiating with government officials for mineral rights, not to mention his archeological work excavating remains in Mexico City. Furthermore, Domenech had something of an amicable feeling toward his Mexican counterparts, stating that “Mexican scholars were just as erudite as European scholars,” defending them against attacks on their credibility by Domenech’s French colleagues during the Commission.³⁰

Désiré Charnay’s Explorations of Mexico’s Southeast in the 1850s and 1880s

Frenchman Désiré Charnay first visited Mexico’s southeast in the late 1850s, more than a decade after Domenech first arrived in Mexico. Charnay departed before the priest participated in the French Intervention of the 1860s and returned in the early 1880s at the onset of Mexico’s modernization. Yucatan became well known for a highly developed henequen industry during the reign of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1910), which transformed a backwater into an international hub, a showcase in Mexico’s late-nineteenth-century economic boom. The region became even more famous in the early 1900s after the publication of American socialist John Kenneth Turner’s sensationalist Barbarous Mexico, which featured the region in a chapter that highlighted the exploitative nature of production process, noting the decline in standard of living for many indigenous Mexicans, where the “henequen kings” implemented a system of what Turner characterized as chattel slavery well into the twentieth century.³¹

Prior to late-nineteenth century industrialization and economic prominence, however, explorers and scientists had considerable interest in the region, cataloging the pre-Columbian ruins of the Maya zone. As Martínez documents in her article that appears in this special issue, Charnay’s expedition was by no means the first to the area. Numerous travelers and explorers preceded him, documenting their findings. In fact, Martínez shows that Charnay was inspired by the earlier work of the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens. Furthermore, like Stephens before him, who sought to obtain Mexican artifacts and display them in an American museum, Charnay hoped to collect and display Mexican pieces in French museums.³² Stephens’ work presented a vision which kept a scientific objectivity in the documentation and sketches of various ruins he visited, but his writing remained diffused with the awe of someone who felt like they had stumbled upon a paradise untouched by the modern world: “[the ruins were] so beautifully shrouded by trees that it was painful to be obliged to disturb them, and we spared every branch that did not obstruct the view.”³³

While Stephens had been inspired by Humboldt’s earlier writings about the region,³⁴ it appears that the German explorer was less influential in the case of Charnay, which is a similarity between him and our previous two French explorers. Clearly, Charnay was aware of the fact that Humboldt commented on pre-Hispanic art and ruins. Further, Viollet le Duc, who wrote the preface to Charnay’s Cités et ruines americaines (1863), mentions Humboldt as an earlier traveler. However, Charnay did not visit the same places as Humboldt (the only overlap was Mitla). Hence, perhaps the German explorer proved a less useful guide to the region than Stephens.³⁵

Martínez’s engaging and informative contribution—entitled “A Frenchman in the Solitudes of the Mexican Southeast: Désiré Charnay’s use of Landscapes and Emotions in the Construction of his Exploration Narrative and Identity”—features one of Charnay’s earlier works, Le Mexique (1858–1861) Souvenirs et impressions de voyage, in which Charnay narrates his exploration of Mexico’s southeast. Much of the scholarship on Charnay emphasizes his contributions to photography. Highlighting this specific travelogue enables Martínez to make an important scholalry contribution by underscoring Charnay’s literary achievements. More specifically, Martínez shows the impact of Romanticism on Charnay, a genre that, she explains, was more influential in Le Mexique than later works by him, which were more scientific. Her article does a fine job of explaining characteristics of Romanticism and showing how Charnay’s work was influenced by the genre. After introducing Charnay (providing useful information about his activities and publications), Martínez divides her article into two parts. The first provides an analysis of Charnay’s romantic depictions of the scenes he encountered, including the natural environment, geography, Indigenous peoples, non-human animals, ancient ruins, and more. Her analysis of Charnay’s discussions about the ways the climate (especially the tropics) influenced the population (i.e. Indigenous peoples) is particulaly interesting. The second part is interconnected with the first in the sense that it also shows how literary styles shaped his writing, focusing this time on the ways in which Charnay constructed his own identity, portraying himself as a hero-explorer, a courageous man who had to brave the elements and other obstacles in his quest to explore ancient Mexico, sites and places, such as Mitla, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, Izamal, and Palenque. As other studies of French explorers’ writings have shown, Charnay was not unique in fashioning himself as a hero.³⁶

After Charnay’s journey in the late 1850s, French exploration of the region was scant (notwithstanding the 1860s French Scientific Commission), especially due to the fact that the French Intervention generated tensions between France and Mexico. Martínez briefly mentions Charnay’s return to the region from 1880 to 1883, when French–Mexican relations improved; we will briefly elaborate, even if this topic is beyond the scope of Martínez’s article. The purpose of Charnay’s later foray into the region was similar in its scope, mostly centered around documenting Mayan archeological sites in the Yucatan through the use of photography as well as sketching. Beginning in 1880, Charnay would embark on what would have been at the time “the most ambitious archaeological explorations of Mexico to date,” and his “unique comprehensiveness and clarity” would allow him to “appropriate the Indian past for the greater glory of the French nation .”³⁷ In addition to taking extensive photographic data of ruins and monuments, he also planned to bring supplies to take molds of inscriptions on the ruins themselves in order to better document what pieces of the past these sites held.³⁸ While Charnay was seeking funding for the expedition from the French Ministry of Public Instruction, a wealthy American of French descent named Pierre Lorillard offered to help finance the journey as well.³⁹ Both parties were initially cautious, with Charnay stating that a collaboration with another country on this mission risked him being forced to “renounce [his] quality as Frenchman.”⁴⁰ However, a deal was struck, and the trip was financed, which proved to be one of the most important archeological journeys of the era. During the trip, he consistently held a resentful attitude toward the Mexican government, who were slightly wary and concerned about Charnay—in particular that he would take the proper precautions when it came to preserving the sites he was excavating. Charnay claimed “that even Mexico’s scholars did not take ‘the trouble to travel any distance to see’ the ruins,” and he asserted that “barbarous explorers” sent by the Mexican state had already “vandalized the monuments.”⁴¹ Nevertheless, his work in the Yucatan was deeply influential, and his work was praised by the French museum curator Ernest-Théodore Hamy who “proclaimed him ‘the dean of [France’s] voyager-missionaries.’”⁴²

Beyond Nineteenth-Century Mexico: France in Latin America and the World

The exploration and eventual conquest of Latin America writ large mostly laid at the feet of the Spanish and the Portuguese, who established powerful colonial holdings in South, Central, and North America. Indeed, France’s sixteenth-century attempts to establish colonies in the region were thwarted (by the Portuguese in Brazil and the Spanish in Florida). Nonetheless, France did establish a colony in Guiana in 1667 with the signing of the Treaty of Breda, but their grip on the continent was much less prominent than the other two Old Empires.⁴³ Beginning in the 1820s, however, once the former Portuguese and Spanish colonies gained independence, the French saw an opening for themselves to try to establish a greater presence.

French travelers of different kinds were also sent to the fledgling nations to perform various tasks not only for the French government and academic organizations but they even worked for American governments as well. One of the more impactful travelers to South America from France was Alexander von Humboldt’s traveling companion Aimé Bonpland, who was crucially important not only to Humboldt’s travels but also established some of the earliest geological work of Argentina. In addition to Bonpland, however, there are figures such as Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, who worked in Brazil both as a diplomat and a scientist, and Henri Coudreau, who operated in Amazonia and Guiana before the establishment of the French colony there. Nevertheless, the exploration of South America by French citizens came much later than Europe’s initial contact with the continent, but the work they did was impactful all the same.

Aimé Bonpland, a physician by trade, worked alongside Humboldt as his botanist and as such, he was critical to the success of this scientific expedition. The journey saw the collection of 5,800 plant species for study and a large portion of those plants came from the work of Bonpland.⁴⁴ After the expedition, Humboldt and Bonpland’s paths diverged in a sense. Bonpland would eventually return to Argentina, where he performed a “geological reconnaissance” of Itá Pucú in 1834 and published some of the first proper geological maps of the region.⁴⁵ Furthermore, he took the opportunity to collect fossil samples to send back to Paris and also sketched the rock feature itself.⁴⁶ His writings on this rocky outcrop were a “mixture of geological report with a bit of gossip column,” due to the nature of the writings where he incorporated commentary on myths about the rocks that the indigenous population held.⁴⁷ All told, Bonpland spent 40 years of his life in South America, moved there permanently at the age of 43 where he began work helping locals develop new cultivation techniques, and he ended up having a massive influence on animal husbandry and the breeding of Merino sheep.⁴⁸

Augustin François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire wrote travel narratives following his exploration and excursions to Brazil in the 1810s and 1820s. He initially found work as a diplomat, helping to try to normalize relations between France and Portugal and Brazil.⁴⁹ While there, Saint-Hilaire visited multiple provinces in the country and wrote Voyages dans l’intérieur du Brésil, which were published from 1830 to 1851. His work included an exploration of the “vegetal riches of Brazil,” which was considered novel for naturalist work and covered almost all of Brazil.⁵⁰ He also established the importance of strong exploration of Brazil’s vegetation given the overall abundance of plants which could be useful for making dyes and pigments for clothes and paints, respectively. Throughout his writings, Saint-Hilaire tried to emphasize the “unprecedented” nature of his travels, mostly as an attempt to secure a stable pension from the French government.⁵¹

Henri Coudreau, who lived from 1859 to 1899, is described by geographer Federico Ferretti as “a little known French explorer of Guiana and Amazonia who was later forgotten by ‘heroic’ histories of exploration because of his unruliness and nonconformist attitudes.”⁵² He was given work to explore on behalf of the French government in 1883 to try to help better understand the region in between French Guiana and Brazil, a borderland which often found itself under dispute.⁵³ Ferretti describes Coudreau as less of a strict explorer and more of a “wanderer,” because he ended up deserting his post and heading in the opposite direction, with “more than 1000 pages of his book La France Équinoxiale” containing the records of his “wanderings almost day by day.”⁵⁴ Likewise, along with the unconventional nature of his expeditions themselves, his narratives told a story of personal growth which were difficult to justify for purely scientific purposes. Coudreau, along with the small group he traveled with, had many encounters with indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon, and while his initial education led him to “the most dreadful racist statements of the time toward black peoples, his later approaches to indigenous communities seem very original in comparison to more canonical explorations.”⁵⁵ Coudreau documented the workings of indigenous society in a way that was significantly more respectful than many of the established traditional exploration narratives of the region, and this gave his writings something of a unique character.

We are pleased to include Noah Glaser’s review essay on France’s nineteenth-century global reach in this special issue, entitled “The Global Turn in the History of French Imperialism: Power Beyond the Colonies.” It is a broader piece that incorporates both Mexico and Latin America into a single essay, aiming to examine French global empire over the course of the nineteenth century. Our readers will find Glaser’s review essay informative and engaging, as his piece addresses the notion of “informal empire” or informal imperialism, a form of informal domination realized by the French in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. While the French became well-known for their acts of direct imperialism in Algeria, West Africa, and Indochina, Glaser notes that the French utilized multiple forms of indirect imperial rule to oversee their interests abroad. According to Glaser, direct colonization of different regions of the world was only a preferable strategy to the French when the indirect methods of imperialism and colonization failed. The article offers a complete view of the French imperial project, and readers will enjoy the clarity and eloquence with which Dr. Glaser expresses this view.

Creating this special issue of TI would not have been possible without support. Writing the introduction was a joint effort. My coauthor Scott Beamon made invaluable contributions that enhanced the end result (and he was a pleasure to collaborate with). The fact that the authors of the articles— José Enrique Covarrubias, Julieta Martínez, and Gerardo Manuel Medina Reyes—coordinated their contributions so effectively, each examining a French traveler in a distinct region of nineteenth-century Mexico, enabled the issue to come together very nicely, resulting in a coherence rarely achievable, even in special issues. Noah Glaser generously accepted my request to write a review essay, a contribution that nicely complements the research articles and fills out the issue. Laurie Corbin translated abstracts into French and Luis Robles Macías translated them into Spanish. Noah Baumgartner and Veronica Johnson coauthored “Recent Literature in Exploration History,” a massive list that contains over 200 titles! Book Review Editor David Buisseret, with support from Assistant Book Review Editor Noah Baumgartner, has compiled the books that appear in the “Reviews” section. I thank them all for their excellent work and generosity!

Since this is my last issue as editor, l will take the liberty of acknowledging and thanking everyone who has helped me during my tenure as editor. I have had the pleasure of working with several wonderful Associate Editors. Thanks to Lindsay Braun, Gayle Brunelle, Margaret Cotter-Lynch, Alistair Maeer, Gregory McIntosh, and Anthony Mullan for their exceptional work! I have had the privilege of collaborating with several talented editorial assistants. Thanks to Scott Beamon, Ashley Masoner, and Kevin Smith for their meticulous copyediting! I have had the pleasure of working with diligent Assistant Book Review Editors. I thank Noah Baumgartner, Alexus Briones, Austin Miller, and Fyodor Wheeler for their excellent work to enhance the reviews section of the journal. Speaking of that section, I thank David Buisseret for his outstanding work as Book Review Editor over my entire five-year tenure as editor. I also thank Laurie Corbin and Luis Robles for doing such an excellent job of translating abstracts into French and Spanish over my entire tenure as editor. I also thank the production team at Taylor and Francis for their support, especially Vittal Babu and Emma Grylls. As many know, Dr. Gayle Brunelle—a long-time SHD member, former TI Associate Editor, and accomplished scholar—is taking over as editor of TI. We at SHD are thankful that the journal is in such capable hands and greatly appreciate that Dr. Brunelle has generously volunteered to take on the complex and time-consuming work associated with the position of editor.

Notes

¹ A classic work on French diplomacy is Nancy Barker, The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861: A History of Constant Misunderstanding (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979); for a more recent work see Edward Shawcross, France, Mexico and Informal Empire in Latin America, 1820–1867: Equilibrium in the New World (London: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2018). For a recent work on the French Intervention in Mexico see Noah Glaser, The Age of Regeneration: Capitalism and the French Intervention in Mexico (1861–1867), Ph.D., diss. (University of Illinois, Chicago, 2022).

² On French travelers in Mexico see Javier Pérez Siller, ed., México Francia. Memoria de una sensibilidad común, siglos XIX-XX (México: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla/El Colegio de San Luis/Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, 1998); and Jean Meyer, Yo, el francés (Tusquets, 2011).

³ On French geography see Anne Marie Claire Godlweska, Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999); for a work on Mexican geography see Carlos Herrejón Peredo, ed., La formación geográfica de México (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2011).

⁴ See Carl Thompson, French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Carl Thompson, “The Romantic Literary Travel Book,” in The Routledge Companion of Travel Writings, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 269–277.

⁵ According to some scholarly interpretations, Ferry’s mercantile pursuits in Mexico could be conceptualized as contributing to “informal empire”(see Noah Glaser’s contribution to this special issue for an extended discussion of “informal empire”). At one moment or another, Domenech and Charnay were involved in French imperial endeavors. Covarrubias mentions Domenech’s participation in the French Scientific Expedition in Mexico. Martínez’s article highlights the ways in which Charnay enhanced France’s empire symbolically by promoting the collection and display of Mexican artifacts in France. For a study of the British case, e.g. collecting exotic artifacts in the British museum, see Robert Aguirre, Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

⁶ For an overview of Mexican immigration policy see, Robert Duncan, For the Good of the Country: State and Nation Building during Maximilian’s Mexican Empire, 1864–67. Ph.D. diss. (University California, Irvine, 2001), pp. 121–222.

⁷ Magnus Morner, “European Travelogues as Sources to Latin American History from the Late Eighteenth Century to 1870,” Revista de Historia de América no. 93 (Jan.–Jun., 1982), pp. 91–149

⁸ Nancy Barker, “The French Colony in Mexico, 1821–61: Generator of Intervention,” French Historical Studies 9, no. 4 (1976), pp. 596–618, esp. 600.

⁹ Berny Sèbe, “The Making of British and French Legends of Exploration, 1821–1914,” in Reinterpreting Exploration: The West and the World, ed. Dane Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 109–34, esp. 113. On French academic societies more broadly see Alain Corbin, Terra Incognita, trans. Susan Pickford (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2021), pp. 175–87.

¹⁰ Marius Warholm Haugen, “News of Travels, Travelling News: The Mediation of Travel and Exploration in the Gazette de France and the Journal de l’Empire,” in Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century, eds. Siv Gøril Brandtzæg, Paul Goring and Christine Watson (Brill, 2018), pp. 159–180.

¹¹ Sèbe, “The Making of British and French Legends of Exploration,” p. 113. For a discussion of the coverage of explorers in the new journalism see Richard Weiner, “Verbalizing Exploration,” in A Cultural History of Exploration, vol. 5, ed. Jane Samson (Bloomsbury, [forthcoming] 2024).

¹² Jean-Yves Puyo, “The French Military Confront Mexico’s Geography,” Journal of Latin American Geography 9, no. 2 (2010), pp. 139–57, esp. 142.

¹³ Nicolaas Rupke, “A Geography of the Enlightenment: The Critical Reception of Alexander von Humboldt’s Work,” in Geography and Enlightenment, eds. David Livingstone and Charles Withers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 319–38.

¹⁴ Puyo, “The French Military Confront Mexico’s Geography,” p. 141.

¹⁵ Chevalier cites Humboldt extensively in Michel Chevalier, Mexico Ancient and Modern, vols. 1 & 2, trans. Thomas Alpass (London: John Maxwell, 1864).

¹⁶ Francisco Altable, Edward Beatty, José Enrique Covarrubias, Richard Weiner, El mito de una riqueza proverbial. Ideas, utopías y proyectos económicos en torno a México en los siglos XVIII y XIX (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2015), pp. 19–78.

¹⁷ Gerardo Manuel Medina Reyes, e-mail message to authors, March 7, 2024.

¹⁸ On the friendship between Jefferson and Humboldt see, Sandra Rebok, Humboldt and Jefferson: A Transatlantic Friendship of the Enlightenment (London: University of Virginia Press, 2014).

¹⁹ James Ronda, “Exploring the American West in the Age of Jefferson,” in North American Exploration: A Contentent Comprehended, vol. 3, ed. John Logan Allen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 9–74.

²⁰ For an article that emphasizes the diverse themes broached in a travelogue (e.g. scientific, economic, and cultural) see Robert Duncan, “‘Beneath a rich blaze of golden sunlight:’ the Travels of Archduke Maximilian through Brazil, 1860,” Terrae Incognitae 52, no. 1 (April, 2020), pp. 37–64. For a discussion of the different themes examined in travelogues, see Richard Weiner, “Verbalizing Exploration.”

²¹ In Seven-Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North-América (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), Domenech cites Humboldt, but mostly regarding the history of migrations to the Americas, not the geography of the United States, Texas, or northeastern Mexico. José Enrique Covarrubias, e-mail message to authors, March 6, 2024.

²² Gary S. Dunbar, “‘The Compass Follows the Flag:’ The French Scientific Mission to Mexico, 1864–1867,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78, no. 2 (June 1988), pp. 229–40, esp. 232.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Paul Edison, Latinizing America: The French Scientific Study of Mexico, 1830–1930, Ph.D. thesis (Columbia University, 1999), p. 269.

²⁵ See, for example, Rafael de Castro, La cuestion mexicana ó esposicion de las causas que hacian indispensables la intervencion europea y el restablecimiento de la Monarquia en Mexico (Mexico City: Andrade y F. Escalante, 1864); and E. Masseras, El Programa del Imperio Mexico (Mexico City: Liberia Mexicana, 1864).

²⁶ Dunbar, “The French Scientific Mission,” p. 237.

²⁷ Emmanuel Domenech, Journal d’un missionaire au Texas et au Mexique, 1846–1852 (Paris: Librairie de Gaume Frères, 1857), p. 422.

²⁸ Edison, Latinizing Latin America, p. 232

²⁹ Edison, Latinizing Latin America, p. 235

³⁰ Dunbar, “The French Scientific Mission,” p. 234.

³¹ John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Chicago, IL: C.H. Kerr & Co., 1911), pp. 11–12. On Turner in Mexico see Linda Lumsden, “Socialist Muckraker John Kenneth Turner: The Twenty-First Century Relevance of a Journalist/Activist’s Career,” American Journalism 32 no. 3 (2015), pp. 282–306.

³² Christen Mucher, “Collecting Native America: John Lloyd Stephens and the Rhetorics of Archaeological Value,” Journal of Transnational American Studies 9 no. 1 (2018), pp. 3–34.

³³ John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I (Perlego, 2010), p. 232.

³⁴ Gesa Mackenthun, “Imperial Archaeology: The American Isthmus as Contested Scientific Contact Zone,” in Surveying the American Tropics : A Literary Geography from New York to Rio, eds. Maria Cristina Fumagalli, et al. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 101–130.

³⁵ “Charnay only mentions Humboldt in the preface to his 1885 work (Les anciennes Villes du noveau monde), where he returns to Humboldt as one of those who had already mentioned the cultural unity of the Toltecs and Mayans,” Julieta Martínez, e-mail message to authors, March 9, 2024.

³⁶ Sèbe, “The Making of British and French Legends of Exploration.” For a broader discussion of the characterization of explorers as heroes, see Mylynka Kilgore Cardona, “The Ideal and Idealized Explorer Typologies,” in A Cultural History of Exploration, vol. 5, ed. Jane Samson (Bloomsbury. [forthcoming] 2024].In Seven-Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North-América (London: Longman, Green

³⁷ Edison, Latinizing Latin America, p. 365.

³⁸ Ibid, p. 367.

³⁹ “Claude-Joseph-Désiré Charnay,” Encyclopædia Britannica, February 22, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Joseph-Desire-Charnay.

⁴⁰ Edison, Latinizing Latin America, p. 368.

⁴¹ Ibid, p. 377.

⁴² Ibid, p. 384.

⁴³ “French Guiana,” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 17, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/place/French-Guiana/Government-and-society#ref2490.

⁴⁴ Stephen Bell, “Aimé Bonpland and Merinomania in Southern South America,” The Americas 51, no. 3 (January 1995), pp. 301–23, esp. 302.

⁴⁵ Eduardo Ottone, “Aimé Bonpland’s Drawings of Itá Pucú, 1834, and the History of Early Geological Representations in Argentina,” Earth Sciences History 23, no. 1 (January 1, 2004), pp. 121–33, esp. 125.

⁴⁶ Ibid, p. 128.

⁴⁷ Ibid, p. 130.

⁴⁸ Bell, Merinomania in Southern South America, p. 303.

⁴⁹ Karen Macknow Lisboa and Amilcar Torrão Filho, “French Travelers in the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century – in Brazil and in Africa,” Transatlantic Cultures (April 2022) https://transatlantic-cultures.org/en/catalog/viajantes-franceses-no-mundo-atlantico-do-seculo-xix-no-brasil-e-na-africa, p. 2.

⁵⁰ Lisboa and Filho, French Travelers in the Atlantic World, p. 4

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Federico Ferretti, “Tropicality, the Unruly Atlantic and Social Utopias: The French Explorer Henri Coudrea (1859 − 1899),” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 38, no. 3 (July 31, 2017), pp. 332–49, esp. 332.

⁵³ Ibid, p. 337.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Ibid, p. 338.