Special Issue on Exploring Latin America: Travelogues by Alexander von Humboldt, Archduke Maximilian, and James Bryce

Introduction

We are very pleased to publish this special issue entitled “Exploring Latin America,” which features articles on travelogues by German explorer-scientist Alexander von Humboldt, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian and Englishman traveler-academic James Bryce. Since Humboldt visited the region at the onset of the nineteenth century, Maximilian approximately a half century later, and Bryce at the start of the twentieth century, the special issue covers what historian Eric Hobsbawm has termed the “long nineteenth century” (the French Revolution to World War I), a key era in the exploration of Latin America. Furthermore, what makes this issue especially significant is that Humboldt was arguably the key figure in the nineteenth-century Latin American exploration, and the travelogues by Archduke Maximilian and James Bryce examined in this issue are significant but underexamined works. Hence, there is something new here, even for people familiar with these famous figures.

The long nineteenth century was an especially consequential era in the history of Latin America exploration. Owing to independence, Spain and Portugal were no longer in control of the subcontinent. This opened the floodgates, as foreigners from numerous countries visited and wrote about the region. Furthermore, technological developments, especially the steamship, made travel across the sea easier (than in the age of the sail), thereby encouraging travel, exploration, and even tourism.¹ With the decline of the Iberians’ power in the region, foreign governments (and their diplomatic representatives) and business groups were especially interested in new economic and geopolitical opportunities. (Additionally, newly formed Latin American nations sent out their own exploration expeditions, including land survey initiatives, often undertaken by foreign companies.) But the foreigners who explored and wrote about Latin America were far more diverse than business and government representatives, also including scientists-explorers, military men, sailors, adventurers, clergy, missionaries, and tourists (who came in increasing numbers starting in the mid-nineteenth century). While men predominated, women also traveled to the region (their numbers increasing after mid-century), some of them writing famous accounts.² Turning to places of origin, travelers from the United States and the United Kingdom predominated. There were also considerable numbers from France and Germany, but all European nations had representatives. While travelers explored much of Latin America, the most common destinations were Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico (travelers from the United States especially visited Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean). With all these travelers, over the course of the “long nineteenth century,” a large number of travelogues about Latin America were produced.³

Not only were travelogues important as a record of knowledge about Latin America but also as a vehicle for the dissemination of information about exploration. The nineteenth century witnessed a significant increase in the production and dissemination of printed material.⁴ Travelogues, which were sometimes translated (even into several languages), proved to be extremely popular and enjoyed a wide readership.⁵ For example, there was a small “boom” of travel accounts about Mexico published in London in the 1820s and 1830s. Along with being an important medium to transmit knowledge about exploration, travelogues, a form of popular literature, inspired readers to undertake their own exploration expeditions (e.g. inspired by Humboldt’s earlier exploits, South American independence leader Simón Bolívar supposedly scaled the Chimborazo in 1822).

Influenced by Enlightenment thought, the eighteenth-century travel and exploration expeditions placed a greater emphasis on empiricism, a tradition that would carry over into the following century.⁶ Furthermore, technological advances resulted in the creation of more precise scientific instruments, which were utilized by explorer-scientists to take measurements. Following the Linnaean system of botanical taxonomy, explorer-scientists, engaged in natural history, were also involved in an ordering project, collecting and classifying new-world animals and plants (sometimes taking “specimens” back home to display). Highlighting economic interests, explorers also studied and wrote about natural resources, commercial possibilities, and economic policies. Displaying an interest in “primitive” and “exotic” societies, there was also an ethnological aspect to the nineteenth-century travelogues on Latin America. Writing about contemporary issues such as slavery, abolition, labor conditions, and social hierarchies (including vestiges of colonial caste systems), travelers were also social commentators.⁷

Scholarship on travel and exploration literature gained renewed vitality in the late 1970s, a period that witnessed the emergence of new approaches. Edward Said’s now-classic Orientalism (1978) was highly influential, inspiring scores of postcolonial and decolonial studies that analyzed western discourses that “othered” the regions they examined, thereby creating a discourse that subordinated the non-western world and facilitated western dominance. Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes (1992) was also highly influential.⁸ Today, scholars routinely used concepts she employed (either created or popularized) in their studies, such as “contact zones,” “monarch of all I survey,” “anti-conquest,” “transculturation,” and “exploratrice sociale” [female explorer of society]. These newer approaches stress the perspective and subjectivity of the travelogue writer rather than the “facts” travelogues provide about unfamiliar societies. While it is true that there have been challenges to these newer approaches inspired by Said, Pratt, and other scholars,⁹ what is perhaps more common is updates and modifications.¹⁰ To create a less static and predetermined relationship between “foreign” and “native,” for example, scholars have highlighted the role of improvisation in the “contact zone.”¹¹ And to capture the fluid movement associated with travel, some scholars have utilized the notion of “transatlantic identities” rather than “foreigners” and “natives.”¹² Finally, scholars have complicated “othering” by showing that there were multiple western representations, which created fragmented identities of non-western regions rather than unified “others.”¹³ Along with modifications, scholarship has also gone in new directions, one of which is a greater focus on native voices by examining topics such as “writing back” (non-western peoples’ explorations of the west),¹⁴ reading “between the lines” in western accounts to retrieve indigenous perspectives, and analyzing domestic reception or travelogues (discovery though native eyes).¹⁵ Turning to new approaches that place a western perspective at the center, one innovation has been highlighting sensuous elements of western travel accounts that have been overlooked—such as smell or sound—by a scholarship that has traditionally focused the eye-witness accounts.¹⁶ As we now turn to the three figures examined in this special issue, we will see that some articles utilize some of the aforementioned perspectives and methods, but others go in their own distinct directions.

Alexander von Humboldt

Afforded more geographic mobility by his mother’s death, Alexander von Humboldt planned an extended scientific exploration. While not his first choice, he settled on a trip to Spain’s colonial holdings in the Americas, visiting the region (and the United States, albeit briefly) from 1799 to 1804. During his five-year trip, Humboldt traveled extensively including visits not only to coastal areas but also to inland areas. This latter practice provided a personal example that was consistent with his critique of travelers who only visited coastal cities and therefore only gained superficial knowledge. During his stay, on land he traveled by foot, on horses, mules, and wheeled vehicles. In South America (Quindío, Colombia), Humboldt walked, refusing to be carried by a sillero, a worker who carried people on chairs attached to his back.¹⁷ As José Enrique Covarrubias’ article in this issue of TI explains, Humboldt promoted the expansion of national and international connections in the name of human progress (advanced, according to Humboldt, by greater connectivity), by advocating the improvement of the transportation infrastructure in Spain’s colonies and the creation of an interoceanic canal somewhere in Central America. Given his promotion of global connections and exchange, it is unsurprising that Humboldt was a strong promoter of the new transportation technologies developed after his trip to the Americas, including steamships (which he praised not only for their ability to cross oceans but also to travel upstream in inland South America) and railroads.¹⁸

Humboldt’s expedition was partly inspired by previous explorers. Columbus was a case in point. Humboldt was deeply interested in Columbus and even hoped his own expedition would provide new insights into Columbus and his voyage.¹⁹ Humboldt was also inspired by scientific exploration expeditions (such as James Cook’s famous voyages) and brought scientific instruments on his expedition to Spanish America.²⁰ Scholars have shown that along with being influenced by empiricism and egalitarianism that characterized Enlightenment thought, Humboldt’s writings also had elements of Romanticism. His training in Cameralism—the science of administration—in Germany also proved influential. The focus of Humboldt’s gaze was comprehensive, spanning both history and modern times, and including both the natural and human worlds and the interconnections between them. As Covarrubias’ article in this issue of TI explains, Humboldt was well aware of claims made by Robertson and others that the Old World was superior to the New World, and was partly motivated to take his journey to formulate his own assessment. Witnessing poverty, inequality, labor exploitation, and slavery, Humboldt was also concerned about (and documented) contemporary moral and ethical issues.

After his extensive trip, Humboldt returned to Europe and spent decades producing an enormous body of work about Spanish America. Humboldt’s impact was enormous. Production and timing were everything. He produced encyclopedic accounts during the era of Spanish American independence, a moment when international interest and foreign designs on the region increased. Humboldt’s works, many of which were quickly translated into several languages, filled the void. His encyclopedic and scientific accounts were authoritative. Countering Robertson by depicting some regions of Spanish America as especially rich and able to support exponential population growth, Humboldt’s works stimulated foreign interest. Mexico, Humboldt asserted, was especially wealthy. Furthermore, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain is what Humboldt became best known for in Europe²¹ and stimulated considerable foreign interest in Mexico.²² In the 1820s, when Mexico was just a fledgling nation, British financiers followed the recommendations in Political Essay as a blueprint for mining investments and complained that Humboldt had misled them when their ventures failed.²³

Literature on Humboldt is extensive and multifaceted. Furthermore, in 2004, it received a boost since numerous conferences acknowledged the 200th anniversary of his departure from the Americas. Additionally, works were published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the 1811 publication of Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain.²⁴ Even before all these milestone dates, Humboldt had taken center stage in the scholarship with the 1992 publication of Pratt’s Imperial Eyes, which depicted Humboldt as a powerful agent of European imperialism. Polemics followed, as some scholars contested Pratt.²⁵

In this special issue of TI, distinguished Humboldt scholar José Enrique Covarrubias provides a fresh perspective in his article entitled “Alexander von Humboldt and James Bryce Compared: The Geographical Factor in History.” Rather than rehashing old debates, Covarrubias goes in a fruitful new direction by considering Humboldt’s understanding of the influence of geography on the development of human societies. While Humboldt’s contributions to the discipline of geography have been extensively examined, Covarrubias’ focus on the connections between the environment and human development is a fresh contribution. Covarrubias also makes a contribution to Humboldt scholarship by engaging in the exciting intellectual project of comparing the German traveler with James Bryce. Perhaps because there are important differences between the two men, the project of highlighting similarities provides new insights about Humboldt. (I will say more about Covarrubias’ comparison when I turn to a discussion of Bryce below.) Along with Covarrubias’ article on Humboldt, we are pleased to include David Allen’s review of Myron Echenberg’s Humboldt’s Mexico, which appears in the Reviews section.

Archduke Maximilian

Robert Duncan, a specialist on Maximilian in Latin America, in his contribution to this special issue of TI titled “’Beneath a Rich Blaze of Golden Sunlight’: The Travels of Archduke Maximilian through Brazil, 1860,” points to an important connection between Maximilian and Humboldt. Archduke Maximilian solicited advice from an aged Humboldt (Humboldt died in 1859) before his trip to Brazil, and the German responded and even highlighted (Duncan explains) their common German heritage. Duncan shows that Humboldt influenced Maximilian in additional ways. Maximilian was clearly very familiar with Humboldt’s scientific work, including his measurements. Given the fact that Maximilian’s personal library included, in addition to Humboldt’s publications, several hundred additional works on geographical exploration, travel and exploration literature appears to have influenced Maximilian.

By examining Maximilian’s travelogue on Brazil, a significant work that has been largely overlooked by scholars, Duncan’s article makes an important contribution to scholarship on Maximilian and, more broadly, Latin America exploration literature. Readers will get a good sense of Maximilian’s travelogue because Duncan provides a detailed and comprehensive coverage (which is nicely organized into sections) and selects excellent examples from the work to illustrate general tendencies. Adding to the significance of Maximilian’s travelogue on history, Duncan’s epilogue shows that his work on Brazil provided a blueprint for what he would later do when he ruled Mexico.

While Duncan’s approach is not explicitly comparative, he does mention Humboldt throughout, implicitly suggesting some comparisons between Maximilian and Humboldt. Perhaps the way Duncan’s article is organized best illustrates this comparison. Maximilian’s broad lens, captured via Duncan’s sections on natural history, society, and political economy, is reminiscent of Humboldt. Like Humboldt, Maximilian was engaged in the scientific project of gathering data, collecting specimens, and measuring. Duncan even reports that Maximilian contested some of Humboldt’s measurements! Turning to society, Maximilian critiqued the institution of slavery. While Maximilian does not reference the German on this topic, Humboldt had dedicated an entire lengthy section to attacking slavery in his Political Essay on the Island Cuba and also critiqued it in other writings.²⁶ Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette claim that Humboldt’s critique of slavery may be his “most controversial” piece of writing.²⁷ Envisioning emancipated slaves living in a post-slavery Cuba, Humboldt did not display the antipathy toward Blacks that Maximilian displayed (which is vividly illustrated in Duncan’s article).²⁸ Finally, Maximilian’s exposition on political economy followed a Humboldtian tradition, which was especially evident in Humboldt’s Political Essays on Mexico and Cuba, works Humboldt differentiated from others by labeling them “statistical.” Humboldt’s work in Mexico was especially in-depth, covering industry, agriculture, mining, trade, and finance. And Duncan’s claim that Maximilian promoted Brazil’s independent development (akin to what Dependency theorists later argued for, says Duncan) is reminiscent of Humboldt’s call for Mexican development that prioritized the interests of the colony over those of the colonizing power (Spain).²⁹

Duncan’s article also implicitly shows contrasts, especially the epilogue, which emphasizes the ways in which Maximilian’s time in Brazil influenced his imperial project in Mexico. Notwithstanding the fact that some scholars emphasize Maximilian’s Mexican nationalism and also point out that some leading Mexican intellectuals participated in his government because they saw it as their best bet for the future success of their beleaguered country, Maximilian’s Second Empire was, undeniably, an imperial project (supported by tens of thousands French troops).³⁰ This contrasts with Humboldt. Despite the fact that he has been charged with being either a witting or unwitting an agent off empire (charges that go back all the way to the nineteenth century), he critiqued empire and imperialism during his lifetime, and his contemporaries took notice. According to Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette, “once Humboldt became known for his critical stances towards colonialism, the British Empire closed its doors, preventing him from visiting India, Tibet, and other British colonies in Asia.”³¹ Furthermore, in the 1820s, shortly after most of Latin America became independent, Humboldt made a case for supporting the fledgling nations as they worked to establish themselves.³² Finally, it is worth noting that leaders in some of these new nations utilized Humboldt’s works on the region to help forge national identities.

Finally, turning to modes of transportation in travel and exploration (a theme discussed but not featured in Duncan’s article), there were some continuities between Humboldt and Maximilian, but also some contrasts since the latter traveled decades after the former (Maximilian traveled to Brazil in 1860 and Mexico in 1864). There had been some technological advances in transportation since Humboldt sailed across the Atlantic at the onset of the nineteenth century. Reflecting the passing of the age of the sail, Maximilian crossed the Atlantic on steamships and also used the steamship Elizabeth to get down to Rio while visiting Brazil. Turning to land transportation, Maximilian reports some advances but mostly utilized the same technology Humboldt had before him. In Brazil, Maximilian reports the beginning of railroad construction in Bahia but never mentions riding on the railroads. When he arrived in Mexico, railroads had hardly been developed. He traveled on railroads for a short section of the Veracruz–Mexico City route but took a stagecoach most of the way. While in Mexico, Maximilian mainly traveled in carriages. Perhaps reflecting his discontent with present conditions, he made the development of the railroads a priority of his administration. The building of a canal, however, was not something he seems to have discussed much. This contrasted with Napoleon III, who did express some interest but did not do any work on implementation perhaps due to financial challenges.³³

James Bryce

We now turn to James Bryce, the famous British scholar of international relations, the final traveler examined in this special issue. Since there are three articles dedicated to him, Bryce gets extensive coverage. The articles are groundbreaking in the sense that they make a compelling case for the significance of Bryce’s work on Latin America, which has been neglected by scholars. We are also pleased to include in this special issue Andrew Hakes review of Héctor Domínguez Benito’s book, entitled James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales del internacionalismo liberal (1864–1922), which appears in the Reviews section.

James Bryce, in his work South America, lists Humboldt’s Aspects of Nature as a work that influenced his own study. Thus, having some type of connection with Humboldt is a commonality shared by Maximilian and Bryce. Additionally, there is a similarity between the articles about Maximilian and Bryce in this special issue. In keeping with Maximilian’s Recollections of My Life, Bryce’s South America, the travelogue featured in all three articles dedicated to him in this issue of TI is an important but neglected text.

These articles, taken together, make an important contribution that revises our understanding of Bryce, broadening his significance as a figure in the field of international relations. Bryce is deemed a significant public figure and scholar of international relations who has written influential and recognized works on a number of countries, including the United States and South Africa (Bryce’s The American Commonwealth is especially influential), but his book South America, and his work on Latin America more broadly, has been largely ignored. The articles in this special issue show that neglect should not be equated with insignificance. To the contrary, the articles make a case for the importance of South America, and, in doing so, make a case for reassessing Bryce’s importance to Latin America, paving the way for a reinterpretation that makes him a significant figure in the history of the subcontinent.

The individual articles have distinct ways of showing Bryce’s significance. The article by Itzel Toledo García—“James Bryce’s Analysis of Latin America in an International Perspective”—a Bryce specialist with a published article on Bryce’s trip to Mexico,³⁴ shows that Bryce was a forerunner in the genesis of the what came to be known as the specialty of Latin American Studies, an academic field that came to have great significance in the twentieth-century United States and Great Britain and remains significant today. Ricardo Ledesma Alonso’s article—“‘Accidental Nations,’ ‘Nations in the Making’: James Bryce’s Colonialist Interpretation of Latin American Nations”—building on the theoretical framework of Edward Said and other postcolonial theorists, shows that Bryce’s South America, which exhibited a colonialist mindset that inferiorized the subcontinent, was one of the ideological building blocks of British informal empire in Latin America. Covarrubias’ contribution shows the role that Latin American geography played in Bryce’s “colonialist mindset,” maintaining that, for Bryce, geography helped explain the “accidental character” of Latin American nations.

Covarrubias’ comparative approach also highlights an aspect of Bryce’s analysis that has been underappreciated: geography. Broaching geography also brings Humboldt back into the picture. Covarrubias is able to underscore the importance of geography in Bryce’s understanding of the development of societies and the unfolding of world history by comparing the place geography plays in societal development in the writings of Humboldt and Bryce, thereby enriching our understanding of both writers. (Readers may also be interested in another comparison Covarrubias makes between Humboldt and Bryce that focuses on writing political essays.³⁵) While geography figured heavily for both travelers, there were significant differences between them. Covarrubias shows that Humboldt’s analysis countered an academic discourse that portrayed the New World as inferior to the Old, but for Bryce, geography was a factor in Latin America’s subpar political development.

Covarrubias also emphasizes that both travelers believed greater global connectivity was a positive force in the development of humanity as a whole, countries, and societies. In the case of Humboldt, Covarrubias cites his strong advocacy of building a canal in Central America as evidence of his promotion of heightened global connectivity and exchange. Since Bryce came a century later, he is actually able to see Humboldt’s dream realized with the construction of the Panama Canal. Along with Covarrubias’ analysis of Bryce, Toledo García’s article has extensive coverage of Bryce’s discussion of the Panama Canal.

Highlighting these technological developments broaches the issue of the way the travel infrastructure had evolved by the time Bryce was traveling in the early twentieth century. Here we see significant contrasts with Humboldt since modes of travel had changed dramatically. During his 1901 trip, Bryce routinely traveled by train. He arrived in Mexico from the United States by train. Turing to sea travel, when he left Mexico (via Tampico) for Cuba he traveled on a steamship. During his trip to South America about a decade later, he traveled by train.

The changes in transportation systems that took place between the periods that Humboldt and Bryce traveled to Latin America broach the issue of differences between the two men, one of which is related to the nature of their endeavors. A central element in Humboldt’s project was his empirical scientific approach, illustrated by his utilization of scientific instruments, taking measurements, collecting specimens, etc. Bryce’s project, while having some vaguely comparable elements, was more of a hybrid that had some groundings in Humboldt but also was distinct, representing a new paradigm. Before turning to Bryce’s new directions, let me mention similarities. Like Humboldt’s work, Bryce’s South America was a travelogue. The first half documented his travels to different countries and highlighted the natural environment, including references to plants, climates, altitudes, etc.³⁶ Furthermore, he did collect flowers during his travels and was interested in botany. However, he did not follow the Humboldtian style of utilizing scientific instruments (at least while he was traveling in Mexico, Jamaica, and Cuba in 1901).³⁷ Despite these comparisons, Bryce helped create a new scientific paradigm. After all, South America was not only a travelogue. The second half of it was more of a political science text, representing a different science paradigm than Humboldt’s, an academic or institutionalized social science, practiced in universities and research institutes.³⁸ The articles in this issue of TI by Toledo García (which highlights Bryce’s significance to the field of Latin American Studies) and Ledesma Alonso (which shows the way Bryce’s social science approach supported Empire) show that Bryce represented and practiced a different scientific paradigm than Humboldt. While Humboldt represented the scientist-explorer, Bryce was a forerunner to the twentieth-century academic specialist in “area studies” (more precisely, Latin American Studies).

Another difference between the two men was related to their understandings of race and societal development. Humboldt rejected the stadial model that was prominent during the Enlightenment. He also critiqued popular cultural diffusion models utilized to explain advanced American civilizations.³⁹ In contrast, as Ledesma Alonso’s article shows, Bryce adhered to evolutionary Darwinian notions that categorized groups as “advanced” and “backward,” a tendency that was especially evident, Ledesma Alonso writes, in Bryce’s The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.

Completing this special issue of TI would not have been possible without the support and help of others. Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank them, starting with the authors whose articles appear in this special issue: José Enrique Covarrubias, Robert Duncan, Ricardo Ledesma Alonso, and Itzel Toledo García. They were a pleasure to work with. Along with writing fine articles, they also generously responded (via email) to specific questions I had when I was writing my introduction. David A. J. Murrieta Flores translated José Enrique Covarrubias's article from Spanish to English. Laurie Corbin translated abstracts into French and Luis Robles Macías translated some of them into Spanish. My new editorial assistant Ashley Masoner helped with editing. With the assistance of our new assistant book review editor Austin Miller (who built an inventory of books for review), book review editor David Buisseret has curated another robust section of book reviews for this issue. Turning to an announcement, we have a new associate editor for TI, Dr. Meg Cotter-Lynch, Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. We are very happy to welcome her to the editorial team!

Notes

¹ For developments in the technology of sea travel, see Steve Mentz, “The Sea,” in The Routledge Companion of Travel Writings, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 454–63.

² See June Hahner, ed., Women through Women’s Eyes: Latin American Women in Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts (Lanham, MD: Scholarly Resources, 1998). Recent works that feature women include Nina Gerassi-Navarro, Women, Travel, and Science in Nineteenth-Century Americas (London: Palgrave, 2017); and Michelle Medieros, Gender, Science, and Authority in Women’s Travel Writing (London: Lexington Books, 2019).

³ For a comprehensive bibliography, see 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. For an overview see Jennifer Hayward, “Latin America,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 361–71.

⁴ See Mary Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

⁵ See Innes Keighren, “Book and Print Technology,” in The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Alasdair Pettinger and Tim Youngs (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 354–64; and Robin Jarvis, “Travel Writing: Reception and Readership,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 89–98.

⁶ Paul Smethurst, “Discoverers and Explorers,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 227–36.

⁷ Barbara Korte, “Western Travel Writing, 1750–1950,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 173–84.

⁸ Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).

⁹ See, for example, “Richard Vowell’s Not-so-Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Adventure in Nineteenth Century Hispanic America,” Journal of Latin American Studies 38, no. 1 (Feb. 2006), pp. 95–122.

¹⁰ Claire Lindsay, “Travel Writing and Postcolonial Studies,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 25–34.

¹¹ Dúnlaith Bird, “Travel Writing and Gender,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 42–3.

¹² Michelle Medieros, Gender, Science, and Authority in Women’s Travel Writing, pp. 1–19.

¹³ Ricardo Salvatore, “North American Travel Literature and the Ordering/Othering of South America,” Journal of Historical Sociology no. 1 (March 1996), pp. 85–110.

¹⁴ Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 115–31.

¹⁵ Lauren Beck, “Discovery through Native American Eyes: Columbus, Cabot, and Cortés,” Society for the History of Discoveries Annual Meeting, Gainesville, Florida, November 2019.

¹⁶ See section III “Sensuous geographies,” which includes chaps. 14–18 (entitled “Seeing”; “Hearing”; “Touching”; “Tasting”; and “Smelling”) in The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Alasdair Pettinger and Tim Youngs (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 191–62.

¹⁷ José Enrique Covarrubias, email message to author, 7 February 2020.

¹⁸ Moritz von Brescius, “Connecting the New World Nets, mobility and progress in the Age of Alexander von Humboldt,” International Review for Humboldtian Studies XIII, 25 (2012), pp. 11–34.

¹⁹ Anne Marie Claire Godlewska, Geography Unbound: Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 276–78.

²⁰ Laura Cházaro, “Medir la Política en la Nueva España de Alexander von Humboldt,” in Economía, ciencia y política. Estudios sobre Alexander von Humboldt a 200 años del Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España, eds. José Enrique Covarrubias and Matilde Souto Mantecón (Mexico City: UNAM/Instituto Mora, 2012), pp. 79–97.

²¹ 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.

²² Richard Weiner, “The Scramble for Mexico and Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain,” World History Connected 7: 3 (October, 2010). <http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/7.3/weiner.html>.

²³ On English investment see José Miranda, Humboldt y Mexico 2^nd ed. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1995), pp. 187–202.

²⁴ José Enrique Covarrubias and Matilde Souto Mantecón, eds., Economía, ciencia y política. Estudios sobre Alexander von Humboldt a 200 años del Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España (Mexico City: UNAM/Instituto Mora, 2012).

²⁵ See (to cite one of many examples) Laura Dassow Walls, The Passage of the Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

²⁶ Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Island of Cuba: a Critical Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 142–54.

²⁷ Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette, “Inventories and Inventions: Alexander von Humboldt’s Cuban Landscapes. An Introduction,” in Political Essay on the Island of Cuba: a Critical Edition, ed. Alexander von Humboldt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. xxii.

²⁸ Humboldt, Cuba, p. 132. This contrasted with Humboldt’s friend Thomas Jefferson, who advocated sending freed slaves back to Africa.

²⁹ Richard Weiner, “Redefining Mexico’s Riches: Representations of Wealth in Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain,” in Humboldt y otros viajeros científicos en América Latina, ed. Lourdes de Ita Rubio and Sánchez Díaz (Morelia: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2006), pp. 157–70.

³⁰ Erika Pani, “Dreaming of a Mexican Empire: The Political Project of the Imperialists,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 1 (2002), pp. 1–32.

³¹ Kutzinski and Ette, “Inventories and Inventions,” p. xii.

³² Humboldt, Cuba, pp. 203–9, 302–7.

³³ Robert Duncan, email message to author, 5 February 2020.

³⁴ Itzel Toledo García, “Mexico through the eyes of James and Marion Bryce,” Studies in Travel Writing 23, no. 2 (2019), pp. 139–57.

³⁵ José Enrique Covarrubias, “Alexander von Humboldt y James Bryce: una visión cosmopolita de Hispanoamérica en dos tránsitos de siglo,” in Escenarios de cultura entre dos siglos. España y México 1880–1920, eds. Aurora Cano Andaluz, Manuel Suárez Cortina and Evelia Trejo Estrada (Mexico: UNAM/Universidad de Cantabria, 2019), pp. 317–29.

³⁶ José Enrique Covarrubias, email message to author, 7 February 2020.

³⁷ Itzel Toledo García, email message to author, 10 February 2020.

³⁸ Ricardo Ledesma Alonso, email message to author, 9 February 2020.

³⁹ Nigel Leask, Curiosity and the Esthetics o Travel Writing 1770–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 269–71.