‘Padres de la Patria’ and the ancestral past: commemorations of independence in nineteenth-century Spanish America

This article examines the civic festivals held in nineteenth-century Spanish America to commemorate independence from Spain. Through such festivals political leaders hoped, in Hobsbawm's words, ‘to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’. But when did the ‘past’ begin? If in nineteenth-century France the French Revolution was the time of history, in Spanish America there was no consensus on when history began. The debates about national origins embedded within the nineteenth-century civic festival not only suggest how political elites viewed their Patrias but also shed light on the position of indigenous culture (usually separated hygienically from indigenous peoples themselves) within the developing national histories of post-independence Spanish America

Consumption and excess in Spanish America (1700-1830)

It may be said without exaggeration, that the finest stuffs made in countries, where industry is always inventing something new, are more generally seen in Lima than in any other place; vanity and ostentation not being restrained by custom or law. With this grand overstatement the Spanish travellers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa summed up their account of fashion in 1740s Lima. Dress in the capital of colonial Peru, according to these men, differed from that of Europe only in its extravagance. European goods and clothing, they insisted, were widely available, which allowed the ladies of Lima to indulge their immoderate taste for Flemish lace and pearls, to the ruination of their husbands. Such was these women’s passion for finery that they often succumbed to uterine cancer, brought on, the travellers were certain, by ‘their excessive use of perfumes’

Potatoes and the Hispanic enlightenment

Among the new publications tempting Spanish readers in 1785, alongside a comedy about jealous women, a how-to manual on forensic surgery, and a 600-page translation of the rulings of the Council of Trent, was a modest pamphlet about potatoes. Its author was an expatriate Irishman, Henry (or Enrique) Doyle. Doyle had for some decades resided in Spain, pursuing an undistinguished career in textile manufacturing. He had also drafted several essays on religious themes, with no impact whatsoever on the Spanish reading public. His writings on potatoes, however, were a phenomenal success. The 1785 pamphlet was followed in 1797 by a longer treatise issued with royal approbation at the behest of several important ministers, which was into its fourth edition by 1804. Newspapers and journals hailed Doyle as a patriotic and enlightened contributor to public happiness and seconded his ambition of extending potato cultivation across the length and breadth of Spain

Potatoes and the pursuit of happiness

Eating acquired a new political importance during the Enlightenment, as writers began to link individual diets to the strength and wealth of nations. This article examines the eighteenth-century career of a foodstuff that became emblematic of these developments: the potato. Politicians, statesmen, and philosophers across Europe enthusiastically promoted the potato as a means of strengthening the body politic. They framed this promotion within a language of choice and the individual pursuit of happiness. In so doing they laid the foundations for today's debates about how to balance personal dietary autonomy with the demands of public health. The roots of the current neoliberal insistence that healthy eating is fundamentally a matter of individual choice thus lie in the Enlightenment

The pleasures of taxonomy : Casta paintings, classification and colonialism

‘The number of these natural productions is so great, their forms are so varied, the connections between them so loose and sometimes so difficult to perceive, that one is often uncertain how to determine the characteristics that constitute a Genus . . . and one is confronted by Species that do not fit into any established Genus, or that seem to belong to several at once.’ These were the challenges facing the Ecuadorean savant Pedro Franco Dávila as he sought to organize his vast collection of stones, minerals, fishes, plants and other natural objects into a coherent classification. Franco Dávila, born in Guayaquil in the early eighteenth century to wealthy parents, devoted much of his life to amassing a vast, and vastly admired, collection of natural objects, which later came to form the core of the Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Madrid, of which Franco Dávila was the first director. In the 1760s he composed a three-volume catalogue of some of his collection; it was here that he offered his thoughts on the difficulty of reducing the diversity of the earth’s myriad productions to a single taxonomic system. A ‘simple, well ordered distribution’ of each species into its correct genus and each genus into its family illuminated the relationship between the different elements, but was no simple task

Potatoes, populations, and states

Today, dietary guidelines, healthy-eating pyramids, and other nutritional advice are a familiar and expected feature of governance. It was not always so. What we eat has not always been of such interest to the state. That people ate was of course very important; since ancient times rulers have feared the disruptive effects of famine. The minutiae of what ordinary folk ate, in contrast, was rarely considered an important component of statecraft. Over the course of the eighteenth century, however, the diet of working people acquired an unprecedented importance within European notions of statecraft, because of its perceived capacity to foster or impede the development of a higher-quality population. This article reviews these developments, to show how during the Enlightenment, everyday eating habits acquired political relevance. Although scholars often identify the twentieth century as the period when food became an object of governance, food's important instrument of modern statecraft has a much longer history

Food, colonialism and the quantum of happiness

In 1799 a group of wealthy women in Madrid began a decade-long experiment aimed at discovering the best substitute for breast milk. The ladies, members of the Junta de Damas affiliated with Madrid’s Royal Economic Society, had taken over the management of the city’s foundling hospital, which provided motivation for their investigation and a ready supply of infants on whom to test their experimental formulas. Unable to find enough wet-nurses for the hundreds of babies now in its charge, the Junta explored substitutes, including goat’s milk, goat’s milk mixed with fennel, and donkey’s milk drunk directly from the animal’s teat. Members kept notes on the outcome of their tests and discussed the results with doctors from the Royal Academy of Medicine. Disappointingly, almost all the babies died. The Junta was therefore eager..

The political economy of nutrition in the eighteenth century

Eighteenth-century European writers frequently described foods as ‘nourishing’. Nourishing foods were acknowledged to play a central role in building the healthy, energetic populations identified as key to commercial and political success, but their objective scientific characterisation proved impossible. In practice, only the people actually eating the food could determine its nutritive power. Eighteenth-century nutrition was perforce a form of embodied knowledge, not a set of scientific facts. This article contrasts nutrition's unquestioned importance to enlightened political and economic discourse with its evolving position within scientific and vernacular systems of knowledge. Despite intense investigation of food chemistry, the embodied experience of eaters remained stubbornly central to all discussion of a food’s ability to nourish. The vernacular nutritional evaluations of ordinary people infiltrated more lofty discussions of diet to create an uneasy and unequal dialogue. Elite schemes to promote particular foodstuffs as suitable for the labouring population thus relied not simply on the expert opinions of scientists, but also on the bodies and opinions of the very people at whom these campaigns were aimed. Only in the nineteenth century was nutrition converted into an objective, quantifiable object of knowledge

Algunos pensamientos sobre “El indio borracho“ en el imaginario criollo

Desde el comienzo del período colonial, escritores españoles y criollos de toda Hispanoamérica sostenían que la embriaguez era una característica esencial de la cultura indígena. Estas reflexiones presentan una interpretación de ese discurso. A través de una comparación de discusiones coloniales y decimonónicas sobre el papel de alcohol dentro de la cultura indígena, trazo la evolución de la figura del ‘indio borracho’ en el discurso de la élite e interpreto la persistencia de esa figura dentro de la imaginación criolla.Since the early colonial era Spanish and creole writers from across Spanish America have alleged that drunkenness was a defining characteristic of indigenous culture. This essay offers an interpretation of that torrent of discourse. Through a comparison of nineteenth-century and colonial discussions of indigenous drinking the essay excavates the changing contours of the elite understanding of the ‘drunken Indian’, and considers the reasons for that figure’s persistent vitality within the creole imagination.Desde o começo do período colonial, escritores espanhóis e criollos (Homens Bons) de toda América Espanhola sustentavam que a embriaguez era uma característica essencial da cultura indígena. Estas reflexões apresentam uma interpretação desse discurso. A partir de uma comparação de discursos coloniais do século XIX sobre o papel do álcool dentro da cultura indígena, traço a evolução da figura do “indio borracho” (índio bêbado) no discurso da elite e interpreto a persistência dessa figura dentro da imaginação criolla