Ambrosio O’higgins’ Textual Cartography. The Geographic Value Of The Chilean Realm In His 1767 Project

Abstract

In 1767 Ambrosio O ́Higgins wrote a Project title “Description of the realm of Chile. Its products, commerce and people. Considerations towards its current state, and some dispositions regarding the reduction of the heathen Indians and the overtaking of his Majesty domains”. In this document, O ́Higgins describes a textual cartography about the resources, prospects and territorial threats to the colony of Chile. In his discourse, O ́Higgins integrates and classifies the geographic elements regarding their economic and geostrategic utility. The main aim of the article is to analyze O’Higgins’ representation and interpretation of the colonial Chilean territory, and to understand how the elements of the Enlightenment helped to build these representations. It is argued that O ́Higgins used the rhetoric of progress to describe and represent the Chilean landscape, building a new discourse by taking the traditional elements of the colonial geographic discourse, with the new narrative of the Enlightenment thought, in order to promote the security and Hispanic imperial sovereignty towards the south of the American continent. To complete this task, O ́Higgins proposes a course of action to control the territories of Araucanía, Patagonia and the South Pacific sea. The analysis of the document will enlighten the way in which O ́Higgins builds a narrative that focuses on the relevance of Chile in terms of its geographical and strategic value. Building on these ideas, the article proposes that geography and the development of the geographical thought were more significant in the Hispanic American illustration of what has hitherto been recognized by the historiography.

Keywords: Geography, territory, Enlightenment, Chile, pro-
ject.