Mapping Nature in New Granada, 1739-1830
- The time span of the project is 1739 and 1830 and the region of interest is northern South America-contemporary Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama.
- The objective is to provide scholars, students, and a general audience with a visual interface to navigate and analyze boundary changes and the changing landscape of economic development: agriculture, mining, manufacture economies, and commercial communication networks.
- Mapping Nature will also feature a repository of indexed digitized documents with a selection of historical sources including economic writings, natural histories, territorial surveys, geographic descriptions, and cartographic materials.
- Mapping Nature will work as a tool that can be put into use in research and teaching of environmental, economic, and political history.
- Mapping Nature in New Granada builds on my own dissertation research that explores the intersections between political economy, space, knowledge about nature, and geopolitics during the crisis and dissolution of the Spanish empire.
The project is currently in a phase of experimentation with digital tools such as Cartodb and Neatline. This is a long term project that need of the collaboration of other scholars, computer scientists, designers, and history and geography students. I am looking for support. If you are interested in knowing more or collaborate send me a message in the "Contact section"