The French Botanist Aimé Bonpland and Paleontology at Cuenca Del Plata

2002 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Ottone

Mainly recognized in his role of naturalist-explorer by his travels with Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), and so by his studies on tropical plants from Central and South America, the French botanist Aimé Bonpland (1773-1858) pursued important paleontological investigations in Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. In the early nineteenth century, when the earth sciences were just developing at Cuenca del Plata, Bonpland collected invertebrates, mammal bones, and petrified wood. Most of his findings have never been published. A part of his collections has been held at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris since 1837. Alcide d'Orbigny (1802-1857) studied the pelecypods collected by Bonpland in Entre Ríos province, Argentina, and named a species in his honor: Arca bonplandiana d'Orbigny.

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul White

ArgumentDarwin's narrative of the earthquake at Concepción, set within the frameworks of Lyellian uniformitarianism, romantic aesthetics, and the emergence of geology as a popular science, is suggestive of the role of the sublime in geological enquiry and theory in the early nineteenth century. Darwin's Beagle diary and later notebooks and publications show that the aesthetic of the sublime was both a form of representing geology to a popular audience, and a crucial structure for the observation and recording of the event from the beginning. The awesome spectacle of the earthquake proved in turn the magnitude of the forces at stake in earth history, and helped to make geology an epic conjoining the history of civilization with the history of the earth.


Author(s):  
Sarah Collins

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (139) ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Henrique Espada Lima

Abstract This article examines postmortem inventories and notarial records from Brazilian slaveholders in southern Brazil in the nineteenth century. By discussing selected cases in detail, it investigates the relationship between “precarious masters” (especially the poor and/or disabled, widows without family, and single elderly slaveholding women and men) and their slaves and former slaves to whom they bequeathed, in their testaments and final wills, manumission and property. The article reads these documents as intergenerational contractual arrangements that connected the masters’ expectations for care in illness and old age with the slaves’ and former slaves’ expectations for compensation for their work and dedication. Following these uneven relationships of interdependence and exploitation as they developed over time, the article suggests a reassessment of the role of paternalism in Brazil during the country’s final century of slavery. More than a tool to enforce relations of domination, paternalism articulated with the dynamics of vulnerability and interdependency as they changed over the life courses of both enslaved people and slave owners. This article shows how human aging became a terrain of negotiation and struggle as Brazilian slave society transformed throughout the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.


Author(s):  
Jason W. Smith

This chapter examines the origins of navigational science in the American maritime culture of the early nineteenth century, in marine societies, and in the U.S. Navy, linking the institutionalization of naval science to the broader expansion of American maritime commerce and the evolving role of science in the federal government more broadly. The chapter argues that naval scientists, surveyors, and cartographers saw their work as bringing empirical rationality to a watery wilderness, imposing cartographic order over nature and an appropriation of space in the interests of American maritime commerce. In the process, they aimed to replace folkloric and experiential navigational understandings deeply held by the American seafaring community with a growing embrace of science institutionalized in the federal government and in the American navy specifically.


Author(s):  
Michelle McCann

This chapter examines the function, status and qualifications of the men that served in the role of county coroner in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This remains an under-researched area when compared to other local government figures of authority. The history of the office exposes tensions within a politically polarised society and the need for changes in legislation. A combination of factors initially undermined the social standing and reputation of coroners. An examination of the legislation on coroners that the administration subsequently introduced suggests that the authority of the office in early-nineteenth-century Ireland was not strictly jurisprudential, but political and confessional by nature. By analysing the personal background, work experience, social standing, political alliances and religious patronage of coroner William Charles Waddell (1798-1878), the paper charts the wider social and political narrative that allowed this eminently respectable Presbyterian figure to secure the role of coroner of County Monaghan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mareite

Abstract Chile’s abolition of slavery (1823) has commonly been framed within a self-congratulatory narrative that emphasizes the philanthropic role of republican elites and the peaceful nature of slave emancipation. The traditional narrative not only views abolition as an ideologically inspired gift from the elites, but also underscores Chile’s exceptionalism vis-à-vis other South American emancipation processes—in Chile, unlike in the rest of the continent, the eradication of slavery was supposedly both politically and socially insignificant. This article challenges two of this narrative’s assumptions: first, that consensus characterized the abolition of slavery in Chile, and second, that abolition was simply a philanthropic concession from the new nation’s republican elites. Instead, this study highlights how officials, slaveholders and enslaved people transformed slavery and its dismantlement into a contested issue. It also explores the proactive role that enslaved people played in undermining the institution of slavery throughout Chile, ultimately leading to its abolition.


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