Bøger i Cambridge Library Collection - Latin American Studies serien

The American artist George Catlin (1796-1872) travelled extensively and wrote about his experiences. After abandoning the legal profession, Catlin moved to Missouri in 1830 to launch his career as a painter of Native Americans with the express purpose of creating a gallery dedicated to America's indigenous population. He was greatly influenced by the Romantic ideal of the 'noble savage' and spent time living with various tribes, recording their everyday life and habits. In the 1850s, he also made three trips to South America and began to draw comparisons between the populations. He shares his thoughts in this work, published in 1868. Written for children and intended as a follow-up to his Life amongst the Indians (1861), the book is a mixture of legend, history, folklore and anecdotes of personal experience. Sometimes regarded as a pioneer of American anthropology, Catlin also outlines his ethnographical theories in the last few chapters.

An important figure in British commercial mineralogy, John Mawe (1766-1829) first published this work in 1812; reissued here is the 1821 revised edition. Mawe and his wife ran a mineral-dealing business, based in Derby with a shop in London. Collecting specimens for the aristocracy, advising on explorations, and going on gathering tours, he also wrote on Derbyshire mineralogy, the South Seas, diamonds, geology and conchology. This book covers his voyage to South America in 1804, including his expedition in 1809 to the gold and diamond mining areas of Brazil. It also describes the local climate, people, natural history, trade and agriculture, and the splendour of such cities as Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. A bestseller, found on library shelves across Europe - and aboard the Beagle with Charles Darwin - the book remains relevant in the history of mineralogy and will appeal to non-specialists interested in South American adventure.

Benjamin Moseley (1742-1819) was an English doctor who left England and spent eighteen years working in Kingston, Jamaica. His time there coincided with the massive expansion of sugar production on the island. Drawing on his own experience as well as an extensive range of classical and contemporary published sources, Moseley presents a lively history of the cultivation and use of sugar cane. The work, first published in 1799 and expanded in this second edition in 1800, discusses the origins of the plant and its later cultivation and development in the Americas, as well as the popularity of refined sugar. Special attention is devoted to the plant's medicinal uses. Moseley also became known for his outspoken opposition to the growing practice of vaccination, and he uses a medical essay in the appendix of this book to launch an attack on the effectiveness of cowpox in inoculations.

During 1834-5 the British naval officer and artist William Smyth (1800-77) and his fellow officer Frederick Lowe (1811-47) went on an expedition to Peru and North-Eastern Brazil. This account of their journey, first published in 1836, combines a travel narrative with anthropological observation. Their objective was to explore the river Pachitea in Peru and investigate its potential as a route from the Andes via the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean that could reduce journey times and benefit Peruvian exports. The tone of the book is typical of early nineteenth-century European travel literature, in that it shows the authors to have been fascinated by the cultures they encountered while retaining a deep mistrust of the indigenous 'savages' some of whom were held to be 'cannibals'. It is, however, full of fascinating details about the rainforest and its inhabitants, the colonial settlers, and their interactions.

Published in 1824, the journal of Maria Graham (1785-1842) depicts one woman's immersion in the culture and society of post-independence Chile. Graham, known later as Lady Callcott, travelled through India and Europe as well as South America, and her writings and reflections on these regions and their cultures, as well as other historical works, established her reputation both as a writer and later as an art historian. Graham outlines the parameters of her work in her preface and her historical Introduction: she is interested not only in what has happened to the Chileans, but in what the future holds for them and their new nation. Graham's writing reveals sensitivity to the sentimental, romantic, and gothic trends among her contemporaries, and her Journal benefits from her literary awareness.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the most respected scientists of his time; Darwin called him 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. From 1799 Humboldt spent five years exploring the Americas, reporting his findings in thirty volumes, published over a period of more than twenty years from 1805. His Essai Politique, describing northern New Spain, particularly Mexico, was one of the first studies of a single country written to take account of both its history, its society and its political development. In 1824, the English mining engineer John Taylor published this abridged translation, combining it with passages from Humboldt's Geognostical Essay on the Superposition of Rocks in order to provide a focussed account of Mexico's mining concerns and opportunities. Including detailed maps, this work contains exhaustive statistics, particularly with regard to trade, agriculture and mining, alongside geographical studies and observations on the population and government.

Clements R. Markham (1830-1916) began his career in the Royal Navy, sailing to South America, learning Spanish, and participating in the Arctic search for Sir John Franklin. In 1852, determined to succeed as an explorer and geographer, he travelled to Peru and visited the site of the ancient city of Cuzco, previously little known in Europe. Published in 1856, this is Markham's lively account of his travels. In his description of arriving in Panama we see a picture of the mid-nineteenth-century eagerness to explore (or exploit) Latin America. Markham's stay in Cuzco allowed him ample time to study the ruins and research the lost Inca civilisation, and also gave him his introduction to the properties of the cinchona plant, a source of quinine, which he later returned to collect and introduce to India, as described in his 1862 Travels in Peru and India (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection).

Leonora Mary Hassal Sansay (b. 1781), also known as Mary Hassal, was U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr's niece. This work, first published in 1808, takes the form of a series of letters to her uncle, describing the events which she witnessed between 1802 and 1805 in the French colony of St Domingo, which became the Republic of Haiti in 1804 after a fierce revolution. A large French army under General Leclerc was sent by Napoleon to retake the colony from the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture and his army. Hassal depicts life under the French occupation, and also in Cuba and Jamaica, to which many settlers from St Domingo fled. She comments particularly on the position and occupations of women, but regrets their subjection to and dependence on men. The tone is anecdotal, but the volume will be of interest to social historians as an eyewitness account of a turbulent period.

William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888) was a renowned traveller and Arabic scholar. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1846 he received a lieutenant's commission in the 8th Bombay Regiment of native infantry, but he converted to Roman Catholicism, and settled in Syria as a missionary in 1855, during which time he travelled across Arabia. After renouncing Catholicism in 1865, he began a career with the British foreign service, working in several positions in the Far East. This volume, first published in 1876, contains Palgrave's account of his visit to Dutch Guiana, now the South American country of Suriname. Arranging his material according to geographic location, Palgrave describes in detail the society and geography of the country, discussing the treatment of former slaves and describing the unique Maroon culture of former slaves and indigenous people. This volume provides fascinating information on the society and culture of this uniquely diverse country.

The daughter of a naval officer, throughout her life Maria Graham (later Callcott) combined her passion for adventure with a diligent attention to scholarship and self-improvement. A talented linguist, children's author, travel writer and self-confessed 'tomboy', by the time Journal of a Voyage to Brazil was published in 1824 she had already penned successful travel diaries for both India and Italy. A perceptive observer, her accessible style made her popular with readers in Britain. Here, Graham combines a history of Brazil with her personal impressions of the politics and people of Madeira, Tenerife, and South America. A friend of Turner and Eastlake, her own artistic talents are evident in the numerous plates that punctuate her vivid account. From slave markets to dragon trees and graveyards, every significant aspect of her personal experiences and observations is relayed to the reader in an absorbing succession of words and images.

Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875) known as 'Galloping Head', was a soldier who later served as lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, but who was dismissed from his post when rebellion broke out there in 1837. Before this, he had tried unsuccessfully to set up a mining company in Argentina. It is from this period of his life that the characteristically entitled Rough Notes Taken During Some Rapid Journeys Across the Pampas and Among the Andes (published in 1826) were written, in a headlong and jocular style which belies the actual hardships of his journey. Part of the interest of the account today lies in the fact that Charles Darwin had read it and referred to it frequently and admiringly in his letters home as he traversed the same country six years later: 'Do you know Head's book? it gives an excellent account of the manners of this country'.

A friend of Charles Darwin and a social activist respected by John Stuart Mill, Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) was an outstanding nineteenth-century intellectual. Wallace, renowned in his time as the co-discoverer of natural selection, was a young schoolteacher when he began his exciting career as an explorer-naturalist, and set off for Brazil in 1848 with Henry Walter Bates. A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853) is the stimulating and engaging result of this first expedition and a precursor to his best-selling Malay Archipelago (1869). The depth and breadth of Wallace's observations in this book as naturalist, anthropologist and geologist are remarkable, and it is tantalising to learn that half his notes and 'the greater part of [his] collections and sketches' were lost at sea when his ship was burned on his voyage home.

The acclaimed Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was referred to by Charles Darwin as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. During his voyage aboard the Beagle, Darwin acquired a copy of this two-volume 1811 New York edition of Humboldt's account of the land and people of Mexico.

The British naval officer George Francis Lyon (1795-1832) survived extremes of African heat and Arctic cold during his colourful career. In 1826 he sailed to Mexico as a commissioner for an English mining company. This vivid and often entertaining two-volume account of his experiences was published in 1828.

Naval officer Basil Hall (1788-1844) joined the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen and had postings around the globe. This is the two-volume revised 1824 third edition of his 1823 account relating to his final commission to South America and Mexico. Darwin later had it with him aboard the Beagle.

Romantic poet Robert Southey (1774-1843) was poet laureate from 1813 to 1843. He was also a noted Portuguese scholar and between 1810 and 1819 published this influential three-volume work. Volume 1 begins with the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1500 and concludes in 1639.

Juan Ignacio Molina (1740-1829) was a Jesuit priest born in Chile who later lived in Italy. His 'natural and civil histories' of his homeland were published between 1782 and 1786, and translated into this two-volume English edition in 1809. Volume 1 covers the natural history of Chile.

First published in 1825, this account, by a British diplomat posted to Brazil, describes the geography, politics, trade, and peoples of a continent undergoing rapid change. Volume 1 focuses on agriculture and everyday life, and records Caldcleugh's impressions of the province of Buenos Aires and of Chile.

In 1903 the Norwegian ethnographer and explorer Carl Lumholtz (1851-1922) published this two-volume account of the five years he spent living among indigenous tribes in the remote mountains of north-west Mexico. Volume 1 focuses on his search for the Tarahumare people, who inhabited mountainside cave dwellings.

This three-volume work, published in 1825, describes W. B. Stevenson's colourful experiences in colonial Chile, Colombia and Peru as a traveller, a prisoner, a provincial governor and a revolutionary. It gives a dramatic account of society and culture in South America as the movement for independence from Spanish rule gathered pace.

Antonio de Ulloa (1716-95) was a Spanish scientist who joined the French geodesic mission to South America between 1735 and 1744. These volumes contain the English translation of his description of South America (first published in 1758), in the fourth edition of 1806.

This account of the Schomburgk brothers' expedition to British Guiana, to survey and collect, between 1840 and 1844, was published in Germany in 1847-1848. They penetrated deep into the interior, and studied native tribes as well as flora and fauna. The account of the latter was considered particularly important.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a respected scientist whose meticulous approach to scientific observation greatly influenced later research. This two volume work, published in French in 1810 and in English translation in 1814, vividly describes his travels in Latin America and the landscapes and indigenous cultures he encountered there.

This two-volume 1904 edition of Diaz del Castillo's history of the Spanish conquest of Mexico was based on the original manuscript. Diaz del Castillo's highly accessible eyewitness account, written from the viewpoint of a common soldier, first appeared in 1632 and became even more successful than the official chronicles.

John Miers' Travels in Chile (1826) is the account of his travels and residence in Chile between 1818 and 1825 and his investigations into the cultural, political, and geographical aspects of the country. It is a rich source for botanical information and offers an insight into Victorian perceptions of Chile.

The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) travelled to South America in 1799. Five years of research there resulted in numerous publications. This seven-volume English translation of his Relation historique du voyage (1814-25) appeared between 1814 and 1829. Volume 7 (1829) focuses on Cuba and Colombia.

This study of Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and South America was first published in 1810.

Published in 1824, this two-volume English translation covers Spix and Martius's Brazilian expedition up to May 1818. As well as discussing the region's natural history, the work provides a valuable contemporary account of indigenous peoples and their customs, including observations on agriculture and industry.

A Franciscan missionary to the Aztecs in 1529, Friar Bernardino Sahagun is considered 'the father of ethnology', as his study was the first to derive from the subjects' own point of view. The largest and most richly detailed account of the Aztecs' customs, religion and language before the Spanish conquest.

The journals of the foot soldier Bernal Diaz (1492-1584) are the fullest surviving eyewitness account of the Mexican conquest led by Hernan Cortes. In this first volume, Diaz recounts his first expeditions to the Yucatan coast and the beginning of his service in Cortes' army.