The Enlightenment in Iberia and Ibero-America by Brian Hamnett

Author:Brian Hamnett [Hamnett, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, General
ISBN: 9781786830470
Google: U-yVDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2017-03-23T00:26:54+00:00

Chapter 7

Issues and Personalities of the Peruvian Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment entered Peru by several means – books brought on ships unloading in Callao, through the contraband trades, from Peruvians returning from Spain or elsewhere in Europe, from peninsular clerics and administrators, or from merchants or mining technologists and scientific explorers. As a result, ideas associated with the Enlightenment circulated widely in Peru among the reading classes and those who listened to them. The Inquisition was aware of the circulation of prohibited books and that prominent figures had them in their libraries and, one supposes, read them from time to time. The Royal Order of 10 August 1785, to which Viceroy Teodoro de Croix (1784–90) instructed strict compliance, sought to tighten book and newspaper censorship, including in the University. Royal Regulations of 2 October 1788 and 5 April 1790 intended to reinforce this ruling. Three regulations of a similar nature within the space of 5 years suggest inability to enforce them effectively. Croix’s successor, Francisco Gil de Taboada y Lemos (1790–5), nevertheless, authorised the establishment of four newspapers, including El Diario de Lima, Spanish America’s first daily newspaper.1

Characteristics of the Enlightenment in Peru

The principal thrust of the Enlightenment went towards the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge about the natural world of Peru and how to utilise more effectively its resources. The French Scientific Expedition of 1735–44, sponsored by the French Academy, took with it two young Spanish naval lieutenants and scientists, Jorge Juan y Santacilia and Antonio de Ulloa, the former from Alicante and the latter from Seville. From Cartagena in New Granada, where Ulloa identified platinum as a specific element in 1735, the expedition travelled to Quito, as we have seen. Both held naval commands at some stages of their careers: both enjoyed the patronage of the Marqués de la Ensenada during the reign of Ferdinand VI. Juan promoted naval construction in Spain during the 1750s and established the Royal Astronomical Observatory in Madrid in 1757. Ulloa, who had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1746, during his brief captivity by the British, established the first laboratory for mineralogy in Spain in 1748. The metropolitan government directed Ulloa’s subsequent career towards administration in the Indies, where he became Governor of Huancavelica in 1758–64, with specific charge of rehabilitating the mercury mines, which supplied the silver-mining industry of Potosí for the amalgamation process. The two men acquired a considerable reputation outside Spain through their manuscript, ‘Confidential Reports from America’, in 1749, which the government immediately suppressed in Spain. In this work, they exposed the inefficiency and corruption that plagued the colonial system.2

Descriptions of Peruvian topography appeared at stages. In 1761, José Eusebio Llano Zapata published his ‘Historical, Physical, Critical and Apologetic Reports on Southern America’, dedicated to Charles III, which laid the basis for subsequent refinements. Llano, who originated from Lima had been a pupil of the Jesuits and had access to the library of their San Pablo Principal College (founded in 1568), the most well stocked of its time in Ibero-America.

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