Geography, Identity and the Creation of the Argentine State

Abstract

The recent trend towards writing contextual accounts of geography, exploration and empire in the nineteenth century has attracted considerable attention from geographers (e.g. Heffernan, 1990; Driver and Rose, 1992) and other scholars (e.g. Said, 1993). Driver (1991: 135) has usefully summarised the attraction of such an approach: 'The history of exploration has until recently been dominated by two sorts of historical writing: biographies... and somewhat Whiggish general histories, which have tended to celebrate the triumph of modern geographical science over the mysteries of the Earth. Neither of these approaches is particularly well equipped to meet the requirements of a more contextual perspective ... emphasising in particular the relationships between exploration and empire.'1 The nineteenth century was a time of great expansion in the numbers of national geographical societies created worldwide. This growth in profes? sional societies numbered 53 with at least 30 coming into existence between 1875 and 1880 (Schneider, 1990; Mackenzie, 1992). Most of the existing research has been concentrated on the European and North American geographical societies. As a consequence, we have been served with many studies that have tended to focus on geographical activities in Africa and the Middle East and the 'scramble' in the nineteenth century to accrue commercial advantage in those regions (e.g. Bridges, 1982; Stone, 1988; Heffernan, 1989,1990; Driver, 1991). I propose, however, to focus on one of the lesser-known nineteenthcentury national geographical societies: the Argentine Geographical Institute.11 hope through this investigation to highlight two major themes. First, to acknowledge the importance of the AGI in contributing to the physical delimitation of the republic. Second, and as a consequence, the paper stresses that the codification of geographical knowledge was bound up with issues of power and identity. In particular, the endeavours of Argentine geographers and surveyors in Patagonia or the Chaco were of great importance in claiming seemingly 'empty spaces' for the Argentine Republic. The instruments of power in this process were the map and survey.2 I believe that a focus on the issues of geography and national identity in nineteenth-century Argentina has two important ramifications. First, this example provides a useful source of reference from which I can address some of the issue raised by Kearns (1984) over closed space theories.31 do not, however, intend to focus on specific Argentine geographical theorists such as

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