Alexander Von Humboldt's Image and Influence in North American Geography, 1804–2004

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt is universally identified as a key figure in laying the foundations for modern geography. His main sites of research and scholarly production were centered on Europe, Latin America, and Russia. He drew on global sources of geographical data and knowledge in constructing and producing his voluminous works. Although he only briefly knew North America firsthand—at the outset of his career, in the late spring of 1804—he maintained a lifelong interest in the realm, especially in the United States. In turn, many North American scholars were admirers and followers of his perspectives, practices, and publications. Although geography did not emerge as an institutionally based discipline in the United States until the late nineteenth century, Humboldt's influence and impact on its antecedents were considerable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, his authority and influence in geography persisted well beyond Humboldt's death in 1859. His vision of demonstrating nature's unity in diversity and his enlightened views on social issues have continued to appeal to select sectors and actors in North American geography, especially Latin Americanists, historians of the discipline, and, more recently, proponents of an engaged, critical geography.

Bridging the Americas: Humboldtian Legacies

“…Or was he? Mathewson's (2006) article affords ample evidence of Humboldt's continuing influence on the many extensive scientific surveys conducted from Washington throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Humboldt's "America" was, of course, primarily New Spain rather than Anglo-America.…”

“…On 28 May Jefferson replied enthusiastically, and during Humboldt's subsequent visit to Washington he had ample opportunity to not only meet great men and charm some great women but also to offer highly valuable statistical, cartographic, and textual information on New Spain to Albert Gallatin, then secretary of the treasury. As Mathewson's (2006) article reveals, Humboldt's ideas influenced Jefferson's image of the trans-Mississippi West and his direction of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The articles in this special issue afford valuable insights into this transatlantic portion of Humboldt's intellectual journey.…”

Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: A Critical Edition; and Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas

“…Although we can admire his capacious mind as he compares, say, a Peruvian quipu (knotted cord for counting) to similar devices in China and among the Hurons in Canada, being less traveled and more intellectually local, we cannot always make the leap forward to Humboldt's general idea that all things are connected-not only across histories, continents, and cultures, but also between plants and humans within similar historical chorologies, as Mathewson (2006) has noted. But today, as Kutzinski and Ette want to suggest, we are finally in a position to run alongside Humboldt and appreciate as never before the global referential matrix and planetary consciousness that his vast oeuvre offers as its ultimate spectacle.…”

Full Issue PDF Volume 1, Issue 4

“…Although we can admire his capacious mind as he compares, say, a Peruvian quipu (knotted cord for counting) to similar devices in China and among the Hurons in Canada, being less traveled and more intellectually local, we cannot always make the leap forward to Humboldt's general idea that all things are connected-not only across histories, continents, and cultures, but also between plants and humans within similar historical chorologies, as Mathewson (2006) On the other hand, for painters, poets, and travelers of the Romantic period, mountains and volcanoes became, along with the sea, a defining topos.…”