The Kingdom of Guatemala in the late eighteenth century was a paradox. It was simultaneously rich and poor, according to its colonial administrators, priests, merchants, and ordinary residents. It was a 'kingdom of vast extension' that should by all accounts be a wealthy province within the Spanish empire, as puzzled observers noted. As the Spanish administrative region spanning modern-day Chiapas, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, it had great natural advantages, from being a place where 'the most exquisite fruits of all climes grow in abundance' to possessing harbours on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Indeed, it might well be 'the best of all the King's possessions'. 1 Yet, as a contributor to Guatemala's newspaper remarked in 1803, 'this kingdom, which should be one of the most prosperous, is one of the most miserable ones in America'. How to square these contradictions, and help fulfil the true potential of the region, was the mission of a group of reformers who came together in patriotic associations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They believed that geographical, climatic, botanical, agricultural, and demographic knowledge held the key to 'enlightened' progress. True patriots would not just be content with gathering such knowledge. Instead, theirs was a practical Enlightenment that would offer prosperity by applying scientific knowledge to the management of landscapes. As this book argues, Central American reformers found the meaning of a homeland not in abstract ideas of idealised national landscapes, but in experiential engagement with them.By the early nineteenth century, reformers imagined a new region, one that was self-confidently connected to the rest of the world through scientific communication networks, and one whose inhabitants were dedicated to developing its bountiful landscapes into ever more prosperous spaces. Although patriotic identities of the eighteenth century map onto nineteenth-century nationalisms imprecisely at best, the legacy of new visions of Central 2
