A Life in Shadow: Aimé Bonpland in Southern South America, 1817–1858

Abstract

When historians write about Alexander von Humboldt, it is not uncommon to see a small reference to Aimé Bonpland, the French naturalist who accompanied him in his travels through the American continent between 1799 and 1804. Stephen Bell’s book convincingly shows that Bonpland deserves much more than a quick footnote in the historical studies of nineteenth-century European and Latin American natural history, science, and agriculture. In a wonderfully researched study, Bell traces Bonpland’s life between 1817, the year he returned to South America, and 1858, when he died on his own estancia in Argentina.Bonpland was a multifaceted character, and the book re-creates his many interests and the many ways in which he interacted with Argentine, Brazilian, Uruguayan, and Paraguayan societies. Next to his studies in botany and plant acclimatization, which guided much of his life and his many travels in Latin America, the French naturalist became an active, although not always successful, entrepreneur with varied agricultural interests. He made efforts to understand and improve the production of yerba mate and put a lot of resources in raising merinos, an activity that would flourish in midcentury Argentina. Bonpland felt at ease among members of Buenos Aires’s elite society as much as he did among indigenous populations on Paraguayan or Brazilian soil. More important, Bell shows that politics were an important part of Bonpland’s experience in South America. The French naturalist, like most naturalists and scientists, was far from being apolitical. On the contrary, Bonpland was highly aware of the context in which he lived and became involved in the dynamics of a region that was looking for stability in the midst of postindependence politics. The fact that he spent almost ten years, between 1821 and 1831, as a political prisoner of dictator José Gaspar de Francia in Paraguay, as well as his political action and opposition to Juan Manuel de Rosas during one of Argentina’s civil wars, exemplifies this point and give us much insight into Bonpland’s complex character.The greatest strength of the book is the superb research in archives and primary sources carried out by the author. As mentioned above, and as Bell aptly puts it in the title of the book, Bonpland lived in the shadow of Humboldt. The fact that Humboldt published many more works than Bonpland may explain this in part. Yet Bonpland was a prolific writer. He wrote numerous accounts, letters, and journals. This is precisely what Bell discovered in numerous archival collections. Bell also gives us a lesson in deep and thorough historical research. In his efforts to trace Bonpland’s life in South America he travelled to a wide variety of cities and regions — including Buenos Aires, Asunción, Paris, London, Rio Grande do Sul, and New York — and explored archives in several institutions including natural history museums, botanical gardens, universities, and national archives.The book’s greatest shortcoming is that it could have expanded its analysis of one of the main objectives stated in the introduction. Bell explains that in Bonpland’s story “there is some potential to help redress Eurocentric biases in the historiography of exploration” (p. 16). Although I agree that there is still much to do to revise this bias, Bell also ignores relevant literature, particularly in the history of science, that has pursued important revisions by looking at the ways in which Latin Americans — as well as Africans and Asians — not only adopted but also influenced the work of explorers, naturalists, and scientists in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By failing to acknowledge these works he misses an opportunity to enrich his analysis. Bonpland was one of those rare characters that mingled with the locals and natives for many decades while still remaining true to his European background. The fact that he seemed to be a perfect intermediary deserves explicit analysis and is a topic that could develop the above-mentioned historiographies. Likewise, Bonpland was an intermediary in more than one way. The way in which he helped exchange seeds and plants between South America and the French colony of Algiers says much about south-south relations in the nineteenth century; once again, this could be a topic with more analysis in the book and in dialogue with historiographies of science, exploration, and imperialism.Bell has produced an excellent work that will interest many scholars. By constantly and aptly contextualizing Bonpland’s life the book turns out to be about much more than just this French naturalist; rather, it conveys important reflections on southern South American history.