Birds of Empire, Birds of Nation: A History of Science, Economy, and Conservation in United States-Colombia Relations

Abstract

Birds of Empire, Birds of Nation adds to a growing literature on the history of science in Latin America. Focusing on the period from 1880 to 1960, Quintero Toro examines the trade in birds between Colombia and the United States and considers the wider implications of this exchange of specimens and knowledge. Colombia is home to an incredibly diverse population of birds, from the handsome toucans displayed on the book’s cover to the tiny hummingbird. Birds of Empire explores how these enchanting creatures became subjects of study for both Colombian and US naturalists, functioning by turns as a source of national pride and a vehicle for cultural imperialism.Birds of Empire’s primary focus is on scientific exchange between Colombia and the United States. This frames the discussion in chapters 2 and 3. In the early twentieth century several US-organized scientific expeditions visited Colombia to collect natural history specimens, including birds, for major museums like New York’s American Museum of Natural History and Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. At the same time, two Frenchmen long resident in Colombia, Brother Apolinar María and Brother Nicéforo María, began their own research projects on the birds of Colombia, seeking to gather and classify the country’s rich avifauna. Quintero Toro studies the transnational networks of correspondence that developed between these ornithologists and situates them within the wider context of US economic and cultural imperialism. Deprived of the bibliographic resources and large natural history collections needed to accurately identify new species, Apolinar and Nicéforo María relied upon the expertise of their US colleagues, who, Quintero Toro argues, were the dominant partners in these epistolary exchanges and generally took credit for publishing accounts of the specimens sent to them by their Colombian correspondents. Colombian scientists, however, also benefited from this relationship, accruing kudos nationally for their prestigious overseas connections.As well as assessing the power dynamics in transhemispheric scientific exchanges, Birds of Empire charts the relationship between science (specifically ornithology) and national identity. In the 1930s and 1940s, there were moves made across Latin America to forge a stronger sense of nationhood by drawing on popular culture and other markers of identity. Natural history functioned as one of these markers, with the impressive number of bird species in Colombia becoming a source of national pride. Quintero Toro explores the role of science in presenting Colombia as a modern and “civilized” nation, showing how a nationalist agenda could shape scientific practice. Colombian naturalists, he contends, were concerned primarily to claim as many new bird species as possible for their homeland, while US naturalists were more interested in bird distribution across Latin America as a whole, irrespective of political boundaries.Colombia’s birds were not only scientific specimens but also highly prized commodities under threat from overexploitation. Conservation thus forms the second major theme of this book. In the late nineteenth century, birds’ feathers and skins were used to adorn ladies’ hats. British hummingbird expert John Gould described in 1861 how thousands of birds’ skins were sent each year from Santa Fé de Bogotá to London and Paris to adorn drawing rooms and advance scientific research. Quintero Toro discusses the ecological threat posed by this new fashion and the measures taken to contain it, culminating in a ban on importing birds to the United States in 1913. The broader issues of conservation are addressed once again in the final chapter of the book, which examines transcontinental approaches to bird protection in the 1940s and beyond.Birds of Empire is an important contribution to an expanding body of scholarship on scientific networks and communities. Much of the existing work concentrates on the colonial period and the exchanges that occurred between Europe and the Americas, so this exploration of postcolonial, transnational scientific relations offers a valuable new perspective. To put this contribution into context, more might have been made of the differences and similarities between the experience of colonial naturalists in New Granada and that of their postcolonial counterparts described in this study. Colonial naturalists like Francisco José de Caldas also complained of the lack of access to books and large natural history collections, and they too turned to the natural world to forge a kind of incipient nationalism, or creole patriotism. It would be interesting to explore parallels between these different periods and to put the relations described in this book within a longer process of debate and exchange. Overall, however, this is an engaging book on a novel subject that should be of interest to historians of science and historians of Latin American politics and culture.