Database

Latin American travelers through Europe and the United States in the 19th century

Biographical data, travel information and reports, bibliography and images.

 

Presentation

This database is the result of the project Who goes towards the “center”: Latin American travelers in the 19th century, developed between 2014 and 2016. Its main purpose is to disseminate information about travel reports of Latin American men and women who went to Europe and to the United States in the 19th century, allowing researchers in the Humanities to access data on these sources. It is an effort to concentrate elements that collaborate for the investigation of these actors, who circulated between America and Europe, and also between the different parts of the American continent, carrying with them knowledge, wisdom, impressions and values.

With this purpose in mind, one can find a file entitled “Reports” in each of the authors listed in this database and access information about the travel narrative of the author in question. Whenever the file of the respective report is made available in full in digital libraries, it’s accompanied by the link with its location. The edition made available by the team and acquired by the project coordinator in different collections was used as a reference, such as the National Libraries in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile, as well as the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. It won’t be always the first edition of the report. Information on other editions, whenever found, was also included in this file. Similarly, data on the recipients of the reports were also included, if any.

For the purpose of situating the reader about the travelers' lives, brief biographical texts were prepared, which are also available at the link of each traveler, in a file entitled “Biographies”.

In addition to the biographical references, a third file called “Trips” contains the itineraries of the travelers based on the very reports they wrote, as well as information on the purposes of the trips.

When opening each link, the user will see an image, usually a painting or a photograph of the traveler himself. Other images of interest, if any, will follow in separate files, below the content files (biographies, travels and reports).

In addition to the aforementioned files, the database provides a specialized bibliography, which includes text references about the trips of the selected authors. In this bibliography there are also references to texts that can serve as a theoretical / methodological contribution to research on the subject.

As this database is subject to continuous complementation, its content may be changed.

The project was coordinated by Stella Maris Scatena Franco, Professor in the field of History of Independent America in the Department of History at University of São Paulo and member of the History of the Americas Study Lab (LEHA/USP), with the financial support of São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo). Data was added to this website during the management of Professor Mary Anne Junqueira at LEHA/USP. The following researchers participated (and are participating) in the project by collaborating on content creation: Patrícia Aparecida Guimarães de Souza, Natania Neres da Silva and Raphael Leon Vasconcelos, all majored in History by the Department of History of the University of São Paulo. In addition to them, another collaborator is Graziela Mazzeo Madeira, an undergraduate student in History at USP and an Undergraduate Research Fellow at FAPESP, who works with the same sources covered by this database.

 

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