6. "Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne"
As the introductory quote reveals, beginning at least as early as 1807 Humboldt was occupied with the work he called "Statistics of Mexico", relatively early compared to the Relation historique which first appeared in 1814. Besides the physical geographical description, the work contains economic geographical aspects (mining, agriculture and trade), statistical studies and investigations into the structure and social situation of the population and the public health system. As Ursula Thiemer-Sachse emphasizes, the work thereby becomes one of the first monographs on a single country written from an historical-sociological and political science point of view.(23)
Table 2. "Dates of the Publication of the "Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne"
f. = fascicle, p. = page, pl. = plate
Vol. 1
1808 May(?) f. 1: title pages, p. I-XLVIII, p. 3-52, pl. 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17
Sept. 26 f. 2: p. 53-172, pl. 5, 6-8, 12, 18
1809 May 22 f. 3: p. 172-348, pl. 3, 15
Vol. 1 and 2
1809 Nov. 13 f. 4: p. XLIV-XCII, p. 349-428(?), pl. 1 and 1bis
Vol. 2
1810 f. 5: p. 429-662
1811 Jan. 14 f. 6: p. 663-788, pl. 2, 4
1811 July 1 f. 7: title pages (?), p. 789-904, pl. 10, 19, 20
In its original form, the work was published in short intervals between 1808 and 1811 in 2 quarto volumes and then, in 1811, in 5 octavo volumes. The matter in the two editions is the same, they only differ in pagination. Each of the 7 fascicles of the quarto edition included the corresponding tables of the atlas volume (see table 2). Fascicle 1 (of April 1808) contained in addition the title pages of volume 1; the last fascicle (July 1, 1811) contained the title pages of volume 2, as well as new titles for the first volume because the publishers’ specifications had in the meantime changed: Although the work had begun as a joint venture between the German publisher Cotta and the French publisher Schoell in Paris, the title of the French edition of 1811 listed only Schoell as the publisher. Cotta left the project in 1810 because of Schoell’s growing financial problems. In 1811, Schoell was on the brink of ruin.
As demonstrated by José G. Morena de Alba, editor of the Tablas,(24) the chapter divisions of both works correspond (see fig. 5) - another reason the Tablas are often regarded as the core of the Essai.
Figure 5
Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva-EspañaLibro 1. Consideraciones generales acerca de la extensión y el aspecto físico del reino de la Nueva-España. Influencia de las desigualdades del suelo en el clima, la agricultura, y el comercio, y la defensa militar del país. (Cap.I-III)
Libro 2. Población general de la Nueva-España. División de los habitantes en castas. (Cap.IV-VII)
Libro 3. Estadística particular de las intendencias que componen el reino de la Nueva-España. Su extensión territorial, y su población. (Cap. VIII)Libro 4. Estado de la agricultura de Nueva-España. Minas metallicas. (Cap. IX-XI)
Libro 5. Estado de las manufacturas y comercio de la Nueva-España. (Cap. XII)
Libro 6. Rentas del Estado. Defensa militar. (Cap. XIII-XIV)
Spot checks show that Humboldt corrected figures with data available to him later. The growth in size is more striking though; the Essai was 36 times more extensive than the tablas. It is already noticable in the Tablas that Humboldt omits the obviously intended tabular structure for the sake of a more descriptive, narrative style. (The descriptive pieces reach far beyond the limits of the tables.) This tendency became altogether prevalent in the Essai: Here only but a few tables are interspersed throughout text.
A second source of the Essai were the diaries. Although Humboldt included some parts of them, they were completely rewritten using additional material. A comparison between the two is made rather difficult by the fact that the observations in the diaries were noted in chronological order, whereas the Essai is arranged systematically by topic. The different mines, e. g., apppear in completely different places in the diaries, depending on when Humboldt visited them, but the Essai sums all of them up in chapter 11.
Humboldt left out personal impressions and rarely wrote in the first person, lending for a stronger objectification of the observations in the Essai. Besides the Relation historique, the Essai on Mexico is the one most similar to the Essai sur l'ile de Cuba of 1826. Both list figures, compare them with each other, as are statistical methods applied in both.
Made up of 19 plates, the Atlas géographique et physique du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne accompanies the Essai and was published simultaneously in 7 fascicles from 1808 to 1811.(25) The historian of geography and Humboldt scholar Hanno Beck has often emphasized that Humboldt, probably influenced by his work as a miner, made the profile map, originally a view into the mine from the side, into a scientific instrument. Part of this is the marvelous profile of the Mexican highland (see fig. 6) - "the first profile ever to be done of an entire country".(26)
Many maps are based on Humboldts own sketches, influenced by studies in Mexican archives. As an example: Plate 1 and 1bis of the fourth fascicle, the main map of Mexico, is based on the Spanish map made by military engineer Carlos da Urrutia on behalf of the Viceroy.(27) The collaborators can be identified through the names in the plates: Cartographers were the engineer geographers Friedrich Wittich and Friedrich Friesen in Berlin, Jean-Baptiste Poirson in Paris and others. The copperplate engravers are also mentioned: Friedrich Arnold in Berlin, Jean-François Barrière in Paris, responsible for map and landscape depictions, Louis Bouquet for the profiles and L. Aubert for the letters of the subtitles.
After the founding of the Mexican Republic, further map material became accessible which Humboldt used for the revision of the text. However, a new and expanded edition of the atlas was not published. The new carthographic findings were added to the Atlas géographique et physique (Partie 1.3), which was being published at that time. These 7 maps were therefore rightly included in the new edition of the Atlas published in 1969 by Hanno Beck and Wilhelm Bonnacker.
Notes:
(23) Ursula Thiemer-Sachse, "Alexander von Humboldt und sein Beitrag zu einem wissenschaftlichen Mexiko-Bild, dargestellt an seinen Forschungen über Alt-Mexiko und die zeitgenössischen Indianer", Ethnographisch-archäologische Zeitschrift, 11 (1970): 163-214, p. 184.
(24) see note 9.
(25) Gerhard Engelmann, "Alexander von Humboldts Mexiko-Atlas. Eine Nachlese", Geographische Zeitschrift, 59 (1971) 4: 315-320.
(26) "[...] des ersten Profils, das je von einem ganzen Lande gegeben worden ist" Letter from A. v. Humboldt to G. v. Cotta, July 26, 1854.
(27) Brand Donald D. Brand, Humboldts Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, see Alexander von Humboldt. Studien zu seiner universalen Geisteshaltung, Joachim H. Schultze, ed., Berlin, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1959, p. 137.
