French naturalist and medical doctor Aimé Bonpland (1773–1858) was one of the most important scientific explorers of South America in the early nineteenth century. From 1799 to 1804, he worked alongside Alexander von Humboldt as the latter carried out his celebrated research in northern South America, but he later returned to conduct his own research farther south. A Life in Shadow accounts for the entire span of Bonpland's remarkable and diverse career in South America—in Argentina, Paraguay (where he was imprisoned for nearly a decade), Uruguay, and southernmost Brazil—based on extensive archival material. The study reconnects Bonpland's divided records in Europe and South America and delves into his studies of rural resources in interior regions of South America, including experimental cultivation techniques. This is a fascinating account of a man—a doctor, farmer, rancher, scientific explorer, and political conspirator—who interacted in many revealing ways with the evolving societies and institutions of South America.
Price: $75.00
Pages: 336
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Publication Date:
20 April 2010
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780804752602
Format: Hardcover
"Bell's book is a praiseworthy, highly readable, and most welcome account of Bonpland's last forty years of life, spent in various places and in different activities in the southern part of the continent. This account is based on a thorough effort to collect and systematically analyze, from an original perspective, a wealth of documents that until now had remained only partially or poorly executed . . . [A Life in Shadow] also illuminated often overlooked, but highly significant aspects of the social and economic dimensions of life in various regions of the southern part of the continent during the first half of the nineteenth century. Thus, the book is recommended reading for an audience whose interests range beyond the biographical dimensions of a unique European intellectual with broad domains of activity and deep involvement in American life, to readers who are also interested in the early history of scientific activities in the continent."
Stephen Bell is Associate Professor of Geography and History at UCLA. He is the author of Campanha Gaúcha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850–1920 (Stanford University Press, 1998), which was awarded the 1999 Warren Dean Memorial Prize.
