Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met - (The David J. Weber the New Borderlands History) by Jeffrey Alan Erbig

About the Book

"During the late eighteenth century, Portugal and Spain sent joint mapping expeditions to draw a nearly 10,000-mile border between Brazil and Spanish South America. These boundary commissions were the largest ever sent to the Americas and coincided with broader imperial reforms enacted throughout the hemisphere. Where caciques and mapmakers met considers what these efforts meant to Indigenous peoples whose lands the border crossed. Moving beyond common frameworks that assess mapped borders strictly via colonial law or Native sovereignty, it examines the interplay between imperial and Indigenous spatial imaginaries. What results is an intricate spatial history of border making in southeastern South America (present-day Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) with global implications"--

Book Synopsis

During the late eighteenth century, Portugal and Spain sent joint mapping expeditions to draw a nearly 10,000-mile border between Brazil and Spanish South America. These boundary commissions were the largest ever sent to the Americas and coincided with broader imperial reforms enacted throughout the hemisphere. Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met considers what these efforts meant to Indigenous peoples whose lands the border crossed. Moving beyond common frameworks that assess mapped borders strictly via colonial law or Native sovereignty, it examines the interplay between imperial and Indigenous spatial imaginaries. What results is an intricate spatial history of border making in southeastern South America (present-day Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) with global implications.

Drawing upon manuscripts from over two dozen archives in seven countries, Jeffrey Erbig traces on-the-ground interactions between Ibero-American colonists, Jesuit and Guaraní mission-dwellers, and autonomous Indigenous peoples as they responded to ever-changing notions of territorial possession. It reveals that Native agents shaped when and where the border was drawn, and fused it to their own territorial claims. While mapmakers' assertions of Indigenous disappearance or subjugation shaped historiographical imaginations thereafter, Erbig reveals that the formation of a border was contingent upon Native engagement and authority.

Review Quotes

"The book adds to our knowledge of the complexity of colonial settler societies and highlights the social nature of boundary drawing and border making. . . . [A]n important contribution to our understanding of how boundaries are made and their social consequences in settler colonialism."--Latin Americanist

". . . . Timely and important. . . . the creative use of GIS, the parallels between historical political economy and recent work in political ecology, and the scholarship that bridges historical and indigenous cartography (or cartography of the indigenous) makes for a useful teaching text that spans disciplinary boundaries."--Timothy B. Norris, Historical Geography 49

"Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met accomplishes the herculean task of placing Indigenous mobile populations in the center of imperial conflicts in South America, demonstrating their pivotal role in the making of the borderline. . . . An invaluable contribution to borderland history, Indigenous history, the history of cartography, colonial/imperial history, and the regional history of Rio de La Plata."--Journal of Social History

"A valuable, provocative addition to recent literature on the making and meaning of borders to indigenous populations."--H-Maps

"Erbig's sweeping, incisive history of South America--presented unassumingly as a history of border making--tells this story with granular detail, revealing a process that unfolded over more than a century."--Colonial Latin American Review

"Groundbreaking. . . . Methodologically innovative and framed by compelling questions."--Eighteenth-Nineteenth Centuries

"Provides an extremely coherent and comprehensible analysis of a very complex topic. . . . Erbig contributes considerably to recent debates on indigenous agency and indigenous knowledge in colonial history and in the history of science. His study goes far beyond the observation . . . that border-making and mapping were cooperative undertakings to which both European and indigenous actors contributed."--Journal of Early American History

"Richly illuminating. . . . Methodologically innovative and framed by compelling questions, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met opens up possibilities for comparative research in other borderland regions in South America and beyond. It offers scholars a whole new perspective on imperial and Native territorialities, which competed and intersected in the making of a meaningful border."--Hispanic American Historical Review

"This book tells a nuanced story of border-making at a critical moment in Latin American political and cartographic history."--The Americas

"This provocative case study alternately provides a reexamination and, in places, reiteration of the core arguments of spatial history. It demonstrates how cartographic practices simultaneously created and transformed ethnicities while significantly contributing to the contemporary marginalization of Native peoples."--CHOICE

About the Author

Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr. is assistant professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.