 |
Emily BerquistAssistant Professor of History |
Emily’s manuscript, The Science of Empire: Local and Metropolitan Conflict and Collaboration in Late Colonial Peru, examines how the Spanish Bourbon reforms of the late-eighteenth century were re-imagined at the local level in Peru. It centers on the work of a Spanish Bishop, Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón, who lived and worked in Trujillofrom 1779 to 1790. Although as an ecclesiastic, Martínez Compañón was officially charged with spiritual matters, his political economy reforms (in mining, education, and agriculture) and his natural history research (in the areas of botany, zoology, ethnography, and archaeology) situate him within a broader network of administrators, bureaucrats, and scientists who sought to improve and transform the Spanish empire in the so-called Age of Enlightenment. As a representative of these Bourbon reformers, Martínez Compañón lived among and worked with the subjects of his plans of improvement. However, these Indians, creole elites, and mixed-race individuals were not simply passive recipients of his agenda; their support for, collaboration with, or opposition to the Bishop’s plans often determined their success or failure. Although The Science of Empire is at its core a history of ideas, it also engages with visual sources as historical documentation through a close reading of the Bishop’s natural history collections and the nine volumes of watercolors he commissioned from local artisans.
In her second book project and a forthcoming article, Emily is examining the politics of early anti-slavery sentiment and abolitionism in the Spanish Empire from the Age of Enlightenment through Independence. This a trans-Atlantic study of imperial politics that links the Iberian Peninsula to small islands off the Western coast of Africa, Montevideo, and England.
General Interests:
Colonial Latin America (especially the Andes)
Visual culture in the Hispanic World, 1492-1826
Indigenous peoples
The Early Modern Atlantic World
History of Ideas
The Enlightenment in the Hispanic World
The Catholic Church in Latin America
B.A. with honors in History, Vassar College, 1997
M.A., Latin American History, University of Texas at Austin, May 2002
Ph.D., Latin American History, Universty of Texas at Austin, August 2007
”Bishop Martínez Compañón’s Practical Utopia in Enlightenment Peru,” January 2008, The Americas
”Science and Nature in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Review Essay,” review article, Itinerario, 2007:3
Fulbright Fellowship for Dissertation Research in the Western Hemisphere, Bogotá, Colombia; Lima & Trujillo, Peru.
John Brockway Huntington Foundation Short-Term Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Maury A. Bromsen Short-Term Research Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Embassy of Spain Program for Cultural Cooperation Fellowship, Madrid.
FLAS Fellowship, Cornell University, Quechua Language study in Bolivia.
HISTORY 301:
Methodology
HISTORY 362:
Colonial Latin America
HISTORY 466:
Painting as Power: The Influence of Imagery in the Early Modern Hispanic World
HISTORY 499:
Religion in Colonial Latin America
HISTORY 590:
Comparative History of the Indigenous Peoples of The Americas
