Amie Campos
Land, Maps, and State Formation in Chile’s Southern Frontera 1883-1929
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Project Proposal:
I plan to exam the evolving relationships of the Chilean state, represented by cartographers and engineers, and peasants who cultivated the land during the four decades following the Occupation of the Araucanía (1861- 1883). I begin with a basic but crucial question: What technologies were mobilized—by whom and how—in the colonization of the Araucanía between 1880 and 1929? Previous attempts to address the question of state formation in the region have relied heavily upon ethnographic approaches, which in turn, have led them to focus on indigenous resistance to violent processes of displacement. More recently, scholars taking an environmental history approach have emphasized the massive destruction that colonization had upon ecological and human environments. While my study recognizes the importance of this formative period to statepeasant relations in the region, it emphasizes the subtle techniques through which the state asserted its control over Araucanía —in this instance, techniques such as mapping, exploring, surveying, and cataloguing. The information that these practices produced helped to further knowledge about exploitable resources and profitable territories, and were pivotal in the formation of more overt ways of exerting control over peoples of the region. My dissertation asks three additional questions that shape this history of nation building and agrarian society. What kinds of knowledge did these cartographic techniques include and obscure? What role did bureaucrats and the local population play in the collection and creation of this information, and how did such information impact existing relationships between peasants and the land, and by extension, the state? How was land use in the Araucanía affected by its integration into the wider national and global market?
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Proposal:
