Abstract

VALENZUELA OLIVARES, Luis Andrés. Forgotten traces. An approach to the generation and utility of the Higgins map 1768. Rev. hist. Am. [online]. 2021, n.161, pp.503-526.  Epub Feb 21, 2022. ISSN 2663-371X.  https://doi.org/10.35424/rha.161.2021.977.

Endless local and global cartography was generated since the discovery, which relate different scientific and utopian aspects. While, the centuries to come offered a wealth of information, provided especially by the religious orders that visited and traveled our territory. The progress and evolution of this technique was conceived directly by the conquering armies.

In the 18th century, with the new administration, knowledge was rethought, not only to the Church, but rather, to the academic world, which together with the military orders were taking over territorial planning.

In this way, we can find that Castilla’s direct request corresponded to continuing to obtain a cadastre that had to complete the desired Royal Register. Many are the requests for information that covered the territory, directed to the administration on duty and to the religious orders themselves. In particular, the wide spatial development that the Jesuits obtained through in situ knowledge in these latitudes, determined a wide acquisition of territories that they had to return to the Iberian empire.

In this process, development and political noise, a drafting engineer makes, at the request of the crown, a report from the Kingdom of Chile. Beyond the preparation of the report, a line that draws and ends at the beginning of the year 1768 draws attention. The Map of the Reyno de Chile, title that delivers and signs as its authorship, raises an enormity of questions that could be useful in operations later of the crown, but the utility and use in the consolidation and reestablishment of the limits of the kingdom as well as the identification of the indicated enemy remains an absolute mystery.

Forgotten traces on Higgins’s map proposes to rediscover the specific elements indicated in its trace and the relationships that lead to a before and after the kingdom of Chile.

Keywords : Map; Chile; territory; symbol; use.

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