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Description

Quite Possibly The Only Official Map of the Confederation Granadine -- Originally Created By One Colombia's Most Important Historians and Scholars

Second state of this rare wall map of the Republic of New Granada dedicated to the Baron de Humboldt, first issued by the geologist, historian and politician Joaquín Acosta in 1847. This second state was issued by Jose Maria Samper Agudelo, the son in law of Acosta, in the same year as the ratification of the Constitution of the Confederation Granadine, which existed from 1858 to 1863.

Acosta originally produced his "Map of the Republic of Nueva Granada", in order to establish an official national cartography that would identify the borders after the dissolution of Gran Colombia and following the so-called War of the Supremes (1839 - 1841).

This second state of the map, issued in 1858, was issued by José María Samper (Acosta's son-in-law), under the supervision of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera. Issued in the same year as the establishment of the Granadine Confederation, this second state of Acosta's map differs from the first in the change in the internal administrative division of the country and in the border with Brazil. The second state of the map reflects the boundaries of the 7 newly created sovereign states which would become the Confederation Granadine in 1858.

Curiously, the map was prepared under the supervision of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, who would lose the election of 1858 and leave federal politics to become the Governor of Cauca, before being re-elected president in 1862.

The inset maps show:

  • map of the city of Bogotá
  • port of Sabanilla
  • port of Cartagena
  • Andes mountain range
  • position of the New Granada with respect to the Antilles

Joaquin Acosta

Tomás Joaquín de Acosta y Pérez de Guzmán (1800-1852) was a Colombian explorer, historian, chorographer, and geologist. Born in Graduas, he joined Simona Bolivar in 1818 in the fight for independence. In 1834, he married Caroline Kemble Rou.

Acosta served in the Colombian army and in 1834 attempted a scientific survey of the territory between Socorro and the Magdalena River. Seven years later he explored western Colombia from Antioquia to Anserma, studying its topography, its natural history and the traces of its aboriginal inhabitants.

In 1845 he went to Spain to examine such documentary material concerning Colombia and its colonial history as was then accessible, and three years later he published his Compendio, a work on the discovery and colonization of New Granada (Colombia). The map accompanying this work, was well executed for the period, and the Compendio is still considered valuable for its abundant bibliographic references and biographic notes.

Jose Maria Samper

Jose Maria Samper Agudelo (1828-1888) was a member of the Colombian Parliament, solider, revolutionary, diplomat, writer, historian and newspaper publisher.

Samper was born in Honda and educated in Bogota, where he obtained a law degree in 1846. In 1854, he was named senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Relations and would later hold a number of senior diplomatic titles and served as Diplomatic Minister to Chile and the Republic of Argentina.

In 1855, he married Joaquin Acosta's daughter, Soledad Acosta, 3 years before re-issuing Acosta's map, with revisions.

Republic of New Granada

The Republic of New Granada was a centralist republic consisting primarily of the modern Colombia and Panama with smaller portions of today's Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil. It was created after the dissolution in 1830 of Gran Colombia, with the secession of Ecuador (Quito, Guayaquil and Azuay) and Venezuela (with Orinoco, Apure and Zulia) and was formed by the departments of Boyaca, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, and Istmo, all parts of the present Republic of Colombia. except Istmo, which is part of present-day Panama). In November 1831, those departments created the Republic of New Granada

In 1851, a new civil war broke out when conservative and pro-slavery groups from Cauca and Antioquia, led by Manuel Ibánez, Julio Arboleda, and Eusebio Borrero, revolted against liberal president José Hilario López, trying to stop the process of freeing the slaves, in addition to a number of religious issues.

One of the prime features of the political climate of the republic was the position of the Roman Catholic Church and the level of autonomy for the federal states. In 1839, a dispute arose over the shutting down of monasteries by the Congress of New Granada. This soon escalated into the War of the Supremes, which raged for the next two years and transformed into a conflict about regional autonomy.

New Granada was transformed in 1858 to the Granadine Confederation as an answer to demands for a decentralized country.

The Granadine Confederation was a short-lived federal republic established in 1858 as a result of a constitutional change replacing the Republic of New Granada. It comprised the present-day nations of Colombia and Panama and parts of northwestern Brazil. In turn, the Granadine Confederation was replaced by the United States of Colombia after another constitutional change in 1863.

Rarity

The map is quite rare. OCLC locates only a single copy of the 1847 edition and a single example of the 1858.

Condition Description
Wall map, with original varnish. Normal toning and cracking for a wall map, but generally very good condition.