Francisco José de Caldas (1768-1816): the creole who ran the Bogotá observatory and printed its numbers
A creole from Popayan who held three crown scientific posts at once - member of the Royal Botanical Expedition, keeper of the Bogota observatory, professor of mathematics at the Colegio del Rosario - and who used a weekly paper to print barometric altitudes, a lunar eclipse and monthly weather tables for the viceroyalty. A Spanish general had him shot in 1816. The volume argued from here is the Paris edition of 1849 that his countrymen printed to recover him.
Why this wins its question: English-language coverage of Caldas is a line in histories of Humboldt or a sentence about a patriot shot by the Spanish, and it almost never says what he measured. This object opens the book instead and reports the numbers: the crown titles printed above his own memoir, the observatory sited inside the garden of the royal botanical expedition, six months of 1808 weather tables, a lunar eclipse of 9 May 1808, and a barometric table giving the elevation in Castilian varas and the mean temperature in Reaumur of eight named places in the viceroyalty. It puts the motive next to the method - the prize memoir on cochineal and on transplanting Asian spices - and the cost next to both: the execution of 30 October 1816 in the editor's own words, and that same editor's verdict that Caldas had worked without books, methods, instruction or a government that protected science. One volume, its bias stated, its unopened pages named.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The book this object is argued from says on its title page what it is: "SEMANARIO DE LA NUEVA GRANADA. MISCELANEA DE CIENCIAS, LITERATURA, ARTES E INDUSTRIA. Publicada por una sociedad de patriotas Granadinos, bajo la direccion de FRANCISCO JOSÉ DE CALDAS. Nueva Edicion corregida, aumentada con varios opúsculos inéditos de F. J. de Caldas. Anotada, y adornada con su retrato y con el cuadro original de la Geografía de las plantas del Baron de Humboldt. PARIS, LIBRERÍA CASTELLANA, 2, CALLE SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS. LASSERRE, EDITOR. 1849." It is not the colonial imprint. It is a republican recovery edition, printed in Paris thirty-three years after its subject was executed, and everything below is worded as what this volume prints.
His offices are printed at the head of his own texts, and they are crown offices. Page 1 heads the opening memoir "ESTADO de la Geografía del Vireinato de Santa Fé de Bogotá, con relacion á la economía y al comercio, por Don Francisco José de CALDAS, individuo meritorio de la Expedicion Botánica del Reino, y encargado del Observatorio Astronómico de esta capital." The index entry for his 1810 prize memoir gives the fuller style: "encargado del Real Observatorio astronómico de Santa Fé de Bogotá, individuo de esta Real Expedicion Botánica, y catedrático de matemáticas en el colegio Real Mayor de Ntra. Sra. del Rosario de esta capital." A man born in the Indies held all three at once.
The programme he opened with is a claim about what a colony needs, stated in his own words on pages 1 and 2. Geographical knowledge, he writes, is "el termómetro con que se mide la ilustracion, el comercio, la agricultura y la prosperidad de un pueblo", and "La Geografía es la basa fundamental de toda especulacion política". The paper is "consagrado principalmente á la felicidad de esta Colonia", and it will show "los pasos que hemos dado, lo que sabemos, lo que ignoramos" - the ignorance put on the page beside the knowledge. He then defines Nueva Granada as everything subject to the viceroyalty of Santa Fe, and fixes its longitudes from the meridian of the Observatorio Real de Cádiz.
What he published was instrumental data, month after month, not natural philosophy in the abstract. The index lists his meteorological observations for January, February, March, April, May and June of 1808, each headed as made "en el Observatorio astronómico de Santa Fé de Bogotá"; the notes and explanation of those tables; a "Descripcion del Observatorio astronómico de Santa Fé de Bogotá, situado en el jardin de la real Expedicion botánica"; the observation of the total lunar eclipse of 9 May 1808 made at the same observatory; and a table for the article on atmospheric pressure. The observatory was physically inside the garden of the royal botanical expedition, which is how the two institutions worked.
That pressure table, printed on page 156, is barometric altimetry applied to a country. Its columns are LUGARES, "Presion atmosférica en libras", "Altura sobre el mar, varas castellanas" and "Temperatura media", and its rows include Santa Fé at 26081 lib., 3253,6 varas and 11,5 degrees Reaumur; Mesa at 30582 and 1540,7; Tocaima at 33629 and 578,2; Neiva at 33482 and 622,7; Tunja at 25266 and 3475,0; Pamplona at 26674 and 2926,0; and a final row for "Altura á donde han llegado los hombres" at 21747, 4900,0 varas and 4,0 degrees. A reader in Bogota in 1808 could look up the elevation and mean temperature of eight named places in his own viceroyalty.
His ambition was continental and it was addressed to his patron. The volume prints, at page 546, a "Memoria sobre el plan de un viaje proyectado de Quito á la América setentrional, presentada al célebre director de la Expedicion botánica de la Nueva Granada D. José Celestino Mutis, por F. J. de Caldas", whose route runs from Quito to the Canelos, back through Riobamba and Chimborazo to Guayaquil, then by Sonsonate, Guatemala, Soconusco, Ciudad Real, Guaxaca and Puebla to Mexico and its famous mines, down to Veracruz, and by sea to Havana, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Cartagena before returning to Santa Fe. The editor's footnote states that the memoir carries no date and that it is inferred to have been written in 1801, at Quito.
The motive belongs on the record beside the achievement, and the index states it without embarrassment. His first memoir of 1810 is "Sobre la importancia del cultivo de la cochinilla que produce el Reino, y la de trasplantar á él la canela, clavo, nuez-moscada y demas especias del Asia", and it won the prize the paper itself had offered in its number 21 for 1808; a second memoir answers that same prize question, which asked which production proper to the local climate should be cultivated in preference to the others and which foreign production it was in the country's interest to naturalise in its soil. The science was pointed at export agriculture and at breaking an Asian spice monopoly, and page 544 ends the cochineal memoir with a description of the insect written in Linnaean Latin.
He was killed by the state that had employed him. The editor's advertencia, page X, records the date and the hand: "El dia 30 de octubre de 1816 en que la cuchilla del general español Morillo privó á Caldas de la vida, la naturaleza tropical se cubrió de un velo fúnebre, y desde aquella época triste la patria no ha podido reemplazar este hijo benemérito. Mas de treinta años han trascurrido, y su lugar está todavía vacante." The same page says the botanist and astronomer had turned soldier and engineer during the war of independence, training young men and tracing fortifications. The execution is carried here at high confidence; the editor's surrounding language, which calls the men who did it barbarians, is his and is reported as his.
The strongest counterpoint to a triumphal reading of this life is printed in the same volume, by the editor who is trying to celebrate him. Addressing the young men of New Granada in 1849, he tells them they now have what Caldas lacked - "libros, métodos, instrucciones, y un gobierno liberal que protege á los que se dedican á las ciencias". Whatever the crown had built in Santa Fe, the man who edited Caldas thirty-three years later thought his subject had worked without books, without method, without instruction and without a government that protected men of science. That judgement is partisan, published by a republic against the monarchy it had left, and it is recorded here for exactly that reason.
Two limits belong on the record. First, this object rests on one printed volume, because the archives and libraries that hold the manuscript record of Caldas were unreachable from the machine that wrote it, and no modern peer-reviewed study of him could be opened either; nothing here is corroborated by a second witness, and the 1849 edition is an interested one. Second, the pages actually opened were the binding and title leaves, page X of the editor's advertencia, pages 1 and 2 of the opening memoir, pages 156, 544, 545 and 546, and the index leaves 569, 570 and 572. The remaining five hundred pages were not read, and nothing above depends on them.