Cartographic Reproductions: The Franciscan Legacy in Amazonian Peru, 1830–1847

Scholars have not paid sufficient attention to the role that cartographic reproduction played in shaping and disseminating geographic knowledge about Amazonia in early postcolonial Peru. By the early nineteenth century, when Peru gained its independence from Spain, cartographic knowledge of its eastern Amazonian frontier was limited to maps produced mostly by Franciscan missionaries who had overseen the evangelization of the region since the previous century. Thus, the reproduction of missionary charts became an important procedure that the Peruvian administration undertook to delineate and incorporate Amazonia into the newly independent nation. But it was not a simple process of copying, nor was it associated with advances in technical and printing accuracy, the reduction of map production costs, and the emergence of copyright regulations, as has been commonly argued in studies of modern cartographic copying. In contrast, this article explores a still unregulated context involving amateur cartographers who produced primarily handwritten maps. More significantly, I highlight the new meanings that colonial missionary maps acquired after being reproduced within postcolonial bureaucratic circles through the deployment of three strategies of cartographic reproduction — celebratory, tactical-military, and administrative — that transformed the original evangelizing intentions that the Franciscans had when mapping Amazonia. • Reproduction as active and valid means to learn and produce cartographic knowledge. • The first modern maps of Peru's Amazonia reproduced colonial Franciscans charts. • ‘Amateurs’ played a key role in the dissemination of cartographic reproductions. • The copied Amazonian maps carried different meanings from the Franciscan originals.