Jesuit Missionary Cartography of the Upper Amazon, 1689 to 1789

Saladin, Irina

In the early modern period, members of the Society of Jesus working as missionaries in the so-called mission of Maynas explored vast areas of the upper Amazon. These missionaries belonged to the very small group of Europeans who lived in the forests of the Amazon Basin for longer periods, in close contact with local people. Their daily experiences in the mission, their high level of education, and their connection with the institutional structures of the Jesuit order made them key figures in the production of knowledge about the Amazon. Irina Saladin investigates the complex relationships between mission and knowledge in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit maps. She analyzes how Jesuit missionary practices shaped the cartographic representation of the Amazon in the early modern era.