The Invention of Nature

When Humboldt returned to Paris from Aachen, he began his preparations in earnest. He bought books and instruments, corresponded with people who had travelled to Asia and worked on his exact route. He would first visit Constantinople, and then the snow-capped dormant volcano Mount Ararat near today’s border between Iran and Turkey. From there he would go south, travelling overland across the whole of Persia to Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf from where he would sail to India. He was taking language lessons in Persian and Arabic, and one wall of his bedroom in his small Parisian apartment was covered with a huge map of Asia. But, as always, everything took longer than Humboldt had initially thought.

He had still not published the full results from his Latin American exploration. Together all the books would eventually become the thirty-four-volume Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent – it included the multi-volume travel account Personal Narrative but also more specialized books on botany, zoology and astronomy. Some, such as Personal Narrative and the Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, had few or no illustrations and were affordable for a wider audience while others, such as Vues des Cordillères with its stunning depictions of Latin America’s landscapes and monuments, were large volumes that cost a fortune. In its entirety Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent would become the most expensive work ever privately published by a scientist. Humboldt had employed mapmakers, artists, engravers and botanists for years now and the expenses were so high that they ruined him financially. He still had his income from the Prussian king and from his book sales but had to live frugally. His inheritance had been completely used up. He had spent 50,000 thalers on his expedition and about double that on his publications and life in Paris.

None of this stopped Humboldt. He received loans from friends and banks, and mostly chose to ignore his financial situation, his debt growing steadily.

While he was working on his books, Humboldt continued his preparations for India. He dispatched Karl Sigismund Kunth to Switzerland, the nephew of his old childhood teacher Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth and the botanist who had taken over the botanical publications when Bonpland had slowed down too much. The plan was that Kunth was going to accompany Humboldt to India but was first to examine plants in the Alps, so that he could compare them to those on Mount Ararat and in the Himalaya. Humboldt’s old travel companion, Aimé Bonpland, was no longer available. When Joséphine Bonaparte had died in May 1814, Bonpland had stopped working in her garden at Malmaison. Bored with his life in Paris – ‘my whole existence is too predictable,’ Bonpland had written to his sister – he had been keen to embark on new adventures but had become impatient with Humboldt’s delayed travel plans.

Bonpland had always wanted to return to South America. He travelled to London to meet Simón Bolívar’s men and other revolutionaries who had come to Britain in order to rally support for their fight against Spain. Bonpland had even supplied them with books and a printing press, as well as smuggling weapons. Soon the South Americans were competing for Bonpland’s services. Francisco Antonio Zea, the botanist who would become Vice-President of Colombia under Bolívar, had asked Bonpland to continue the work of the deceased botanist José Celestino Mutis in Bogotá. At the same time the representatives from Buenos Aires hoped Bonpland would establish a botanic garden there. Bonpland’s knowledge of potentially useful plants held economic possibilities for the new nations. Just as the British had founded a botanical garden in Calcutta as a storehouse for the empire and for useful crops, so was the Argentinians’ plan. Bonpland was to help them to introduce ‘new methods of practical agriculture’ from Europe.

The revolutionaries were trying to lure European scientists to Latin America. Science was like a nation without borders, it united people and – so they hoped – would place an independent Latin America on an equal footing with Europe. When Zea was appointed as Colombia’s Plenipotentiary Minister to Britain, he received instructions not only to obtain support for their political struggle but also to promote the immigration of scientists, craftsmen and farmers. ‘The illustrious Franklin obtained more good in France for his country through the natural sciences than through all the diplomatic efforts,’ Zea was reminded by his superiors.