Argentina

CARLA LOIS

The History of Cartography

The University of Chicago Press

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2017;

Since the National Constitution officially create the Confederación Argentina (1853), the elites become more and more interested in designing an appropriate map for the new country. Foreign professors were hired to organize scientific institutions and foreign professionals were in charge of the earlier cartographic projects, such as Juan F. Czetz (1822-1904), an Hungarian military officer settled in Argentina (1860) who worked for the army carrying out measurements and topographic surveys. As the head of the Sección Ingenieros de la Inspección General de Obras he was in charge of making a map of the boundaries of the Argentine Republic. Even when these projects were funded by the national government, some of the most prestigious works were printed abroad and published in foreign languages. The most famous of those ouvrages was Description géographique et statistique de la Confédération Argentina, three volumes with an Atlas de la Confédération Argentine (its first Parisian edition is from 1865 and its reedition in Buenos Aires from 1873), by the French doctor Victor Martin De Moussy. The governments of the Argentinean Confederation funded his work and it was considered an official publication.