2 - Dispute and Dissociation: John Black’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1811)

Summary

In 1811 the first of Humboldt's major works appeared in English translation. An account of the population, climate, industry and agri¬culture of Mexico, the Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle- Espagne (1808–11), translated by the young Scottish journalist John Black (1783–1855) as the Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, attracted immediate interest in Britain. It gave important new insights into mining, manufacturing, defence and revenue in the Spanish colonies. Hailed by the New Universal Magazine as ‘the most laud¬able travels ever undertaken by individuals for the progress of science’, Black's translation of the Essai politique was declared by the Critical Review to throw ‘more light on the state of New Spain than any which has been hitherto published’, and offer a store of useful information to the ‘philosopher, the merchant and the statesman’ alike. The appear¬ance of the Political Essay in Britain was timely. In September 1810, the liberal priest and revolutionary Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla had declared Mexico's independence from the Spanish crown. The Peninsular War, which Spain had been waging against France from 1808 following Joseph Bonaparte's seizure of the Spanish throne, made the volatile future of Spain and its colonies a subject closely followed in the British press. And the fact that the Essai politique was by Humboldt heightened its market appeal: ‘The attraction excited by the subject receives also much addition from the name of a traveller, who adds to the activity of an inquisitive mind the stores of extensive erudition,’ enthused the Monthly Review.

But if British critics were fascinated by the author of the Political Essay, they were less enthusiastic about its translator. The Literary Panorama remarked sourly that ‘his labour could have been more honourable to his abilities had he carefully re-inspected it, before it was committed to the press’. It was not just the text that bore signs of haste. The plates annexed to the Political Essay had been so hurriedly printed that ‘those who have seen the originals will bestow but moderate com¬mendation on these translations’, continued the Literary Panorama, making ‘translation’ synonymous with the derivative and the second-rate.