Explosive Landscapes: Volcanoes, Science, and Nation Making in the Equatorial Andes, 1742-1877

This dissertation uses volcanism as a vehicle to examine the relationship between place and identity, and to shed new light on the process of nation-state formation in the equatorial Andes and beyond. It examines volcanoes as subjects of European natural science and cultural inquiry during the eighteenth century; explores early-republican aesthetic and scientific representations of volcanoes in nationalist thought; analyzes the relationship between volcanology and state-building during the latter half of the nineteenth century; and investigates how people experienced and gave meaning to volcanic disasters over time. Volcanism shaped notions of nationhood and modernity in Ecuador because volcanoes embodied powerful ideas about place and about culture. Following the French Geodesic Mission to Ecuador in the 1740s, a long history of mountaineering and geological fieldwork transformed equatorial volcanoes into powerful symbols of the nation, particularly for creole intellectuals and their counterparts in government. Due in part to concurrent developments in the earth sciences, volcanoes evoked a sense of history and permanence---what I call the primordial landscape of the nation---while at the same time calling forth a sense of creation, discovery, and renewal. However, the eruption of Cotopaxi volcano on June 26, 1877, crippled economic development and exposed deep social divisions of race, class, and location, revealing to nation builders their greatest fears and anxieties about the prospect of modernity in the Andes. If nationalist ideologues had used volcanoes to anchor the abstract idea of the nation in a tangible landscape, the eruption showed how that landscape could also undermine the very foundations of the state. In this way, volcanoes existed in a paradoxical relationship with society, symbolizing at once the promise and peril of modernity in the Andes. As a case study of the historical relationship between people and volcanoes, this dissertation engages research in environmental history, the history of science, and nation-state formation to generate broader insights into the construction and limits of state power, the spatial dimensions of identity, and the role of nature in shaping human endeavors.