Manoel’s Destinies 1984

[Ariel Wascom]

Theformation and study of natural history and paleontology collections was part of the installation of political order under the Empire of Brazil, as well as the establishment of a scientific program. The symbiosis between science and the nation was actively promoted by Peter W. Lund, pioneer of paleontology studies in the country. The collections and writings produced by the naturalist lent support to the visualization of the past and the writing of history in Brazilian and European scientific and cultural institutions and museums. The disputes over the political order under the Regencies and the Majority were closely accompanied by the study and explanation of the forms of life and the planet found in the past.

A formao e o estudo de colees de histria natural e de paleontologia participaram da instaurao da ordem poltica do Imprio do Brasil, delineando tambm uma ordem cientfica. A simbiose entre cincia e nao encontrou em Peter W. Lund, iniciador dos estudos de paleontologia em nosso pas, um agente ativo e constante. As colees e escritos desse naturalista deram amparo visualizao do passado e escrita da histria em museus, instituies cientficas e culturais brasileiras e europeias. As disputas pelo ordenamento poltico sob as Regncias e a Maioridade foram acompanhadas de perto pelo estudo e a explicao das formas de vida e do globo no passado.

The work of the naturalist Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801-1880), particularly in his paleontological investigations undertaken between 1836 and 1844, allows us to study the dual process of the musealization of nature and the propagation of a set of ideas concerning the nation during the period of the Empire of Brazil. Pursuing the metaphor of the petrification of the nation, we can discover some of the meanings involved in the visualization of the past in the paleontological studies and collections produced in the first half of the nineteenth century (Meneses, 2003).

During this same period, museums grew in importance and assumed particular characteristics (Guimares, 2006, 2007). The visual was also used as a resource by other institutions. The Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indstria Nacional (Society for the Support of National Industry), for example, promoted debate on issues like agricultural production and the workforce not only through the publication of reports, journals, manuals and technical works, but also through exhibitions and public demonstrations of equipment, cultivation methods and processing technology with the aim of disseminating a "modernizing spirit in society" (Carone, 1978, p.18, 25). The historian Jules Michelet, for instance, made the 'resurrection' of the past a touchstone for his work (Barthes, 1991).

The examination of natural objects can help in comprehending the relations between the human being, society and nature. Beyond technology, commerce, hobbies and economic production, there is also a political and ideological vector involved in the ordering of these relations. Scientific procedures and explanations in the nineteenth century, especially in the first half, were dominated by the "naturalistic inclination" (Leinz, 1955, p.247). In this sense they contributed to reinforcing and disseminating "the ideology of the inevitability of scientific progress in the domain of the control of natural forces" (Gramsci, 1968, p.132).1 1 On Brazil, see Figueira, 1997. In this and other citations of texts from non-English languages, a free translation has been provided. Gilberto Freyre (2000) collected numerous examples of the new mysticism that emerged around technology and machinery in the first decades of national life under the Empire.

The paths and strategies pursued in the organization of the Brazilian State following its declaration of independence from Portugal in 1822 catalyzed the social endeavor to implant a 'scientific order' compatible with the creation of a tradition and identity for the nation - or more specifically, the society and economic groups that had led the introduction of the Empire of Brazil. The outlines of a new political order, including the revision of legal frameworks and institutional rules and practices, were crystallized in the movement known in historiography as the Regresso (Regression). Some of the actions and projects of the regressives - promoted as part of the political and administrative centralization embedded in the 1824 Constitution - included the interpretation of the Additional Act, reform of the Criminal Procedure Code, a reduction in the autonomy of the provinces, greater control of the Judiciary and the Legislature by the Executive, moderation of the power of the emperor, and army reform. The maintenance of slavery and the territorial unity of the Empire were paraded, even in the nineteenth century, as successful outcomes of this political action.

The recruitment of artists, scientists and intellectuals failed to conceal the more pragmatic aims, as indicated by the creation of the Society for the Support of National Industry in 1827, the Pedro II Imperial College in 1837, the Public Archive of the Empire and the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute (IHGB) in 1838 (Carone, 1978; Guimares, 1988). Parliament, the ministry, the courts, the State Council, the Imperial Court, the press, academies and faculties, the Armed Forces and the Church, among other imperial institutions, were heavily funded and filled with individuals with a variety of cultural profiles. Even the Emperor Pedro II tried to embody the symbiosis between science and nation.

The work and experience of Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801-1880), a Danish naturalist, who settled and died in Minas Gerais, the pioneer of Brazilian paleontology, provides an insight into the relations between science and nature in the structuring of a national Brazilian identity, in the midst of the political project of the Regression. This was a centralizing project that in the decades from the 1830s to the 1860s, between to:"the end of the Regency and the liberal renaissance of the 1860s set the tone and defined the content of the imperial State," combining social order and the diffusion of the ideal of civilization in what Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos (2009, p.32; 1987) called "the Saquarema period."2 2 The Conservative party leadership at this time in the mid nineteenth century were known as the saquaremas, named after their political base in the coastal town of Saquarema, near to Rio de Janeiro.

A reading of Lund's Memrias cientficas (Scientific memoirs), letters and biography (1935, 1950) allows us to study the role performed by natural objects in a broader political process spreading out through time and space. They provide us with a series of insights into how the past is visualized and history written in museums, insofar as the ideological function contained in the celebration and musealization of natural history tells us about values, positions and social conceptions of the world (Vasconcellos, 2007, p.18).

The location of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro from 1808 made Brazil increasingly visible to other western societies. Between the second half of the eighteenth century and the mid nineteenth, the observation and collection of objects, data, samples and information launched innumerable scientists on journeys across the different continents, expanding knowledge and stimulating the emergence and organization of institutions, publications, exhibitions and national and international communities of different kinds, animated by the spirit of discovery and classification of the global explorers (Fernndez-Armesto, 2009, p.357-430; Raminelli, 2008). According to Eric J. Hobsbawm (1982, p.23), during this period the world was still known only in pieces, even for someone experienced like the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Europe experienced a similar movement of discovery within the continent itself as people explored areas until then considered hostile, wild and dangerous, enshrouded in mystery, like the highest mountains. The European urban world was unaware of them until the eighteenth century and, at the start of the nineteenth, the mountainous areas were still largely unknown. It was only in 1787 that an expedition climbed Mont Blanc, located in the border region between France and Italy. Humboldt embarked on what was a remarkable exploit for the time, climbing Mount Chimborazo in the Andes (Pratt, 1999, p.222). In the 1830s, according to Angyone Costa (2006, p.266), there reigned "a vivid scientific curiosity stimulating young scientists to observe and study the caves of Europe, especially those of France." These investigative excursions would result in discoveries, such as the 'Neanderthal man,' in modern day Germany in 1856, clearing the way for questioning and contesting that the Old World was inhabited in the past by a historically and physically homogenous population. Large animals and other peoples were found to have occupied European spaces before them. It was the revelation of a new world that seemed to emerge from the heart of the old continent.

The presence of naturalists from the north of Europe in Brazil started to expand after 1810 with the arrival of Eschwege and Varnhagen in the service of the Portuguese Crown, responding to the promises of reform and a revival of mineral exploration in the country. In 1841, Peter Claussen, a Dane, accompanied Joseph Libon, a Belgian naturalist, on his first voyage to Brazil (Stols, 2006, p.77). Claussen had become the owner of a farm in Curvelo, Minas Gerais, and presented the region to his compatriot, Peter W. Lund.

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