Quintero Toro, Camilo. Birds of Empire, Birds of Nation: A history of Science, Economy, and Conservation in United States- Colombia Relations. Bogota: Universidad de los Andes, 2012.
Intro.
This book seeks to answer these and other questions by focusing on the study in perception of Colombian birds from the late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, as a pretext to analyze social, scientific and environmental relations between the United States and Colombia.
Understanding how ornithologists and collectors formed bird collections reveal s a rich story of international scientific relations and power structure throughout the 19th and 20th century.
Reconstructing the story of Colombian birds allows the author to build a history that not only analyzes the early and complex scientific relations between the United States and Colombia, but also takes into account the importance of North America's growing influence over Latin America as well as Colombia's changing economic, cultural and social history to understand different perception of the natural world in both countries.
For a North American, the study of birds brought forth a natural world where US imperialist intentions over Latin America were entirely legitimized. For Colombian naturalists, the study of birds offered another way to promote relations with the United States and incorporated Colombia into the international arena of science.
At the same time, a toucan in 1940 had a different meaning to a North American, who in the midst of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy, approached Latin America as an important economic and political ally, than to a Colombian rooted in the context in which nationalism had a very strong current.
In other words, a study of the changing meaning of Colombian birds allows us to understand the many ways in which imperialism, nationalism, and