Territorial Experience and Cartographic Resources for a Provincial State. Mendoza, Argentina (1849-1860)

Abstract

This paper intends to provide elements to reflect upon the relations between territoriality, spatiality, and State. For that purpose, it examines the diverse strate-gies needed to design the political space and accumulate territorial knowledge by actors involved with the government of the province of Mendoza (Argentina), between 1849 and 1860. It shows how the empirically obtained knowledge concerning terri-tory along with the technical resources connected to projective geometry were avail-able for government involvement in the need to define the reach of their orders and tax collection. It is concluded that, for the time studied, it is fundamental to link the study of Cartography and Statistics since for the contemporaries these became intel-lectual resources of the same process of accumulation of information to define the State spatiality, gathering territorial praxis and contributing to nurturing the identity of the political community of belonging.