>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> I'd like to welcome you here to the Library of Congress in the John W. Kluge Center. I am Carolyn Brown and I direct the center. And we're delighted this afternoon to have two very interesting speakers. Our distinguished visiting scholar, Ambassador Ricardo Luna will be speaking in conversation with Larrie Ferreiro about an 18th century scientific expedition to the equator to determine the true shape of the Earth. Who knew that this was a problem in the 18th century? This is the event that's described in Ferreiro's book, Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World. So we have this afternoon, history, science, and adventure. But before we begin, I wanna ask you to please turn off your cellphones and any other electronic equipment that might go off, disturb the speaker or interfere with the recording. The event is sponsored in by the John W. Kluge Center, which was established in the year 2000 with a gift from John Kluge with the idea that there should be a place on Capitol Hill where mature scholars could bring their wisdom to the nation's leaders. This happens-- when it happens well as it sometimes does. It's usually-- it's an informal conversation. But it can be quite splendid when it does occur. So it's a space where the world of ideas can come together with the world of affairs where the doers can meet the thinkers. We also have a nice cohort of those some of the world's most promising scholars and together we form a community that does research here in the Library. The center also sponsors a range of lectures, a small symposia, workshops. It's Sarah, you can get more information. If you would like to by going to the Library's home page, www.loc.gov, down at the bottom of that page you can sign And Ambassador Luna, who will be-- who is here with us to frame the discussion is distinguished diplomat from Peru but he's not wearing his diplomatic hat today. He's wearing his scholarly hat. You can hear him in his diplomatic hat later. Guess it's not-- it's December, December 1st and December 8th. December 8th, he'll be presenting his own research and December 1st will be a very interesting conversation about diplomacy and how it varies among generations. But today it's the scholarly hat. He has taught international relations at a number of universities. So this is not a surprising hat at all. But he's been at the center particularly creative in identifying really interesting subjects for public discussion. And one of those is that that we're having today and it's sort of demonstrates in interesting ways, his very wide ranging interests. So my thanks for Ambassador Luna for suggesting this program and I think we're gonna find it really interesting to learn about this little known event and its implications. So let's welcome Ambassador Luna who will introduce Larrie Feirrero. And gives some of his own remarks. [ Applause ] >> Thank you Dr. Brown. Thank you Larrie for giving me this opportunity to just say a few things very briefly as to an introduction. You will be getting the substances, the version of why this-- which was actually the first international scientific mission to South America, a very important so the time of the enlightenment, came at the time of normal friction among the powers in Europe and I just thought I'd mentioned a few of the things that I have been looking at as background. In the first place, there were two contradict reviews in vogue in Europe particularly in France in the middle of the 18th century when this expedition was about to take off. One was a kind of romantic revival of the idea that the pre-Columbian civilizations particularly the Inca, the Aztecs, and less so the Maya where the Greeks and the Romans and that they were model that could be replicated after independence in terms of their social. Know how their sophistication in terms of agriculture and general virtue at governance and that was also [inaudible] in plays and in operas all over the place, as I repeat, but in particular in France. At the same time, you had a contrary review which was that the continent and its people, the new world and its people were inferior to the new world in terms of the quality of the species, the vitality of the animals, the level of the intelligence and the culture of the native populations, et cetera. And among those people who held a slightly negative view was La Condamine, who is a prominent member of the scientific mission which is quite surprising because he seemed to be lot more-- was a more pragmatic than most of early travelers, but in fact he's the only one of the people who had a negative view like Buffon or de Pauw who actually get-- was in South America. In any case, this gave rise to two events, these contrarian views, that's to say the romantic view and the critical view gave rise to a radicalization of the politics that led to the independence movement among more or less the illustrated class of-- I say the ruling elites in what was to become Latin America. They were gathered in what they called patriotic societies which discuss everything that there was to know under the sun about the nature of the countries that they were born into and these were Spanish-- people of Spanish origin born in Latin America and different from the Peninsulares who were the Spaniards, who are-- who have come from or were coming from Spain. And they-- there are two events that took place in the 18th century which are traumatic in radicalizing the views of this precursors for the people who lead the ideological fight towards independence before the actual liberators from Bolivar in San Martin. One was the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, which was a very traumatic event because nearly, if not half, two-thirds of the Jesuits worldwide were in Latin America. And so they were withdrawn from Latin America to Rome. Most of those at the same time were Creoles. Creoles are Spanish origin but born in Latin America. So the Jesuits that were expelled from Latin America were actually born in South America or Mexico in Central America and that created an enormous amount of resentment and enormous amount of interests on the part of the Jesuits to write about their countries of origin and their exacerbation but not being able to convey true picture of what realty was. And this was I say, 1767. The second, probably more traumatic event was the brutal repression by the-- by [inaudible] authorities of the last Inca insurgency of Tupac Amaru II in 1780-1783. Because he was brutally, he was quartered and when he was found, it was a shocking show of repression which only confirmed a view of Spanish ruthlessness which had been in vogue from two centuries before from the time of the birth of the what we call the Black Legend which was essentially a tool of propaganda by the adversaries of Imperial Spain particularly Elizabeth I onwards and the Dutch, et cetera, which reaches apotheosis in the late 16th century. >> But then-- once again became fashionable and they printed and translated the books of de las Casas which detailed supposed the depravities and the tortures that were committed on the inhabitants. This is not to say that there wasn't any truth to this theory. But the actual thesis was that Spanish depravity was actually unique in comparison to anybody else and it was continuous and it was applied in a sustained form or contemporary-- not even contemporary even by the early 20th century, historians, there's really very little basis to this, the Spanish inquisition was never applied to the native populations. In 300 years, there was only 1200 people processed and usually that was the system of keeping the local politicians in place. But be that one-- Be that as it may, it's relevant to our inquiry because one part of the group of the scientific expedition was made up by two Spanish naval officers and scientists. So it was in their interest to find out first of all what the nature of governance in Spanish America in this case particularly Peru which is now Ecuador and was really like. And it was an indirect way of trying to dismantle this Black Legend. Nevertheless, as I say, the repression of Tupac Amaru's revolt was a turning point and the precursors and people who-- the Creoles in Spanish America who had essentially been interested in reforms, in giving more power to the local elites took that as a breaking point and it evolved into a fight for absolute independence and among the leaders of-- the intellectual leaders of this were the Jesuits and two of them. One of them in particular, Viscardo actually went to Britain to ask for support of Britain to help to Tupac Amaru in this. It was a three-year war, 1780 to 1783 against the local Spanish Viceroyalty. The three most important precursors before Bolivar were Vizcardo y Guzman who is a Spaniard Peruvian Jesuit; Antonio Narino from Columbia, what would be Columbia; and Francisco de Miranda who was extra ordinary man from Venezuela who fought in the Napoleonic wars, in the American Wars of Independence and in first wars of Independence for South America. Both Vizcardo and Miranda did a lot of lobbying in London. They were both admirers of United States system but this did not preclude their hope of getting support from the Brits in terms of strategic help for their fight of independence later on. And among the more interesting things that they did was to propose in the case of Vizcardo, a joints described to William Pitt, a joint system which would become the-- it should be the form of a new government in Peru which essentially fused, a kind of a bucolic idea of Incan rule with Habsburg Spanish, that's to say pre-bourbon Spanish customs in a benign monarchy and they would have house of commons, an elective Inca who would be probably from the Creole class rather from the native class. But in the case of Vizcardo y Guzman, he made it very clear that it would be absolutely egalitarian in terms of the population of Spanish origin, the Metizos and Indians. Miranda went further in his proposal. I don't know why they thought this would be tempting or even intelligible to the British authorities but they apparently did and I think, I suspect the reason is that it would proved indirectly that the Black Legend really didn't work. Of course the British knew that it wasn't true but they were using it as propaganda. In any case, I don't wanna take anymore of your time but I think I should tell you that in the report that Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, two Spanish naval officers who accompanied the mission to South America. There's an excerpt in which they described the nature of the Peruvians which I though you find interesting because this written by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. And it proves that no amount of ideological fervor either fermented by the example of the success of US Independence as a generation before or the enlightenment writers as Voltair, Russo, or what have you. The actual simple friction between the Peninsulares, this is in Spaniards coming to Peru and the Creoles, Spanish-born in Peru was so intense and so long in terms of time, 300 years, gestating. It produced frictions of all kinds. Imagine slights, you know, seeking positions of government or authority which was not available to them, et cetera. But-- and I close with this when I leave Larrie to give you the interesting introduction as to the significance of the mission. But this is what he said about-- this is Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa speaking specifically about the relationship between the Peninsula Spaniards and the Creoles. He says and I quote, "To be European or chapeton is caused enough for hostilities to the Creoles and to have been born in the Indies a sufficient reason for hating Europeans. This ill will reaches such a pitch that in some ways, it surpasses the rabid hatred which two countries in open war feel for one another. Since while with this, there is usually a limit to vituperation and insult. With the Spanish or Peru, you will find none. And far from this discord being alleviated by closure contact between the two parties, by family ties and by other means which might be thought likely to promote unity and friendship, what happens is the reverse. Discord grows constantly worse and the greater the contact between the Spaniard and the Creole, the fears or the fires of dissension. Rancor is constantly renewed and the fire becomes ablaze that cannot be put out." So that was the atmosphere in which the scientific mission arrived in South America in the middle of the 18th century and I just wanna say thank you Larrie for coming and giving us this opportunity to hear more about it. Thank you. [ Pause ] >> It does work. Thank you so much for that introduction. Let me just make sure this works. The dilemma, the fight between the Peruvians of the Spanish who were born in Peru and the Spanish who came from Spain was nothing compared with the fight going on at the same time between two powers in Europe, France and Britain. It is perhaps a little bit of a stretch to compare it with the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States, but that's a reasonable starting point. The two nations had been at war both politically, militarily, as well as in the scientific and cultural realms for over 100 years by the time this story begins. And the story begins with that rivalry. First on the scientific front but then also on the strategic front. And it started interestingly enough with the problem of the Earth shape. There was a scientific problem at the time. There were two views of how the universe was constructed. A French scientist by the name of Rene Decartes had 100 years earlier developed a theory of everything that seemed to make perfect sense. The universe was composed of these great swirling board of seas in the ether and they moved the stars and the moved the planet, planets around the sky, they created the pole that pushed objects to the Earth's surface. It made perfect sense. It also followed the dictates of the church. Along came an upstart mathematician across the channel named Isaac Newton and he postulated this very odd theory which he called the attraction. Today we called it gravity. >> It's this unseen force that somehow pulls planets together, stars in their courses, it pulls objects to Earth and it's a theory of everything that is in direct contrast to this very satisfying mechanical motion. So by the turn of the 1700s, you had two opposing world views of the universe, one by the French, one by the British. It probably would not have done-- you probably would not have made much difference to the average person except to read about some arcane scientific debate over something like global warming. But it became a strategic issue when it starts to involve the question of the Earth's shape because each model seemed to give you a different form of the earth. Newton, who had developed this idea of gravity, postulated that because gravity pulled everything to the center, but because the Earth was spinning, it somehow caused the Earth to bulge out of the equator and flatten at the poles. The followers of Rene Decartes on the other hand argued that somehow these swirling vortices in the universe caused the planet to be compressed at the equator, elongated at the pole. So it gave a different shape. Again, something of an arcane scientific debate. But if you're the Minister of the Navy and your job is to make certain that your ships have to travel long distances over the ocean to combat your potential-- your adversary which is Britain who controls much of the world's oceans. To control your empire which spread across the globe, the problem with the earth shape suddenly becomes quite important because without a proper knowledge of that, you cannot navigate across long distances. So the strategic problem now became one between Britain and France. The nation which could properly establish the Earth's shape, which could understand the problem navigation can control their empire. The way to do that is using science to establish what that proper shape is. So science, in essence had become politics carried out by other means just like war. So the stage was set for a mission to determine the Earth's shape. And the first question was, "how you do that when you're living on the planet and you can't see beyond the horizon?" The way you can do and it and they had been well understood by that point is to make measurements on two very widely spaced points on the globe. If the earth is shaped like an egg, a prolate spheroid, I had to throw that one in, the curvature is different at each part of the Earth. If the earth was perfectly spherical, it would be the same curvature no matter where you are. But with a planet that shaped more like an ellipse, the curvature changes from one part to another. And you could establish what that curvature is by measuring a degree of latitude at different points. If in the case of an oblate spheroid, in other words flatten at the poles, you took a measurement close to the equator which is shown on the right side, you would see that the-- a degree of latitude measured there would be slightly smaller than a degree which was measured closer to the poles. By this time that had already been several surveys carried out in France which is about 45 degrees or so north latitude which has established the degree of latitude. To put it in perspective, here in Washington, DC, we are at 39 degrees north latitude. If you go 69 miles to the North, I think that way, almost exactly you'll get to 40 degrees north latitude. That would not be the case if you were at the equator. It would be just a little bit shorter. And in fact they knew that based on their initial observations that that difference would only be a few tens or hundreds of yards over the course of 70-- almost 70 miles. So the kind of precision they required to make these measurements was incredible. They had to do it at a point that was as far away from France, as close to the equator as possible. Now up until 1733, there was no place on the planet that was really accessible for that kind of measurement. What was at the equator, what was known were several places along the African Coast, but that really wasn't a good option because these were primary slave trading post and in between there was not much that Europeans were comfortable with. Asia was too far away. But in 1733, the first of the series of alliances between France and Spain came about. And it came about because they had a common adversary, Britain. And by aligning their interests under what was called the Bourbon Family Compact, not because it was actually agreed to over a glass of whiskey but because the family which was-- came descended through Louis XIV, the Sun King, were in fact on two sits. The king of Spain was the uncle of the King of France. So it certainly made sense from a familiar point of view but it made a lot more sense from a strategic point of view. With that strategic alliance, suddenly the land at the middle of the Earth became open to France. The minister of the navy whose name was Maurepast quickly proposed a mission to measure the Earth. So the Spanish king who readily accepted because they also understood that the interest of navigation weren't hard and they have to control their empire as well. With that, the mission to the equator was born. To prepare for the mission, they have to get the people, the instruments and the logistics together all at the same time. The man who proposed the expedition, the first one, top left was Louis Godin, a fairly young astronomer, member of the Academy of Sciences who sponsored the expedition although the navy paid for it, which was fairly easy because the president of the Academy of Sciences was also the minister of the navy. Godin was probably the worst choice possible as leader of the expedition. As a scientist, he was used to working alone and the requirements for leading a long distance expedition into foreign territory requires skills of leadership, being able to pull teams together, teamwork, diplomacy. None of which was particularly encouraged in the Academy of Sciences. Louis Godin was perhaps the epitome of that and believed that just by giving orders that somehow constituted the role of the leader. With him, probably the most reluctant to go was Pierre Bouguer who became the de facto leader of the expedition. He'd been a childhood prodigy and at this time, 37, which was old for the time, he had not yet acquired the more mature title of genius. He was looking to make a name for himself in the Academy of Sciences. And by participating in this expedition, he knew he could cement his place. He was reluctant to go in part because although he was one of the most famous of the professors of navigation in France, he got seasick and hated long distance ocean voyages. The third scientist was Charles Marie de La Condamine, easily the most charismatic of all the members of the expedition and probably of the entire Academy of Sciences. He was a good friend of Voltaire. He was a good friend because he made Voltaire rich by making himself rich. He figured out how to scam a lottery in Paris by buying up almost all the tickets which will worth only about half of the pay out. By the time, he and Voltaire were done, each were about to the equivalent of 2 million dollars richer. That set Voltaire for life. It's certainly set their friendship for life and the portrait shows a-- if you can see it close up, a little twinkling in his eye, he never quite took science seriously. But he saw everything through the lens of humanity. He was a wonderful writer, very witty and he knew everybody. So they're at the top of this expedition who had three quite unlikely characters; a man who for all intents and purposes should have been left at the dock; Pierre Bouguer who spent his life buried in books; and Charles Marie de La Condamine who saw that's almost his yet another adventure, so the glue that kept this fractious group together. >> They had with them science-- other scientists, doctors, surgeons, assistant craftsmen, et cetera, about 20 people in all where two Spanish officers who where named almost at the last minute. They were midshipmen or just recently promoted midshipmen. As Ricardo said, Jorge Juan y Santacilia, a wonderful name, and Antonio de Ulloa y Torre-Giralt which again is just-- you'll get those kinds of names today. As you can see they, were quite young. But they were wise not only beyond their years but wise beyond anybody's expectation. They not only held the expedition together. They brought back ideas that were really at the cutting edge of the enlightenment. These two young officers, who had seen battle, who had voyaged across the ocean, who had grown up on the ocean, together with these three scientists form the core of the expedition. In May of 1735, the expedition left the shores of Europe in two different ships to rendezvous in Cartagena de Indias. So to get there, they first had to traverse the Atlantic. Find their way to the Caribbean Coast, cross the isthmus of Panama, down to the shores of what today is Ecuador and make their way inland to the City of Quito which would became their base of operations. So while the French took their ship to the Caribbean to the Island of San Domingue, the Spanish officers went directly to Cartagena where they waited for several months. The French scientists were held up in the San Domingue, today Haiti for some time during which they managed to burn through much of their funds in part because Louis Godin had decided that he-- being the leader and the treasurer also had say over what his funds could be used for-- the expedition's funds could be used for including buying a diamond for his mistress. It did not endear him to the rest of the expedition so by the time they left those shores, there was almost a mutiny on their hands. It was somewhat swaged when they met the Spanish officers. But this expedition broke apart when they arrived on the shores of South America. They literally broke apart because some of the members decided that they would one route while Godin and the rest of the troop will take another route to come inland to Quito. It was a decision that was-- I'm trying to find another word than insane, but so far I can't find one because the scientists did not know the language, did not know the people, the culture, the flora, the fauna, what could kill them, what could cure them, and yet they decided to strike out across the jungle alone. La Condamine was the man who led this and I think this should tell you an awful one because he made it to Quito alive and unhurt. If there was one thing that La Condamine had that probably took him through most of this expedition, it was luck. It was attribute that Napoleon later on actually believed was something that his officer should have and La Condamine had in spades. So by the time the expedition rendezvoused in Quito, a year had gone by. They envision this entire expedition to take 2 years at the most, maybe 3. They've already been gone a year and they hadn't even began their operations. Now the in sea of Quito was one of several provinces within the Viceroyalty of Peru. At the time the Viceroyalty of Peru extended from the Caribbean, all the way down to the farthest Southern reaches of South America. Each region was-- had a president and at the time, the new president was just coming in, was shifting-- the presidency of Quito was shifting from a Peninsula, a foreign born Spaniard to a native born Spaniard named Araujo y Rio who to show that he was in power, wanted to make certain that anybody who was from Europe was put in to their place. It was into this environment as Ricardo had mentioned that these scientists walked into. And they walked into it not only unprepared for the political situation, they walked into it without money because they had burned through all their funds and they walked into it with an enormous degree of hubris because they did not think they were going to be in the country long enough to become accustomed to its culture, to its ways. They walked into a culture that in-- and probably to put into terms we would understand would be the equivalent of a 20th century American setting foot in Victorian, Britain. The Enlightenment had taken hold in France, it was a different view of the world that it started and they called in Spain. It had not yet reached the shores of South America. It was still a very conservative country or land. Many of the views of between men and women for example and the beginnings of the equality of the sexes had not reached those shores, the idea that scientists were somehow a special breed a part which took route in Europe but not in South America. This was the baggage they carried with them and they were not to drop it when they reached the shores. And this would have deadly consequences. [ Pause ] >> It's a good pause while I get my water. [ Pause ] >> Okay, is it possible to advance the slide from where you are? Thank you. The first order of business was to measure what was called the baseline and that was part of a process called triangulation. I mentioned that they had determine the length of the degree of latitude at the equator and you do that by first calculating the physical length along a stretch of land and then making astronomical observations to determine the latitude at the northern and southern points so that you can have the difference in latitude. You take that distance in degrees and divide it by the physical distance in miles at the time to us, and you have the length of the degree of latitude. But what they were measuring, 3 degrees of latitude was approximately the distance between New York and Washington DC, just over 200 miles. To do that, you could not just stretch your tape measure. You did something known as triangulation. If you reached back to your 9th or 10th grade geometry, you might remember that to determine the shape of a triangle, you needed the length of one side and two angles. If you extend that over what's known as a chain of triangles, all you need to do is make an accurate physical measurement of one side of one triangle which was called the baseline, and then choose points at very far distances, 20 and 30 miles, make very accurate angular measurements using an instrument known as quadrant. And by doing that, you can triangulate all the way down across 200 miles without having and do it in theory fairly quickly. At least that's what it seemed like as they where sitting in their comfortable armchairs in the Academy of Sciences on the second floor of the Louvre, which is where it was located. Things were much different when they got there. First, they had to measure a baseline. You do that by finding a very flat place where you can literally take, today, a tape measure at the time, measuring rods that were about 20 feet long and lay them end to end to make a precise measurement, except that this was an area known as the Avenue of the Volcanoes. It's riven by earthquakes, volcanoes, storms. Flat is a relative term. Second, they went there believing that it was going to be on the equator, bright, sunny, and they would suffer from the equatorial heat. It's in an area that we now know today as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. In other words, cloudy, because you have two weather system from each hemisphere colliding and with all the moisture coming in from the jungles, the oceans, it's one of the worst places in the world for astronomical observations. That's why the majority of the telescopes in South America are all the way down in Chile and not only the equator. So they found themselves in the some rather unexpected difficulties. First, was to find a place to establish the baseline. They found it on a plateau about 12 miles away from the city of Quito on a place knows as Yaruqui, which was surrounded by mountains and on which they could do their measurements. And if you see at the bottom, those measuring poles had to be laid out in a very precise way on the ground and literary they were traversing 7 miles on hands and knees. >> Once that baseline was established and they established it to an incredible degree of accuracy. They were able to use their instruments known as a quadrant to make their measurements of the triangulation. There, the map on the left is-- shows the route that they took down this chain of mountains. Notice the avenue of the volcanoes. And you can probably make out fairly quickly what they were trying to do. This area of the Indies, the Cordillera is essentially two sets of volcanoes separated by very wide valley, about 20 or 30 miles wide. And by going from one side of this avenue, going up the mountains with this quadrant which you see on the right side making measurements to the mountains on the other side of the valley 30 miles away they could establish this chain. They had several problems as I mentioned. First, it was frequently cloud covered. So they would be in-- on a mountain looking at to get an angle between two other mountains and one mountain would be covered with clouds while the other one was clear. When that mountain with clouds finally cleared, the other one would be covered. So they would spend anywhere from a week to a month on top of this mountains and this is was Cotopaxi probably the most emblematic of all volcanoes, a beautiful triangle that you can see, a great distance. That snow line is actually a little bit higher than it was at that time. They had to set up at or above the snow line. Again, they're imagining themselves broiling in equatorial heat but they're at four miles altitude. They were freezing. There was snow. There was wind. There were hurricane force winds in some cases. And they have to log this quadrant. You don't really have much of the scale from this picture but it's taller than I am and it weights about 300 pounds because it's cast iron. That quadrant and this-- the original quadrant made by the same manufacturer, a man named Langlois, is in the observatory of Paris today. That's how I got to see this and actually look through the eye piece when no one was looking. [Laughter] They had-- it had to be this mantled, hold up the mountain, setup, adjusted and then the measurements taken. Now these were scientists who you can imagine spent most of their lives at desks. So the physical labor involved was extraordinary. You probably already have guessed that they did not log these quadrants up to the mountains themselves. Yes, they had mules but primarily they used the local labor. In other words, the Indians, who went almost unmentioned except for some very disparaging comments in a few of the-- later on. But they were just almost literally armies of unnamed Indians who helped them, who brought the equipment, who probably cooked their meals, helped setup camp. So whenever you read a scientist's account to the expedition and he says "and I did this," I should include an army behind him and mostly of the local people who went as I said unnamed. That process which say did not imagine would take very long, actually took about two years. During this period of time, they had other issues. The issues were; out-- that they were out of money, so they had to stop their operations in the middle. La Condamine who quite wisely brought about a million dollars equivalent of bank notes with him. These were letters of credit. They carried letters of credit and not cash because they were able to find banks that could cash those letters of credit. One of the things that I'm still fascinated by was how extensive the banking and how global the banking system was in 1735, that he could carry letters of credit across the ocean to Lima, Peru, find somebody to cash them, and accept these letters which was he did. They had other problems with the physicality of the observations. Storms as I've mentioned. But by the end of 1739, so they're now gone four years, they have come to the end of their triangulation. From that point it should be a fairly straightforward set of measurements, they didn't see anything that was getting-- gonna get into-- in their way. They were almost ready to go home, and then the unexpected happened. One of their expedition members, a surgeon had been treating along with the doctor a number of locals. They were not just there to help the expedition members. They were there to collect flora and fauna samples. They were especially interested in the cinchona tree which is from where you get quinine. They were helping the local population who were frequently suffering from epidemics. But the surgeon found himself involved in the family of one of his patients a little bit too intimately. He got involved in fact with the local woman who'd been jolted by one of the town leaders and took it upon himself to help rectify that situation and eventually called this man out to a duel. Again, we have to put ourselves into the mindset of a European coming from a place where dueling had been already outlawed for hundred years, where sword was ceremonial, and he walked into a place where sword where the-- a [inaudible] of the day. You wore them that because they look good but because you needed them. He did not understand the customs, he did not understand the how to duel obviously, but he did not understand the enormous resentment that the people felt towards these interlopers, these outsiders. And it came to a head in the festival in August of 1739 at 4:30 p.m. during one of the bullfights. Most towns at the time would makeshift bull rings by putting sand over plazas. This was the plazas of San Sebastian in the town of Quenca at the bottom of the triangulation. The surgeon who'd had too much drink began to have words with some of the locals. He leveled his sword and his pistols at them. The leader went off to find the mayor and together with the group of people they came back to arrest him. The surgeon did not want to be arrested and he moved into the center of the ring brandishing his word, brandishing his pistol and the people started to pick up the arms that had originally been intended for the bullfight and used it against him, the picks, the lances. The scientists who were also at this bullfight intending to witness a celebration dropped down from the galleries which were surrounding this ring trying to help him. Jorge Juan who was a renounced swordsman who'd been in battle tried to help but he was pulled back. The surgeon was hit with rocks, with swords and then in one instance where a type of sword that was normally used to dispatched the bull. Wounded, he ran out of the plaza and collapsed in a house. The scientists tried to run after him but they were chased by the angry mob. Bouguer was wounded on the back, pulled inside by-- house by a Jesuit just in the nick of time. The surgeon died, Bouguer recovered. But it meant that their operations had to come to a halt for sometime and in fact they have to carry them out undercover of darkness because the locals were so against them. So this was the first unexpected problem that inhibited the measurement of the earth. The second one was war. I mentioned Britain. They've been out of the picture for sometime when in 1737-1738, the problems of smuggling, the problems of piracy and privateering reared their head again. And in one instance, the captain of a British ship claimed that, his name was Roberts-- Robert Jenkins, sorry, claimed that the Spanish coast guard had come-- boarded his ship and threatened him by cutting off his ear and threatening to do the same to the British King. The press went-- they had yellow journalism there, so the equivalent of the Hurst Papers at the time got the British government to declare a war. The war was called the War of Jenkins' Ear. It began with an attacked on Panama, Portobelo, and then became at attacked on the City of Cartagena which was extremely well defended. The name of the admiral who attacked Cartagena was Edward Vernon who was so sure of his victory but he had coins printed or stamp commemorating the victory before the battle began. >> He didn't count on the Spanish admiral defending the city. The name Horatio Nelson may mean something to some of you. He is seen at the top of the Trafalgar Monument, one eye, amputee, strategic genius. Well, a generation before Nelson was born, Blas de Lezo was Nelson, amputee, one eye, strategic genius. And he managed to fight what was the largest amphibious assault until the D-Day by the British and get them to retreat and go back to Jamaica. It didn't really ruin Vernon's reputation. One of his officers, a man named Lawrence Washington, later commemorated for Vernon by calling his own plantation Mount Vernon which was then given over to George Washington. But it meant that all of the operations that the scientists were trying to accomplish were being disrupted, because the battle went from Caribbean waters all the way down the coast, including a British admiral named Anson who circumnavigated the cape-- attacked the coast of Peru, and that meant that the Spanish officers, Jorge Juan and Ulloa were called to defend Lima, and then to command two ships to go out and look for Anson, who by that time had already gone up into the Northern Pacific. But it broke a part the expedition, which had to carry on without the glue that had held them together. [ Pause ] >> It came at one of the worst times. They thought that they would have to do a set of astronomical observations using what's known as the zenith sector. Essentially, it's a vertical telescope that sighted on a particular star, tells you the latitude of each point. And it would seem to be a fairly straightforward operation, but they didn't take into account several astronomical phenomena which we now understand today, they didn't understand then. And it took them over two years to finally establish what was going on and come up with a method to accurately make latitude sightings on these stars. They were hampered by the lack of these two Spanish officers in part because by this time, Godin was operating completely independently from La Condamine and Bouguer. So another two years had passed before they were finally able to make all their observations. Meaning that it took them almost 10 years from the time they left until the time that they have finished to make what seemed like a fairly straightforward operation to come up with one number. And that one number that they looked for was the length of degree of latitude at the equator, 68.7 miles in today's terms. And they went back with this number. And it proved that Newton was right. Now, there had been-- while they were away, another expedition that have gone closer to the Arctic Circle and first established that the Earth was flattened at the poles, but there was still a contentious debate. It was one-- essentially one political camp versus the other political camp. It wasn't until this Peru expedition came back that the debate was settled. At the Arctic Circle they measured a degree at 69.5 miles, 69 miles in France, at the Equator 68.7 miles. You can see that the differences were not huge. But the accuracy of the observations were incredible. Today, with GPS, we know that the measurements they came back with were off by a little less than 150 yards. Given all of the travails that they went through, war, death, graft, greed, corruption, sword fights, bullfights, and the politics of personal destruction, that was an amazing feat. The effect on navigation, which is what they were trying to determine in the first place, was fairly minor. They knew now what the shape of the Earth was, the difference in an ocean voyage might amount to 20 or 30 miles, not great, but enough to make some difference. The real effect, as Ricardo had said, was that it changed the way Europeans perceived South America, and it changed the way the South American people perceive themselves. Taking the second one first, it's important to note that it was after the expedition had left that the colonies of Spain began to create these patriotic societies. They started to investigate historical issues, started to think about science, history, and themselves in a different way. One of the members of the society which was established in Quito, under a man named Eugenio Espejo, was the son of one of the expedition members who would stay behind. It led the Europeans to rethink South America in part because the expedition members, when they came back, had to report on the scientific information. And it's pretty dry reading and if you want to read through it. But what was much more interesting were the writings by La Condamine and [inaudible] in particular that talked about the people, the culture, the land, the flora, the fauna in ways that they had not seen before. These were through the eyes of people who said they were scientists. They often misrepresented the people, but the accounts were riveting. It didn't completely dispel the Black legend, but it gave a view of South America that went beyond the religious, beyond the notion of the conquistador and to the idea that this is a world apart, a different land and not just a dominion of the Spanish empire. Not simply a place where Spain got its gold and where the conquistadors had downtrod the Indians, but as a new place, a new world. And it overtime changed the view of the people who were living in the country to that same concept. We are not simply a part of Spain, but we are a land apart, an independent place. And I say this because of two things. The first is Simon Bolivar, who is the most emblematic of the liberation of South America, of the Wars of Independence, which were in many ways modeled on the same notions that drove the United States to declare independence years earlier, was fascinated with this expedition. Now as many of you know, we are in the 200th anniversary over the next 10 to 15 years of the events that led to the independence of many of these South American nations. In 1822, Bolivar had just finished one of his battles and was on his way to the coast of today's Ecuador, and climbed Mount Chimborazo and he did so quite explicitly. He was thinking about this expedition, La Condamine was the name now attached to it because he wrote the best. Humboldt, Alexander von Humboldt, a wayward German who had come to South America specifically because he found the accounts of La Condamine and others so interesting, became his inspiration and he said, I explore-- and Bolivar said in a very well-known poem, "My Vision on Chimborazo," "I explored mysterious sources of the Amazon and saw to ascent the pinnacle of the universe. I strove bravely forward in the footsteps of La Condamine and Humboldt, and nothing could hold me back." Bolivar himself began to refer to the region and to its people, not by the old name, Quito, but buy a new name which they were already taking for themselves, a name that La Condamine had begun to use to describe the region, "Equator." And he called those people who lived in the region the "children of the equator." And so in 1830, when a new nation was starting to split itself off from Grand Colombia, and they were searching for a name, it did not do to reach back into history, to colonial times, to Quito, for that name. And even Colombia was not right. This was a new nation, modern. They needed a modern name, and the name they chose was Ecuador, equator. And it was because of that expedition and the notoriety that that expedition gave to the region that we have a country, notice the name of the country today. >> If you go to Ecuador today, well not today, but what time is it? In about maybe 6 months to 8 months to a year to 2 years, depending upon how projects go, you'll be landing at the new international airport which is on that plateau of Yaruqui which I had pointed out to you. Airports like geodesic baselines need long flat open plateaus, and the airports is built directly on top of the baseline that they have carved out almost 300 years earlier. As a matter of fact, if you look at the terminal and go directly above it to that-- I'm trying to remember what they call between the two taxi ways. There's a-- [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Sorry? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Still didn't hear. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yeah, that little angular road between the two taxi ways, that's where the baseline went through. And that airport is scheduled to open in the very near future. Several of the places that they wrote about and lived and worked in are still there. There's hacienda known as Guachala which is not far from the City of Quito going clockwise around. If you visit Cuenca today, the plaza where the doctor Seniergues was assassinated is a beautiful park today with fountains, trees, a nice little restaurant to one side. The most famous of course is the Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world, which is a monument erected by an Ecuadorian geographer having nothing to do with the expedition in terms of where it went, but commemorating the fact that they came there and they measured the Earth. And that's what it says on the monument. And today, there's a line of busts looking down the avenue of the volcanoes, much as they must have been 300 years ago. That baseline that I mentioned had originally been marked by two large pyramids which overtime crumbled. In 1836 the first president of Ecuador commissioned the reproduction of those two pyramids which are visible today. If you go to the observatory of Quito, you can see one of the original, in fact the only remaining original placard that was on the monument which survived somehow in a place of honor in front of the entrance. And one of the marble plaques that they created is also there. So you can go and see some of these sites but I think the most important thing is that center one, the Quito Airport. And the reason why is because the planes that land there are using GPS, the Global Positioning System which is a series of satellites that know where they are because they know the exact shape of the earth. And they know the exact shape of the earth because of the observations and the accomplishments that these men began on that very spot 300 years earlier. So they-- that mission has come full circle, I've come full circle, and I wanna like to take your questions. [ Applause ] [ Inaudible Remark ] >> I guess I should use this, shouldn't I? Yes, sir? >> Thank you very much for your very enlightening presentation. My name is Diego Vasante [phonetic] and I am from Ecuador, from Quito actually. And-- >> Bienvenido. >> Muchas gracias. And, well, you know, first of all, I'd just want to congratulate you. I think it was a very-- it was a great presentation. The history of the geodesic mission to what is now Ecuador is of course-- it's part of my country's history and it's very dear to all Ecuadorians. And what I wanna mention is, you know, the fact that in Ecuador, back in Ecuador, a lot of historians argued that the name of the country should not have been Ecuador but rather Quito. And that's what we're taught in school, you know, having been raised in Ecuador I can tell you that in Ecuadorian schools, what we are taught is that the country got its name from the writings of the French scientists that were there in the 18th century. However, historians argued today that the name of the country should have been Quito and, you know, the thing is that the French scientists referred to that territory not as the Land of Quito, but rather as the Land of the Equator. So my question to you is, do you think there was any other reason for them not to use the name of the city and of that territory, the land of Quito? Was there any political reason maybe or did they just use the name Equator because of their particular interest? >> I think they did so primarily because the object was to make a measurement at the equator. And by underlining the physical location on Earth where they were, they were establishing essentially their scientific basis. So that is the short answer to your question, I think. Why did they use the word "equator" as opposed to, calling it Peru or Quito in most of their writings? They actually would often use the word-- and I'm trying to remember this, meridian-- meridianal America, or equinoxital equator. I-- It's normally in Latin or French. So they used a lot of different terms but I think equator-- >> America meridional. >> America meridional. So they also used that term as well. That was quite common. But you asked about politics and I'm glad you did because I think this is an important point, especially about this French scientist La Condamine. He was a soldier, and he as a military man, he knew the importance of what we call today presence. And you notice that in-- up on the top left, that monument, the placard, and the marble which is above that. La Condamine had a habit of leaving markers that essentially said "France was here. And by the way, we might be back" throughout the country. And he did this for very overtly political reasons. And it really, and again in keeping with what I said earlier about the hubris, this was almost intentionally designed to get the local leaders angry because it was essentially trying to place France above even the King of Spain as a source of authority. So there were very-- it is no question that they had very political motives in their expedition. But I don't think that the naming of the country in their writings as "equator" was one of them. >> Thank you. >> Sir. Oh, Ricardo, yes? >> Just to compliment what you were saying, I'm glad you were able to come. I've lived 3 years in Quito many years ago as a-- in fact right in front of Pichincha, so I remembered perfectly well. La Condamine is true, that he's adventurer and a wonderful scientist. But he's also, you know, these archaeological testings and he decided to go back to Europe through the Amazon with an Ecuadorian partner. So it was-- I don't know. It was-- I mean, it was-- it had never been done before and map it, which he did. So it was extremely important because it stimulated an amount of interest among the Creoles, among the Ecuadorians. Espejo, for example, is one of the people who began to negate all these sort of ideas that the Europeans of the Old World was-- experienced with the New World. And Clavijero, who is a Mexican Jesuit, for example negated the theory that La Condamine had made that the pre-Colombian Americans were incapable of abstract thought, they had no writing, and they had no money. Of course, the Clavijero's thesis on abstract thought is probably the most important ever, because it means-- I mean simplifying it, but basically he says that the function of abstract thought is not necessarily a symptom of civilization because if you don't-- you need abstract thought if you can't get what you need, whereas if things are accessible to you because the organization of your society and your environment is conducive, you don't need abstract thought. That's number one. Secondly, you did have writing in cuneiform writing in the Aztecs and the Mayan forms. And thirdly, you had money. You had the cocoa which was the cocoa beans which were more durable than coins made in Europe. Nowadays it would've, you know, come out, had this provocation, French provocation not taking place. >> Thank you for that. Let me just say one or two more things about that. First of all, I have to say that your former ambassador, I hope he is able to return, Luis Gallegos, was quite instrumental in helping several of my investigations during the time of writing. >> So I'm sad that he's able to be here for political/diplomatic reasons. A lot that I could not say in the 45 minutes of this talk would have dealt with all of the other scientific discoveries and observations that this expedition brought back to Europe, the identification of platinum, rubber, inoculation, the source of-- rather an explanation of how quinine is cultivated. Those are just a few of many and the mapping of the Amazon, are all of the other things that happened in-- [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Oh, and-- >> Louisiana >> Louis-- yeah. And the people just did so many things in addition to mapping the shape of the Earth that it's almost impossible to put into one small, you know, lecture. In fact, it didn't even fit, except there's a couple of footnotes and addenda in this book. But there's an enormous amount that this expedition did. The other thing I have to say that it-- I think it helped to do was create the idea that science is not just an individual pursuit by individual nations. It gave the kick to the idea that science can be done on a global basis and between nations. It was after this expedition that the transit of Venus expeditions which were coordinated internationally, were accomplished. Other expeditions joined between different countries, were carried out. It led to the person that I mentioned, Humboldt. Humboldt of course came to South America on the back of this expedition and the person that he influenced most was a wayward British scientist still trying to find his way in the world, who bordered a small collier, and named Beagle, and came to the Galapagos Islands, and of course his name was Charles Darwin. Yeah? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yeah, I was saying La Condamine must've been more than lucky. He must've had certain qualities of character or personality or something to-- first he had to persuade people to wanna help him, 'cause they didn't have to. It would have been very easy to kill them off in the jungle or some place and who would have been the wiser. So I'm curious about what else we know about him, and then the second part of the question is what other kinds of sources did you use, and are there, I guess were there Jesuit writings about this? Were there other native writings? How do we know what we know? >> The answer to the first question is, La Condamine was the guy you wanted to hangout with on this expedition. He was witty. He had a regular table at the Cafe Gradot, which was where all the scientists met and talked and had coffee. As I said he was a friend of Voltaire, a correspondent. He knew everybody. He was called by his peers "La Condamine the Inquisitive." Because he not only was interested in science, and in fact, in many ways helped people like Voltaire interpret science for the masses. He was interested in archaeology. As Ricardo said, he was one of the first to make detailed studies of an Inca-- well, really a pre-Inca site called "Canar." It was an Inca site but it had been there before by the Canari, and he made the first detailed observations by-- you know, in what we would call today somewhat of a scientific method of Inca and pre-Inca sites. So he was interests-- his interest went, were quite wide-ranging. I found it particularly telling that after having served as a soldier, and then come and made his fortune, he somehow managed to get himself into the Academy of Sciences as a chemist, because that happened to have been the only open spot where he immediately did no chemistry and instead got himself onto a privateering expedition around the Mediterranean where his main job was to go visit sites in Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, et cetera. One of the less, and I'm always surprised at this, and this is just, again, one of the many sidelines. Voltaire of course was writing plays at the same time. And I don't see very-- I don't see any scholar of Voltaire pointing out that every time La Condamine would make some voyage to some exotic location, Voltaire would write a play about it. So when he wrote Zaire which took place in Constantinople, was because his buddy had just gone to Constantinople. And then when this expedition to Peru came up, Voltaire by this time was living very happily with Emilie, and I can't remember her last name now. Anyways, he was living very happily with a woman who was also-- Chatelet. Brilliant physicist, mathematician, he was writing a play called Alzire, or the Americans about Peru. So he was always inspired by La Condamine. So La Condamine was just what we would call today a Renaissance man. He knew everybody. You find his writings absolutely fascinating. The ones that he wrote down and that were published are witty, well-written and absolutely and totally self-serving. Because-- And this it to give you another example of sources, apart from having gone to the observatory to-- in Paris, pretty much every country that they were in I went to to get the information. That incident that happened in Cuenca where the surgeon was killed, La Condamine was the first one to write about it. And when he wrote about incident, he wrote it in such a way that it seemed like the surgeon really wasn't at fault, that it was these backwards locals who instigated the attack and eventually killed him. And the brave and noble French scientists came to his defense but somehow were unable to make-- you know, make it right. Then I went to the court case, which is in the archives in Cuenca, and the court case tells a completely different story. The surgeon I think was suffering from what we would call today paranoid schizophrenia. He was continually threatening the local population. Several times he made reference to cutting off their ears, which turns out to be quite an event at the time. He had notions of grandeur, notions of persecution. All in all, his actions would've landed him in jail no matter where he would have been, perhaps not-- because-- you know, perhaps because of a disease, but La Condamine just-- he lied over that whole aspect and repaints the picture. So it was not by concentrating on the published sources that I found the story to be so compelling, but actually going to the letters, the diaries, the observations of the people that I was able to, I think create a much more complete and nuanced picture and I'll give one more example. We'd spoke about Jesuits and the Jesuits, many of them who were Creolos. One of them was Juan de Velasco, and he was I believe at least in part Indian-- of Indian descent. They called themselves Indian so I used the word Indian. And he wrote about the fact that La Condamine had come to his own house when he was a boy and it was very obvious to the people that he was asking questions to show how stupid they were. And he was so intent on mismeasuring these people that the locals pretended to be even more stupid, so that they would pull the wool over his eyes. And that's a fascinating little observation about how these scientists were so intent on making an accurate measure of the Earth, seemed almost intent to mismeasure the people who inhabited that land. Did that answer your question? >> Yes, that's wonderful. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> We're quite overtime so I think we probably should-- >> Well, as we have a little talk later if anybody wants to come and ask me questions, I'd be more than happy. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> So let's please thank both of our speakers and [background applause] continue the conversation at the reception. Thank you so much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.