Maps and maritime journals are essential instruments while navigating uncharted waters. However, these sources can also provide other forms to understand landscapes and communities. When French direct trade took the coasts of Peru by storm during the first decades of the eighteenth century, the King of France commissioned sailors to survey the coasts and provide detailed maps and descriptions that could help the French understand the territory better. Nonetheless, these journals were even further than providing navigational information. French mariners also became ethnographers, portraying the societies they engaged in throughout the coast while giving their perspectives and biases of what they encountered. This presentation discusses how French navigational journals are vital documentation, providing geographical illustrations and depicting coastal communities of eighteenth-century Peru.

Lunch will be served by M.A.R.I.

Raúl Alencar (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Tulane University. His dissertation analyzes Peruvian and French merchant communities' trajectories within the era of global trade and the Bourbon reforms (1700-1763).