Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In moving west, Americans had developed several ways of taking “open” or contested
lands and profiting from them. One technique was to grab territory, subdivide it, and
sell the lands outright. Another way was to build infrastructure—roads, ports, and rail-
ways—and control the revenues from them. One could also sell infrastructure derivat-
ives—for example, the right to build or the right of commerce on rivers. Another prac-
tice was to build infrastructure, negotiate rights to their adjacent lands and speculate on
these. These risky possibilities with potential for large returns all required raising capit-
al.
The Amazon was alive with adventurers. In the 1860s and 70s, the US engineer,
Mexicanrevolutionarysympathizer,andBolivianAmazonsurveyorGeorgeEarlChurch
began to plan major railroads to link Bolivia with the Amazon ports on the Madeira,
the precursor of the construction of the disastrous Madeira-Mamoré rail line. Today
Church's name survives only as a footnote in Amazonian studies, but he was as ubiquit-
ous an imperial explorer-entrepreneur as his friend the celebrated imperial botanist and
biopirate Clements Markham, or the widely traveled Sir Richard Burton, diplomat, eth-
nographer, libertine, and translator of the
Kama Sutra
,
Epigrams on Priapus
, and
The
Arabian Nights
aswellasthePortuguesemasterpiece
The Lusiads
.Thesemenwerereg-
ularly at the intersection of journalism, exploration, and uprisings, with developed tastes
in history and ethnography. Markham and Church knew each other from their ramblings
in the upper Amazon and were close friends. Markham was Church's literary executor
and promoted him for the post of vice president of the Royal Geographical Society.
87
Church engineered railroads and infrastructure surveys in Argentina, Costa Rica, and
pact on Amazonian business speculations. His field research, newspaper articles, nego-
tiations, and programs were meant to launch him from his career as a civil engineer,
populist revolutionary, and journalist into the lofty realms of an imperial capitalist. Like
that of Lardner Gibbon, Church's experience in the upper Amazon was widely used and
cited, and the would-be explorers of the Britain Royal Geographical Society pored over
his pamphlet
Desiderata in Exploration
.
89
In1868,withthenew1867AyacuchoTreatyboundariesinhand,Churchnegotiateda
concession to canalize the Madeira-Mamoré Falls or to construct a railway around them
with the Brazilian government. This negotiation package included navigation rights on
the Bolivian Amazon affluents and the right to exact toll and freight charges for twenty-
five years through his Bolivian joint venture, the National Bolivian Navigation Com-
pany,incorporated inNewYork.Because theMadeira RiverisinfactinBrazilian lands,
Church'spropositionrequiredtheconsentofBrazil.HewasabletoconvincetheBrazili-
an government to give him the Madeira concession directly, and he integrated these
rights into a second corporation, the Madeira-Mamoré Railway Company, along with
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