Written culture and colonial projects: The “Descripcion of Patagonia”, by Thomas Falkner

Abstract

During his exile from England, his homeland, the Jesuit Thomas Falkner manufactured a manuscript in which he reported experiences lived by him in almost 40 years living in the “Río de la Plata”, including areas unknown to the Europeans. The text was edited and published in 1774, in Hereford, by William Combe, under the title “A Description of Patagonia and Adjoinjing Parts of South America”, being received with great distrust by the Spanish authorities that saw on it a risk to their colonial territories. The literary work is a part of a “written culture” that build, through the XVIII and XIX centuries, a block of reports about wild territories that European science was looking forward to get known. We intent to, in this article, analyze the “Description of Patagonia” to reflect about his production background and, after that, briefly discuss about the reception and flow of the text amongst his fellow countryman.