The German natural scientist and humanist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the most prominent modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean, where he traveled between 1799 and 1804 in the company of the French botanist Aimé Bonpland. Humboldt’s writings on the New World made him the undisputed father of modern geography, early Ameri­can studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental science and history. He was, for instance, the first to suggest that America’s indigenous peoples had come from Asia and that Inca, Aztec, and Maya civilizations, rather than representing earlier stages in human development, emerged coevally with the great classic civili­zations of Europe.

The combination of scientific rigor with a deeply felt philosophical humanism made Hum­boldt one of the most broadly influential writers in nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas, north and south. His writings on the New Continent influenced scores of natural scientists, among them Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and Louis Agassiz. Humboldt’s accounts also in­spired countless writers, from Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Susan Fenimore Cooper to Jules Verne, Honoré de Balzac, Emile Zola, Thomas Mann, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Már­quez, Christoph Hein, and Daniel Kehlmann.

Specialization without regard for the larger picture was anathema to Humboldt, which makes his work of great value to scholars who seek to reconnect the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences even outside Latin American studies. His own scholarly-scien­tific practice, a virtual blueprint for intellectual collaborations, implies skepticism about the frag­mentation of knowledge into areas of ever-greater specialization.

The Alexander von Humboldt in English (HiE) project's goal is to prepare volumes of new, unabridged, and annotated translations of the most significant parts of Alexander von Humboldt’s monumental Voyage aux regions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (Paris, 1805-1839), one of the most important texts for the study of transatlantic and global modernities. The University of Chicago Press will publish HiE’s volumes between 2010 and 2013.

First Volume: Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)

The Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba was first published in 1825 and 1826 as part of Humboldt’s Voyage aux regions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. The HiE translation is based upon the full text of the 2-volume freestanding French edition from 1826. HiE’s On the Island of Cuba will be the first complete English version of the revised and expanded 1826 edition of the Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba. 

Second Volume: Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

Vues des Cordillères et monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique’s first edition appeared in 1810-1813 in 2 volumes, the second on 1816. HiE annotated translation is based on the first edition of Vues des Cordillères (1810-1813).

Third Volume: Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain

The Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne was first published in two volumes from 1808-1811. A revised and expanded four-volume edition appeared from 1825-1827. HiE’s annotated translation is based on this revised edition, which has never before appeared in English.

For more information on the three volumes visit the forthcoming University of Chicago Press’ HiE web­site. It will lodge a full set of digital reproduction of all of Humboldt’s Views images, along with excerpts from Humboldt’s Quito diaries and other historical and critical materials. It will also give readers ready access to Humboldt’s maps of present-day Mexico, selections from his letters and diaries, and related historical and critical writings.