European travelers and their motivations to visit Ecuador in the 19th century

Viajeros europeos y sus motivaciones para visitar Ecuador en el siglo XIX

Abstract

Nineteenth century was characterized by the emergence of new material, political, demographic and intellectual forces that would have prompted the realization of trips around the world.  Also, incursions into inhospitable territories as a step towards the New Continent which has marked history, and has left extensive compiled on stories of experiences, feelings, journeys, points of view and impressions of travelers. This article aims to identify the motivations of travelers from France, Germany, Spain and England to Ecuador in the 19th century. For this purpose, a retrospective analysis was carried out based on the deep bibliographic review of primary and secondary sources in national bibliographic repositories as of the countries in question.  This, to subsequently proceed to schematize that information in summary matrices.

Besides of motivation, registration of personal data of each traveler, so nationality as well as occupation were noted, to finally achieve a segmentation of six types of motivation of own elaboration. Preliminary results, after six months of work, indicate that majority of travelers moved for work reasons, following a collective feature of knowing places described as exotic; and then a thought of the epoch influenced by the desire to explore “the other " Likewise, travelers stand out for motivated academics, for science, for art, diplomacy, for commerce, emissaries of scientists, collectors of natural specimens and even accidental visits.