Imperial and Ancestral Knowledge of the Central American Caribbean
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51349/veg.2025.2.26Keywords:
Caribbean Studies, Explorations, knowledge, Mosquito Coast,, EnglandAbstract
This article analyzes the construction of imperial knowledge about the American territories, in this case it is about the British elaboration of an accumulation of insights and understandings about the geographical, environmental and human conditions of the western Caribbean, composed of the Mosquito Coast, its adjacent islands and the interior territories of Central America. This knowledge was elaborated in the expeditions carried out by Captain Robert Hodgson between 1739 and 1743 and was nourished by the ancestral knowledge of the Mosquito peoples who were the main guides of the expeditions. This understanding of the territorial reality allowed Hodgson, as an imperial agent, to highlight the importance of the area for British interests in his process of imperial expansion against his imperial opponents.
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