At the beginning of each year throughout most of the 1850s, a small government sponsored commission departed from the high Andean city of Bogotá with scientific instruments strapped to the backs of mules. Year after year, the commissioners would travel through a different section of the young republic of New Granada, today known as Colombia. Led by a European born military officer, Agostino Codazzi and Manuel Ancizar, they made their way over the country’s three Andean mountain ranges and across its Savannahs and rainforests by mule, foot, and boat, and even occasionally on the backs of other men (Applebaum “Introduction” 1).
Agostino Codazzi
Explorer, Cartographer, soldier, member of Chorographic Commission
Born in 1793 in Lugo, Italy. Died 1859 in Codazzi, Granadine Confederation
Retrato de Agustín Codazzi, extraído del Atlas geográfico e histórico de la República de Colombia, 1890.
Manuel Ancizar
4th Seceretary of Foreign Affairs of the Granadine Confederation, First Dean of the National University of Colombia, Member of Chorographic Commission
Born in 1812 in Bogota, Died 1882 in Bogota
Photograph of Manuel Ancízar, Colombian lawyer, journalist, writer and diplomat.
Map of Colombia
Carta de la Republica de Colombia dividida por Departamentes. Lith. de Thierry Frs. a Paris. (Caracas 1840). Agostino Codazzi, 1824.
One of many maps created by Codazzi. Others were mainly of Venezuela.
Timeline of Import Dates for the Chorographic Commission
Bibliography
Applebaum, Nancy P. “Introduction: The Chorographic Commission of New Granada.” In Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia, 1-16. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2016.
Colombia's Regions 