Agricultura y botánica. La herencia de la Ilustración

Abstract

Agriculture and botany were very closely linked from the last third of the eighteenth century, and even more so in the first third of the following century. The high standards attained by botany during the Enlightenment continued to some extent, associated with agriculture in the transition from the Old to the New Regime. This was specifically the case from the time when Casimiro Gómez Ortega travelled to Paris, enhancing the link with French science and its representatives like Duhamel de Monceau, whose directives he would try to introduce following his return to Spain. Subsequently, Claudio Boutelou and the reign of Joseph I would increase this influence. The article seeks to deal in general with the study of agronomy in the crisis of the ancien régime, when attempts were made to introduce enlightened theoretical assumptions as a means to improving agriculture and streamlining the depleted economy. I will also emphasise the culmination of enlightenment policy which, in the institutional framework, represented a full deployment of possibilities for extending the new agriculture through a teaching system, with the training of specialists using more modern and up-to-date education, in many of the potentially agricultural localities throughout the country.