Social representations of national territory and citizenship in nineteenth-century history and geography textbooks of the Colombian Caribbean region

This article shows how the legitimization of the territory of a national community was going through a territorial and citizen-oriented pedagogy in which geography and history texts contributed to the elaboration of certain social representations that were part of the new Latin American nations' development process. Therefore, this paper reviews social representations of territory and citizenship that appeared in some geography and history school handbooks used by nineteenth-century Colombian Caribbean region schools. These texts played an important role in the education of Colombian citizens. The paper is divided into two parts: first, it focuses on the representation of the national territory to which former republican governments attached great value promoting a number of geographical studies and the exploration of the country by foreign travelers and geographers who produced various works that influenced greatly geography handbooks used in the school. The second part refers to the representation of a citizenship drawn through History, Civic and Urbanity handbooks. These publications became cultural tools used not only to educate people but also to describe and to teach about the territory of this young republic. 1 Translation: Julio Maldonado Arcon. Teacher Universidad del Atlántico. This paper forms part of the research entitled "El discurso sobre la nación y la ciudadanía en el Caribe colombiano durante el siglo XIX. Un análisis heurístico de los manuales escolares y la prensa educativa" and was financed by Universidad del Atlántico, in the public announcement "Pensar el Caribe 2003/2005."