Emily Berquist Soule's study of eighteenth-century Peru centers on the labors of Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón, a Spaniard assigned to the bishopric of Trujillo in 1778. The bishop's appointment inspired an ambitious undertaking: a “paper museum” of nine volumes, titled Trujillo del Perú, depicting the human and natural landscapes of his region. While Berquist Soule's book considers the bishop biographically, the Bourbon reforms contextually, and eighteenth-century Peru socioculturally, the heart of the project lies in analyzing the bishop's paper museum. This is not to say that the book is an annotated Trujillo del Perú; rather, the author examines the bishop, the reforms, and Peru through the lens of Martínez Compañón's work.
The driving conviction of Berquist Soule's book is that Martínez Compañón envisioned a utopian Trujillo. He understood that Trujillo had a long way to go, but he thought that with the right reforms and the right guidance,...
