Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco

Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco (1860 in Popayán – 1914 in Barranquilla) was a Colombian geographer, cartographer and historian.

Life and work

His major works are the Nueva Geografía de Colombia (1888, 1892 and 1901; final version published in 1902) and the Atlas completo de geografía colombiana (1906–1910), through which he won the Charles Manoir price of the Paris Geographical Society.

Vergara was an erudite and critical writer, and his geographical thoughts did not fit within the parameters of the dominant geographical ideologies in the country of his time; his work serves as a starting point for studies of the history of territorial formation in Colombia.

The anarchist French geographer Elisée Reclus based his chapter on Colombia in his Nouvelle Géographie Universelle on the works of Vergara y Velasco.

Publications

Nueva Geografía de Colombia (1888, 1892 and 1901) 1818 (Guerra de Independencia), Bogotá, Imprenta Nacional (1897) Atlas completo de geografía colombiana (1906–1910) Memoria sobre la construcción de una Nueva carta geográfica de Colombia y de un Atlas completo de geografía colombiana, Bogotá, Imprenta Eléctrica (1906) Tratado de metodología y crítica histórica y elementos de cronología colombiana, Bogotá, Imprenta Eléctrica (1907) Archivos Nacionales: índice analítico, metódico y descriptivo, Bogotá, Imprenta Nacional (1913)