Political Controversy and Exile
In December 1794 Malaspina met with King Charles IV and Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy. At first all was well and Malaspina was promoted to fleet-brigadier in March 1795.
In his examination of the political situation in the Spanish colonies Malaspina had decided that Spain should free its colonies and form a confederation of states bound by international trade. In September 1795 he began trying to influence the Spanish government with such proposals. Unfortunately Malaspina had lost the support he used to have at the royal court before his voyage and the political situation had changed radically, due in part to the French Revolution. He formed part of a conspiracy to overthrow Prime Minister Godoy, so Malaspina arrested on November 23 on charges of plotting against the state. After an inconclusive trial on April 20, 1796, Charles IV decreed that Malaspina be stripped of rank and imprisoned in the isolated fortress of San Antón in La Coruña, Galicia (Spain). Malaspina remained in the prison from 1796 to 1802. During his incarceration he wrote a variety of essays on topics such as aesthetics, economics, and literary criticism. Francesco Melzi d'Eril and Napoleon campaigned for Malaspina's release. He was finally freed at the end of 1802 but was exiled from Spain. He left for his hometown of Mulazzo via the port of Genoa, and settled in nearby Pontremoli.
Because of his political conflict with Spain, his seven-volume account of the 1789–94 expeditions was suppressed and remained unpublished until the late 19th century. A large portion of the documents meant to be used as source material for the publication of Malaspina's expedition remained scattered in archives to the present day. A significant number of documents are lost, and those that survive are often in a rough, semi-edited form. Alexander von Humboldt, an admirer of Malaspina, wrote, "this able navigator is more famous for his misfortunes than for his discoveries." There was some contemporary publication, but it took two hundred years for the bulk of the records of the expedition to be published. The notes made by the expedition’s botanist, Luis Neé, while he was at Port Jackson in 1793 were published in 1800. Dionisio Alcalá Galiano’s journal of his survey of the straits between Vancouver Island and the mainland, carried out as part of the Malaspina expedition, was published in 1802 with all mention of Malaspina’s name excised. In 1809, José Espinosa y Tello published the astronomical and geodesic observations made during the expedition in a two-volume work that also contained an abbreviated narrative of the voyage. This narrative was translated into Russian and published by Admiral Adam von Krusenstern in St. Petersburg in 1815. The journal of Malaspina’s voyage was first published in Russian translation by Krusenstern in successive issues of the official journal of the Russian Admiralty between 1824 and 1827 (a copy of the manuscript had been obtained by the Russian ambassador in Madrid in 1806). The journal of Francisco Xavier de Viana, second-in-command of the Atrevida was published in Montevideo in 1849. Bustamante’s journal was published in 1868 in the official journal of the Directorate of Hydrography. An abbreviated account of the Malaspina expedition, consisting mostly of his journal, "Diario de Viaje", was published in Madrid in 1885 by Pedro de Novo y Colson. Malaspina’s journal was published in another edition in Madrid in 1984. The definitive version of the expedition was finally published in Spain by the Museo Naval and Ministerio de Defensa in nine volumes from 1987 to 1999. The second volume of this series, Malaspina's journal, was published in an annotated English translation by the Hakluyt Society in association with the Museo Naval between 2001 and 2005.
The drawings and paintings done by members of the expedition were described by Carmen Sotos Serrano in 1982. The 4,000-odd manuscripts relating to the expedition were catalogued by Maria Dolores Higueras Rodriguez between 1989 and 1994.
Read more about this topic: Alessandro Malaspina
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