Sagra, Ramón de la (1798–1871)
Sagra, Ramón de la (1798–1871)
Ramón de la Sagra (b. 1798; d. 1871), Spanish naturalist and economist. De la Sagra studied agriculture in Madrid until 1820; subsequently he was appointed director of the botanical gardens in Havana, where he arrived in 1823. While there he also served as professor of agricultural botany at the university and studied the plant life of the island to assess its potential productivity. In 1828 he began to contribute to the new journal Anales de la ciencia and kept in close touch with academics abroad. In 1831 he published Historia económica, política y estadística de la Isla de Cuba. De la Sagra relocated to Paris in 1835 and there published an expanded version as Histoire physique, politique et naturelle de L'lle de Cuba (1842–1857). The latter, considered his masterwork, describes all aspects of the lives of the Cuban people and their environment. In his later years de la Sagra fell under the influence of the French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and wrote on social and economic issues.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fermín Peraza Sarauza, Diccionario biográfico cubano (1951–).
Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820–1980 (1989).
Karen Racine