Bogotá’s Librería Colombiana: Between Rural Haciendas and a Global World of Books, 1880s-1900s

Abstract

This article uses the case of the bookstore Librería Colombiana and the broad investment portfolio of their owners—the partnership Camacho Roldán & Tamayo—to show how networks of commodity exchange shaped Bogotá’s space during the late nineteenth century and its articulation to the rural and the global. I examine the combined speculative investments of the partnership in books, cows, and land to explain how they turned Librería Colombiana into a landmark in the city and benefited from the credit it yielded to further their social standing and economic power. By siphoning off capital from their hacienda to buy foreign books and urban land during the whirlwind of speculation spurred by the urban renovations processes, Camacho Roldán & Tamayo helped connect Bogotá to a global world of books, altering social and spatial relations, and reinforcing the city’s domination over its hinterland.