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Shaping a New Man: The Schools for the State Engineers in Nineteenth-Century Spain (1830s–1900)

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/19378629.2014.944535

1940-8374

Darina Martykánová,

Historical Medical Research and Treatments

AbstractThe education of Spanish engineers-civil servants became standardised since the 1830s, leaning on institutional precedents dating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Henceforth, studies in a state-run special school constituted an important milestone and unifying element in the careers of these men. The education in special schools not only provided the future engineers with what was considered knowledge necessary for carrying out their professional duties, but it was also supposed to strengthen certain human characteristics desirable in elite civil servants in general, and corps engineers in particular. While some of these elements were introduced with more or less explicit intention to obtain specific results, others seem to have been developed as products of institutional dynamics or were combination of both. One way or another, the contents of engineers’ education, the criteria and methods of selection and evaluation, explicit and unspoken rules of students’ life, all these created very exceptional settings that shaped the young men into a unique profile. I examine how the different mechanisms of selection, evaluation and discipline and other elements of the school life in engineering schools besides the curricula, shaped the young men who studied there into a specific figure of Spanish state engineer, an elite man with a strong corporate (as in “corps”) identity, individual and collective self-confidence and a sense of entitlement to make decisions on behalf of the Nation. The conclusions discuss the exceptional position of Spanish corps engineers within nineteenth-century Spanish governing elites.Keywords: engineersSpaineducationelitecivil servicediscipline Notes1This article is heavily based on the unpublished part of my Ph.D. thesis: Martykánová, Los ingenieros en España y en el Imperio Otomano en el siglo XIX, 2010. There are several sentences which are a direct translation from the thesis (and are not marked by quotation marks) in the paragraph on the esprit de corps.2There exists a vast bibliography on the emergence of engineering as a modern profession, particularly if we consider studies set in a national framework. For a general overview, see, for example, Fox and Guagnini, Education, Technology, and Industrial Performance in Europe, 1993; Malatesta, Professionisti e gentiluomini, 2006; Grelon, “Emergence and Growth of the Engineering Profession in Europe,” 2001; Grelon and Gouzévitch, “Reflexión sobre el ingeniero europeo en el siglo XIX,” 2007. For Spain: Silva Suárez, “Presentación,” 2007. For France: Picon, L'invention de l'ingénieur moderne, 1992; Belhoste and Chatzis, “From Technical Corps to Technocratic Power,” 2007; Shinn, “From Corps to Profession,” 1980. A comparative study of French and US American engineering: Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge, 1997. For Germany: Gispen, New Profession, Old Order, 1989. For USA: Calvert, Mechanical Engineer in America, 1967. For Mexico: Lucena, “De Criollos a Mexicanos,” 2007. For the USA: Reynolds, Engineer in America, 1991. For Chile: Parada Hoyl, “La profesión de ingeniero y los Anales del Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile, 1840–1927,” 2011. For the Ottoman Empire: Martykánová, Reconstructing Ottoman Engineers, 2010. For Egypt: Alleaume, “La mise en place du Corps des irrigations en Égypte (1821–1835),” 1997. For Maghreb and Middle East: Longuenesse, Bâtisseurs et Bureaucrats, 1990. For a comparative perspective: Meiksins and Smith, Engineering Labour, 1996.3There was, of course, a period of certain overlap in the 1830–1840s, when the school regulations already established national exclusivity, but had neither produced a sufficient number of engineers nor were the corps engineers strong enough to show resistance, so that the government still occasionally appointed foreign engineers. A similar observation would be valid for foreign-trained Spanish engineers, for whom it became increasingly difficult to integrate into the corps structure, both due to the rule that the corps engineers should come from the special schools and to the resistance of the corps engineers to the exceptions to this rule.4For the Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales and, in general, on the education of industrial engineers, see Lusa Monforte, “La difícil consolidación de las enseñanzas industriales (1855–1873),” 1997, pp. 114–119; Lusa Monforte, “La Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona,” 2007, pp. 351–394.5This included frequent examinations and discipline measures. Even the Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales adopted strict discipline measures, foreseeing the quasi-military punishment of “arrest” for its students. Garrabou, Enginyers industrials, 1982.6Rumeu de Armas, Ciencia y tecnología en la España ilustrada, 1980; Casals Costa, Los ingenieros de montes en la España contemporánea, 1996; Pan-Montojo, Apostolado, profesión y tecnología, 2005; Cartañà i Pinén, Agronomía e Ingenieros agrónomos en la España del siglo XIX, 2005. The education of Spanish engineers from a comparative and transnational perspective: Gouzévitch, “L'institut du corps des ingénieurs des Voies de communication de Saint-Pétersbourg,” 2004.7 Martín, “Cuestión de vida o muerte,” 1875.8Particularly the notion of strict discipline and the specific measures of this discipline (examinations, punctuality and compulsory presence) is dealt within the great part of the existing bibliography on the Spanish engineering schools. For particularly brilliant observations on the quasi-monastic image of the schools, see Fornieles Alcáraz, Trayectoria de un intelectual de la Restauración, 1989; Casals Costa, Los ingenieros de montes en la España contemporánea, 1996, pp. 38–40.9Weber, Economía y Sociedad, 2002, p. 732.10Bourdieu, La noblesse d’État, 1989, p. 140; Alder, “French Engineers Become Professionals,” 1999, pp. 109–115.11This feature, very much present in the engineers’ professional journals and personal memoirs, has been pointed out, among others, by Garma, “Cultura matemática en la España de los siglos XVIII y XIX,” 1988, pp. 114–115; Hormigón, “Las matemáticas en España en el primer tercio del siglo XX,” 1998, pp. 254–256; Fornieles Alcáraz, Trayectoria de un intelectual de la Restauración, 1989, p. 34 (providing eloquent quote from the journal of mining engineers).12For instance, masculinity is taken for granted and therefore goes unmentioned as a legal prerequisite in the regulations of the Escuela de Caminos from 1865, while Spanish nationality is explicitly stated as a condition of joining the corps and foreign students, while allowed to study at the school, are explicitly excluded from this right. See Reglamento para la Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, 1865. Nerea Aresti has judged this implicit exclusion of women in nineteenth-century Spain as “complicit silence of a restrictive interpretation” in Aresti, “Los argumentos de la exclusión,” 2012, p. 408. A glance at women and power in the medieval and early modern Iberian Peninsula is inspired by the classic essay by Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” 1977. For the nineteenth-century liberal questioning of the public role of aristocratic women, see, for example, Burdiel, Isabel II, 2004. The fact that nineteenth-century Spanish engineers where men has been considered as well known and obvious and has not merited a deeper analysis, even though an interesting comparison could be made with medicine and law, two elite professions that were accessed by Spanish women earlier and in greater numbers. A first systematic approximation to the issue of masculinity as one of the cornerstones of the figure of engineer in nineteenth-century Spain in: Martykánová, “La profession, la masculinité et le travail,” 2014 (in press). The case of Spanish female engineers in the twentieth century could be studied in future in a comparative perspective based, for example, on the research presented in Canel, Oldenziel, and Zachmann, Crossing Boundaries, 2003.13In this sense, Pablo Alzola y Minondo, engineer of caminos and Basque politician, even argued, in the very last years of the nineteenth century, to establish Spanish nationality as a condition for individuals to receive contracts in public works from the state. Alzola y Minondo, Historia de las obras públicas en España, 1994 (first published in 1899), pp. 369–381, 428–449.14For the Spanish nationality as a condition for joining the engineering corps of civilian nature, see, for example: Reglamento para la Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, 1865. In the mid-nineteenth century, those who wished to join the corps of engineers of the Army had to prove the Spanish nationality of their fathers, too (a major break with tradition, considering the recruitment of a remarkable number of foreigners for the corps during the eighteenth century): Reglamento para la Academia especial del Arma de Ingenieros, 1859. The question of nobility as a condition for entering the corps of engineers of the Army during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Herrero Fernández-Quesada, La enseñanza militar ilustrada, 1990, p. 106; Capel, Sánchez, and Moncada, De Palas a Minerva, 1988, p. 154. For the lack of such condition for the corps of caminos engineers: the Royal Order of 12 June 1799, the full text of the original document was published in Revista de Obras Públicas, special issue, 1899 (pages not numbered).15Garcini, “Reseña Histórica de la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos,” 1899, p. 8.16For the age limits, see, for example, the article 62 of the Reglamento para la Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, 1865, p. 31. For the certificate of “good life and habits”, see the same article. Ollero Vallés quotes the report by the civil governor of Madrid submitted by Práxedes Mateo-Sagasta, future Prime Minister of Spain, when applying for the admission to the Escuela de Caminos. The report states, using a standard formula, that Sagasta “seems to a subject recommendable for his moral and political conduct.” AECM, Personal file of admission. Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, quoted in Ollero Vallés, Sagasta, 2006, p. 74.17Torre Rojas, Ingenieros de Montes, 1866. Torre, “Testamento forestal de Bernardo de la Torre Rojas, fundador y primer director de la Escuela de ingenieros de montes (1866),” 1991, pp. 519–528. See also Bauer Manderscheid's analysis in Los Montes de España en la Historia, 1991, pp. 256–257. For the health and robustness in the regulations of the other corps and schools, see, for instance: Article 62 of the Reglamento para la Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, 1865, p. 31; Garcini, “Reseña Histórica de la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos,” 1899, p. 5. Garcini quotes from a royal decree of 11 January 1849: “being, moreover, of healthy and robust constitution and without a physical defect that would prevent them from working in the public works service.” Similar requirements are also established for mining engineers in the regulations enacted by royal decree of 31 July 1849.18Martykánová, Los ingenieros en España y en el Imperio Otomano en el siglo XIX, 2010, pp. 140–141.19Reglamento para la Escuela especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos. Aprobado por el Real decreto de 18 de Febrero de 1910, 1914. Royal Decree dated 2 February 1914 replaces with this Regulations those that had been approved by the Royal Decree of 3 November 1911.20For the engineer alleging poor health to get a transfer, see Montenegro López, Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991. For Pepe Rey, see Pérez-Galdós, Doña Perfecta, 1876.21Specific data on the different schools can be gathered and compared in Técnica e Ingeniería en España, vol. 5, El Ochocientos: Profesiones e instituciones civiles, edited by Silva Suárez, Citation2007.22Mansilla Plaza and Sumozas García-Pardo, “La ingeniería de minas,” 2007, p. 95.23For the application principle, see Belhoste and Chatzis, “From Technical Corps to Technocratic Power,” 2007. The experience in engineering works had been valued in the candidates for the service to the Crown before the process of entry to the engineering corps was standardised and linked to education at special schools during the decades 1830–1850s.24This issue has been thoroughly discussed in Silva Suárez and Lusa Monforte, “Cuerpos facultativos del Estado versus profesión liberal,” 2007, pp. 323–386.25For the criticism of state corps, see Gaceta industrial from 20 November 1868, quoted in “Noticias varias,” 1868, pp. 278–279. For the answer of the corps engineers, see “Noticias varias,” 1868, pp. 278–279. More on this long-lasting dispute in Silva Suárez and Lusa Monforte, “Cuerpos facultativos del Estado versus profesión liberal,” pp. 323–386.26Garma “Cultura matemática en la España de los siglos XVIII y XIX,” 1988, p. 122. On class dimensions in engineering education, see also Pan-Montojo, Apostolado, profesión y tecnología, 2005; and Lusa Monforte, “La Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona,” 2007, pp. 51–394.27See Montenegro López,Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991, p. 77.28Montenegro López, Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991, p. 59.29Sáenz Ridruejo, Los ingenieros de caminos del siglo XIX, 1990, pp. 7–10.30For the coexistence of competitiveness and companionship, see Montenegro López, Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991. For the difficulty of combining social life with the studies in special schools, see Montenegro López, Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991, pp. 141, 169; and Ildefonso Cerdà in a letter to his brother quoted in Ruiz Bedia, “Sagasta, el trabajo de ingeniero hacia 1850,” 2002, p. 94.31Torre Rojas, Ingenieros de Montes, 1866.32Pan-Montojo, “Agronomy and Agronomists in the Spanish Cities, 1880–1936,” 2015 (in press).33There exists an extensive literature mentioning and/or analysing nineteenth-century debates about the contents of the engineers’ education in terms of theory and practice, and in terms of usefulness and scientific character as well as regarding the weight of each scientific discipline. See, for example: Lusa Monforte, “Contra los titanes de la rutina,” 1994, pp. 335–365; Silva Suárez, “Presentación,” 2007, pp. 9–79; Garma, Navarro, and Flament, Contra los titanes de la rutina, 1994; Roca Rosell, “L'enginyeria de laboratori, un repte del nou-cents,” 1996, pp. 197–240; Roca Rosell and Lusa Monforte, “Un altre 98?,” 1998, pp. 609–626; Casals Costa, Los ingenieros de montes en la España contemporánea, 1996, pp. 43–48; etc. For primary sources, see Royal Decree of 23 October 1868, Colección Legislativa de España, vol. C, 1868, p. 435; Inchaurrandieta, “Condiciones para el ingreso en la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos,” 1900, pp.188–189.34The necessity to justify physical work as application of sciences, that has to do, in my opinion, with the difficulty in the nineteenth-century Spain to reconcile the image of elite man, on the one hand, and manual work, on the other, was explicitly discussed and understood as a regrettable obstacle for the full introduction in Spain of the Saxon model of forestry engineering: “because the men of our race do not conceive that practice can precede theory in any kind of education.” Bernardo de la Torre's words discussed in García-Pereda, González-Doncel, and Gil, “Agustín Pascual,” 2014 (in press).35As for the dichotomous vision of education for the elites and for the “common people”, we may quote the Law of Public Instruction, also known as the Law Moyano (1857) as its consecration, particularly regarding technical education. See also the report by Mariano Miguel Reinoso about agricultural education or the report by Agustín Monreal about industrial education. For the analysis of the latter and an important contribution to a much less-developed analysis on the difficult position of physical work in the engineers education and practice, see Cano Pavón and José Manuel, “El informe de Agustín Monreal sobre la enseñanza industrial en España y Europa,” 2000, pp. 95–117. Reinoso's report: Reinoso, “Sobre enseñanza agrícola profesional,” 1850. For the quotes from and analysis of this report, see also Cartañà i Pinén, “Ingeniería agronómica y modernización agrícola,” 2007. The following article in the journal of mining engineers shows that similar attitudes might have shaped also the engineers’ work and business activities: J.M.D., “Sobre los principales depósitos auríferos y en particular sobre los de la California,” 1850. For a systematic treatment of the issue of work in the self-representation and practice of Spanish engineers, see Martykánová, “La profession, la masculinité et le travail,” 2014 (in press).36For the concern for forging the esprit de corps expressed explicitly in legal documents, see, for example, the Royal Decree of 19 November 1835, Colección Legislativa de España, volume XX, pp. 537–540. For Bernardo de la Torre's ideas, see Torre Rojas, Ingenieros de Montes, 1866. For the attempts at establishing a Polytechnique-like establishment, Silva Suárez, “Presentación,” 2007, pp. 9–79; Lusa Monforte, “!‘Todos a Madrid!,” 1999, pp. 3–43. For “gremial isolation” of each corps, see Sáenz Ridruejo, Los ingenieros de caminos, 1993, p. 156. The issue of technocracy in the French engineering is a widely debated one. See, for example, Belhoste and Chatzis, “From Technical Corps to Technocratic Power,” 2007, pp. 209–225.37See Règlement concernant les Etrangers autorisés par le Ministre de la Guerre à suivre comme auditeurs externes, les cours de l'Ecole Polytechnique, 18 December 1851, Archives of the Ecole polytechnique, file 1851, VI 2b, particularly this part of the article 5 of the Regulations: “Il leur est expressément défendu d'avoir aucune communication avec les Elèves, dans l'intérieur de l'Ecole.” The issue is brought up again in the letter on 11 March 1864 from the Ministry of War to the Director of the Ecole impériale polytechnique, file 1864, Vi 2b.38This programmatic vision is clearly expressed in Royal Decree of 23 October 1868, Colección Legislativa de España, vol. C, 1868, 435, also quoted in Fornieles Alcáraz, Trayectoria de un intelectual de la Restauración, 1989, pp. 35–36.39Pinet, Histoire de l’École polytechnique, 1887; Belhoste, La Formation d'une Technocratie, 2003.40For examples of discipline measures from the Regulations of the school of mining engineers (1870), see Mansilla Plaza and Sumozas García-Pardo, “La ingeniería de minas,” 2007, p. 101.41On the lack of discipline and students’ protests, see, for instance, Garcini, “Reseña histórica de la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, canales y puertos,” 1899; Sáenz Ridruejo, Ingenieros de Caminos del siglo XIX, 1990, pp. 84, 123; Rumeu de Armas, Ciencia y tecnología en la España, 1980, p. 456.42Some of the measures of discipline were set directly in the regulations of the schools. For a detailed analysis, see Rumeu de Armas, Ciencia y tecnología en la España ilustrada, 1980; Sáenz Ridruejo, Los ingenieros de caminos del siglo XIX, 1990; Fornieles Alcáraz, Trayectoria de un intelectual de la Restauración, 1989. For France, see, for example, registers of enrolled students of the Ecole centrale. For example, in the register of the year 1850 we find the student Alexandre Chiandi who was guilty of “continuous noise”; “singing an indecent song” and “fight in the classroom”. Emile Allatini, enrolled in 1863, was reprimanded for tearing up paper and throwing it around, while Georges Aslan registered in 1869 deserved a warning for smoking in the hall during the study time. Registres des élèves, Archives of the Ecole centrale des arts et manufactures, Paris (Châtenay-Malabry).43Echegaray, “Recuerdos,” pp. 22–26; and other memoirs quoted in Fornieles Alcáraz, Trayectoria de un intelectual de la Restauración, 1989, p. 35; Montenegro López, Memorias de un ingeniero del siglo XIX, 1991, pp. 141, 169; See also footnote no. 34.44Sáenz Ridruejo, “Ingeniería de caminos y canales, también de puertos y faros,” 2007, pp. 166–170. For the number (898) of Escuela de Caminos graduates between 1839 and 1899, see Sáenz Ridruejo, “Ingeniería de caminos y canales, también de puertos y faros”, 2007, p. 150. The percentage is approximate. On the one hand, during the early decades there were engineers de caminos who graduated from the Escuela in the earlier periods or joined the corps after having received education elsewhere. On the other hand, the engineers who graduated in the later decades could have become deputies after 1900.45I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer no. 2 for this useful quote from Vicuña, Cultivo actual de las ciencias físico-matemáticas en España, 1876, pp. 41–42. On the Spanish civil service, see Villacorta Baños, Profesionales y Burócratas, 1989.46See Gaceta industrial from 20 November 1868, quoted in “Noticias varias,” 1868, pp. 278–279.47Martykánová and Pan-Montojo, “State-Builders,” (in press).