Contextualizing the Cartographic Origins of Continental Drift: Antonio Snider-Pellegrini’s La Création et ses Mystères Dévoilés (1858) and Nineteenth-Century Transnational Scientific Networks

The continental drift theory proposed by Alfred Wegener in the early twentieth century was a pivotal advancement in our understanding of the Earth’s geological configuration and its graphical representation. However, already in 1858, the adventurer Antonio Snider-Pellegrini had published La Création et ses Mystères Dévoilés, which included the first-ever depiction of continental drift in two compelling globe maps, drawn by the planetary mapper Charles Bulard, illustrating the Earth’s surface “before” and “after separation.” The first part of this contribution explores the earlier versions of the continental drift hypothesis from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, identifying the theories and concepts that likely influenced Snider and Bulard’s work. Subsequent sections provide a detailed analysis of their theory, while in the final section, a hitherto unpublished account of Snider’s and Bulard’s lives sheds light on the circumstances and encounters most likely to be relevant to their conceptualization of continental drift. Among these was the presence of the geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Snider and Bulard’s theory of continental drift is the outcome of a combination of planetary representation, scientific theorization and human exploration, and offers new research perspectives.