Antonio de Alcedo

Who was Antonio de Alcedo?

Antonio de Alcedo was a Spanish soldier and scholar.

Born at Quito, where his father was president of the Real Audiencia de Quito from 1728 to 1737, Alcedo returned to Spain in 1752 to pursue a military career, and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Spanish army, in 1792. In 1800 he was promoted to field marshal and in 1802 named governor of A Coruña, Galicia.

He wrote a dictionary, historical and geographical, of the Novohispanic New World possessions, entitled Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales ó América: es á saber: de los reynos del Perú, Nueva España, Tierra Firme, Chile, y Nuevo reyno de Granada. The work was published at Madrid and issued in five volumes from 1786 to 1789. The earlier work of Father Giovanni Coletti, S.J., "Dizionario del l'America meridionale" was a substantial basis.

The work of Alcedo was translated into English by G. A. Thompson in 1812.