This essay analyzes José María Samper's publications between 1855 and 1862, prior to and over the course of his first visit to Europe. I propose to read these travel accounts through the lens of the sublime as an inventory of the sensations, perceptions, and reflections through which the republican subject constructs a modernizing project. It is through the category of the sublime that Samper gives shape to an economy involving the interaction of the political and social structures of European and American societies as well as the production and exchange of goods and merchandise to cultivate the desired modernity.