 His image as the premier European scientist was a later development.For the Bourbon crown, which had authorized the expedition, the returns were not only tremendous in terms of sheer volume of data on their New World realms, but in dispelling the vague and pejorative assessments of the New World by Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and William Robertson.The achievements of the Bourbon regime, especially in New Spain, were evident in the precise data Humboldt systematized and published.