Objective:

To analyze how religious tolerance was discussed in travel literature produced by foreigners who visited Colombia in the nineteenth century.

Methodology:

A textual analysis was applied to at least twenty travel stories (diaries, memoirs, and correspondence), unraveling the different points of view that their authors had on religious tolerance, and locating these ideas in political, cultural, and social spheres.

Originality:

This is a contribution to Colombian historiography of the nineteenth century because no other research studies the way in which foreign travelers, most of them Protestants, saw religious tolerance.

Conclusions:

The travel accounts show that the travelers' positions on religious tolerance cannot be reduced to a black and white reading. On the contrary, this study shows tensions between the travelers' ideas about religious tolerance and what the environment portrayed. In this way, it follows contemporary research on the religious fact, focused on the history of religious tolerance and freedom.