Chapter 23 Historians in Spanish South America: Cross-References Between Centre and Periphery
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/22/2011, SPi Chapter 23 Historians in Spanish South America: Cross-References between Centre and Periphery Juan Maiguashca The purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of the historiography of Spanish South America (SSA) in the nineteenth century and the fi rst half of the twentieth. It does not treat the nine countries individually but takes the region as a whole as the unit of analysis. 1 This can be done because during the period in question there emerged in this part of the Americas an intellectual common market, la república de las letras , which grew in size and complexity. To be sure, an interchange of ideas and intellectual products took place during the late colonial period. The density of exchanges, however, increased after independ- ence. They dealt with a variety of subjects: political, military, economic, liter- ary, and historiographical. This chapter will deal exclusively with the latter. The idea of a common market in historical writing was suggested but not developed by Germán Colmenares about twenty years ago in his Las convenciones contra la cultura: Ensayos sobre la historiografía hispanoamericana del siglo XIX [Conventions against Culture: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Spanish American Historiography] (1987). There he writes: ‘Hispanic American historians have constantly referred to the Europeans. All of them had access to the same authors, French mostly . But there were cross-references among them as well. Ideological connections, generational affi nities, exile, common experience or incompatibilities, real or imagined, permitted these references.’2 More recently, Josep Barnadas has referred to these cross-references more forcefully: ‘it must be remembered’, he writes, ‘something that has been usually forgotten: that the Spanish American elites cultivated among themselves intellectual, political and 1 The countries in question are: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.
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