Chile: The Making of a Republic, 1830–1865: Politics and Ideas

Abstract

This postumous book by Simon Collier is the culmination, as well as the synthesis, of his solid historiographic work. This, his last book, is the continuation of his first book, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1808–1833 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), a classic in the field, and improves upon it. This time—the author takes on the task of self-criticism—its ideas are not untied from politics itself. The small change in the order of the words “ideas” and “politics” in the title is not coincidence.Collier develops the idea—disputed in the historiography and in Chilean public opinion—that Chile is a case distinct from the rest of Latin American in having achieved, early on, political stability and institutional continuity, though not without sometimes bloody conflicts. This tradition was forged in the period under study through the formation of a multiparty political system that governed on the basis of coalitions. These pages demonstrate how this system was constructed, step by step. Without ignoring the importance of the colonial authoritarian past, it is demonstrated how the conservative period initiated in 1830 founded a new order, through the analysis of its constitutional base, its institutional and administrative structure, the management techniques of the government, and the workings of electoral interventions.Its most original contribution rests in its detailed study of the political process of the period, showing how it arrived at a system of parties and government coalitions following the two civil wars (1851–59). It is a period that has been studied extensively, but so far in a form that is fragmentary and, at times, confusing. Here, he not only puts together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, but makes them intelligible. Two major variables explain the formation of political parties: the tension between freedom and order, and the struggle between the priesthood and the laity. Thus, among the conservatives who ruled during the 1830s are found both authoritarians and moderates, while during the 1850s they were divided between royalists and proclericals, who in the end separated from the governing party. Afterward, the formation of the liberal opposed to presidential authoritarianism, who allied toward the end of the 1850s with proclerical conservatives against president Manuel Montt, authoritarian and royalist. Finally, a radical wing of the liberals took shape, passionately anticlerical and unwilling to ally with Catholic conservatives. Following the political defeat of Montt, his successor, José Joaquín Pérez, formed a government on the basis of a liberal-conservative coalition (la Fusión), while royalists and anticlericals united as the opposition.Analyzing this period (1859–64) overturns classical liberal and conservative interpretations, which see the period as one of political and religious ruptures that did not repair the stability of the system being forged. Collier situations the birthplace of the Chilean political system and culture precisely in this conjuncture, since it witnessed the achievement of an equilibrium between order and freedom following the two civil wars (1851 and 1859) fought against centralism and presidential authoritarianism.Collier masterfully achieves his goal of making this process comprehensible without violating the ambiguities of this political reality. He achieves this clarity by taking into account the vagueness of the concepts and groups of the period. His research captures the elite’s discourse and worldview. His sources are almost entirely published, predominately press publications, pamphlets, parliamentary sessions, and correspondence. The intellectual and mental manifestationes of the elite are set forth with magnificent prose not lacking in humor or irony.Collier takes his subject seriously. He critiques, quite rightly, the paternalism that has surrounded the study of liberalism in Latin America, as if it were merely a mask to cover up some opposing and unconfessable practices. In contrast, Collier shows us a liberal ideal (held by some conservatives as well) that effectively constructed new political ties, or, as the author puts it, a new nation. His study of conservatives as a vertiente liberal, which he already espoused in his work of the 1970s, has had an important impact in the resurgence of Chilean political history, especially in the generation that followed him. The same path that he opened has allowed us to understand, from a less ideological perspective, religious conflicts of the time, which paradoxically are treated here as a squabble between some fanatical clerics and some ironic freethinkers. It was more than that.Finally, Collier holds forth concerning the formation of the national sentiment, the importance of the press and pamphlets, civic ceremony, the use of the plaza, and the mobilization of artesans together with the birth of historiography and the intellectual debates over the meaning of the nation. For all these reasons, this book is not just a study about the history of Chile, but rather about the problem of the construction of modern nations, the role of the elite, and the formation of liberal political systems.