In this book the author’s stated objectives are to write a synthesis of Colombian history for students, scholars, and all those interested in Colombia, and to explain the origins of the country’s violent negative image. Both objectives are well met: Jean-Pierre Minaudier has provided a clearly written, well-organized interpretation, based on secondary literature. He emphasizes developments in the regions, which is an important contribution, fundamental to understanding the country’s evolution.
The focal areas for the colonial period are the demographic collapse, the significance of gold mining, and the regional compartmentalization that later made nation building such a challenging endeavor. The approach is thematic; Minaudier rightly discusses important issues such as the economic, political, and religious institutions imposed by the Spanish, as well as the various labor systems and their impact on colonial society. The difficulty with the thematic approach is that separate sections are devoted to political and socioeconomic issues, resulting in chronological leaps, some repetition, and a lack of integrated explanation.
The author is critical of those who praise the glories of independence, which he interprets as a disaster that devastated the economy, exacerbated regionalism, and introduced the new problems of violence and insecurity. Perhaps his major contribution is his intelligent assessment and lucid explanation of politics in the national period. The current two-party system evolved in the context of regionalism, clans, quasi-tribalism, and patron-client relations (clientelismo). Minaudier does not accept the traditional explanation that traces the parties to the contrasting visions of Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander, or the Marxist analysis founded on economic differences. He argues that there was one radical and durable factor—the church—and that this implied a difference in world view. Religious passions were so intense that they predominated over social and economic matters. Similarly, partisan solidarity transcended differences between the dominant and the dominated.
The nineteenth century is viewed as a période noire, dominated by regional chiefs until the arrival of the first national leader since Santander—Rafael Núnez— and the Regeneration of the 1880s. Indeed, the author calls the Constitution of 1886 the turning point in Colombian political history. The political analysis of the period 1886-1930 is adept, but the sections on the economy and society are not as strong, and lack integration. Thus, the nature and impact of the late nineteenth-century War of the Thousand Days are difficult to grasp.
A fundamental problem in the twentieth century has been that, far from modernizing, the state has tended to reinforce many traditional aspects. The political system suffered sclerosis while the country was dramatically transforming itself. The appearance of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, whom the author regards as a new type of politician, could have changed things, but his assassination plunged the country once again into anarchy. The section on the Violencia benefits from the quality of several recent studies and elucidates this period’s complex nature, profoundly rooted in the past. Minaudier views the present conditions of violence, guerrilla war, and the drug trade as nothing exceptional and very much in the norm of the country’s history.
Although a basic bibliography is included, students will be frustrated at the author’s failure to use scholarly apparatus to cite his sources, which makes further investigation difficult. This drawback, however, is relatively minor in comparison to the quality of his portrayal of Colombian history.
