Rightly convinced of the need to reexamine the interplay between ideas and politics during the independence period in Chile, Simon Collier of the University of Essex has produced a carefully researched study that revises many traditional interpretations and substantiates others. His treatment, however, does not always suggest the degree to which polities was determined by personal, family, and kinship considerations, opportunism, regional loyalties, and shrewd compromise, rather than by ideas.
Describing the role of ideology in the Chilean revolution, Collier stresses the concepts of the natural law, contract, and popular sovereignty. He notes the social conservatism of the ideology, asserting that equality was tempered in the minds of the creole intelligentsia by the natural order and stratification accepted as inevitable. The author also emphasizes the insistence of creole leaders on freedom of the press. Here perhaps was another instance in which intellectuals were concerned primarily with the privileges of a literate elite. Collier maintains that the sources of Chile’s revolutionary ideology were carefully selected elements of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century liberalism, not traditions of sixteenth-century Spanish populism, however much these may have prepared a fertile ground for liberalism.
The best section of the book—and a very good section it is—deals with factors that contributed to a revolutionary mystique. Supporters of independence bitterly denounced all colonial institutions for allegedly stifling economic and intellectual potential. At the same time these supporters glorified the Araucanians for their heroic opposition to Spanish tyranny. Revolutionaries were usually optimistic about the perfectibility of the human race and the emergence of a Utopia; they believed that progress came from enacting good laws and from inculcating virtue through education. Admiring the Anglo-Saxon world, they were convinced that a unique event was taking place, the birth of a nation. Undoubtedly Collier is correct in implying that the mystique of revolution, based often on myth-fantasy, was more important than philosophical tenets in leading first to the desire for reform and then for independence.
Judicious analyses of the personalities and programs of José Miguel Carrera, Juan Egaña, and Bernardo O’Higgins are presented, but the personality of the Liberal leader Francisco Antonio Pinto is not adequately considered. Collier is relying upon highly impressionistic generalizations when he suggests that the establishment of the conservative republic was both unfortunate and unnecessary. He is also on shaky ground when he states that the government after 1830 fell completely into the hands of the traditional oligarchy and its mercantile supporters, advancing as proof of this the reestablishment of mayorazgos by the 1833 Constitution. In the actual exercise of a moderating power among different political factions and in establishing a legal-rational basis for legitimacy, Diego Portales by no means excluded all Liberals from government. Furthermore, President Manuel Bulnes (1841-1851) welcomed an increasing number of Liberals to high positions and himself married Pinto’s daughter, an act which nourished the growing accord between various Conservatives and Liberals. In the 1840s one Chilean congress came very close to abolishing mayorazgos and in 1852 another actually did so.
When Collier holds that the early conservative republic was purely conservative, he unfortunately perpetuates a myth, demonstrates anew a proliberal bias apparent throughout the book, and concludes a commendable study on a weak note. Nevertheless, the overall quality of his book, which is the initial publication in the Cambridge Latin American Studies series, augurs well for this new English venture under the general editorship of David Joslin and John Street.