One of the most salutary movements resulting from the current revival of historical revisionism in Argentina has been the rush to republish older studies and document collections. Presumably meant to provide one or another side with fresh ammunition in a historiographical war of attrition, they nonetheless afford disinterested students an opportunity to reconsider earlier attempts to explain the Argentine past. In the process it frequently becomes clear that some standard works have become known by their reputation rather than by their contents.
Such, at any rate, seems the case with this classic study of the Eosas period, long regarded as a major pillar if not the actual foundation stone of the Argentine revisionist school. When the final volume of the first edition appeared in 1887, Bartolomé Mitre castigated the author for having “glorif [ied] a tyrant and mercilessly condemn [ed] the adversaries of the tyranny”—an anathema sufficient to earn Soldías a prominent place in the pantheon of Rosista historians. But as Julio Irazusta points out in the introduction to this edition, this accusation fell very wide of the mark. Rereading Saldías’ major work today, one is struck by bow little—rather than how much—he departed from the orthodox, Unitarian view of Argentine history.
Like his mentor Sarmiento, Saldías stigmatized the Spanish colonization and its long-range effects. Rivadavia, the favorite straw man for later revisionists, became for the historian a statesman of vision who had the misfortune to be born before his time. Saldías pardoned the government of General Martín Rodríguez for having “lost” the Banda Oriental, and ended by condemning Artigas and the Federal caudillos of 1820 in terms to which the most hard-bitten porteño would have found no reason to take exception.
Nor did Saldías progress much beyond Mitre and Vicente Fidel López in understanding the motive forces of Argentine federalism. One searches in vain for mention—much less discussion—of Rosas’ tariff of 1835 or the broader economic aspects of interprovincial conflict. Instead the reader is treated to an exhaustive (and exhausting) description of personal rivalries among regional leaders.
In what sense, then, did Historia de la Confederación Argentina represent a new departure in Argentine historiography? In the first place, Saldías discarded the concept of the Rosas regime as the product of one man’s personality in favor of a more “sociological” approach. For him the dictatorship was but the expression of a far larger social tragedy, in which a newly independent people “failed to contain the violent impulses of its blood and race” and thus found itself compelled to “entrust its political and social being to the hands of a single man” (III, 380). Since civil war followed so quickly on the heels of emancipation from Spain, the executive power inevitably became the most important mechanism of government, inviting abuse by anyone who might hold it. It was not so much that Rosas was innocent of dictatorial excesses as that both sides committed atrocities. This assertion led Saldías to suggest that a Unitarian victory in 1829 would have yielded a similar result.
In the second place—and this is probably what disturbed Mitre—Saldías insisted that Rosas’ rule had not been without its positive aspects, particularly during the Restorer’s first term as governor of Buenos Aires province (1829-1832). He praised the latter’s work in advancing and securing the Indian frontier to the south and his laws intended to protect the tribes from the voracity of settlers—also his support of primary school instruction, hospital construction, and introduction of smallpox vaccination. He warmly applauded Rosas for agreeing with Great Britain to abolish the slave trade within the the Confederation, for withdrawing the charter of the controversial National Bank, and for his general financial scrupulousness. Predictably, he concluded with an appreciation of Rosas’ role as defender of national independent and sovereignty during the French (1838) and Anglo-French (1845-1849) blockades.
Third and last, Saldías rested his case on a formidable array of hitherto unpublished documents, which he reproduced in appropriate appendices (as they are here). Irazusta shows that these were not obtained from Rosas’ daughter in England, as is sometimes supposed, but copied from Argentine depositories, where they had lain neglected for more than three decades. Apparently the dictator’s successors thought that they were not worth the trouble to destroy.
Saldías was not an uncritical apologist for Rosas; rather, he sought to balance the historical record, to reconcile still remaining antagonisms. His work was informed by a sense of decency, patriotism, and fair play that has found too few imitators in the continuing Argentine battle of books.
