This volume, of over a thousand pages, is an important and ambitious attempt to select documents which illustrate the image of Bolívar and the Latin American independence movement in nineteenth-century Europe and demonstrate the link between that image and European policy toward Latin America. Three broad types of documents are included: first-hand accounts or reports by Europeans, the writings of European statesmen or political figures, and historical studies. The structure is designed to emphasize examination of documents and actions in historical context.
The 413 documents are arranged into 16 national sections and further subdivided into subsections according to the type of source. For example, the French section is divided into the following subsections: “Bolívar en las crónicas de los viajeros a Sudamérica,” “Bolívar y la independencia hispanoamericana en el pensamiento de los estadistas y de los políticos,” “Informes de marinos, diplomáticos, cónsules y agentes de información sobre la política de Bolívar y sus consecuencias en América y en Europa,” “Juicios de historiadores políticos y periodistas,” “Legitimidad, instituciones jurídico-políticas y formas de gobierno en la polémica entre monárquicos y republicanos de Gran Colombia y de Francia (1828-31),” and “La imagen (y la política) de Bolívar divulgada en París (y en Europa) por el ex-vicepresidente de la Gran Colombia F. de Paula Santander.”
The analytical pattern for the volume is set in the long general introduction (28 pages of text and 25 pages of explanatory footnotes) by general editor Alberto Filippi. In it he sets forth a plea for history written on a large scale, one that encompasses “las relaciones entre la formación de los nuevos Estados independientes y la historia y la historiografía de Europa” (p. 3), and does so from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. This is a broader, more integrative, as well as more subtle and sophisticated approach than that taken in the more narrow monographs on national or bilateral issues which are so typical of twentieth-century scholarship.
Filippi raises several intentionally provocative issues which readers may pursue through these documents, but which he also proposes for further scholarly inquiry. First, he stresses the enduring effect on European policy of Europe’s early nineteenth-century perception of the Latin American independence movement as a civil war within the Spanish empire rather than an international struggle. Second, he urges scholars to examine (for each nation and on a comparative basis) the specific linkages and interdependence between the “crónicas” or first-hand accounts, the views and policies of statesmen/politicians, and historiographical trends. Notions of historical interpretation as essentially nationalist and of close interrelationships between historical interpretations and public policy and vice versa are not particularly new, but the linkage has seldom been so extensively and provocatively presented as it is here.
National sections and most subsections are introduced by essays which place the documents in a historical and historiographical context. These essays, taken together, make up nearly a fourth of the volume; they are in themselves insightful analyses of the history and historiography of European views of and relations with Bolívar and the revolutionary movement. Each introductory essay is copiously annotated so that the reader is guided to a wealth of primary sources and scholarly literature.
A second volume will be devoted to the twentieth century and will include the indexes (persons, subjects, titles) which will greatly facilitate the use of this imposing trove of documents. This work will be essential for serious students of diplomatic or intellectual history.
