These works both complement and supplement recent book-length treatments of Chilean history. From the outset they are marked both by differences and similarities. Collier and Sater place their work within the context of traditional Chilean historiography; Sarget does not. Specialists and others will clearly see that Collier and Sater have written a scholarly book in the form of a general survey, and that Sarget has produced a very general work with limited scholarly pretensions. The former hews to a traditional path: history is politics (p. xiv); the latter claims to represent French historical thinking: history is more social and economic than political. Both attempt a comprehensive treatment with an emphasis on modern times, Collier and Sater with detail and methodological rigor, Sarget by intertwining socioeconomic developments with politics in cause-and-effect relationships that are intellectually stimulating. Both pay some attention to cultural history.
To do justice to the two and to their place in the field of Chilean history in a few words, this review compares how each book treats four critical transition periods: the 1841-61 Bulnes-Montt presidencies, the “Parliamentary Republic,” the second administration of Arturo Alessandri (1932-38), and the post-Pinochet years. In this way, I think, the best of each work can be covered.
Given Collier and Sater’s expertise, they spend little time on the intellectual “boom” of the Bulnes-Montt decades. José Victorino Lastarria receives proportionately less attention, for example, than does Andrés Bello’s cat (pp. 106-7, as opposed to p. 234). History is politics, all right, but during this era new ideas were prominent in Chile. Sarget sees this period as one in which the oligarchic state led by Montt—a member, after all, of neither the Santiago nor the Concepción oligarchy—showed signs of stress (pp. 72-74). Given Sarget’s emphasis on class-conflict analysis, it is no surprise that the intellectual “Generation of 1842” receives bare mention here as well.
Both books are more incisive when it comes to the parliamentary era. Collier and Sater’s analysis is excellent. Their knowledge of sources is impressive, and their discussion adds to our knowledge of Chile’s period of “political baroquism” between 1891 and 1925. Sarget views the Parliamentary Republic as a vehicle for the perpetuation of oligarchic control (pp. 118-22), and notes the increasing heterogeneity of Chile’s ruling class—the weakening of the gene pool, as it were—as a sign of declining legitimacy in an age of socioeconomic stress. From both books readers will take away clear evidence of the deepening rifts between the oligarchy, middle sectors, military, and state rifts that were neither stressed during the mid-nineteenth century nor widened to a breaking point by the civil war of 1891.
Alessandri, a disruptive figure of the parliamentary system, is accurately portrayed by Collier and Sater as a defender of the status quo during his second presidency, which, in turn, they consider the vehicle for continued control of state machinery by oligarchs. Sarget focuses on the run-up to the 1938 elections, and agrees with Collier and Sater that this presidency perpetuated control of politics by vested interests that seemed comfortable with restored presidential powers after having struggled against such powers following the 1891 confrontation.
The authors of both books also agree about the post-Pinochet years. For Sarget the politics and social and economic policies of Patricio Aylwin (1990-94) and Eduardo Frei (1994-) are a question of “petits pas negociés un à un” (p. 270). Collier and Sater compare Aylwin governing with Augusto Pinochet as army commander-in-chief to former Prime Minister Felipe González democratizing Spain with Francisco Franco still alive (p. 384). Never mind that this analogy neglects the presence of a king in Spain, for it makes vivid another transition era in Chilean history. Both these new works on a country rich in history merit our attention, Collier and Sater’s work because of its scholarly and bibliographic richness, Sarget’s owing to its readable style and socioeconomic focus.
