This collection of documents is intended to cover the origins of nationhood in Argentina, from the decade preceding the May Revolution to the middle of the Rosista experiment. Its emphasis lies on the nature of the first sovereign states following independence and on the political conceptions that animated them. The title “Cities, Provinces, States” points out the progression from city to confederation of provinces in the process of nation-state formation. The book comprises an introductory essay and a collection of documents, thematically ordered and carefully referenced. For the first 261 pages, a preliminary study guides the reader along themes at the heart of the author’s interests and preoccupations, which include the heterogeneous mixture of ideas at the end of the colonial period, the forms of political identity prevalent during the first decades of independence, and the true meaning of key political concepts such as “federation,” “nation,” “Argentina,” and “pueblos.” The following 384 pages are devoted to the documentary evidence: letters, official reports, minutes of constitutional debates, acts and decrees, newspaper articles, and excerpts from books, most of them relating to the political identity and the forms of sovereignty claimed by political actors during this period.
The materials appear divided into three parts: (a) political culture during the late colonial period; (b) the first sovereignties; and (c) toward the confederate Argentine states. In the first part, the author examines Enlightened Reformism in Río de la Plata, cautioning readers against considering it as a revolutionary, coherent ideology. Within the Catholic Church, reformist trends tried to accommodate empiricist perspectives to the necessities of scholasticism. Starting around 1800, Enlightened ideas began to permeate some areas of public culture (journalism, the Consulado, the study of the arts), but the reformism they inspired remained conciliatory and moderated by self-censorship. In the second part, the author pays special attention to the question of the political vocabulary inherited by the independence leadership. Political actors rested their claims about sovereign government on pre-existing municipal rights, on an ancient concept of citizenship (vecindad) devoid of egalitarian connotations, and on identity positions that were ambiguous, contradictory, and did not correspond to a clearly delimited territory (americanos, rioplatenses, cordobeses, etc.). In the third part, the author follows the deployment of these elements of political culture in the context of an increasingly polarized polity. Major reforms such as the electoral law of 1821, the university reforms of the early 1820s, and debates about the Patronato divided political actors into camps that did not necessarily coincide with the traditional dichotomies of liberal/conservative or federalist/unitarian.
There is much to be praised about this collection. With this publication, the author has made accessible documents that were not readily available elsewhere. Readers can find here the 1793 “Representación de los Labradores,” the debates around the question of the “Patronato” in 1810 and 1826, excerpts from the first texts on public law used in the University of Buenos Aires (ca. 1822-24), the positions of La Gaceta and El Nacional in regard to the new electoral regime, and samples of the doctrinal debate carried out by representatives to the constitutional conventions of 1824 and 1826. In addition, the introductory essay can serve as a summary of the author’s positions regarding the question of nationstate formation. Readers can expect to find a clear exposition of the author’s arguments concerning the myth of a pre-existing nation, the importance of municipal sovereignty in the formative period, the characterization of Bourbon reformism as conciliatory rather than revolutionary, and long discussions about political vocabulary.
Those partial to a different conception of political culture—more rooted in ritual practice, symbolic representation, and the fragmented and contested nature of the political imagination—will find Chiaramonte’s selection of texts a bit biased in the direction of a traditional definition of politics and representation. Nevertheless, the collection represents a welcome and needed addition to the historiography of the region. Its ample coverage, the clarity of its language, its careful referencing of sources, and the author’s engagement with important debates of political history makes it quite useful for both teaching and research.
However, Ciudades, provincias, estados also manifests some salient weaknesses. Save for a few documents about Corrientes, there is little new in this collection about political culture, state-formation, or government administration in the provinces after 1830. Also, the political culture of Rosista federalism—perhaps one of the most important state experiments in inculcating nationhood among the peasants—receives little attention, except for a few, well-known letters from Rosas to Quiroga. Quite traditionally, the texts of Echeverría and Alberdi are taken as good measures of the political discussion after 1835 when, in actuality, they represent only one of the perspectives. Other subjectivities outside of traditional politics (women, soldiers, Africans, and indigenous peoples) are conspicuously absent from discussions about the nation. Perhaps more materials on the federalist pacts, on Rosista federalism, and on alternative, lower-class forms of political identity would have enhanced the scope of this collection, making it truly representative of the period’s political culture.