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Juan Bautista Alberdi, Americanist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
August 29, 1960, marked exactly a century and a half since the birth of Juan Bautista Alberdi, and more than a century since his pen produced a book of unique importance in the history of Argentina and of America in general — Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina. This work, published in 1852, is one of those rare books in the history of the human spirit which capture the sense and meaning of the experience of an age. The age, in this case, is that of the literary generation of 1837 in Argentina, an era which suggests some analogies to the almost equally famous generation of 1842 in Chile, as well as to that of the New-England Transcendentalists. The common element in all three is the birth of an American spirit in letters and thought.
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- Copyright © University of Miami 1962
References
1 Historia de San Martín, 1950 edition (Buenos Aires: Ateneo) Vol. I, p. 96.
2 Alberdi, el Ciudadano de la soledad. (Buenos Aires, Losada, 1941).
3 Littérature Híspano-Américaine (Paris: KRA, 1930) p. 249.
4 (Buenos Aires: Ed. Populares Argentinas, 1956) p. 64.
5 de Ghioldi, Op. cit., p. 41.
6 Introducción de Bernardo Canal Feijóo. (Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette, 1955. First ed. Buenos Aires: Imp. de la Libertad, 1837.)
7 de Ghioldi, Op. cit., p. 51.
8 Fragmento preliminar, p. 214.
9 Idem., p. 45.
10 Idem., p. 213.
11 This passage, and others which follow immediately, are from the English translation in Burr, Robert N. and Hussey, Roland D., Documents on Inter-American Cooperation, 2 v. (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia, 1955) 1, 88–94.Google Scholar
12 Op. cit., p. 92.
13 Cartas Quillotanas. Clásicos Argentinos, Vol. xviii (Buenos Aires: Estrada, 1945) p. 15.
14 Bases y puntos de partida, p. 215.
15 El crimen de la guerra was written to be entered in a competition held by a peace society in 1870 for the best essay on war. In this work Alberdi envisaged the slow but steady development of international law and organization to replace war. To speak of civilized war, he argued, was as ridiculous as to speak of civilized barbarism. Once the peoples of the world become self-governing, they would naturally proceed to unite in some form of international society or world government.
16 Alberdi's relationship to the Paraguayan War is a matter of considerable historical controversy, into which it is not the author's intent to enter, except to note Alberdi's general view. He either did not know, or chose to ignore, certain aspects of the dictatorial military regime of Francisco Solano López.