Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T19:26:05.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ANDRES BELLO AND THE CHALLENGES OF SPANISH AMERICAN LIBERALISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

James Dunkerley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Andrés Bello (1781–1865) is generally reckoned to be the foremost intellectual amongst opponents of the Spanish empire in the Americas after the Napoleonic Wars. This paper provides a synoptic account of Bello's development as a scholar, politician and statesman from his early career as a servant of the crown in colonial Caracas, through his nineteen-year exile in London, to his prominent role in the institutional design and management of the young Chilean republic. The paper traces the historiographical treatment of Bello and the application of his cosmopolitan learning to the tasks of nineteenth-century state-building. It is suggested that his trajectory reflected a successful adaptation of liberal precepts to a conservative local social setting within a world order dominated by British promotion of free trade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 24 , December 2014 , pp. 105 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Adelman, Jeremy, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, 2006), 9Google Scholar; Soasti, G., El Comisionado Regio Carlos Montúfar y Larrea (Quito, 2009)Google Scholar.

2 Lynch, John, Simón Bolívar. A Life (New Haven, 2006)Google Scholar; Lynch, John, San Martín: Argentine Soldier, American Hero (New Haven, 2009)Google Scholar.

3 Jaksic, Iván, Andrés Bello. Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 See, most recently, Iván Jaksic, The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820–1880 (2007).

5 One signal multidisciplinary exception is Andrés Bello y los Estudios Latinoamericanos, ed. Beatriz González Stepan and Juan Poblete (Pittsburgh, 2009).

6 Cartas a Bello en Londres, 1810–1829, ed. Sergio Fernández Larraín (Caracas, 1968), 77; Velleman, Barry L., Andrés Bello u sus libros (Caracas, 1995), 221–2Google Scholar.

7 Alexander von Humboldt makes no mention of Bello in his Personal Narrative when relating his stay in Caracas, and particularly the ascent of the Silla de Avila on 2 January 1800, although it seems that Bello accompanied him and Bonpland on the climb until exhausted, returning to the city with carriers sent back to fetch food. Over fifty years later, Humboldt recalled advising the Bello family to moderate his dedication to study in order to preserve his health. Amunátegui, M. L., Vida de don Andrés Bello (Santiago, 1962), 18Google Scholar. For Darwin, see Whittemberg, G., Jaffé, K., Hirshbein, C. and Yudelivich, D., ‘Charles Darwin, Robert Fitzroy and Simón Rodríguez met in Concepción, Chile after the Earthquake of February 20 1835’, Interciencia, 28, 9 (2003), 549–53Google Scholar.

8 According to Guillermo Cruz, Feliú, ‘Personality disappears in this very broad concept of what service to the country meant. And it is precisely in this that we can explain the scarcity within Chilean literature of memoirs, autobiographies, and intimate revelations to newspapers.’ Obras completas de Andrés Bello (hereafter OC), xii (Caracas, 1981), ccxxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

9 I owe this phrase to Cussen, Antonio, Bello and Bolívar. Poetry and Politics in the Spanish American Revolution (Cambridge, 1992), 70Google Scholar. The best synthetic appraisal of Bello's contribution to the creation of a stable republic in Chile is Concha, Jaime, ‘Bello y su Gestión Superestructural en Chile’, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 43/4 (1996), 139–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Brading, David, The First America. The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.

11 Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution.

12 Obras de Luis Castro Leiva, i: Para Pensar a Bolívar, ii: Lenguajes Republicanos (Caracas, 2005).

13 Silva, Patricio, In the Name of Reason. Technocrats and Politics in Chile (University Park, 2008)Google Scholar.

14 Nearly 100 of the 2,000 books of Bello's library at his death were devoted to medicine and science. Velleman, Bello y sus libros, 65–70.

15 OC, x, 543–62.

16 Filosofía del Entendimiento, in OC, iii.

17 Ibid. English translation here is from Stoetzer, O. Carlos, ‘The Political Ideas of Andrés Bello’, International Philosophical Quarterly, 23, 4 (1983), 399CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 This translation is from Jaksic, Andrés Bello, 193.

19 Andrés Bello. The London Years, ed. John Lynch (1982).

20 Stuven, Ana María, La seducción de un orden. Las elites y la construcción de Chile en las polémicas culturales y políticas del siglo XIX (Santiago, 2000)Google Scholar.

21 To Felipe Pardo, 26 July 1839, OC, xxvi, 55.

22 ‘The supplicant took no part whatsoever in the movements and plotting that preceded the Revolution – no intelligence with those planning the First Junta, no slippage, not even of the slightest nature, whilst a legitimate Government stood in Caracas’. OC, xxv, 55–7.

23 Archivo Epistolar de Don Miguel Luis Amunátegui (Santiago, 1942), 155–6.

24 Cussen, Bello and Bolívar, 53–7.

25 OC, xxv, 114–18. It was probably Mier's name that attracted one of several agents sifting through the international mails in that period, but letters were generally vulnerable.

26 Bolívar to O’Leary, 13 Sept. 1829, quoted in I. Jaksic and M. Leiras, ‘Life without the King. Centralists, Federalists, and Constitutional Monarchists in the Making of the Spanish American Republics, 1808–1830’, Working Paper no. 255, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame (1998), 13.

27 Bello to Gual, 6 Jan. 1825, OC, xxv, 142–3.

28 Bolívar to Madrid, Fernández, 27 Apr. 1829, Cartas del Libertador, vii (Caracas, 1969), 127–8Google Scholar.

29 OC, xxv, 408–9.

30 Encina, F., Resumen de la historia de Chile, ii (Santiago, 1954), 827Google Scholar; Bocaz, L., Andrés Bello. Una biografía cultural (Santa Fé de Bogotá, 2000), 207Google Scholar; T. Sutcliffe, Sixteen Years in Chile and Peru: From 1822 to 1838 (1841), 245–6.

31 Literary Memoirs (New York, 2000), 34–5.

32 Rodríguez, Simón, En defensa del libertador del mediodía (Arequipa, 1830), 152Google Scholar, cited in Leiva, L. Castro, ‘El Historicismo Político Bolivariano’, Revista de Estudios Políticos, 42 (1984), 100Google Scholar.

33 ‘The democracy that is so urged by the deluded is absurd for countries like the Americas, full of vice and where citizens are entirely bereft of virtue, which is necessary for the instituting of a true republic. Neither is monarchy an American ideal; we emerge from one terrible condition to enter into another, and what have we gained? Republicanism is the system we should adopt, but do you know how I understand it for these countries? A strong government, centralized, whose members are true models of virtue and patriotism…When the citizenry has been moralized, then let completely liberal government prevail.’ Epistolario de Portales, ed. G. Feliú Cruz (Santiago, 1936), i, 176–8.

34 El Araucano, 27 Nov. 1830, cited in Stuven, La seducción de un orden, 51.

35 Sarmiento, Domingo Fausto, Recollections of a Provincial Past (New York, 2005), 188Google Scholar; Sacks, Norman, ‘Lastarria y Sarmiento: El Chileno y el Argentino Achilenado’, Cuadernos Americanos, 2, 62 (1997), 491–512Google Scholar.

36 El Araucano, 23 Nov. 1832, cited in Campbell, Margaret, ‘Education in Chile, 1810–1842’, Journal of Inter-American Studies, 1, 3 (1959), 366CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier, Simon, Chile: The Making of Republic 1830–1865 (Cambridge, 2003), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Ruth Hill, ‘Entre lo transatlántico y lo hemisférico: los proyectos raciales de Andrés Bello’, Revista Iberoamericana, lxxv (2009), 730; Davies, Catherine, ‘Troped out of History: Women, Gender and Nation in the Poetry of Andrés Bello’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 84, 1 (2007), 99–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 ‘Civil Code. Presentation of the Bill to Congress’, Selected Writings of Andrés Bello, ed. I. Jaksic (New York, 1997) (hereafter SW) 271.

39 Milanich, Nara, Children of Fate. Childhod, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850–1930 (Durham, NC, 2009), 58Google Scholar.

40 Bauer, Arnold J., Chilean Rural Society from the Spanish Conquest to 1930 (Cambridge, 1975), 20–1Google Scholar.

41 Mackenna, Benjamín Vicuña, El incendio del templo de la Compañía de Jesús: fundación del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Santiago (Santiago, 1971)Google Scholar.

42 Jaksic, Andrés Bello, 120.

43 Portales to Encalada, Blanco, 17 Oct. 1836, Portales pintado por si mismo (Santiago, 1941), 115–16Google Scholar.

44 Arana, D. Barros, Un decenio de la historia de Chile, 1841–1851, i (Santiago, 1905), 77Google Scholar.

45 According to Portales, ‘Chile's position in relation to then Peru-Bolivia confederation is untenable. It cannot be tolerated neither by the people nor by the government, for it would be equivalent to suicide’. Epistolario, ed. Feliú Cruz, ii, 452.

46 El Araucano, 25 Oct. 1844, in OC, xi, Derecho International, ii, 271–2.

47 Fawcett, Louise, ‘Between West and Non-West: Latin American Contributions to International Thought’, International History Review, 34, 4 (2012), 679–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 According to Irisarri, ‘it is not weakness but imprudence that has caused the poor outcome of relations between strong and weak states, because when the just cause of the weak is made plain, the strong cedes’. Quoted in G. Feliú Cruz, Andrés Bello y la redacción de los documentos oficiales, administrativos, internacionales y legislativos de Chile. Bello, Irisarri y Egaña en Londres (Caracas, 1957), 229–30.

49 OC, xi, 31–2.

50 Ibid., xlv.

51 Memoria sobre las incidencias ocurridas en el matrimonio del Honorable Señor Barton, Encargado de Negocios de los Estados unidos de América, con doña Isabel Astaburnaga (Santiago, 1849).

52 It is unclear to me if this is the same vessel as the Jeune Nelly which featured in ‘United States v. Guillem, 52 U.S. 47 (1850)’, an important Supreme Court case relating to the rights of neutrals during naval blockades.

53 Tocornal to Ragueneau, 7 Dec. 1833, OC, xii, 88.

54 To Carlos Bello, 30 Dec.1856, OC, xxvi, 345.

55 To Carlos Bello, 30 Apr. 1842, ibid., 78.

56 El Araucano, 13 Nov.1844, OC, xii, li; Amunátegui, Vida, 301.

57 Tocornal to Mexican foreign minister, 17 June 1836, OC, xii, 103.

58 Ibid., 644.

59 SW, 124–37.

60 ‘On the Aims of Education’ (1836), SW, 110; OC, xxii, 658.

61 Jaksic, I. and Serrano, S., ‘In the Service of the Nation: The Establishment and Consolidation of the Universidad de Chile, 1842–79’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 70, 1 (1990), 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 T. Eagleton, Trouble with Strangers: a Study of Ethics (2009); Dews, P., The Idea of Evil (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 ‘Her texts have insisted on micropractices of difference and an aesthetic of the fragmentary, partial and oblique as opening new discursive and artistic possibilities for contesting hegemonic discourses.’ Nelly Richard, The Insubordination of Signs (Durham, NC, 2004), xiv–xv. In a debate included in this volume, Germán Bravo declared, ‘I think that just as Portales can be seen as a kind of paradigm for the politico-institutional, Andrés Bello appears as the paradigm of the notion of culture based on the prevention of “orgies of the imagination”.’ Ibid., 87.

64 ‘Latinoamérica y la posmodernidad’, Escritos, 13–14 (Jan.–Dec. 1996), 276.

65 SW, 128.

66 In the Filosofía he states, ‘There is for man a future destiny capable of satisfying his aspirations. The human soul survives death’, OC, iii, 221. Lastarria ridiculed Bello for his conviction that a wealthy merchant and his new young spouse had seen the ghost of his first, murdered wife at a banquet, saying he had heard it as evidence in their subsequent trial. Bocaz, Andrés Bello, 204.

67 Ana Antonia López de Bello, Caracas, to Bello, 17 Sept. 1826, OC, xxv, 201.

68 , L and Grimberg, R., Psycholanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile (Yale, 1989), 20Google Scholar, cited in Racine, K., ‘Evolution of Andrés Bello's American Identity in London’, in Strange Pilgrimages. Exile, Travel and National Identity in Latin America 1800–1990s, ed. Fry, I. and Racine, K. (Wilmington, 2000), 7–8Google Scholar.

69 Bello to Concha Rodríguez, 27 May 1847, OC, xxvi, 153.

70 Urdaneta, O. Sambrano, Cronología de Andrés Bello 1781–1865 (Caracas, 1990), 64Google Scholar.

71 ‘Animals have a sort of intelligence in which sensitivity enters as one of the elemental faculties’. Filosofía, quoted in Rafael Caldera, Andrés Bello: Philosopher, Poet, Philologist, Educator, Legislator, Statesman (1977), 63.

72 ‘Our true Patria is that rule of conduct indicated by the rights, obligations and functions that we have and that we owe each other; it is that rule which establishes public and private order, which strengthens, secures and imparts all their vigor to the relationships that unite us, and forms that body of associations of rational beings in which we find the only good, the only desirable thing in our country. Therefore that rule is our Patria, and that rule is law, without which everything disappears’. ‘On the Observance of the Laws’ (1836), SW, 263.