Could it have been, in place of Argentina that we know, 14 independent powers in incessant competition ? From “disunited provinces” of the Rio de la Plata to the affirmation of a single nation state, G.VERDO describes five decades of unity research.
The decomposition of the American Empire of Spain at the start of XIXe century has given way to independent states after a long and winding emancipatory process (1808-1824), preceding another, just as slow and difficult, of affirmation of a coherent and pacified political community in the second half of the same century. Centered on Argentina, Geneviève Verdo’s book, which extends its previous study on Argentine independence, between cities and nation (1808-1821), brings new light on the methods of political construction to XIXe A century in South America, in which stato-national purpose was only one option among others.
At the origins of Argentina was the vice-kingdom of the Río de la Plata, on the outskirts of the Spanish colonial empire. Created in 1776 to strengthen imperial defense in the face of the Portuguese threat of Brazil and reorganize exchanges with the metropolis, the presence of the crown in the region remains discreet. These are the cities (stubborn) which form vice-rotoyance, and are largely governed by the corporations that compose them, in particular the city bodies (codos). After the dynastic crisis launched by Napoleon following the abdications of Bayonne in 1808, the Río de la Plata, like the other territories that make up the Empire, entered a revolutionary process which leads to the official proclamation of the independence of “ Provinces of the plata río During the Tucumán Congress in 1816.
This study analyzes the political construction process which has been developed since that date until the establishment of the Argentine Republic in 1853. During this interval, there is indeed no state constituted unlike the rest of South America, but 14 provincial republics which coexist in place. This book is also the story of these unknown entities and their incessant attempts to unite. If the desire for union remains the common ambition of their respective leaders, the constantly debated constitutional framework must also preserve the existence of their communities and guarantee peace between them. This problem shows the gap between these entities from the nation state, which is only a form in the making in the Euro-American space at that time. To understand this Argentine political construction, the study was divided into two thematic parts.
Fourteen provincial republics
The first part (“ Community ) Examine these provincial republics as an original political form. These entities, constituted in 1820 after the fall of the Directorial Regime, were part of the cities of the Empire, of which they inherited the renewed dynamism of territorial corporations and the role played by them during the revolutionary process. They have institutions capable of managing the government of their jurisdictions, while the “ executive power », Entered by a governor, and a House of Representatives govern together. Calling into question the concept of separation of powers, these provincial republics are based on the distribution of functions and the “ authorization principle »Rooms, which explains the trend for the concentration of the power of governors and the use of” extraordinary faculties In the 1830s to put an end to the potential factors of troubles. They are also distinguished by their recurring aspiration of preserving their “ existence “, While wanting to recreate the political unity they knew under the Spanish Empire and at the beginning of the Revolution. Federalism, unanimity and domestic power over rural areas constitute the pillars of these provincial republics, which, while integrating revolutionary principles, such as the sovereignty of the people and the institutional organization which reflected it, reveal, from the 1830s, a deeply anti -liberal component.
In search of union
The second part (“ Stand ) Analyzes the exchanges between these territorial entities from the creation of vice-kingdom until the advent of Argentina. It shows how the administrative reorganization of the Spanish Empire at XVIIIe century, the “ English invasions (1806-1807), the revolution and the war of independence created both a hierarchy, dependence and solidarity between the cities. With the “ May Revolution 1810, new relationships are being put in place between Buenos Aires, the former capital Vice-Royale, and the other cities of his jurisdiction. They are based on the solidarity of stubbornthe role of guide played by the capital and its junta as an incarnation of the whole, and the deliberate confusion between it and the revolutionary regime. The junta uses the primacy of the capital to conclude with the cities a pact which allows it to present the territorial cohesion of the major part of the vice-kingdom-the Haut-Pérou (Bolivia), the Paraguay and the Eastern Strip (Uruguay) escape its authority-and to direct both the course of the revolution and that of the war. But these new relationships have the consequence of politicizing the transversal links between communities and serving as a foundation for political union.
As soon as the junta was training in 1810, the representation of stubborn is erected in principle of substitution of the sovereign. At the same time, the idea of organizing powers is mentioned by means of a constitution, supposed to give form to a new state. However, despite the meeting of several constituent assemblies during the first revolutionary decade, the texts which emanate from it retain a provisional value. The implementation of a final constitution stumbles on cultural factors relating to the very conception of said text, and by political factors relating to the difficulty of defining the real subject of sovereignty: on the one hand, a centralist vision defended by Buenos Aires for whom sovereignty remains the nation composed of individuals, on the other, a federal vision, shared by most provincial republics, Capable of arbitrating interprorvincial relations. After 1820, these “ disunited provinces “Plata remain in the form of a” common horizon That the actors seek to materialize on the constitutional level through different congresses. Nevertheless, this second revolutionary decade is marked by the constitutional impasse to get along (1821-1829).
In parallel, an alternative political construction is developed in the same period by means of pacts and treaties that the governments of the provincial republics (1820-1841) take out between them. These bilateral agreements reflect attempts to build regional unions awaiting a real general organization. Whatever has strengthened with vigor, the sovereignty of these entities remains quite relative: on the one hand, it designates all the rights and customs that its actors seek to safeguard, on the other hand, it corresponds to relations with the other republics. Ultimatelythe construction of a supreme power – federal or confederal – can be seen as the culmination of the process which pushes them to pact with the other provincial entities in order to organize their relations, to appease conflicts and to protect themselves against aggressions.
Conclusion
When reading this work, we see all the difficulties encountered by Argentina to organize itself in a state constituted during a large part of the XIXe century, which makes this country a unique case in the post -revolutionary Atlantic world. For more than thirty years, Argentinian leaders continue to want to build a coherent unit without achieving it, before getting along around a Federal Republic, like the United States of Mexico, Venezuela or Brazil. This period of “ anarchy “And” barbarism “, Disped by the Argentinian national novel (Historia Patria), was compared by one of its supporters, Domingo Facundo Sarmiento, to “ The crossing of the Hebrews desert ». As the author rightly recalls, if most of the Rioplatin space-called the United Provinces until 1831 before taking the name of Confederation and then of the Argentine Republic-finally led to the progressive constitution of a nation state from 1853, it could also have led to the formation of 14 independent states, comparable to those which appeared to its periphery (Bolivia, Paraguay). The comparison with Central America, organized in the Federal Republic between 1824 and 1840 before imploding in 5 distinct nation states, clearly indicates one of the possible ways of this “ Future not avenu ».