Independence in Argentina

Abstract

The topic of Argentina’s break from Spain and toward independence has concerned Argentine historians since the late 19th century, a period when authors published the country’s first research-based histories. For generations, scholars focused on the words and actions of individuals who emerged as leaders of the independence process. These histories centered on the ideals and events between 1810 and 1816 as significant and determinant, and they depicted Argentina’s break from Spanish authority as autonomous and self-directed. Beginning in the 1970s, Argentine scholars led a revisionist turn that first explored the context that shaped the political process and both motivated and limited the leaders and the factions that they represented. As was true with the study of other revolutions that took place in the Atlantic World during the late 18th and early 18th centuries, the focus for researchers expanded with shifts toward economic, social, and cultural influences. By the 1990s, the traditional narrative had fallen away in favor of a recognition that fundamental assumptions overlooked historical conditions. While events in North America and, for a time, France inspired discussion circles and correspondence among activists, rebellions within Spanish America and the revolution in Haiti, which underscored the potential cost of a break with authority, chilled any revolutionary push. In turn, the British attempts to capture Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807, which led porteños to form their own militia that defeated the invaders, focused local ambitions on a push for more autonomy within the Spanish Empire. When Napoleonic forces invaded Spain and captured King Ferdinand VII in 1808, the question of who ruled whom pushed the issue of independence forward. Royalist resistance, regional differences, and factional strife within the revolutionary movement complicated and slowed the move toward independence. Recent studies have again broadened the topic in useful directions. When the Cabildo Abierto in Buenos Aires convened to determine who and what form of government should rule in the place of the absent king, what exactly the council in the viceregal capital represented, who it spoke for, and what its relationship would be with Spain and the wider world was not clear. Recent work has added to our understanding of independence beyond Buenos Aires, comparing regions that resisted efforts to keep the colonial boundaries intact with those that remained linked to the capital, either willingly or by force. Social and cultural studies have helped us to better appreciate the role and the actions of the many whose lives and experiences marked the era.