Bartolomé Mitre

Any author who decides to write a biography of Bartolomé Mitre is setting themselves up for a challenge. Mitre's life, which spanned much of the nineteenth century and the formative years of independent Argentina, in many ways encapsulated the conflicts of the era, including the bloody Juan Manuel de Rosas dictatorship in Buenos Aires (which Mitre opposed) and the even bloodier War of the Triple Alliance, in which Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay faced off against Paraguay (in which he led). The extant documentation is enormous, the events that Mitre participated in are still polemical, and his family is still a powerful force in news and politics.The author of the latest release from Edhasa's Biografías Argentinas series, Eduardo Míguez, is an accomplished historian who has published in the fields of economic, social, and political history, including migration history; his 2011 book, Mitre montonero: La revolución de 1874 y las formas de la política en la organización nacional, analyzes Mitre's role in the failed 1874 revolution. He has clearly spent years living with the sources, including voluminous correspondence and an endless historiography, and thinking about the role of Mitre in many of the defining moments of Argentine history, all of which have their own historiographies. In his new biography of Mitre he has brought to bear the different subfields, in general quite effectively.Míguez succeeds in his effort to provide an account of Mitre's life and involvement in politics “with the most possible equanimity,” though specialists in the various subfields as well as defenders and detractors of Mitre will find grist for the mill (p. 12). For example, though convincingly arguing that Mitre did not actively seek war with Paraguay and was not an instrument of British imperialism, Míguez seems to minimize Mitre's responsibility in the march toward war and the ensuing bloodbath. Reading the account, I was reminded of the old cliché about the blind march into World War I, despite nobody wanting it; to my mind, this does not speak well of Mitre.Míguez's central theses about Mitre's life, which cannot be adequately summarized here for reasons of space, include his close personal identification with both the Argentine nation and the city of Buenos Aires, his democratic nationalist ideology, his qualities (or lack thereof) as a thinker and politician, and his relationships with figures ranging from Justo José de Urquiza to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Julio Argentino Roca. These theses are well considered and argued, though again will no doubt provoke debate. The accounts of political developments are clear and informative. The end result, however, is in some ways disappointing. In the introduction, Míguez notes that this biography is part of a larger project on the provinces' role in Argentina's national organization; he hints at discussions with the editors on length and format, though it is not clear to me why he chose to write a biography of Mitre as opposed to, say, Urquiza. A certain tension with this larger project shows in the book's structure and development. The book often veers away from Mitre and toward an account of the politics of the day, in particular with regard to electoral matters and the relationship between capital and provinces. This is also a result of the author's decision to restrict himself to Mitre's political life. While excluding literary adventures such as Mitre's translation of Dante is welcome, the exclusion of Mitre's role in the origins of Argentine historiography is less so. While no doubt in part a result of space limitations, this choice misses a chance to reinforce one of Míguez's central theses: the relationship between Mitre and the nation, given the importance of Mitre the historian in the development of historical narratives of nationhood.The book also has structural issues. Though largely chronological, the second chapter, which provides an overview of Mitre's intellectual life, gives short shrift to important conceptual issues. For example, I was surprised by the relative absence of republicanism in the discussion of Mitre's thought. More fundamentally, the summary two-page bibliography and lack of footnotes in the physical text itself (they are available for download online) limits the book's usefulness to scholars. For an author as prolific as Mitre, the online bibliography should have included a comprehensive list of Mitre's work. These limitations point to editing decisions as well as the limits of the Edhasa series, which does not seem to allow for multivolume works, yet the book remains a well-researched, enjoyable biography of an important Argentine political figure, engaging to specialists and nonspecialists alike

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