Repúblicas en armas

This study, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, sets out to show the “central role of war in the attempt at constructing the Bolivarian nations” (p. 13). It focuses more specifically on the transformation of the insurgent army in Venezuela and Colombia during the years between 1810 and 1825. Thibaud argues that the military process itself helped create new nations and new national identities for the region. Grounded in a fundamentally Guerresque vision of independence (the late François-Xavier Guerra was Thibaud’s thesis adviser), the volume charts the evolution of armed conflict from the gentlemanly struggles (at least in New Granada) of the war’s early years, through the guerrilla warfare typical of 1815–16, to the formation of an institutionalized army after 1819. Along the way, it provides a wealth of information about the size, composition, and structure of patriot forces. Using a database of 3,815 hojas de servicio, Thibaud shows that although at the start of the war armies (unsurprisingly) differed little from colonial militias, by the 1820s they had been transformed into “national” entities. He also provides a notable discussion of José Tomás Boves’s royalist troops, many of whom subsequently enlisted with the republicans.The volume’s principle historiographical referents are the extensive Colombian and Venezuelan literature on independence, and the historiography of the French Revolution. The latter provides a format for assessing the army’s role within revolutionary processes, while the former gives the author the opportunity to take shots at the easy target of traditional nationalist history. Thibaud shows less interest in relating his research to the growing literature on popular ideology in the independence process (Eric Van Young’s work, for example, make no appearance). In the absence of explicit discussions of ideology, Thibaud relies on transformations of military strategy and structure to demonstrate the formation of national identities. He argues that these provide a unique vantage point from which to observe the “evolutions and progress of modernity” (p. 17). The book shows that over the course of the conflict, insurgent troops lost their militia-based links to particular territories and regions and began to form part of a new entity: the Ejército Libertador. Patriot forces were thus “deterritorialized”; a “crucible” is Thibaud’s favorite metaphor to describe this new army. At the same time—and particularly as a result of the irregular warfare they pursued in the Llanos in 1815–17—these troops helped create a “deinstitutionalized” space in which the emergent national army could establish itself as the sole authority. As a result, the army came to see itself as equivalent to, and representative of, the pueblo. The army, in other words, became the nation, or at least the republic.At 571 pages, this is a long book. The author himself admits he does not possess “much skill in writing concisely” (p. 2). (In his own defense, he notes that the published version is less than half the length of the original dissertation.) The argument about the army’s role within the process of nation building is, at times, in danger of vanishing under a welter of information about the meaning of the term “guerrilla” or the nature of military charisma. There were, moreover, times when I found the text frankly confusing. On page 168, for example, Thibaud notes that “in the llanos, disdain for land ownership . . . explains the institutional instability of the territory,” while four pages later he writes, “it is known that the llaneros were hungry for land” (p. 172). Similarly, Thibaud’s interesting argument that rates of promotion within the patriot forces increased dramatically in 1815–16 is supported by two different charts (6.2 and 7.1) that appear to give conflicting figures for the number of annual promotions (none of which are calculated in relation to the size of the army). Nonetheless, the book offers a wide-ranging account of the development of patriot forces, replete with detail about the nature of military life, the transformations in military strategy, the structure of guerrilla warfare, the recruitment of slaves, and more. It will certainly be of interest to military historians, scholars of the wars of independence, and those interested in the transformation from colony to republic in Spanish America. The volume concludes by locating the origins of the “nacionalismo cesariano” (p. 520) of the Chávez governments in this pivotal period

Political science · Historical Studies in Latin America · History and Politics in Latin America · Latin American history and culture

• Pintando La Historia Nacional

  Open Access•Yobenj Aucardo Chicangana-Bayona•Almanack•2021

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