FROM VICEROYALTIES TO NATIONAL STATES HISTORICAL TRAJECTORIES AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES IN THE RÍO DE LA PLATA AND NUEVA GRANADA (19TH CENTURY) CONTRASTS CONVERGENCES TRANSITIONS
The purpose of this symposium is to promote dialogue about the mutations, changes and continuities that developed in the Río de la Plata and Nueva Granada during the nineteenth century. The new national states, born of an exogenous crisis — the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy and empire — and of a long colonial tradition, charted new paths, sometimes accompanied by old formulas, in a process of consolidation that took more than a century.
The dismemberment of the viceregal units was not free of internal and external conflicts that pitted against one another those who, in the colonial past, had constituted an unstable unity sustained by the colonial scaffolding.
New imaginaries and representations, new social and cultural practices, took shape in a world of profound economic, political and institutional changes for their protagonists. New zones of confluence, conflict and complementarity between tradition and the modernity of the time in each of the regions gradually developed formulas in which similarities and differences can be seen, both within the new national states and in the conflicts among them.
Both viceroyalties, which emerged under the Bourbon Reforms and resulted from the fragmentation of the Viceroyalty of Peru, developed their own processes of formation and consolidation, finding numerous south-north contrasts and convergences throughout the nineteenth century: the unity generated in the independence processes led by the liberators, the fragmentation of the late-colonial administrative units, Colombia’s recognition of Paraguay’s independence in 1846, the repudiation of the secret treaty of the Triple Alliance, and the solidarity offered to the Paraguayan people after the war.
By articulating contrasts, convergences and transitions, this symposium proposes a space for new historiographical dialogues on the historical trajectories of the Río de la Plata and Nueva Granada, viewed from dynamic and complex perspectives. Examining the multiple nineteenth-century processes constitutes an undertaking in which the shared contrasts and transitions will bring to the table evidence of subtle yet significant connections.
