Paternalism, violence and moral economy on the southern frontier of the spanish empire during counter-insurgent military campaigns, 1813-1822

Abstract

The  military  actions  deployed  by  the  viceroys  Abascal  and  Pezuela  against  the  main centers of the South American insurgency were determined by the mobilization of their respective  local  components.  In  the  specific  case  of  the  kingdom  of  Chile,  these communities not only formed their own military forces. In fact, they participated in the design and staging of the counterrevolution.

The nature of that  "monarchist reaction" and the different practices deployed within it, reveal the existence of complex social configurations in which various sectors saw in the war  a  mechanism  of  economic  accumulation -assuming  that  it  was  already  a  source  of legitimacy- all  this  at  a  time  when  the  Bourbon  monarchy  had  a  wide  incentive  in  the political  imaginary  of  those  populations.  This  paper  analyzes  the  characteristics  of  this process  through  the  reconstruction  of  the  main  economic  and  fiscal  practices,  together with the relational networks that involved the main protagonists of the war. On the one hand, we highlight the paternalistic strategies of the local and viceregal authorities in the reestablishment of the royal authority, a situation that coexisted with the discourses of the officers around a moral justification of their actions.