To the End of the World and Back: Émigrés during the Chilean War of Independence from Spain

This paper will explore how political peregrinations complicated the development of Chilean national identity during the founding of the new republic. Spanish and creole residents of colonial Chile sometimes lamented that they lived at the end of the world (finis terrae). Despite its being the farthest colony except the Phillipines from the metropolis, however, merchants and bureaucrats circulated through the Captaincy of Chile. Such movements intensified and became politicized in the wake of the imperial crisis precipitated by Napoleon’s occupation of Spain, and the process of Chilean independence was closely linked to developments in Peru and Rio de la Plata. As separatists gained the upper hand in the 1810 Junta established to govern during the captivity of King Fernando VII, royalists fled to Lima only to return with expeditions sent by the Viceroy of Peru to reestablish control over Chile. From 1814 to 1817, separatists in turn emigrated over the Andes into the territory of the Rio de la Plata, from where many returned under the command of José de San Martin in 1817. Although patriotic accounts of independence generally mark definitive victory at the Battle of Chacabuco that year, royalist reinforcements continued to arrive through the southern port of Talcahuano and challenged patriotic control of the South into the 1820s. Throughout this period, identities as well as borders remained in flux as natives of Spain and the colonies could be found on both sides of the conflict. In the wake of the war some americanos (as they were known) found themselves in Spain or Cuba requesting assistance to reward their fidelity to the Crown, while some peninsulars remained in or returned to Chile and petitioned for naturalization and the return of confiscated property.