Between Two Cities: Regional Rivalry and Peripheral Independence during the Chilean Patria Vieja, 1810–14

On April 1812, two Chilean armies stood waiting for the forthcoming engagement into battle. The army of the southern province of Concepción was encamped on the south bank of the Maule River. On the north bank lay the camp of the army of the new national Junta, in reality the army of the capital of Santiago. The dramatic event was one of the peaks of the deep regional rivalry between the two cities that dominated the politics of the early period when Chilean elites exercised self-rule. Adopting the “middle period” perspective, this paper argues that the regional schism is the most useful interpretative framework to the understanding of Chilean politics between 1810 and 1814 (and suggests it is also relevant to the entire first half of the nineteenth century). Metaphorically speaking, the engine that pulled the independence train was fueled by many agendas, but the tracks that stirred it to its destination were the regional tensions between Santiago and Concepción. The Chilean case demonstrates the need to separate the causes of Spanish American independence and the agendas and structural constraints that shaped the process of independence.