1. Elementos para una biografía coral de los soldados del Real Ejército de la Frontera de Chile (1602-1702)
- Author
-
Mario Prades Vilar
- Subjects
Chile ,soldiers ,microhistory ,choral biography ,Royal Army of the Border ,Anthropology ,GN1-890 ,Latin America. Spanish America ,F1201-3799 - Abstract
This paper analyzes the possibilities and the historiographic value of a choral-biographical approach to the history of the Royal Army of the Border of Chile during the 17th Century. It justifies, in the first place, the validity and opportunity of such approach. In the second place, it exposes one of the main problems for its application: many of the sources for Chilean military history in colonial times come from instances of power (political, religious, military) within a process of moral, social, and cultural organization of the soldiery, thereby blurring the normative system and values of the soldiers themselves. Consequently, the historiography of the Chilean army has favored a social approach and a longue durée timeframe, paying, therefore, more attention to social and economic structures than to individual trajectories. Finally, the paper exemplifies two ways for an alternative reading of the sources: reading between the lines and against the author's concept system; and normalize trivial, perhaps exceptional, details to bring to light practices, social dynamics, and identification processes. These are just two examples, among others, that point towards the possibility of give back an historical agency to the soldier and understand its construction from a collective dimension, halfway between the individual and the institutional.
- Published
- 2022
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