Regular and irregular forces in conflict: nineteenth century insurgencies in South America

ABSTRACT

In the decades following independence from Spain, ‘civil wars’ ravaged the newly established polities in South America. Former vice-regal capitals inherited a larger portion of the colonial administration and had larger economic resources and a hegemonic project they were able to have permanent and professional armed forces, capable of leading the offensive and giving battle following the European rules of military art. The central hypothesis of this work is that there is a necessary relationship between the shape of these asymmetrical conflicts, their outcome and the political territorial configuration of each country in post-revolutionary Spanish America. When permanent armies took over from local militias, the capital kept the integrity of its territories and there was a tendency towards political centralization. When this did not happen and the militias managed to find a way to defeat their centralizing enemies, the local powers had an opportunity to renegotiate their participation in the political body, and sought to maintain their independence, which was manifest in federal agreements, otherwise a process of territorial fragmentation began. More than a difference between regular and irregular forces there was one between intermittent, and permanent mobilization.

KEYWORDS:

• Wars of independence in Spanish America
• caudillos
• irregular forces
• armed forces

Acknowledgments

Some sections of this paper were published in “Milices et guérillas paysannes face a la armée régulier: le combat asymétrique au Rio de la Plata et la fragmentation territoriale (1810-1852)”, Hispania Nova, Revista de Historia Contemporánea, num. 13, 2015, pp. 164-187. Translated by Natalia Sobrevilla Perea. We thank the Leverhulme Trust for making the writing of this joint article possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. On this point see Lempérière, “Revolución, guerra civil, guerra de independencia.”

2. Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars.

3. Verdo, L’indépendance argentine.

4. Demelas, ”De la ‘petite guerre’ à la guerre populaire.”

5. Fradkin, “‘Facinerosos’ contra ‘Cajetillas’?”; Slatta, “Rural Criminality and Social Conflict”; and Salvatore, “The Breakdown of Social Discipline.”

6. Sobrevilla Perea, “Luchando por ‘la patria’.”

7. Rabinovich, “La máquina de la guerra y el Estado.”

8. Méndez, The Plebeian Republic.

9. There are many works on the colonial army, one of the first ones is by McAllister, The “Fuero Militar” in New Spain.

10. See for instance Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru; Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada; and Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico.

11. For the most recent study see Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion.

12. The work of Leon Campbell looks at this issue in detail The Military and Society in Colonial Peru.

13. Fernandez, El Ejército de América antes de la independencia.

14. See “Informe del Subinspector General sobre el deficiente estado de preparación militar del virreinato, 1802”, in Juan Beverina, El Virreinato de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata, su organización militar, Buenos Aires, Círculo Militar, 1992, 437–443.

15. Rabinovich, “The Making of Warriors.”

16. Roca, Ni con Lima ni con Buenos Aires.

17. Sobrevilla Perea, “Luchando por ‘la patria’.”

18. The offensive vocation of the revolution was evident after its first move. In the popular petition of 25 May 1810, that demanded the creation of a new government, the revolutionaries demanded the immediate departure of an armed expedition of 500 men on to the interior provinces. See Anon, “Acta capitular del día 25 de Mayo de 1810.”

19. With regards to the issues of putting together regular armies and the creation of new States, see Storrs, The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe; and Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe.

20. Garavaglia, Les hommes de la Pampa.

21. Fradkin, “Las formas de hacer la guerra,” 167–214.

22. For example “Copia del oficio dirigido al cabildo de Buenos Aires por el Gobernador de Santa Fe, Brigadier General Estanislao López el 14 de Septiembre 1820”, Revista de la Junta de Estudios Históricos de Mendoza, Segunda Época, n°3, 1966, 337–344.

23. On the Indian war culture see Beccara, Guerre et ethnogenèse Mapuche dans le Chili colonial.

24. The definition of the military concept of defense and its relationship to attack can be found in von Clausewitz, De la guerre, 399–425.

25. For the first wars of 1814, see Lopez “La guerra de independencia en Salta,” 113–35; Manuel Otero, “Informe sobre los servicios del Coronel Don Luis Burela de Salta en la Guerra de la Independencia”, and “Informe sobre los servicios del general Don Pablo de la Torre”, in Memorias: de Güemes a Rosas, Buenos Aires, Ediciones Argentinas, 1946, 33–116. Yabén, Los capitanes de Güemes,17–19 .

26. For a detailed description of this see Joaquín de la Pezuela, Compendio de los sucesos ocurridos en el ejército del Perú y sus provincias (1813–1816) Santiago de Chile: Bicentenario, 2011.

27. Archivo General de Indias (AGI) Lima,1014A, Proclama de José de Abascal, Lima Abril 25 1812.

28. Rabinovich, “La militarización del río de la plata, 11–42.

29. Rabinovich, “La máquina de la guerra y el Estado”.

30. Sobrevilla Perea, “From Europe to the Andes and Back,”472–88.

31. Verdo, “La guerre constituante,”246.

32. These are the main questions that guide current research on asymmetrical warfare. Baud, La guerre asymétrique ou la défaite du vainqueur.

33. Sobrevilla Perea, The caudillo of the Andes.

34. For the classic study of the problem of “regularity” in the military, see, Schmitt, Théorie du Partisan.

35. A comparative study of different models of militarization can be found in Keegan, A History of Warfare; 221–234, Corvisier, La Guerre, 210–7; and Armées et sociétés en Europe de 1494 à 1789, Paris, PUF, 1976.

36. This idea of this danger is deeply seated in Indo-European mythology see Dumezil, Heur et malheur du guerrier.

37. Muir, Tactics and the experience of battle in the age of Napoleon, 68–76.

38. The best modern studies on discipline and control is Foucault, Surveiller et punir.

39. Gresle, “La ‘société militaire,”777–98.

40. For a similar experience in Venezuela see Hebrard, «Cités en guerre et sociabilité au Venezuela (1812–1830), »123–48.

41. See for example the proclamation of the Cabildo of Buenos Aires 24 sept.1807, Biblioteca Nacional Argentina, http://www.bibnal.edu.ar/webpub/digital.asp; also the proclamation of Supreme Director Pueyrredón to the people of Salta, le 18 October 1816; Gümes, Güemes documentado, 67.

42. Cansanello, De súbditos a ciudadanos.

43. Garavaglia, “Ejército y milicia,”153–87.

44. Just in the case of Upper Peru we know the names of 132 little caudillos. See Bidondo, La guerra de la independencia en el Alto Perú, 180.

45. For a detailed analysis see Rabinovich, La société guerrière, 200–15.

46. There are many examples of militia mobilization in the archive; a good example is that of the greatest militia commander of Caillet-Bois (dir.), Archivo del Brigadier General Juan Facundo Quiroga, 13, 284, 289, 303, 304.

47. Montonera: from the Spanish word montón, was used to describe those who had similar elements. Name given in South America to a type of irregular war in the countryside. Definitions vary with time see Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la Lengua Española, 1869, 1884 and 1899 editions. Available online: http://www.rae.es/rae.html.

48. Fradkin, La historia de una montonera, 39.

49. On the people of great planes see Lebedynsky, Armes et guerriers barbares au temps des grandes invasions ; et Les Scythes. La civilisation des steppes (VIIe-IIIe siècles av. J.-C.), Paris, Ed. Errance, 2001.

50. On indirect tactics see Gérard Challiand, Stratégies de la guérilla, Paris, Payot, 1994.

51. These tactics are explained in detail ins “Orden de Miguel de Güemes a Vicente Torino, 6 junio 1820” ; Güemes, Güemes documentado, vol.8, 48–52.

52. Rabinovich,“El fenómeno de la deserción en las guerras de la revolución e independencia del Río de la Plata,” 33–56.

53. The examples are numerous, see Baron de Holmberg’s report of his defeat in Espinillo, Partes de batalla de las Guerras Civiles 1814–1821, vol.1, Buenos Aires, Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1973, pp.7–16 .

54. The complete description of this « montonera » tactic is provided by the expert hand of José María Paz. See the notes of his study of combat de la Herradura in his Memorias Póstumas, vol.1, Buenos Aires, Ed. Emecé, 2000, pp.271–289.

55. This is exactly what happened to commander Manuel Dorrego at the combat of Guayabos. See Partes de batalla de las Guerras Civiles 1814–1821, vol.1, pp.66–70.

56. Recent approaches to the history of cavalry in historique des armées: Le cheval dans l’histoire militaire, n°249, 2007.

57. The prairie horsemen in Venezuela known as the llaneros used a similar tactic; see Clément Thibaud, Républiques en Armes, 284–287.

58. Prudencio Arnold, Un soldado argentino, Buenos Aires, EUDEBA, 1970, 66–72.

59. Manuel A. Pueyrredón, Escritos históricos, Buenos Aires, Julio Suárez ed., 1929, 35–40. Cf. Damián Hudson, Recuerdos Históricos sobre la Provincia de Cuyo, vol.2, 1898, 413–414.

60. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, “Vers une anthropologie historique de la violence de combat au XIXe siècle: relire Ardant du Picq ?”, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 2005, n°30.

61. On panic in combat, see Corvisier, “Le moral des combattants, panique et enthousiasme: Malplaquet, 11 septembre 1709”. Jean Chagniot, “Une panique: les Gardes françaises à Dettingen (23 juin 1743)”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alejandro M. Rabinovich

Alejandro M. Rabinovich gained his doctorate in history and civilisation at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. He is currently a researcher for CONICET and a lecturer in the history of Argentina at the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina. He has published the following monographs: La société guerrière. Pratiques, discours et valeurs militaires dans le Rio de la Plata, 1806-1852 (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013), Ser soldado en las Guerras de Independencia. La experiencia cotidiana de la tropa en el Río de la Plata, 1810-1824, (Sudamericana, 2013) and Anatomía del pánico (Sudamericana 2017). His research focuses on the phenomenon of war in revolutionary processes and in the formation of the state. He received the French Prize for Military History in 2010 and first prize in the Argentine Historic Essay competition in 2017.

Natalia Sobrevilla Perea

Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is a Professor of Latin American History at the University of Kent. She obtained her PhD at the University of London, has been a visiting fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and held grants from the British Academy, the British Library, the Leverhulme Trust and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2011, Cambridge University Press published her book The Caudillo of the Andes Andrés de Santa Cruz and in 2015, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos published it in Spanish. She is the co-editor of The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World, The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 that came out with Alabama University Press in 2015. Between 2015 and 2018 she led an International Network of scholars researching on the idea of nation and the wars of independence funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She has published extensively on the creation of the state in Peru, focusing on elections, constitutions and the importance of the armed forces. She is currently completing a book on the armed forces and the creation of the Peruvian State in the nineteenth century.