State and Science: the Case of the Liberal Historiography (Chile, XIX century)

Abstract

Diego Barros Arana, Miguel Luis Amunátegui and Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna represent the beginning of national historiography. With them, the ambiguous and dispersed character of historic studies became in a modern and professional science. They refused the possibility of philosophical speculation about human history, renewing the studies about the past by a rigorous and neutral review of documents. Any other intelectual aspiration might wait. However, this strictly scientific motivation also included the postulates of their liberalism ideology. Therefore, the history of Chile was transformed in a confuse issue which included both the historical sources and also the European ideology of the universal history, as we can appreciate in the role of State in the narration. In this article, we pretend to analyse the most important works of these three historians considering both matters.