Narratives of Exile, Narratives of Nationhood

This chapter analyzes Chilean exile writing, emanating from Lima, Ecuador, Mendoza, Buenos Aires, Montevideo—as well as London, Paris and Madrid—to better understand the political and social integration of emigres into host societies and the impact it had on their thinking about a post-Montt Chile, and republican national projects more generally. Chilean emigres understood their own experience in the light of a global republican struggle, shaped by Europe’s 1848 revolutions and their neighbors’ combat against Rosas. Romantic notions of early socialist exile mixed with discourses of tyranny to produce a shared cosmopolitan narrative of exile, solidarity and possible return. The exile experience was also the occasion to develop narratives of cultural differences of nationality. This is the context for the birth of both Chilean and Argentine historiography, as historians such as Diego Barros Arana and Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna shared source material acquired in exile.