ITS RISE AND PROGRESS
BY
F. GARCIA CALDERON
WITH A PREFACE BY
RAYMOND POINCARÉ
Of the French Academy, President of the French Republic
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL
WITH A MAP AND 34 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
597-599 FIFTH AVENUE
1915
[All rights reserved]
TO
MONSIEUR ÉMILE BOUTROUX
(of the Institute of France)
Permit me to offer you this book as a mark of admirationand gratitude. Often of an evening, in the soberhour of twilight, hearing you comment upon a page ofPlato or a line of Goethe, or explain to me withunfailing geniality and marvellous lucidity the troubles ofthe present day, I have gained a fuller understanding ofthe magnificent radiance of the French genius; andalways, on leaving you, I have found pleasure inrepeating the thought of Emerson, of the Emerson whom youlove, concerning the utility of great men: "They makethe earth wholesome. They who lived with them foundlife glad and nutritious."
F. G. C.
PARIS, November, 1911.
Here is a book that should be read and digestedby every one interested in the future of the Latingenius. It is written by a young Peruvian diplomatist.It is full of life and of thought. History,politics, economic and social science, literature,philosophy—M. Calderon is familiar with all andtouches upon all with competence and withoutpedantry. The entire evolution of the SouthAmerican republics is comprised in the volumewhich he now submits to the European public.
M. Calderon, a pupil in the school of the bestmodern historians, seeks in the past the laws of thefuture development of the Latin republics. Bymeans of a scholarly and painstaking analysis, heshows us, in the South American Creole, a Spaniardof the heroic age, slowly transformed by miscegenationand the influence of climate; he sees in him,modified by time and enfeebled by cross-breeding,the most ancient characteristics of the Iberian race;and he expounds, in a few pages, the heroic epochin which the individualism of Spain broke out intothe audacious adventure of the conquistadores andthe savage mysticism of the Inquisitors.
Then comes the colonial phase, with its disappointments,its illusions, its abuses and errors; thedomination of an oppressive theocracy, of crushingmonopolies; the insolence of privileged castes, andthe indignities of the Peninsular agents. A thirstfor independence gradually possesses the Spanish andPortuguese colonies; they rebel not merely againstthe economic and fiscal tyranny which is crushingthem, but also against the rigours of a political and{10}moral tutelage that leaves them no political liberty.It is a great and terrible crisis. The movement ofliberation fulfils itself in three phases: firstly, thecolonies seek to obtain reforms of the metropolis,still anxious to remain loyal; then they considerthe question of submitting themselves to Europeanmonarchs; and, finally, the republican idea appears,develops, and is victorious.
A cycle of pioneers an