A CITY TRANSFORMED BY THE ARMY. ATLANTIC NETWORKS IN SAN MIGUEL DE TUCUMÁN, 1812-1819

MOREA, ALEJANDRO HERNÁN; FACUNDO NANNI

Annals of The Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science

OLSCHKI

Año: 2020 vol. LIV p. 57 - 82

2532-4969

Even though the city of San Miguel de Tucumán was located in a peripheral,mountain and remote geography, the wars of independence, and particularly thecantonment of the Ejército Auxiliar del Perú, revitalized its territory and reinforcedtheir integration into the political-military circuits of what we may call Atlanticnetworks. This city, that had been a battlefeld (1812) but also the main quarteringsite of that army between 1812 and 1819, doubled its population and underwenttransformations derived from the arrival of hundreds of ofcers and troops, withthe consequent technical changes derived from the need to build hospitals, fortifcations, military factories and other ways of supplying the new arrivals. Understoodat the time as an army of porteños, regarding the origin of the majority of its ofcersand sub-ofcialdom, however, a small but signifcant part of the ofcers were European, who brought with them the technical knowledge learned during their passagethrough the Napoleonic Wars. The objective of the article is to analyze the atlanticnetwork created by the arrival of political and military ofcers such as the FrenchPhilippe Bertrés (1786-1856), Enrique Paillardell (1785-1815), Jean Joseph D?Auxionde La Vayesse (1775-1829), the Austrian Baron Holmberg (1778-1853), and the Italian Emilio Salvigni (1789-1866), all of them ofcers that brought specifc knowledge(military techniques, mathematics, agronomy) that contributed to their integrationinto local networks.