Abstract

The essay analyses the South American War of Independence as a war of translatio imperii involving Spanish-American world as a whole. Imperial war produces into the colonies a chaos perfectly resembling the metropolitan one. The unity of the cultural universe bridging the old and the new world during the colonial era explains how colonial world reacted to the 1808 translatio imperii. Popular preachers adapted the Hapsburg imagine of the natural in order to turn Catholic religion into something natural to America, justifying in this way its sovereignty through the production of political myths. On these same foundations, the political centrality of the city was established, and the unavoidable tension between confederal ambitions and unitary exigencies exploded. National war and the necessity of a unitary army to struggle against the Spanish professional forces preceded everywhere the establishment of the nation. Against cities, communities and the privileged orders - like the Church - a still long war would have been struggled along XIX century, just like in Spain.