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Enlightenment, education, and the republican project: Chile's Instituto Nacional (1810-1830)
Andrs Baeza Ruza a Faculty of Liberal Arts, Universidad Adolfo Ibez, Santiago de Chile, Chile Online publication date: 18 August 2010

To cite this Article Ruz, Andrs Baeza(2010) 'Enlightenment, education, and the republican project: Chile's Instituto

Nacional (1810-1830)', Paedagogica Historica, 46: 4, 479 493 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2010.495077 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2010.495077

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Paedagogica Historica Vol. 46, No. 4, August 2010, 479493

Enlightenment, education, and the republican project: Chiles Instituto Nacional (18101830)
Andrs Baeza Ruz*
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Universidad Adolfo Ibez, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Taylor Paedagogica 10.1080/00309230.2010.495077 CPDH_A_495077.sgm 0030-9230 Original Stichting 2010 0 4 46 Mr afbaeza@gmail.com 00000August AndrsBaeza and Article Paedagogica (print)/1477-674X Francis Historica 2010 LtdHistorica (online)

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This article analyses the establishment of the Instituto Nacional de Chile between 1810 and 1830 as a crucial element of a political and cultural project advanced from an enlightened and republican elite. Its early inception in 1813 resulted from the necessity of consolidating a republican order, as shown by the different projects between 1810 and 1813. During its first years, a revolutionary rhetoric emphasising discontinuities with the colonial past prevailed. Yet, after the consolidation of independence, institutional and intellectual links to the inherited Catholic tradition heavily affected the definite shape of the Instituto. In this context, the negotiations with the Catholic church and the role played by the moderate Juan Egaa explain the fact that the model of republic related to the Instituto in its first decades focused on virtue and morality. Keywords: independence; enlightenment; republicanism; elite education; Chile

One of the unusual features of the process of Chilean independence in comparison to that of other Spanish American countries was the early importance that its leaders assigned to education as a necessary tool in the consolidation of the new order. In the majority of cases elsewhere, any significant reforms in educational matters took place after the wars were over and the new regimes firmly established. It was not until the 1820s that other Spanish American governments started to set up new educational establishments that were distinct from the former colonial schemes. While the wars of independence dragged on, the old universities, religious colleges, seminaries and academies persisted, but there was very little space for the creation of new educational institutions in a scenario dominated by preoccupation with questions of a political, economic or military nature. In Chile, things were quite different. Beginning in 1813, the Peruvian Viceroy Fernando de Abascal organised royalist invasions to put the brakes on the radicalness of the breakaway political movement in Chile headed by the young military leader Jos Miguel Carrera, and thereby opened an important space for the participation of civilians in the decision-making process. The main priority for Chiles patriot government between 1812 and 1814 had to be the military defence of their territory. A governing Junta [council] had been formed in 1810, and the few economic resources that were available necessarily had to be put toward military affairs. However, in the middle of all these trials and tribulations, one of the other projects to which the Junta began to give early and consistent priority in their discussions was educational reform. On 10 August 1813, they made their vision concrete through the foundation of the
*Email: afbaeza@gmail.com
ISSN 0030-9230 print/ISSN 1477-674X online 2010 Stichting Paedagogica Historica DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2010.495077 http://www.informaworld.com

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Instituto Nacional (IN). Even when military victory was by no means guaranteed, at the time when Abascals threat was most real, influential Creoles such as Juan Egaa, Manuel de Salas, and Camilo Henrquez devoted their precious time and energy to writing proposals for the creation of a new educational institution that would serve the patria [homeland]; one of their visions was to incorporate existing institutions such as the University of San Felipe, the Carolinian Convent, the Conciliar Seminary, and the Academy of San Luis, into a new national institution whose goal would be to inculcate republican values and strengthen the independent political order. For all three men, education constituted the basic cornerstone of a cultural project with extended reach, one that was broadly linked to the independence ideals that they shared. What is unique about the Chilean situation is neither the priority that they granted to education, nor its instrumentalisation towards the achievement of their political objectives, but rather that such concentrated efforts were oriented towards the creation of a major new cultural institution during wartime when the material resources were very scarce; furthermore, this newly-created institution was intended to be totally distinct from its colonial predecessors, even while the older ones remained active and in force elsewhere in Spanish America. Why, then, did the Chilean patriots find it imperative to consolidate an educational project in 1813 even though their military triumph was not assured? In the Chilean case study, the political process that began with the creation of the Junta of 1810 had much significant participation from people close to academia and the intellectual world, such as Egaa, Salas and Henriquez. All of them shared the enlightened premise that education was the most powerful key to change and social progress, as well as the objective to consolidate a republic. In the following article, I analyse the process by which the Chilean patriot leaders designed and put into practice this project of the Instituto Nacional as an elite educational institution, one which grew up alongside their republican project in a broader national context in which it was fundamental to preserve the concept of order. In the first section, I deal with the initial phase of the Instituto Nacionals conception, an era during which these patriot men discussed diverse proposals for the Instituto and its operation as a functional part of the republican project. In the next section, I analyse the second, constructive phase during in which they took steps to make their visions come alive. This was the period in which Juan Egaa played a significant guiding role; his appraisal of virtue and morality was crucial in the defining moments of the Institutos foundation. Finally, in the third section, I set out the role of the Instituto Nacional in the post-independence era in relation to the diverse political projects in which its influence was felt. The conception of a new order, 18101813 First, it is necessary to recall that the political landscape of the period known in Chilean history as the Patria Vieja (18101814) was still very uncertain. It was a fractious time, not only because of both Viceroy Abascals royalist military reaction against the patriots and the internal divisions among the Creoles themselves, but also because there existed an iron will from the Peninsula to maintain the cohesion of Spains overseas empire in the face of the Napoleonic threat. The Cortes of Cadiz, which began its sessions in March 1810 with a significant American contingent, had redefined some fundamental concepts like nation and sovereignty, both of which reached their highest expression in the famously liberal Constitution that was promulgated on 19 March 1812. Thus the scene was propitious for putting into action some of the loftiest

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aspirations of political liberalism. The Constitution had emphasised a definition of the Spanish nation as the collectivity of all Spaniards in both hemispheres and identified its form of government as a constitutional monarchy that ultimately rested upon national sovereignty.1 However, the same document generated by the deputies in Cadiz devoted five articles to the establishment of the general principles of an educational project that had transatlantic dimensions and which reinforced the principle of a strong regulating state.2 Later these principles were fleshed out more fully in specific legislation on the subject which was introduced in September 1813; the document was called Informe para proponer los medios de proceder al arreglo de los diversos ramos de la instruccin pblica [Report on proposals for the best methods to go about arranging the diverse branches of public instruction]. Eventually, it became the basis for a concrete proposal called Dictamen y proyecto de decreto sobre el arreglo general de la enseanza pblica [Ruling and projected decree on the proper arrangement of public teaching] that was elaborated by the Commission on Public Education and presented to the Cortes on 17 April 1814. Historian of education Antonio Viao has assessed the contents of the Informe and the Dictamen as the first theoretical expression (not legal or practical) of the liberal ideology in the realm of education, as well as the intention of organizing an educational system of the first level.3 That these initiatives were designed for the entire Spanish world is amply demonstrated in the circulars sent from the Iberian Peninsula to American colonial authorities on 13 September and 22 October 1814. The first of these documents clearly manifested the centralising character of the Cadiz educational project:
As one of the attributes of the new Overseas Secretary is that of attending to public education in the form of schools, colleges, universities, academies, and other such establishments of science and fine arts, you are requested to make a survey of all the entities of this sort which exist throughout your governmental district, asking the Rectors, or other persons who might head up each one, to make a detailed report of its origins, the funds with which it was established, the current state and conditions in which it finds itself, the number of teachers and their equipment, the progress that they have made, or the setbacks, giving the cause of each as well as the ways it happened, the methods of study used, and attaching samples of the regulations or ordinances of each one of said establishments.4
1Constitucin Poltica de la Monarqua Espaola (Barcelona: Manuel Sauri, 1835), 23 (articles 1, 2, and 3). The original is from 1812. 2Ibid., 1279 (articles 366371). The principles are clearly set out in Article 368 The general plan of education will be uniform throughout the kingdom, and it is obligatory to explain the political constitution of the monarchy in all universities and literary establishments, where they teach ecclesiastical and political sciences. Article 369 There will be a General Directorate of Studies, composed of persons of well-known education, whose brief will be to inspect and oversee public education under the authority of the Government. All translations from Spanish into English have been made by the author. 3Antonio Viao, Poltica educativa: Poltica liberal de las Cortes de Cdiz. El Informe Quintana, in Historia de la educacin en Espaa y Amrica. La educacin en la Espaa contempornea 17891975, ed. Buenaventura Delgado, vol. 3 (Madrid: Fundacin Santa Mara, 1994), 48. 4See Registro de decretos, ordenes generales y particulares sobre la instruccin pblica en Ciencias y Artes de las provincias de Ultramar y la pennsula, 1814, Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Indiferente 550, legajo 2, ff. 2334 and Indiferente 550, legajo 2, f. 255. In the same register, one can find the responses being returned especially from the Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, and the territories of Central America and the Philippines.

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No response was ever received from Chile. The Cadiz Constitution was widely diffused throughout America and, in many places, government officials had sworn loyalty to it, leading one to suppose that independence was not yet a firm conviction in American minds in 1813. Nevertheless, the autonomist ideal had proliferated especially in New Granada and the Southern Cone. In the Chilean case, the installation of a National Congress on 4 July 1811 had been a clear demonstration of the appeal of the independence idea, although Jos Miguel Carreras short-lived dictatorship had given a more radical tone to the process. This latter condition was manifested especially in the promulgation of the Provisional Constitutional Regulation of 26 October 1812, a locally produced document that took away whatever validity the Spanish Constitution had managed to retain by prohibiting the enforcement of any order, norm, or ruling coming from outside Chilean territory.5 Similarly, the foundation of the Instituto Nacional reveals that another field in which the autonomist strategy took on a more radical quality had been in the realm of public education. This new direction is not owed to Carreras personality as Chilean historiography has long asserted, but rather to the initiative of civilians and intellectuals who assumed control of the government while Carrera led the military defence in the southern part of the country.6 In the crucial months from April to August 1813, exactly the same time during which the Instituto Nacional was founded, a new civilian Junta was in control of governmental affairs, and it was on their initiative that this new educational project was consolidated, even though its first traces can be discerned as early as 1810. The urgency with which these men began to discuss their plans for the opening of a new educational institution was conditioned by a unique set of circumstances. The most obvious was the diagnosis of the decadent state of Chilean education, a fundamental condemnation and basic assumption of all the projects that they put forth. They considered this decay to be economic as well as academic and noted that it had become accentuated since the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. The Jesuits had exercised control over various educational institutions and had control over the post of the department chair of the school of scholastic philosophy and theology at the University of San Felipe. Following the Jesuits expulsion, the Spanish Crown had intended to take over the Orders role in education using the old Jesuit institutions as its base. This was the case in the foundation of the Royal Seminary of Nobles of San Carlos (also known as the Carolinian Convent), which took over the place of the Convent of St Francisco Xavier in 1778. The same thing occurred with the Conciliar Seminary which had been annexed to the Convent of St Francis Xavier, but which also quickly passed into the control of the secular clergy once the Jesuits were removed. None of these religious institutions was in a position to offer a quality education, and it was
5Reglamento constitucional provisorio del pueblo de Chile subscripto por el de la capital presentado para su subscripcin a las provincias, sancionado y jurado por las autoridades constituidas (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1812). Even though it recognised Ferdinand VII as the legitimate king, article 5 established the following: No decree, ruling, or order which emanates from whatever authority or tribunal from outside Chile will take effect here; and those that try to enact them will be punished as outlaws from the State. 6Giving a central place to Carreras role in the foundation of the Instituto Nacional was the central objective of the documentary work of the historian Guillermo Feli Cruz, La fundacin del Instituto Nacional (Santiago: Imprenta Cultura, 1950), 23; and also see Ral Silva Castro, La fundacin del Instituto Nacional, 18101813 (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1953), 29.

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judged urgent to establish a new one in order to revitalise public instruction according to the new parameters dictated by the Enlightenment. In this sense, the late arrival of scientific education and the introduction of technical knowledge into the curriculum was another of the major critiques made by the generation of patriotic Creoles. Two of the eras most enlightened personalities were Manuel de Salas, who had founded his own educational institution, the Academy of San Luis in 1797, in order to make up for the deficiencies he perceived around him, and Jos Antonio de Rojas.7 Both men had had the opportunity to travel to Europe during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Rojas recalled the eye-opening experience he had while visiting Spanish schools:
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When I saw what it was like there (knowing that Spain is the most isolated and contemptible part of all Europe), in sciences, just as it is in the military arts, the academies of sculpture, painting and architecture, and other offices where this man-beasts teach all that which in whatever other part is capable of knowing; I say to myself, if I was in a place where I could choose among the greats and one of the colleges, I would abandon these ones and would come back contentedly to my country with one of them. But this is a desperate dream. Even now the time has not yet arrived where we can awaken rationality in America.8

Toward 1810, it was evident that nothing had improved, neither the quality of instruction itself nor the modernity of its curriculum, both of which made it imperative for the Creoles to reformulate the substantive elements of the colonial educational network. The teaching institutions had very few students; therefore one of the most consistent elements among the diverse proposals that circulated at that time was to merge the many dilapidated existing institutions into a single larger one. This was an idea which was already set out in the Plan de Gobierno [Plan of Government] that Juan Egaa presented to the Junta in September 1810, in which he pronounced that the work of Chile must be a great college of arts and sciences and, above all, a civil and moral education capable of giving us customs and character.9 This work could only be financed through a tremendous joint effort of all social sectors, including the older educational institutions with their infrastructure and resources, which had to pass over to form a part of the new college. This precondition was made even more explicit in the proposal that Manuel de Salas sent to the Junta on 20 October 1811 in which he wrote that:
the spacious Colegio San Carlos (the Carolinian Convent) in which the nobility has always been educated is today almost deserted; well, it only has fourteen or fifteen youths who can be found in the various classrooms of the many faculties who teach there. Parents generally lament that they have nowhere else to educate their sons, and this clamor is inconceivable given the great amount of empty space there. 10
7He returned from Spain in 1775. Six years later, he was involved in a conspiracy with Antonio Berney and Antonio Gramusset (both Frenchmen), known as The conspiracy of three Antonios, to defeat the governor of Chile and establish a republic. For details of Rojass life and this conspiracy, see Sergio Villalobos, Tradicin y reforma en 1810, 2nd ed. (Santiago: Ril Editores, 2006), 13375. 8Cited in Miguel Luis Amuntegui, La crnica de 1810, vol. 2 (Santiago: Imprenta y Litografa Barcelona, 1911), 401. 9Cited in Domingo Amuntegui Solar, Los primeros aos del Instituto Nacional, 18131835 (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1889), 70. 10Manuel de Salas, Expediente promovido sobre reunin de estudios, 1811, Archivo Nacional de Chile (herafter ANC), Fondo Antiguo, Vol. 23, pieza 13. This document is dated 21 October 1811, but is a copy of the original, dated 20 February 1811, which has been lost.

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It is evident that the Enlightenment exercised great influence over the conception of the Instituto Nacional.11 Men like Egaa, Salas and Henrquez had a clear notion of the importance that education plays in the formation of an individual according to the tenets of enlightened thought, and they valued its role in fostering social and economic progress. They sought to form an individual who would be capable of utilising autonomous reason for the benefit of the State. The Enlightenment actively encouraged education as a way of the furthering of applied scientific knowledge for economic progress, and also its usefulness in the inculcation of a particular brand of political ideology associated with republicanism. For Egaa, the republic could only be consolidated if it was comprised of virtuous citizens; it was towards such an end that he envisioned that the Instituto Nacional would transmit a type of education centred around the cultivation of virtue and morality.12 Furthermore, it was understood that the creation of a central, national institution such as this must be the model upon which any other provincial educational institutions would be founded in the future. The Instituto Nacional thus performed a dual role, one that would be given formal expression in Egaas projected plans for a Chilean Constitution, which he drew up in November 1812. It contained his second pass at making a proposal to create a new educational institution for his country:
There shall be established in the Republic a great national institution for sciences, arts, trades, military instruction, religion, and exercises that give activity, vigour, and health, and which may form the physical and moral character of the citizen. This will be the centre and model of national education, the great work of the principal care of the censors and the protection of the government.13

To conclude, the enlightened thought of the Instituto Nacionals designers took on a political dimension inasmuch as it instrumentalised education as a function of a clear political objective. It was intended to be a key institution in the formation of an independent republic, and would also have a role in the modernisation of the economy. In the view of its designers, the Instituto Nacional had to foment the teaching of practical scientific knowledge which could be applied to industry, mining and agriculture, which would permit the Creole leaders to overcome the ruinous state of the economy. This latter concern was not new but rather was an idea that had been in circulation since the second half of the seventeenth century; proposals for educational reforms had been made by innovators like Benito Jernimo Feijo and Gregorio Mayns, by members of the Spanish Court such as Pedro Rodrguez de Campomanes, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, and Francisco Cabarrs, and by some other local authorities

11Sol Serrano links this to the influence of French ideas in La revolucin francesa y la formacin del sistema nacional de educacin en Chile, in La revolucin francesa y Chile, ed. Cristin Gazmuri and Ricardo Krebs (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1990), 24775. 12For an analysis of Egaas concept of virtue, see Simon Collier, Ideas y poltica de la independencia chilena (Santiago: Editorial Andrs Bello, 1967), 1949, and Mario Gngora, Estudios de historia de las ideas y de historia social (Valparaso: Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaso, 1980), 20730. 13This plan is reproduced in its entirety in Amuntegui Solar, Los primeros aos, 97102. Although Amuntegui Solar, Feli Cruz and Silva Castro all assign the date of Egaas presentation of his plan for national education to the Congress to be 24 October 1811, a text of that date cannot be located.

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such as the Peruvian Pablo de Olavide.14 The background of these earlier reformist proposals in educational matters was clearly linked to the necessity of making Spain economically competitive again, having long since ceded its central place in Europe to rising powerhouse rivals like England, France and Holland. Hence the boost in scientific knowledge had a pragmatic component that had to be applied to the improvement of the economy in general and to the cultivation of industry specifically, so that social progress could also be attained. For Juan Egaa, Manuel de Salas and Camilo Henrquez the foundation of the future Instituto Nacional represented the institutionalisation of broader Enlightenment ideals applied to Chilean conditions. As soon as republicanism was conceived as the modern ideal on which to structure the political community, Creole patriots redefined its value as part of the new Spanish American political order.15 Clearly, during the period from 1810 to 1814, the idea of definitive, full independence was still far from being popular among the great majority of Creoles. Joined to the oaths of loyalty to Ferdinand VII, the revolutionary ideal that incubated the germ of independence came as much from the ideals emanating from Cadiz as from Chilean conspirators themselves. You have to recall that a representative National Congress had already been installed in all the provinces of Chile on the 4 July 1811, and that the Constitutional Regulation of 1812 had marked a sphere of juridical independence from the metropolis. Furthermore, the republican option had been defended openly by well-known Creoles like Antonio Jos de Irisarri, Camilo Henrquez and Juan Egaa in printed media such as the Aurora de Chile and the Monitor Araucano, where it was regularly associated with a model of representative and anti-absolutist government.16 The construction and interruption of a new order, 18131814 Although the conception phase of the Instituto Nacional was marked by the proposals of these three men and the discussion that their projects generated, toward 1813, when the phase of actual implementation started, Juan Egaa emerged as the dominant figure. Without a doubt, his political participation was transcendental. Beginning in April 1813, the directing Junta headed a government of which Francisco Meneses and Agustn Eyzaguirre formed a part; none of its central figures were military men. The same Junta designated Egaa to be a member of the recently created Board of Education which was charged with enacting the project of the Instituto Nacional; among the other members of the Board were the rector of the Carolinian Convent and the priest Jos Francisco Echaurren. The definitive project for the
14Among their relevant works, see Feijo, Theatro crtico universal, o discursos varios en todo gnero de materias para desengao de errores comunes , vol. V (Madrid: Blas Romn Impresor de la Real Academia del Derecho Espaol y Pblico, 1781); Campomanes, Discurso sobre el fomento de la industria popular (Madrid: Imprenta de don Antonio de Sancha, 1774); Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Tratado terico-prctico de enseanza con aplicacin las escuelas y colegios de nios (Madrid: Imprenta de Len Amarita, 1831), original from 1802; Olavide, Plan de estudios para la Universidad de Sevilla, 1768, reprinted in Juan Marchena, ed., El tiempo ilustrado de Pablo de Olavide: Vida, obra y sueos de un americano en la Espaa del siglo XVIII (Sevilla: Ediciones Alfar, 2001), 121227. 15For an analysis of republicanism in Chile, see Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier, La independencia de Chile: tradicin, modernizacin, y mito , 3rd ed. (Santiago: Editorial Debolsillo, 2009), 23582. 16Collier, Ideas y poltica de la independencia chilena , 138.

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establishment of the Instituto Nacional was sanctioned by a decree of 27 July 1813 and gave expression to the principal ideas discussed in the previous phase.17 This vision implied that the Instituto Nacional would be established on the basis of gathering together the University of San Felipe, the Carolinian Convent, the Conciliar Seminary, and the Academy of San Luis, whose material resources, professoriate and student body would thus constitute its nucleus. But the weight of structuring the IN on the pre-existing base of colonial institutions was tricky; it was understood that the Instituto Nacional would be a new entity, destined to direct the educational future of the republic and which would foment the study of practical and applied science. In their rapidly developing formal project, the Board united the old educational institutions into the Instituto Nacional, including the Conciliar Seminary, an action which generated a harsh response from its rector and Ecclesiastical Cabildo.18 The need to rely on its material resources and the aim of including its seminarians in the educational project of catching up to the global standard, were the principal arguments that explained the Boards decision; as one can imagine, it generated great resistance, based on the royalist and Gallicist doctrines which exercised influence among the religious authorities who did not want to lose the prerogatives that had been theirs under the operation of the colonial patronato.19 Clearly those who wished to expand the States right to control Chilean public life had a clear intent to take over the right to direct ecclesiastic affairs which previously had belonged to the king, and this aim used the educational project to further the republican ideal. This central issue was perhaps the main conflict in the INs foundational process. Although the Ecclesiastical Cabildo had rejected any possibility of dialogue, Egaa undertook arduous negotiations; he represented the governments position and Juan Ignacio Cienfuegos, the parish priest of Talca, represented the interests of the Catholic Church. The result of this negotiation was the signing of a concordat on 25 July 1813, which determined the shape of the Instituto Nacional in its early decades inasmuch as the predominant ecclesiastic power was consolidated in its organisational structure. The government promised to respect the education of the seminarians and maintain their scholarships in exchange for a share in the Seminarys resources. Finally, the men agreed upon a redaction of the Ordenanzas [Ordinances], a document in which they consolidated the INs organisation and which clearly indicated that the influence of ecclesiastical power still hung over it.20 Echaurren was responsible for drafting it, but the final document was revised and corrected by Egaa. In the Institutos rules and regulations, it is noticeable that a body that promised to be a revolutionary institution was established upon a series of limitations which actually minimised its differences from the preceding colonial institutions. In the first place, of the six most important authority figures in the Instituto Nacional, three were
17Sancin de lo acordado en orden al Instituto Nacional, El Monitor Araucano I (July 31, 1813): 1836. 18Oficio al Dean i Cabildo, ANC, Fondo Varios, pieza 5, f. 1. 19This aspect has been treated by Mario Gngora, Estudios sobre la historia de las ideas e historia social (Valparaso: Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaiso, 1980), 71121. 20Ordenanzas del Instituto Nacional, literario, econmico, civil i eclesistico del Estado, in Sesiones de los Cuerpos lejislativos, vol. I (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1887), 296316. All references to the plan of studies are taken from this document.

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ecclesiastics, including its Rector.21 On the other hand, of the 19 open posts to be head of a department, 10 were filled by members of the clergy, mainly the religious orders and especially the Franciscans, and the secular clergy continued to exercise a great influence in the education of the elites.22 But the influence of ecclesiastical power in the INs organisation was too active to satisfy us with the idea that it was the product of a mere negotiation. From the outset of its foundation, the Instituto Nacional was conceived as a formative institution to create a directing elite for the Republic; in reality, Egaas participation and his particular outlook impeded the process, despite the fact that authors like Guillermo Feli Cruz have argued that the Instituto Nacional had been born as a protest against the past.23 For Egaa, his intellectual formation in enlightenment had been important, but so had his thorough reading of the authors of classical antiquity and his profound adherence to the Catholic religion. Knowing the importance that an institution such as this one would have in the formation of the future republic, Egaa saw with clarity that the teaching that the Instituto should transmit must blend scientific knowledge with true republican values with a solid moral and religious formation. In his view, its physiognomy must transmit this harmony to its students who would then go on to form the ranks of the directing elite of the future republic when they became adults. Egaa himself identified this conscious element in his design process when he noted:
I pondered, examined, and combined all the resources and funds badly invested that I could identify and proposed to the government that if the erection of this establishment was left to my charge, I would present within one year an Institute of moral, civil, and political education, which, without altering the ordinary expenditures, would be the most complete in all of America.24

In recent works, historians have alluded tangentially to this same point, emphasising the fact that this mechanism for the implementation of the Instituto obeyed criteria that were actually quite pragmatic; in the Catholic Enlightenment, they observe, these educational leaders were themselves Catholic and participated in an enlightened but still profoundly religious world of ideas.25 In Egaas conception of a
21I refer to the Protector Eclesistico, the Inspector de Mantestas and Aulas Pblicas, and the Rector. The first two also formed part of the Public Education Tribunal. The Vice-Rector Minister, in charge of the internal police, would be designated by the government, but they chose a priest Domingo Antonio Izquierdo. 22These were Jos Francisco Echaurren, Rector; Domingo Antonio Izquierdo, Vice-rector; Pedro Ceballos, Inspector de Mantestas; Father Antonio Briseo, primary school teacher; Father Jos Mara Bazacuchiasca, teacher of Latin for upper classes; Father Francisco de la Puente, mathematics teacher; the priest Jos Bezanilla as physics teacher; Father Jos Antonio de Urrutia, teacher of theology and church history; the priest Juan de Aguilar, teacher of sacred scriptures; the priest Jos Mara Argandoa as teacher of natural law and political economy; the priest Juan de Dios Arlegui, teacher of civil, canon and patriot law. The complete list of professors can be found in ANC, Fondo Varios, vol. 113, ff. 1194. The legajo contains the matriculation book of students, and indicates who was destined for which post. 23Feli Cruz, La fundacin del Instituto Nacional, 366. 24Juan Egaa, Escritos inditos, quoted in Feli Criz, La fundacin del Instituto Nacional, 289. 25Ivn Jaksic and Sol Serrano, In the Service of the Nation: The Establishment and Consolidation of the University of Chile, 18421872, Hispanic American Historical Review 70 (1990): 142. The concept of the Catholic enlightenment has been detailed in Mario Gngora, Aspectos de la ilustracin catlica en la vida eclesistica chilena 17701814, Historia 8 (1969): 4373.

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republican regime, Christian morality must be cultivated just as much in the new elements of political liberalism national sovereignty, constitutionalism and the division of powers as they were under the concept of order (which referred to a more traditional outlook). In this sense, the Catholic religion, morality and the emphasis which was put on the experience of the virtues as articulators of order, were central elements in the setting up of this new republican order. This vision explains why the plan of studies included in the Ordenanzas granted a primordial place to the teaching of moral philosophy.26 All students of the Instituto Nacional would be required to take a course in this subject, as well as Latin grammar, living languages and the fundamentals of religion. Once he had mastered these subjects, the student could go on to more advanced studies, choosing out of the options of theology, natural sciences, law, medicine, and surgery. The 19 department heads were distributed among the higher courses: Latin for retailers, Latin for wholesalers, drawing, living languages, logic and metaphysics, pure mathematics, military sciences, experimental physics, Church history, sacred scriptures, rhetoric and oratory, natural law, political economy, moral philosophy, clinical or practical medicine, surgery, anatomy, botany, and chemistry.27 The most important innovations were in the field of science but, as historian Domingo Amuntegui Solar later remarked, it was precisely those chairs in botany, chemistry and experimental physics that could not be filled because of a lack of trained professors.28 In other words, while the Instituto Nacional was conceived as an institution that would embody a harmonisation between traditional and modern elements in the new political order, a series of limitations soon emerged that checked its most innovative aspects and restricted the teaching of the sciences that the most enlightened men among them had desired. In fact, the same author admitted that the scholastic spirit with which they tried to distance from the education continued to reign in the Institute for many years.29 Yet, this should not be so surprising when we consider that the INs professoriate was practically the same as the one that belonged to the religious colonial institutions. The liberal historian Diego Barros Arana attributed the initial failure of the Instituto Nacionals innovating character to several factors, chief among those ones of cultural nature:
Even if the reform had been undertaken with a more advanced spirit than the one proposed by Camilo Henrquez, and even if for its implementation they could have counted on better prepared professors, they had always felt the lack of another indispensable factor that would have allowed this reform to have born fruit. Chilean society could not modify itself suddenly, because it was not prepared to accept these innovations. 30

However, few of the definitive elements of the Institutos organisation can be seen in Henrquezs plan. Its main legacy seems to have been the choice of name, taken from the Institute de France (founded in 1795), and its institutional motto: The great objective of the Instituto Nacional is to give the patria citizens to defend it, to direct
26For an analysis of the role of moral philosophy in this process, see Ivn Jaksic, Academic Rebels in Chile: The Role of Philosophy in Higher Education and Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 1819. 27Ordenanzas, Instituto Nacional, literario, econmico, civil i eclesistico del Estado, 3027. 28Amuntegui Solar, Los primeros aos, 176. 29Ibid., 157. 30Diego Barros Arana, Historia Jeneral de Chile, vol. IX (Santiago: Rafael Jover Editor, 1888), 213.

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it, to make it flourish and to give it honour.31 Although it was not formally set out in the Ordenanzas, it is this phrase that best denotes an institutiano in relation to the Instituto Nacionals historical trajectory and which represents a vestigial element in the Instituto Nacional today. It is a public liceo [grammar school], under the jurisdiction of the Municipality of Santiago, which continues to support the Institutos longstanding existence as a secular institution. Few alumni would believe in the close ties that the foundation of the Instituto Nacional had had with the ecclesiastical powers and the colonial tradition, but part of the Institutos early identity came from a distinct membership drawn from a community threatened by the new republican order; its ambiguous origins were linked with the rupture and overcoming of the colonial past; its official anthem includes resounding phrases like cradle of all that could be called enlightened, and the first beacon of the nation, and which makes manifest the intentionality to conceal the harmonizing mechanism which was necessary to consolidate its foundation.32 Standard historiography depicts Camilo Henrquez as a revolutionary, in contrast to the moralising figure of Egaa, which explains why the founding mythology of the Instituto Nacional exalts the former at the expense of the latter. After its formal opening on 10 August 1813, the Instituto Nacional reached full functionality within a year. It had registered 74 students before being shuttered on the orders of the Spanish Brigadier Mariano Osorio who had entered Santiago without much opposition and re-established the monarchical regime after the disastrous battle of Rancagua in October 1814 which had seen surviving patriots fleeing to Mendoza.33 In short order, Osorio suppressed all measures taken by the previous patriot governments since 1810, including a negation of the Instituto Nacional in a decree promulgated on 17 December 1814.34 The often overlooked point, however, is that this decision had actually been solicited by the professors and students of the University of San Felipe who felt that the Instituto Nacional had impinged upon their own interests. Thus, the more conservative elements had cried out for the restoration of the previous function of the educational institutions which had been lately absorbed by the Instituto Nacional.35 With this, the Institutos existence ceased, but the mentality of its founders endured. The projection of a new order, 18191830 The liberating armys triumph at Chacabuco on 12 February 1817 obliged the royalist forces to withdraw to the south and thus opened a space for the Creole patriots to retake power. Government was assumed by Bernardo OHiggins, after Jos de San Martn refused high office and opted to prioritise the organisation of the liberating campaign for Peru instead. Even so, the military situation ensured a state of ongoing
31Camilo Henrquez, Plan de organizacin del Instituto Nacional de Chile, escuela central y normal para la difusin y adelantamiento de los conocimientos tiles, Aurora de Chile 19 (June 18, 1812): 1. 32Himno del Instituto Nacional, http://www.comunidadinstitutana.cl/instituto/resena/ simbolos-institutanos (accessed June 17, 2010). 33Among the most renowned for their political participation were Diego Portales, Minister between 1830 and 1837, and Manuel Bulnes, President of the republic between 1841 and 1851. 34Decreto de Clausura del Instituto Nacional, in Coleccin de historiadores y documentos relativos a la independencia de Chile, vol. 35 (Santiago: Imprenta Cultura, 1950), 144. 35Correspondence cited in Amuntegui Solar, Los primeros aos, 18392.

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uncertainty, owing to the fact that the royalist forces were reorganising themselves in the south, betting on the execution of a definitive assault on Santiago. This instability determined the scope of politics available to OHiggins during the first year of his government; he had to place almost exclusive priority on the military defence of the territory and, along with it, the consolidation of political control in those areas. However, the triumph at Maip on 5 April 1818 definitively eliminated the threat of royalist forces. This meant that the government could dedicate itself to the organisation of internal politics and social development. In this context, the reopening of the Instituto Nacional as it had been conceived under the previous model and enacted during the Patria Vieja presented itself early on as a priority issue. This issue was discussed in the Conservative Senate, an organ created by the new regime and which was vested with legislative power; this governing body quickly and unanimously passed a proclamation in which the Instituto Nacional was reinstituted.36 The authorities explicitly reaffirmed their confidence in the role education as an instrument of political and social change could play, and strengthened the links it had to the consolidation of the liberal, so that republican order was now much more explicit than it had been during the Institutos foundational stage. If the Instituto Nacional was founded in the middle of an uncertain panorama dominated by royalist military victories in the south in 1813, by 1819 the institution could be re-established in the context of assured military triumph. These were two different historical conjunctures; its early foundation was engaged with the immediate goal of gaining independence, while its re-foundation belonged to a process of consolidation of a recently independent state. The tree of liberty, said the Proclamation, dead in the darkness was revived with the light, the same as those field flowers which show themselves to be the most beautiful and fragrant in the light of the sun.37 Yet, in some ways, the conditions in which the IN was founded a second time had not changed much from the first time. A widespread state of poverty, aggravated by war, continued to be an important condition and reaffirmed the necessity of having a single institution of education that could encompass all the other pre-existing ones. Similarly, the previous conflict with the ecclesiastical powers resurfaced when they again refused to accept the incorporation of their Seminary into the Instituto Nacional, putting forward the same arguments as they had in 1813. The second foundation of the Instituto Nacional again took place through negotiations between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, and this time including a juridical argument based on the right of the patronato, which, in the judgment of the new authorities, had passed, to the independent states.38 This was, without a doubt, one of the most acrimonious points in the Instituto Nacionals trajectory during the period of republican organisation. The controversy only culminated in 1834 when the Congress finally opted to separate the Conciliar Seminary from the Instituto Nacional. In relation to the organisation and plan of studies, the Instituto Nacional operated under the same Ordinances as those under which it had been founded, meaning that
36Proclama del Senado Conservador para el restablecimiento del Instituto Nacional en 1819, in Francisco Prez, Centenario del Instituto Nacional, 18131913: breve resea histrica (Santiago: Imprenta, Litografa y Encuadernacin Barcelona, 1913), 1537. 37Ibid., 156. 38Jos Rodrguez Aldea, Colleccin de historiadores y de Documentos relativos a la Independencia de Chile. Tomo XXXV: Escritos y documents OHiggins, Doctor don Ju Antonio Rodriguez Aldea y otros concernientes a su persona. 17831822 (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Cultura, 1950), 392411.

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during the period between 1819 and 1830, the Instituto Nacional maintained a line of continuity in its physiognomy; its characteristic element was the harmonisation of traditions and new elements as a necessary path to the construction of the new nationstate and its republican regime. However, the political situation during this decade was far from being stable. Diverse projects followed one another after Bernardo OHiggins renounced power in February 1823 which reflected the different political outlooks that divided Chileans. Constitutionalism was one of the exceptional tools to express each project. In 1823 Juan Egaa thus presented a project for a Constitution in which he set out to construct his ideal republican model that would be sustained by the cultivation of virtues and morality. From the beginning of 1826, one faction tried to impose a federalist project designed by Jos Miguel Infante, a man who had played a significant role during the years of the Patria Vieja. On the other hand, a final attempt on the part of the pipiolos [liberals] to entrench their own particular vision of statehood was expressed in the Constitution of 1828, designed by a liberal Spaniard Jos Joaqun de Mora during the government of Francisco Antonio Pinto. In this incarnation, the Instituto Nacional was very much about being a functional educational institution that would serve his interests. For the first time since the Institutos creation, a government opted to create a new institution under the same elitist principles but which would function in such a way as to serve the regimes particular interests. The Instituto Nacional was too much identified with conservatism, but it was Pintos favourite institution, a contradiction which motivated him to give Mora a commission to found a new institution which would educate an elite under the principles of so-called pipiolo liberalism. This new institution was called the Liceo de Chile and became the INs main competition from 16 January 1829 until its demise in 1831. The Liceo was likewise geared toward the elites; the education it offered was general and combined both humanistic and scientific disciplines while avoiding excessive specialisation. Its principal figures were Mora, who was charged with the teaching of law, literature and grammar, and Antonio Gorbea, who was the main professor of sciences. Mora used his own textbook instead of Antonio de Nebrijas classic fifteenth century grammar of the Spanish language that was being used in the Instituto Nacional. Similarly, according to the testimony of some of Moras students, like Jos Victoriano Lastarria, a member of the liberal writers known collectively as the Generation of 1842, his classes were a space for the diffusion of the enlightened ideals of Rousseau, Bentham, Saint-Simon, Campomanes and Jovellanos.39 Conclusion: a Chilean case study in republican elite education The civil war meant the fall of pipiolo liberalism and, at the same time, the end of the Liceo de Chile. The advent of the Portalian regime enthroned the Instituto Nacional as one of the most powerful tools that the State had at its disposal to consolidate the emerging political order. Not until the foundation of the University of Chile in 1842
39A summary of the role of the Liceo de Chile, and specifically the influence it exerted over Lastarrias thought can be found in Bernardo Subercaseaux, Historia de las ideas y la cultura en Chile, vol. 1 (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1997), 1628. The rivalry among the different political sectors also came out in the foundation of another elite institution, but one which represented the interests of the Catholic, conservative sector (known as the pelucones). On 10 March 1829, they opened the Colegio de Santiago, which was directed by Andrs Bello and closed its doors in 1831.

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would the Institutos hegemonic position in the sphere of higher education be challenged, and with it, a second reinvention of itself as the nations pre-eminent secondary school. In all ways, the Instituto Nacional continued to be the central structural axis of the secondary school system, and the model institution for provincial liceos, exactly as Egaa had conceived it to be in 1813. Operating under the premise that the Chilean State would require a well-prepared directing elite, its founders prioritised the organisation of a system of public secondary education to advance that objective. Eventually, a primary school system was also organised in a form consistent with the Organic Law of Primary Education of 1860. As historian Gertrude Yeager has argued:
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The Chilean case is noteworthy for the scope of the duration for the governments systematic effort at elite education. This task, and ultimately the task of creating an entire political culture, was assigned to a secondary school, the Instituto Nacional. 40

In this article, I have analysed the role of the Instituto Nacional in the process of consolidation of independence and the formation of the republican order. In this process, the Instituto Nacional was conceived as an institution that would override the colonial past, although it was structured on a traditional base configured by the Catholic Church. In this sense, the physiognomy of the Instituto Nacional reflected the fact that in the way Juan Egaa had conceived it it would not only serve the republican cause, but also sustain traditional values like Christian morality and virtues. From 1830 to 1860 a conservative, centralising, authoritarian political order was consolidated in Chile that was fundamentally governed by the political ideology of Diego Portales. Under this constitutional regime, Chile maintained a certain political stability that was in marked contrast to the conditions that emerged in other places in Latin America. During 40 years (18311871), Chile was governed by just four presidents, something quite exceptional in comparison to the turmoil that plagued the rest of the continent. During those years, the Instituto Nacional continued to be the institution that formed the elites and its structure changed very little from the time it was founded. Various political figures that were most relevant to the conservative order, such as Portales, and the presidents Manuel Bulnes (18411851) and Manuel Montt (18511861), had been part of the first generations to be educated at the Instituto Nacional. In their political action, they were strongly influenced by the concept of a republic in the most loyal order, alluding to the concepts of virtue and morality, transmitted by the Instituto Nacional during their student years. Acknowledgement
The author thanks Paula Caffarena, Cristbal Garca-Huidobro, Roberto Prez and Karen Racine for their valuable contributions.

Notes on contributor
Andrs Baeza Ruz (Santiago de Chile, 1982) obtained his degree in history at the Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile in 2005 and his Masters on History of the Hispanic World at the Universidad Jaume I in Castelln, Spain, in 2009. He co-authored the books XIX. Historias
40Gertrude Yeager, Elite education in nineteenth-century Chile, Hispanic American Historical Review 71 (1991): 74.

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del silgo diecinueve chileno (Santiago: Vergara, 2006), and XX. Historias del siglo veinte chileno (Santiago, Vergara: 2008). He has worked at the College Programme of the Universidad de los Andes and at the Faculty of Education of the University Alberto Hurtado, and is now lecturing at the Faculty for Liberal Arts of the Universidad Adolfo Ibez in Santiago de Chile. His current research concerns the educational implications of independence in the early nineteenth century.

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