Francisco Encina and Revisionism in Chilean History
T HE WRITING of full-length, multivolumed national histories which was so conspicuous a feature of the nineteenth century has practically disappeared in our time. The professionalizing of the writing of history has discouraged wouldbe literary historians in the grand manner; cooperative enterprises by groups of scholars have supplied the demand for large general works of reference for students and teachers ;1 the changing and expanding reading public has sought a literary diet far removed from that of the nineteenth-century educated gentlemen on whose library shelves the works of Macaulay, Guizot, George Bancroft, or Diego Barros Aralla reposed in massive dignity. It is therefore an event of no small importance that at mid-century a twenty-volume national history of Chile should have been published, and an even more astonishing fact that this voluminous work should have become an outstanding exito de libreria.2 The interest aroused by Francisco Encina's history is surely not due to its extraordinary length. It is doubtful whether it will be followed by competitors on the same scale, and it has even been felt desirable to publish a three-volume condensation in order to overcome, in part, the extraordinary effort demanded of the reader of the original work.3 To what, then, can we ascribe the popularity of this history? There appears to exist in Chile a large public interested in a fresh interpretation of the national past. Compilations based on earlier syntheses no longer speak meaningfully to those who face the