‘De gente que a ningún rey obedecen’: Republicanism and Empire in Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana

Sutton, Imogen

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (2014), 91, (4), 417–435.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/bhs.2014.27
Language: English
Pages: 19

Abstract

This article explores the implications of understanding the State of Arauco in Part One of Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana (1569) as a republican form of political community. I begin by discussing how scholastic and humanistic tropes of barbarism employed in the opening two cantos give way to a description of a non-urban society that nevertheless has certain resemblances to the mixed government of Venice. The description of the Araucanian citizen militia intersects both with contemporary calls for reform of the Spanish military at the outset of the wars in Flanders and with the militaristic model of the republican state favoured by Niccolò Machiavelli. The decline of Araucanian military fortunes and virtue is analysed according to their transition from a policy of self-defence to one of aggressive expansion. This critique of republicanism also presents certain parallels to, and an implicit interrogation of, the Spanish model of empire.

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