General History of Chile II

Diego Barros Arana was a nineteenth-century Chilean historian and educator, whose most important legacy was the monumental work entitled Historia General de Chile, written in 16 volumes between 1884 and 1902. It covers from pre-Columbian times until 1833. The work is based on documents from private and public archives, which Barros Arana knew and collected over decades until he began writing his General History in 1881.
This second volume deals with the acephalous government, its beginnings in 1554, until the year 1580 and the appearance of Francis Drake.
The idea of writing a general history of the country was conceived early in Diego Barros Arana. Already in his introduction to Life and Travels of Magellan published in 1864, he had confessed that he had been working on a general work for many years. The author felt the need to tell the story of Chile, due to the deficiencies of the historiography available at the time. Barros considered that Chilean history was to be built in almost all its periods and themes, and that the absence of narratives was not determined by the lack of materials, but by the lack of interest to undertake an extensive, complex and critical work.
In the author’s own words:

“This incessant work, which might seem excessively monotonous and overwhelming, has been to me the most pleasing of pastimes, the relief of great sorrows, and I could almost say the rest of many and very painful fatigues.”

The text is organized in 16 volumes that addressed great epochs: The Indians; Discovery and Conquest; Consolidation of the Independence and Organization of the Republic. It was a question of practicing a historical investigation very different from how certain chroniclers had done it so far. In the presentation of the work, Barros Arana explains that he assumed the narrative method to write his work, following the recommendation of Andrés Bello. The facts are ordered and investigated with neatness and clarity, noting precisely their filiation and content. This orderly and chronological exposition was a guarantee to clarify the facts in an objective and rigorous way.