Order, Family and Community in Buenos Aires, 1810-1860

This is the first study of Latin American history to consider family history in conjunction with the larger issues that conditioned the relationships between the masses and their political rulers.

It achieves this objective by describing and analyzing the world of the people of Buenos Aires during the first half-century after independence.

The author concentrates on three themes: social control and the criminal justice system; the nature of children in a politically turbulent period, including the changes over time in the educational system; and the demographic effects of political instability.

The author uses both traditional historical materials and quantitive findings, reaching across race and class, to reconstruct the daily life of the people of Buenos Aires.

Quantitative materials, culled from three manuscript census returns spanning the years 1810 to 1855 and from other archival sources, are used to discuss household structures and the demographic environment.

These materials include information on nearly 35,000 men, women and children in approximately 7,500 households. The author richly informs his findings by drawing upon recent historical thinking about nineteenth-century developments in Western Europe and the United States.

The book concludes with an analysis of the complex interplay between family and political leadership, notably the nature and role of political patriarchy in the process of nation-building.<