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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jens R HentschkeORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0).
Uruguay is a prime example of how a peripheral country creatively digested foreign experiences and became not only Latin America’s first welfare state democracy, but also a pioneer of free, compulsory, and lay education, the work of two political generations, positivist varelistas and Krausist batllistas. This article, based on new archival sources, contemporary newspapers, official publications, and monographs by protagonists argues that one of their consistent reference points, largely ignored in historiography, was Belgium, a country founded almost at the same time as Uruguay and admired for its liberal constitutionalism. Uruguayan reformers’ fascination with Belgium, but also their risk awareness, increased when, from the 1860s, both countries implemented conflictual secularizing school reforms that aimed at belated cultural nation-building.
Author(s): Hentschke JR
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Historia
Year: 2023
Volume: 56
Issue: 1
Pages: 255-290
Online publication date: 31/07/2023
Acceptance date: 01/10/2022
Date deposited: 25/10/2023
ISSN (electronic): 0717-7194
Publisher: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
URL: https://ojs.uc.cl/index.php/rhis/article/view/48431