9 - Chile

Summary

Invaluable work has been done since the late 1950s by the journal Historia (published by the Institute of History, Catholic University of Chile, Santiago), in keeping a detailed record of all materials published on Chilean history (in Chile and abroad) from year to year. These are listed in the journal’s regular Fichero bibliográfico. The first such bibliographies were usefully collected in Horacio Aránguiz Donoso (ed.), Bibliografía histórica, 1959–1967 (Santiago, Chile, 1970). Subsequent ficheros have been published in each issue of Historia except for 21 (1986), the first of two special memorial issues for Mario Góngora, whose tragic death at the end of 1985 deprived Chile of one of its most respected twentieth-century scholars.

The publications appearing in Chile during the period from independence to the War of the Pacific are listed (though not in accordance with modern bibliographical criteria) in Ramón Briseno (ed.), Estadística bibliográfica de la literatura chilena, 3 vols. (Santiago, Chile, 1965–6). Briseno’s two original volumes were printed in 1862 and 1879. Vol. 3, produced under the auspices of the Biblioteca Nacional, Santiago, contains much-needed amendments and additions, compiled by Raúl Silva Castro. The Oficina Central de Estadística was founded in Chile in 1843, though it only began work four years later; thereafter the government became reasonably assiduous in collecting statistical information, much of it subsequently published in the Anuario estadístico from 1861 onwards. Commercial statistics were published (after 1844), as were the censuses of 1854, 1865 and 1875. Statistical material from this period, however, has to be used with critical awareness of its inadequacies.