Diario de un soldado and Journal of a Soldier: the British Invasions, the Voice of the Anonymous Soldier and the Emergence of New Sensibilities in Great Britain and the Río de la Plata

Abstract

Journal of a Soldier (1819) is the memoir of a British soldier who belonged to the 71st Highlanders Regiment, the one that took part in the capture of Buenos Aires in 1806 and was defeated by the Buenos Aires militias during the Reconquest and the Defense of the city. The Río de la Plata also has a Diario de un soldado (1960), written by a soldier of the Patricios Regiment, who recorded the events that interrupted the quietness of colonial life between 1806 and 1810. A comparative reading of these texts will lead us to investigate their configuration as plebeian writings on the British Invasions, allowing us to reflect on the ways in which the popular sectors of the British and Rioplatense societies lived the war as a new and transforming experience. We will investigate how the voice of the anonymous soldier participates in the construction of a heroic image of the people and in the visibilization of the horrors of war, giving indications of new ways of understanding and perceiving the war that we can relate to the emergence of a romantic sensibility on both sides of the conflict.