Un empresario extranjero en el desierto argentino: Juan Bautista Alberdi y su Vida de William Wheelwright

Abstract

In this work, there is a critical analysis of William Wheelwright’s biography, written and published by Juan Bautista Alberdi, in Paris, in 1876. Special emphasis is placed on Alberdi’s interest in bringing into light what he calls “heroes of peace” and in correcting the preference towards war and warriors that he noticed in South American historical and biographical texts. So, with this biography, Alberdi intends to change the historiographical paradigm. In this work, we examine how this biography falls within the dispute, ostensive or veiled, between Alberdi and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (since 1850). Finally, we examine some aspects of the text’s reception, first in France and then in the United States