James E. Sanders is Assistant Professor of History at Utah State University.

A Social History of Politics 1

Three Forms of Popular Republicanism 18

The Emergence of Republican Bargaining 18481853 58

The Limits of Elite Power 18531863 100

5 The Triumph of Democracy 18631876 125

The Suppression of Popular Politics 18751886 153

Popular Republicans Legacies 184

Notes 199

Abbreviations 237

Bibliography 239

Index 253

Contentious Republicans is a lucid, well-researched, and engagingly written account that will force a rethinking of popular political thought and practice and its impact on national politics in Colombia.”—Mary Roldán, author of Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia Colombia, 1946–1953



“Contentious Republicans is the most intelligent and persuasive application of the insights of ‘subaltern studies’ I have encountered in the field of Latin American studies. James E. Sanders shows in engaging detail how different subaltern groups turned the republican politics of newly independent Colombia into an arena of struggle. The quality and sheer quantity of Sander’s evidence is impressive; much of it is drawn from regional and national archives largely untapped for the purpose of writing social and cultural history.”—Charles Bergquist, author of Labor and the Course of American Democracy: U.S. History in Latin American Perspective