Cardona Zuluaga, Patricia. Trenches of ink: the writing of national history in Colombia, 1850-1908. (Medellín: Fondo Editorial Universidad EAFIT, 2016), 380

Abstract

The question of how the two diffuse ideas of nation and homeland were sought to materialize in the second half of the 19th century found one of its key elements in the so-called "little history books." This idea is a guiding principle in the work of Cardona Zuluaga, who points out that at the heart of these "simpler and smaller books" was "to lay the historical foundations of a consensual narrative for building national ties and exalting the past as the basis for the civic education necessary for extending the national 'brotherhood' [...]." Thus, these little books, along with the official history of the nation during the period under study, were not merely discursive representations, but rather became cultural mechanisms that "fully fulfilled the function of giving the homeland a precise materialization, a concrete form."