This article provides an analysis of republican discourse in the context of the Pacific War. Our proposal is to explain how, on the one hand, the notion of "barbarousness", traditionally associated with the wilderness, was employed to refer to the despotism, degeneracy and luxury of the Ancien Regime society that - according to its Chilean publicists - continued to reign in Peru. The transformation of republicanism, from an ideology obsessed with the fragility of the Republic to one that became engaged with territorial expansion, enables us to study the emergence of an "empire republic" in Chile. This conceptual re-elaboration is based on the austerity, hard work and even the inclusion of all citizens, including Indians. I suggest that the analysis of a republican experiment that was carried to an extreme can enrich debate on the vocabulary and political practice of 19th century Hispano America.
Republicanism; Civilization; Barbarism; The Pacific War; Chile; Peru