“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

and geographic conceptions. Extending observations about layers of imperial sovereignty
and complex geographies of authority well into the 19 th century, therefore, provides a
powerful way to map these transformations and restore peripheral voices and perspectives.
It also serves to historicize the sometimes static or distant character of borderlands
narratives by demonstrating how these liminal spaces survived and changed over time.
Borderlands Legalities
This dissertation argues that the law provides an important and formerly overlooked
vehicle to assess these dramatic transformations in the Río de la Plata borderlands over the
course of the 19 th century. For a region divided by multiple sovereigns and beset by
factional violence, it initially seems surprising to even speak of law at all. The Río de la Plata
experienced nearly incessant warfare in the period between 1810 and 1870. Yet this
dissertation shows that alongside these military struggles, the law and legal practices were
incredibly important to borderlands residents. Litigants and their allies doggedly fought,
sometimes for decades, over legal questions. They spent resources to secure written
evidence and witnesses from far-flung locations throughout the borderlands. Moreover,
even in towns experiencing protracted factional and international military conflicts, local
attorneys represented important figures in the political universe. They served as key
lieutenants in struggles over access to justice and the definition of legal rights. There may
not have been clearly defined states, but there was clearly law in the borderlands – and it
mattered deeply to the people there.
By placing law at the center of the borderlands story, this dissertation also addresses
a broad and persistent narrative in the historiography of the Río de la Plata that has
described the borderlands as a lawless region defined solely through its opposition to outside
control. The origins of this interpretation lay with Sarmiento and other national political
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