''Montevideo, or the new Troy'' (french: Montevideo, ou une nouvelle Troie) is an 1850 novel by

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas (, ; ; born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (), 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas père (where '' '' is French for 'father', to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils), was a French writer ...

. It is a

historical novel Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...

about the Uruguayan Civil War, where the Uruguayan presidents

Manuel Oribe Manuel Ceferino Oribe y Viana (August 26, 1792 – November 12, 1857) was the 2nd Constitutional president of Uruguay and founder of Uruguay's National Party, the oldest Uruguayan political party and considered one of the two Uruguayan "tr ...

and Fructuoso Rivera disputed the rule of the country. The name sets a parallelism with the Trojan War, as Oribe kept

Montevideo Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

, capital of Uruguay, under siege for many years (known as the Great Siege of Montevideo). The plot of the book makes a summary of the history of Uruguay, from Spanish colonization to the Civil War.

Juan Manuel de Rosas Juan Manuel José Domingo Ortiz de Rosas (30 March 1793 – 14 March 1877), nicknamed "Restorer of the Laws", was an Argentine politician and army officer who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confederation. Althoug ...

, Juan Facundo Quiroga, José Gervasio Artigas, Bernardino Rivadavia, and

Giuseppe Garibaldi Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, patr ...

are thus treated as literary characters.Reseña de NUEVA TROYA, LA
Dumas describes Artigas and Rosas as barbaric, and Montevideo as a source of civilization. A similar dichotomy between civilization and barbarism was the theme of '' Facundo'', another antirosist book published by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in 1845.La Nueva Troya
Dumas described Rosas, who supported Oribe, as a coward who avoided the

Argentine War of Independence The Argentine War of Independence ( es, Guerra de Independencia de Argentina, links=no) was a secessionist civil war fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and José de San Martín a ...

and took control of Buenos Aires with a barbaric horde, and Montevideo as a heroic city standing against him. Dumas had never been to Uruguay, nor known first-hand about the war. His work was based on the reports of the antirosist

Melchor Pacheco Melchor may refer to: * Melchor (name) * Melchor Island in Chile *Melchor Ocampo, Nuevo León, a municipality in Mexico * Melchor Ocampo, State of Mexico, a town and municipality in Mexico * Villa de Tututepec de Melchor Ocampo, a town and municipal ...

, who sought French support against Rosas, and thus twisted the information about Rosas' administration in order to get such support. It is likely that the similarities with Sarmiento's book were introduced by Pacheco's, as it would have been unlikely that Dumas had read the former's work. The book has been edited twice in Argentina, once during the 1960s and again in 2005. An English translation has been available for Amazon Kindle since 2019.

References

Novels by Alexandre Dumas 1850 French novels Works about the Argentine Civil War Uruguayan Civil War Novels set in Argentina Novels set in Uruguay Montevideo in fiction French historical novels War novels {{war-novel-stub

See also

References