Sarah Chambers, whose first book From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780–1854 (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1999) received much well-deserved critical acclaim, has produced another excellent monograph on Spanish America's transition from colonialism to independence and its highly conflictive process of state-building. This new book focuses on the centrality of family to nation-state formation in Chile. As Chambers states from the outset, numerous historians have already ‘noted the familial language of revolution’ (p. 3), and the ‘frequent metaphorical references to the nation as family in Chilean political culture’ (p.16). In this sense, the author's topic of enquiry is not particularly new, and the broader picture she maps out of a paternalist and patriarchal state does not come as much of a surprise to readers. Her contribution to existing scholarship on these subjects lies instead in the detail she provides – her excavations of that ‘familial language’ and those ‘metaphorical references’ from an impressive amount of archival material – and the fact that she goes far beyond the official proclamations of Chilean state officials by delving into the intricacies of policy formulation and implementation.

Exploring disputes about the seizure and restitution of property, military pensions, custody of children and family maintenance allowances – through a vast array of primary sources, including personal letters, official communiqués, petitions, ecclesiastical and civil lawsuits, courts-martial, state decrees and congressional laws – Chambers shows us exactly how paternalism and patriarchy in Chile functioned. We learn how new legislation came into being, how this was implemented, and how a variety of different people (across the social spectrum) engaged with, experienced and responded to it. For example, we gain some insight into the internal diversity of the fledgling state apparatus through a description of the competing agendas of state attorneys and treasury officials (p. 168); we see the difference between ad hoc, temporary decrees and increasingly cohesive, enduring and institutionalised legal processes; and we are impacted by the (often uneasy) co-existence of Spanish colonial law and new republican legislation (with the Siete partidas on pp. 182–3). Perhaps more significantly, this study shows us how it was often the persistence of mothers, widows and other guardians that forced changes in family law, or forced legal changes to be applied in practice. In other words, it pays as much attention to people's requests and demands of government as it does to government decision-making, and thereby avoids presenting these changes as an exclusively top-down process.

One of the main conclusions of Families in War and Peace is that the state position shifts from paternalist responsibility (in the early nineteenth century) to patriarchal authority (by the mid nineteenth century), or from ‘from mending families to reinforcing hierarchies of wealth and status’ (p. 212). This shift is mapped out against the backdrop of military struggles for independence, internal political rivalries following independence, continuing conflict in the south, efforts to consolidate a centralised government, war against the Peru–Bolivia confederation, and civil war in the 1850s. It is also set against the life history of Javiera Carrera (1781–1862), the sister of executed independence leaders Luis, Juan José and José Miguel Carrera. The two storylines work well together, for the ‘personal’ and ‘political’ become intimately intertwined, and this helps to engage the reader.

One especially interesting theme of the book is that of networks: kin-based networks, how they functioned and when they mattered. In particular, the author illustrates the importance of marriage for commercial enterprises, and for the consolidation and transmission of property. Another welcome theme, though much more implicit, is that of transnational connections: Families in War and Peace is a nation-focused study, but the Chile that we read of here certainly did not function in isolation. Peru and Spain were common destinations for fleeing royalists. Peru also offered a home to many patriot figures when post-independence political upheavals forced them into exile. In addition, we find out about illustrious Peruvians who visited Chile, about commodity circuits between Lima and Santiago, and about the Chilean state's sequestration of assets belonging to residents of Peru. The United Provinces of La Plata (later Argentina and Uruguay) crop up repeatedly, as does the United States, where numerous Chileans formed important alliances (the son of Javiera Carrera, for instance, was educated there). Vice versa, many US citizens – as well as British, Irish and French people – migrated to post-independence Chile. The references are often fleeting: the Englishman Ricardo Dunn appears and disappears in one sentence; indeed, it is not really him that appears, but rather his Chilean widow and her petitions for a pension (p. 129). The larger picture these fragments point to, however, is an important and compelling one.

It also raises the question of Chilean ‘exceptionalism’ in Spanish America. Chambers usefully references existing scholarship on family law in Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and offers tentative comparisons, but explains that to do any more than this is not her objective here. ‘Only further research’, she remarks, ‘will demonstrate whether the Chilean state was distinctive or simply more successful than other governments in implementing policies that refashioned paternalist governance from royal to republican terms’ (p. 11). This is not necessarily a weakness, but I was slightly disappointed not to see more in-depth discussion of the differences and similarities between Chile and its neighbours, especially given the author's expert knowledge of Peruvian political culture, and her participation in important edited collections on the continent as a whole, for example Honor, Status and Law in Modern Latin America (Duke University Press, 2005).

I noticed one other gap as I read through the absorbing material. Conflict-ridden southern Chile serves as an important setting for much of the history that Chambers documents, and yet the very obvious racial dimensions of the process of state-building as it unfolded here, while touched upon, are not explored in any depth. Indigenous inhabitants of the ‘frontier’ region appear for the most part as ‘barbarous Indians’ and enemies of the new republican state. Certainly, many members of the political elite saw them as such, but to leave it at this misses the fact that Mapuche people were also imagined as brothers in the ‘greater Chilean family’ by some early independence leaders, not least Bernardo O'Higgins and Ramón Freire.

Of course, no book can deal with all aspects of the chosen topic of study. I was just a little surprised – considering the author's previous works – by the kind and extent of the gaps that I found in Families in War and Peace. There is no doubt, however, that it offers an unequalled examination of family law as it developed in Chile during the first half of the nineteenth century.