ABSTRACT
For the educated publics of the early nineteenth century, the leader of Paraguay José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia was a figure as mysterious as he was puzzling. The few travellers who got to know him expressed themselves ambivalently about Francia and characterised his rule sometimes admiringly and more often contemptuously as a dictatorship. At the beginning of modernity, Francia stood as a symbol for the change in meaning of the term ‘dictator’ from a legitimate, temporary and thus positive ruler in an emergency to an illegitimate tyrant. How did European observers perceive Francia? What was the significance of the fact that Francia ruled in a region that had only recently broken away from Spanish colonial rule and declared itself a republic? What were the motives behind Francia’s assessment, and what generalisations were associated with it for the entire region and with dictatorship at large? The chapter deals with this question based on the relevant published source texts ranging from Rengger and the Robertsons to Caldcleugh and others.
