ABSTRACT
IT is noteworthy that while the English colonies of North America were preparing for an independent national life, the Spanish colonies were drifting toward social anarchy. In one case the colonists were passing to a new phase of political organization under the inspiration of the principles of liberty that had their origin in the mother country. In the other case, the colonists, incapable of self-reformation, were reorganized by a power that shaped their destiny without consulting their will. The new organization of the southern colonies, which created the intendancies, took account of certain political entities that had been maintained during the two centuries and a half of colonial existence. The ancient province was the historical antecedent of the intendancy, although the limits of the two political divisions may not have been the same in all cases. In fact, the territorial limits of the old provinces were not carefully established. The settlements in the heart of the continent, including the cities of Cordova, Tucuman, and Santiago del Estero, might very well be treated as a province without fixing a definite boundary line through the vast unoccupied regions that separated them from the settlements of Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata. There was no need of definite boundaries when it was a journey of many weeks from one centre of population to another. But since certain groups of provinces have become independent and self-conscious nations, this lack of definite boundary lines has given rise to numerous international controversies respecting territorial limits. Those countries that lay on the shore of the Atlantic or the Pacific were sure of their boundaries on at least one side; and that was about the extent of their certain knowledge concerning the lines that limited their territorial possessions.
