ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explores the role of Gloria Victis in postwar Peru during the Aristocratic Republic (1895-1919), when the oligarchic elite pursued cultural nation-building after defeat in the War of the Pacific. It argues that Peru's adoption of Gloria Victis—a marble replica installed on Lima's Cripta de los Héroes in 1908—reflected a deliberate effort to emulate the French Third Republic's model of commemorative regeneration. Shaped by the French military mission and expanding French cultural influence, the monument functioned as an aspirational symbol of republican modernity. Rather than a passive import, Gloria Victis masked Peru's structural dependency while reinforcing France's symbolic authority, revealing how commemorative culture operated as an instrument of soft imperialism amid Franco-German rivalry.
