Retratos del héroe naval: representación de la oficialidad naval en la sociedad de la honradez (segunda mitad del siglo XIX)

Abstract

This article seeks to study how the officers of the navy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were imagined and represented by the 1870s as naval heroes. Therefore, it will be analysed how the individuals who formed naval officer corps from 1700 to 1870 were imagined as bearers of the dominant social and cultural values. The material examined for this purpose is based on the three hundred biographies that formed the work Galería biográfica de los generales de marina, jefes y personajes notables que figuraron en la misma corporación, written by Francisco de Paula Pavia ‒ highlighted general of the navy and Minister for the Navy twice during the Spanish Restoration‒ and published in 1873. They not only provided information on the life and career of these officers, but they also intended to create a general portrait of the body and a presentation before the public opinion as heroes. The main conclusion drawn is that this naval hero was not based on military virtues, but on social principles such as honesty, decorum, probity, decency or respectability.

Keywords

• naval hero
• naval officers
• navy
• respectability
• 18th century
• 19th century