Rare 1880 Buenos Aires pamphlet edition of Francis Lieber’s pioneering wartime code, translated into Spanish and issued in compact form during a period of major military conflict in South America.

Bibliographic Details

Author: LIEBER, Francis; translated by SUSVIELA, Jacinto.
Title: Instrucciones para los ejércitos en campaña de los Estados Unidos de America / Traducido por Jacinto Susviela / Publicadas en el diario La Prensa.
Imprint: Buenos Aires: La Prensa, 1880.
Edition: First Argentine pamphlet edition, following newspaper serialization.
Pagination: 67 pp.
Format: 12mo.
Binding: Original buff printed wraps.
Size: 13.4 cm × 9 cm.

Condition

Good to Fair. Pages generally clean, with minor age-toning. Wraps edgeworn, soiled, and chipped at corners. Spine reinforced with tape. Ownership inscription in ink to front wrap. Please ask if you require a more detailed condition report, or view gallery images closely.

Description

A rare South American printing of Francis Lieber’s seminal codification of military conduct, known as the “Lieber Code”, originally issued during the American Civil War and widely regarded as the first modern attempt to codify the laws and customs of war.

This Spanish-language version was translated by Jacinto Susviela and published by the influential Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa in 1880, a year of significant conflict and upheaval across the continent. At the time, South America was gripped by the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), a devastating territorial war between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as Argentina’s controversial Conquest of the Desert (1870s–1884), a military campaign against Indigenous peoples in Patagonia and the Pampas.

In this context, it is highly likely that this edition of the Lieber Code, reframed as a general set of military instructions for campaigning armies, was circulated as a model for conduct amidst intensifying warfare in the region. The timing suggests that these Instrucciones may have been viewed not just as theoretical doctrine, but as directly applicable guidance in a time of active regional conflict.

Issued in portable pamphlet form rather than as a large formal treatise, this Buenos Aires printing has the feel of a practical working text: concise, accessible, and suited to immediate consultation. That gives the edition particular force as a document of transmission, showing how a foundational American wartime code was adapted for Spanish-speaking readers in Latin America at a moment when questions of military conduct were anything but abstract.

Bibliographical Significance

Bibliographically, the pamphlet appears to be of marked rarity. We have traced no copies in WorldCat and no other examples in the trade. As such, this seems to be an apparently unrecorded Argentine pamphlet edition of considerable interest, representing an early and elusive Latin American appearance of one of the key texts in the history of the modern laws of war.

An important item for collectors of international law, military history, Latin American printing, Argentine pamphlets, and early material relating to the development of the laws of war.

Notes

A scarce and historically resonant survival: a compact Buenos Aires issue of the Lieber Code, translated into Spanish and published in a continent then marked by active war, territorial expansion, and sharp military transformation.