Teachers as public servants in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the Republic of Colombia: reflections on salary scales and the funding of teachers in Escuelas de Primeras Letras (1810–1830)

The War of Independence of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (the name given to the territory of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama under Spanish rule unfolded as a transitional process between 1810 and 1830. During this period, Spanish rule gave way to a republican order, and former vassals became republican citizens. A central institution in these transformations was the Escuela de Primeras Letras (schools of reading and writing). The term Escuela de Primeras Letras refers to a government-regulated form of elementary education through which children were introduced to reading and, above all, to writing in Spanish: in this educational practice, schoolteachers emerged as key actors in their capacity as piublic servants. This article examines, precisely, the salary conditions of two schoolteachers – a monarchical teacher, Agustín Joseph de Torres, and a republican teacher, Sebastián Mora Berbeo – against the backdrop of a turbulent transitional period defined by the War of Independence and the Spanish Reconquest (1810–1819), and the invention of the Republic of Colombia (1819–1830), using teachers’ pay as a lens onto the fiscal relationship between the emerging State and the institution of elementary schooling.