"A culmination of the author's earlier research and writing on the tone and content of Peru's 19th-century 'political culture.' This sizeable study focuses on the Civilista era and argues that there existed a concerted attempt by a group of 'vanguard intellectuals' at the Lima Univeristy to create a cultural consensus regarding the nature of citizenship in their nation. The War of the Pacific did not completely deter these efforts to define the characteristics and responsibilities of citizenship. Notes that the campaign was renewed during the civilian presidency of Nicolás de Piérola during the late 1890s. Not made fully clear whether this Lima vanguard in its search for illusive concept of citizenship, which still remains in question today, may not have been looking to one of Europe's most concrete models, the Napoleonic Civil Code"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.