A Treatise on the Guaraní System of Government in Comparison with Plato’s Republic (1793)

The Guaraní-Jesuit communities of greater Paraguay, in existence from 1609 until 1767, represent a unique collaboration between Indigenous and European peoples in the history of the Americas. Reports of these communities were met with fascination in Europe, as readers saw in them an opportunity to build a new political system from the ground up, one unencumbered by the entrenched norms that stymied reform in Europe. European intellectuals mythologized these communities, employing ancient Greek paradigms to characterize―and caricature―them within the context of a broader ideological conflation of antiquity and the Americas.

Josep Manuel Peramàs’s De Administratione Guaranica Comparate ad Rempublicam Platonis Commentarius (A Commentary on the Guaraní System of Government in Comparison with Plato’s Republic, 1793) emerges as a response to this European intellectual tradition. Written by a leading humanist scholar who lived among the Guaraní, the treatise offers a systems-level analysis of how the Guaraní-Jesuit communities were structured, interrogating formative aspects of the civic experience, such as weddings, public festivals, clothing, and political offices. In making this fascinating Latin treatise available in English for the first time, this bilingual edition offers new perspectives on the Guaraní and new avenues for exploring the complex legacy of classical literature in the Americas.