This article explores the phenomenon of the sedition trial in the early history of the Spanish American republics, focusing on sedition trials that occurred in Santiago de Chile from the late 1820s to the early 1850s. Sedition trials were governed by laws enacted in the wake of Chile's political independence to protect and regulate the freedom of the press. Because of the way press laws were written, sedition trials were conducted in front of juries composed of active citizens. As such, they constituted a dramatic break with the judicial tradition of Spanish colonial rule. The article argues that sedition trials were instrumental in the dynamics of political conflict, but only when the national government allowed them to operate without interference, which was not always the case. When sedition trials had integrity, as they did for a period in the 1840s, they became a public space in which citizen-journalists and publishers participated in establishing the boundaries of political speech. However, as one might expect, government officials also used the charge of sedition to silence their opponents. Sedition trials can thus be seen as a form of political warfare that has not been fully appreciated by scholars.

本文探讨了西班牙美洲共和国早期历史中的煽动叛乱审判现象，重点关注 1820 年代末至 1850 年代初期在智利圣地亚哥发生的煽动叛乱审判。煽动审判受智利政治独立后颁布的法律管辖，以保护和规范新闻自由。由于新闻法的编写方式，煽动叛乱的审判是在由活跃公民组成的陪审团面前进行的。因此，它们与西班牙殖民统治的司法传统形成了戏剧性的决裂。文章认为，煽动叛乱审判有助于政治冲突的动态，但只有在国家政府允许他们不受干扰地运作时，情况并非总是如此。当煽动叛乱审判具有完整性时，正如他们在 1840 年代所做的那样，它们成为了一个公共空间，公民记者和出版商在其中参与建立政治言论的界限。然而，正如人们所预料的那样，政府官员也利用煽动叛乱的罪名来压制他们的反对者。因此，煽动审判可以被视为一种政治战争形式，尚未得到学者们的充分认识。