Two recent compilations offer an entry to Colombian history in these fifty years. A. Tirado Mejía, director, assisted by J. O. Melo and J. A. Bejarano, Nueva historia de Colombia, 6 vols. (Bogotá, 1989) and J. Jaramillo Uribe, J. G. Cobo Borda and S. Mutis Durán (eds.), Manual de historia de Colombia, 3 vols. (Bogotá, 1978–9).

For descriptions of the country in the 1880s, see M. Cané, En viaje, 1881–1882 (Paris, 1884); E. Rothlisberger, El Dorado (Bogotá, 1963); A. Hettner, Viajes por los Andes colombianos, 1882–1884 (Bogotá, 1976); R. Gutiérrez, Monografías, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1920–21). A later work of exceptional value is P. J. Eder, Colombia (London, 1913), and the diary of the Bolivian novelist, historian and diplomat Alcides Argüedas, La danza de las sombras, new ed. (Bogotá, 1983) describes politics and society at the end of the 1920s.

The occasional writings of Rafael Núñez are collected in La reforma política en Colombia, 7 vols. (Bogotá, 1946–50). The writings of Miguel Antonio Caro exist in various compilations apart from the Obras completas, 8 vols. (Bogotá, 1918–45). A new edition is in the course of publication by the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, and this is complemented by publications of his correspondence, much of it erudite but some of it political, and by volumes of constitutional studies and speeches. Of the correspondence, see especially E. Lemaitre (introd.), Epistolario de Rafael Núñez con Miguel Antonio Caro (Bogotá, 1977), especially valuable because Núñez’s instructions that on his death his archive should be thrown into the sea were carried out.