Triangulating the Atlantic: Blanco White, Arriaza, and the London Debate over “Spain” (original) (raw)
Related papers
« The French Revolution and Spanish America »
in Wim Klooster (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: Volume 2: France, Europe, and Haiti, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, vol.2, p. 172‑194., 2023
The Conceptual History of Independence and the Colonial Question in Spanish America
The idea that Spanish American countries experienced and were burdened by the legacy of Spanish colonialism was well accepted for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The movements for political independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century were viewed as the result of social and economic pressures and the struggle of oppressed nations against the tyranny of the metropolis. However, over the last two decades we have witnessed a “Copernican revolution.”1 Much of the recent historiography views the collapse of the Hispanic order as the result of the political and legal crisis brought about by the Napoleonic invasion and the illegal abdications in Bayonne in March 1808. As a consequence, if colonial and post-colonial theories and categories were previously accepted by historians of all stripes, now they have been brought under scrutiny and many scholars challenge their analytical pertinence. The following pages deploy a conceptual approach in order to sketch the historiographical and theoretical grounds and consequences of this paradigm shift.
This work is an essay to connect philosophically two ideas: Empire and Spain. The first, Empire (Imperium), appears to be a very complex historical and political idea. We ought to explain the different meanings it can express in its application to Spain in its historical development, first as an ideal empire (Reconquista, 8 th to 15 th centuries) and, secondly, as the universal imperial reality (16 th to 18 th centuries). Finally, the Spanish Catastrophe (1808) led to a transformation from the Empire-form to a nation-State form, throughout the 19 th and 20 th centuries. To show these transformations, we shall (1) analyse the geopolitical location of the Iberian Peninsula, one between two seas (Cantabrian and Mediterranean) and at the crossroads of continents and several peoples " confrontation. After this, (2) we shall review the birth of the Spanish Imperial Idea, focusing on the very important medieval period and the Reconquista enterprise. We view these centuries as foundational periods for the later rising of a real universal Spanish Empire.
Popular Royalism in the Spanish Atlantic: War, Militias and Political Participation (1808-1826)
Contemporanea, 2021
Popular royalism has recently emerged as a growing field of research on both sides of the Atlantic. This paper aims to compare the popular political participation in royalist movements in Peninsular Spain, New Spain, New Granada and Venezuela during the crisis of the Spanish Monarchy and the wars of independence (1808-1826). I argue that popular royalism had a dual origin. On the one hand, it was linked to the «monarchical imaginary» of the Ancien Régime. On the other hand, it was deeply connected to the experience of civil war and the role played by slaves, Indians, artisans, labourers and other commoners in royalist militias and armed groups. The reasons to join the royalist side were not necessarily ideological but related to what these particular groups perceived as their own interests. Thus, popular royalism was a political strategy of pursuing their claims and achieving specific benefits in exchange for military service, such as a reduction of the tribute, the concession of freedom, jurisdictional privileges or a salary. https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1409/101327