Independence and Nation-Building in Latin America: Race and Identity in the Crucible of War reconceptualizes the history of the break-up of colonial empires in Spanish and Portuguese America. In doing so, the authors critically examine competing interpretations and bring to light the most recent scholarship on social, cultural, and political aspects of the period.
Did American rebels clearly push for independence, or did others truly advocate autonomy within weakened monarchical systems? Rather than glorify rebellions and "patriots," the authors begin by emphasizing patterns of popular loyalism in the midst of a fracturing Spanish state. In contrast, a slave-based economy and a relocated imperial court provided for relative stability in Portuguese Brazil. Chapters pay attention to the competing claims of a variety of social and political figures at the time across the variegated regions of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, while elections and the rise of a new political culture are explored in some depth, questions are raised over whether or not a new liberal consensus had taken hold. Through translated primary sources and cogent analysis, the text provides an update to conventional accounts that focus on politics, the military, and an older paradigm of Creole-peninsular friction and division. Previously marginalized actors, from Indigenous peoples to free people of color, often take center-stage.
This concise and accessible text will appeal to scholars, students, and all those interested in Latin American History and Revolutionary History.
Author(s): Scott Eastman, Natalia Sobrevilla Perea
Series: Seminar Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 188
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Chronology
Who’s Who
Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Structure of the Book
1. Colonialism, Enlightenment, and Reform
Historiographical Debates
Colonial Majorities: Race, Class, and Gender in the Americas
The Hispanic Enlightenment
Administrative Reforms
The Economics of Colonialism
The Tumultuous 1780s and 1790s
2. Sovereignty and Insurgency in the Revolutionary Atlantic
Napoleonic Europe and the Crisis of Iberian Monarchies
Loyalty in 1808
Insurrection in 1810
The First Republic
The Hispanic Constitution of Cádiz
Civil Wars in Spanish America
Andean Loyalism: Popayán, Quito, Peru, and Chile
Conclusion
3. The 1814 Restoration
Popular Royalism in the Venezuelan
The Morillo Expedition
From Reconquest to Restoration
Restoration in the Centers of Loyalism
Independence in the Río de la Plata
Conclusion
4. Total War
A Sojourn in Haiti
From War to the Death to Total War
Threats of Race War
From Angostura to the Republic of Colombia
Between Independence and Instability in the Río de la Plata and Chile
Monarchies or Republics?
5. Loyalism, Monarchy, and Constitutionalism in America
Constitutionalism in New Spain and New Granada
Consolidating New American States
The Last Frontier of Loyalism: Peru
Divergent Legacies of Civil Wars: Racism and Regionalism
6. Nations-in-the-Making: The Republican Tradition in Latin America
Centralism and Federalism
Conflict and Constitutions
Inclusion and Exclusion
Conclusion
7. Epilogue: Postcolonialism
Documents
Document 1: Count Aranda’s 1786 Proposal for America
Document 2: Dionisio Inca Yupanqui, Speech given at the Cortes, December 16, 1810
Document 3: Simón Bolívar, Reply from a South American to a Gentleman of this Island, Kingston, Jamaica, September 6, 1815
Document 4: 1816 Petition by María de la Peña, an Enslaved Woman from Buenos Aires Who Requests Payment of Her Husband’s Salary to Cover the Cost of Her Freedom
Document 5: Decree of General José de San Martín Assuming Supreme Political and Military Command, with the Title of Protector, August 3, 1821
Document 6: Pension Request, Francisca Caballero y Quiroga
Glossary
Index
