Suchergebnisse

A Missionary Nation focuses on Spain's crusade to resurrect its empire, beginning with the War of Africa.

Preaching Spanish Nationalism across the Hispanic Atlantic skillfully debates the prevailing view that the monolithic Catholic Church -- as the symbol of the ancien régime -- subverted a secular progression toward nationalism and modernity. It was, Scott Eastman deftly contends, the tenets of Roman Catholicism and the ideals of Enlightenment worked together to lay the basis for a "mixed modernity" within the territories of the Spanish monarchy.

The Capuchin friar Diego José de Cádiz penned an influential treatise in 1793 during the War Against the Convention (1793-1795) titled The Catholic Soldier, in a War of Religion. It was reprinted and circulated widely during the War of Independence in Spain (1808-1814), and according to an early twentieth-century friar, it had a profound effect on that "heroic generation" of soldiers who fought against the French.

Spanish nationalists lauded the Constitution of 1812, which erased the boundaries of colony and metropole. By the early 1820s, however, separatists narrated 300 years of American history as a Biblical tale of enslavement, with nations ultimately freed from captivity by the heroism and martyrdom of liberators such as Hidalgo. Contrary to the idea that an apathetic metropolis turned away from its empire, this article recovers a vibrant public sphere in which debates raged over independence, nationality and the possibilities of constitutional monarchy. As Spain and Mexico shared a liberal political culture, it is clear that national identities diverged only inasmuch as nationalists insisted upon distinctive cultural and historical roots and the definitive separation of the 'two Spains'.

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.

"In March 1812, while Napoleon's brother Joseph sat on the throne of Spain and the armies of France occupied much of the country, legislators elected from Spain and its overseas territories met in the Andalusian city of Cádiz. There, as the cornerstone of a government in exile, they drafted and adopted the first liberal constitution in the Hispanic world, a document that became known as the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. The 1812 Constitution was extremely influential in and beyond Europe, and this collection of essays explores how its enduring legacy not only shaped the history of state-building, elections, and municipal governance in Iberian America, but also affected national identities and citizenship as well as the development of race and gender in the region. A bold blueprint for governing a global, heterogeneous monarchy, the Constitution represented a rupture with Spain's Antiguo Regimen (Old Regime) in numerous ways-in the limits it placed on the previously autocratic Bourbon monarchs, in the admission to its governing bodies of deputies from Spain's American viceroyalties as equals, and in its framers' vociferous debate over the status of castas (those of mixed ancestry) and slaves. The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World covers these issues and adopts a transatlantic perspective that recovers the voices of those who created a vibrant political culture accessible to commoners and elite alike. The bicentenary of the Constitution of 1812 offered scholars an excellent moment to reexamine the form and role of constitutions across the Spanish-speaking world. Constitutionalism remains a topic of intense debate in Latin America, while contemporary Spain itself continues to seek ways to balance a strong central government with centripetal forces in its regions, notably the Basque and Catalan provinces. The multifaceted essays compiled here by Scott Eastman and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea both shed new light on the early, liberal Hispanic societies and show how the legacies of those societies shape modern Spain and Latin America"--