Revolts in Mexican California: Between Resistance to the State and Integration of Federal Republicanism (1821–1832)

Abstract

Like Europe, the Americas experienced a period of state and nation building during the nineteenth century. South of the United States, which declared its independence in 1776, a dozen new political entities appeared on the map from the former American kingdoms of the Spanish monarchy (and Portuguese, in the case of Brazil) after a long and complex process, largely due to the Napoleonic Wars in Spain. Among them, Mexico gained independence in September 1821. It was formed from what was the viceroyalty of New Spain, meaning all of Spanish North America (see figure 1). This relatively late independence (the first American independences from Iberia took place in the 1810s) meant that most of Mexico was affected first by a political revolution: the adoption of a liberal constitution in 1812 on the scale of the entire Spanish monarchy, known as Constitution of Cádiz. Initially an empire, Mexico adopted a federal republican system in the 1823–1824 period, like many of its American neighbors, whether they came from Spanish or English Empires. Historians have underlined the paradox represented by the adoption of a liberal, individualist, and egalitarian political systems by these new countries, with wide access to voting, in organic societies, arranged in collectives in which unanimity was privileged. This situation led to overlaps and hybridizations around key political notions of popular sovereignty and freedom.1