Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean

Abstract

Centering her account on a failed 1822 voyage from Philadelphia to Puerto Rico by cosmopolitan revolutionaries hoping to liberate the colony from Spain and create a Republic of Boricua as Latin American revolts convulsed the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, Vanessa Mongey grapples with the “cosmopolitan patriotism” so central to understanding the age of Atlantic revolutions. In the best traditions of radical scholars such as E. P. Thompson and Marcus Rediker, Mongey beautifully reclaims the importance of failed movements and how ships could carry a “floating dream” over great distances to disparate places (p. 2). During an era of universalist ambitions, radicals crafted a common culture that made cultural differences seem surmountable. Rescuing the Republic of Boricua from extreme obscurity, Mongey highlights the subversive power and reach of even ephemeral movements, during a period when even many of the most famous revolutions did not lead to stable or enduring governments. Mongey's work provides an excellent example of how to “place the margins at the center” and see them as key sites for innovation and experimentation (p. 7). Paying close attention to failed experiments—especially numerous across the Caribbean and Latin America in the early nineteenth century—helps us better understand the creativity of the revolutionary era and possibilities of a time when modern national divisions had not yet been determined. Only occasional references are made to grand thinkers, orators, and statesmen in faraway revolutionary capitals. Mongey's focus is instead on almost-unknown rebels in obscure corners of empire. Moreover, she ably argues for the need to restore foreign cosmopolitans and racial minorities to their important places in the era's revolutionary history from the quasi-oblivion to which subsequent nationalist tellings have often consigned them.