Together or separate in the fight against oppression? Liberals in Peru and Spain in the 1820s

Abstract

Following the new avenues of research opened by historians of the Atlantic world, this study analyzes key ideological writings in the press to illustrate some thematic and ideological interconnections between liberals in Spain and Peru in the 1810s and early 1820s. Liberalism emerged in the Spanish world as an ideology-in-the-making that was both Peninsular and American. Liberalism was conceived in broad and abstract terms as a struggle for the overthrow of absolutism and the implementation of liberties and constitutionalism. Soon it evolved into a protest against the oppression of Ferdinand VII’s despotic rule as well as military despotism in Spanish America. Although by the 1820s independence movements prevailed in most parts of Spanish America, many liberals on both sides of the Atlantic continued to envision their struggle as a common one. These circumstances have often been overlooked in the historiography of both Spain and Spanish America, but they are key to understanding the breakdown of the Spanish empire in central areas of Spanish dominion, such as the viceroyalty of Peru.