Spanish Liberals Research Articles

Envisioning Empire from Inside the United States: Exile, Constitutional Monarchism, and Ethnic Conflict in Post-Independence Mexico

AbstractThis article examines Tiburcio Campe's newspaper El Español, a brief yet concerted effort by exiled Spanish liberals in New Orleans that drew on the Cádiz constitutional experiment to demand the return of imperial rule in Mexico in the late 1820s. Exiled from Mexico as a consequence of the expulsion laws against Spaniards (españoles), Campe used his newspaper to criticize republican exclusionary policies and to militate against a possible expansion of abolitionism, ethnic conflict, and anti-white proposals in the Caribbean, promoting imperial constitutionalism as the only guarantor of the coexistence of Spaniards and Americanos and racial hierarchies in the Americas. Discussions regarding political and racial equality in Mexico and the United States, and the community's experience of exile in New Orleans, shaped these ideas, revealing how the banishment of Campe and other Spanish liberals renewed their advocacy of empire. Moreover, their exile in the United States facilitated their participation in the transatlantic public sphere and the circulation of their work, illustrating how the United States became a platform for envisioning and propagating imperial endeavors. Thus a study of El Español and Tiburcio Campe's actions allows us to comprehend the intricacies between exile and pro-monarchical discourses, as well as the nature of political and racial equality in the post-independence Americas.

The Novel of the Bullanga: Eugenio de Tapia’s Los cortesanos y la revolución (1838–39) and Pedro Mata’s El poeta y el banquero (1842)

The period between 1833 and 1840 was a moment of political upheaval in Spain. Not only did these years witness the transition from an absolute monarchy to a liberal parliamentary system, but Spanish liberals also began to divide into several factions, leading to uprisings and several changes in government. At the same time, the nation had to fend off the military advances of the anti-liberal Carlists in the North. This article compares and contrasts two novels from the period that chronicle this turbulence: Los cortesanos y la revolución (1838–39) by Eugenio de Tapia and El poeta y el banquero (1842) by Pedro Mata. It examines how these works represent and comment on the upheaval of the period through their plot, structure, and character systems. What elements of this political transition are included or omitted in the two novels? How do they analyse these historical changes? Finally, what relationship do they establish between revolution and romanticism, the dominant aesthetic of the period?

The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century by Mónica Manrique (review)

Reviewed by: The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century by Mónica Manrique Nitai Shinan Mónica Manrique. The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Justin Peterson. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020. 96 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942100043X Contemporary Spain (1808 to the present) has dealt with two main "Jewish questions": the reevaluation or rehabilitation of the Jewish medieval past by historians and intellectuals, and the process of establishment, legalization, and legitimization of newly founded Jewish communities in a predominantly Catholic country, which until 1869 outlawed all other religious faiths. These questions were only on rare occasions investigated by academic research until the last two decades of the twentieth century. Historians of the Jewish people had not been interested in researching Spanish history of the period after the Spanish Crown burnt the last Judaizers in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century, which left the country without any trace of Judaism. Historians of contemporary Spain, on the other hand, have not viewed the Jewish question as vital to understanding the transformations and vicissitudes which befell the troubled state. In other words, nineteenth-century Spanish Jewish history has been neglected. More recently, the shift in academic research towards issues related to the representation of historical minorities in Spanish historical thought started to draw investigators to researching the place of Jews and Judaism in contemporary Spain. While considerable interest has focused on the contemporary Spanish reinterpretation of the Jewish medieval past, as much as to the history of the establishment of Jewish communities on Iberian soil, very few studies raised the question of how the changes in nineteenth-century Spain were interpreted by European Jewish communities. Apart from the pioneering articles of Joseph Lichtenstein, [End Page 505] which were published in Hebrew in the beginnings of the 1970s,1 I do not know of any study of the subject. Mónica Manrique therefore should be praised for her innovative decision to dedicate her research to an almost unknown subject. The author limited her monograph to a very short time period, no longer than two years (1868–1869), and for good reason. These two years hold great significance in Spanish history, as they were the first of the so-called Six Democratic Years, a period when Spain endeavored but failed to establish a stable liberal democratic regime. The overthrow of Queen Isabel II's regime in September 1868 encouraged the Spanish liberals to implement democratic and liberal reforms even before the Spanish revolutionary parliament (the Cortes) sanctioned them. The principle of religious freedom was thus fully implemented and the Protestant religion was exercised in public in the months following the revolution. Even the new conservative regime of 1876 did not relinquish the worship rights of other religions and only limited them to the private sphere. Noticing the changes in the Protestant camp, Manrique endeavored to find Jewish reactions to these political changes in Spain. Did Jewish communities or organizations seek to encourage Jewish immigration to Spain in light of this newly proclaimed religious liberty? Did they assist those Jews already in Spain to establish new communities, or were their reactions less enthusiastic and more cautious? In order to answer the questions, the author made extensive use of the main organs of the French and German Jewish press, mainly the periodicals Archives israélites or L'univers israélite, and to a lesser extent some archival material. Reading this interesting analysis leaves the reader disappointed. It seems that the new period of openness between the Spanish government and the Jews did not bring changes in the life of the Jews in Spain. After the revolution, enthusiastic or positive views of the political changes in Spain were expressed by commentaries in the Jewish press. However, as time passed the tone of articles became much more cautious and skeptical. While some authors speculated about the possibility of the Jews returning to Spain, later articles warned about the negative attitudes of the Spanish people towards Jews and their religious fanaticism. The author also encountered this opinion in an original letter written by an unknown French Jewish traveler, Agustín Schwob. He warned Adolphe Cremieux, president of the...

La violencia política del liberalismo exaltado durante el Trienio Liberal. La defensa del régimen constitucional desde Barcelona

El presente trabajo analiza la violencia política ejercida por los liberales durante el Trienio Liberal y establece distintas categorías en el análisis de la misma. Se pretende también dirimir cuál fue la actitud de las autoridades frente a la violencia, y de qué modo se relacionó esta con la extensión del miedo al enemigo interior en la retaguardia liberal. El estudio valida la hipótesis de que la violencia política se incrementó en la medida en que las autoridades liberales se sintieron amenazadas por los enemigos interiores y exteriores. También contribuyó a esa violencia la presión del liberalismo exaltado en el marco de sus demandas de justicia popular, o revolucionaria, contra los enemigos del régimen liberal. Paralelamente, el conflicto contra los realistas rompió el equilibrio entre los poderes institucionales, lo cual incrementó significativamente el nivel de violencia, hasta que se impuso el poder militar con el apoyo del liberalismo exaltado y popular.

The Second American Revolution: The Civil War–Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic by Gregory P. Downs

Reviewed by: The Second American Revolution: The Civil War–Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic by Gregory P. Downs Don H. Doyle (bio) The Second American Revolution: The Civil War–Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic. By Gregory P. Downs. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 212. Cloth, $27.95.) In the preface to this provocative book, Gregory Downs confesses he set out to take risks, and that he has done. The result is a genuine intervention in historical debates that for ages have remained confined to a nation-bound narrative sealed off from the fascinating world stage on which Civil War–era history played out. [End Page 419] Downs invites readers to see the American Civil War as a revolutionary event whose causes and consequences were linked to Cuba and Spain in ways few have imagined. He is dissatisfied with the way historians have “whitewashed” the conflict as a brothers’ war and celebrated the Union’s survival and the emancipation of four million enslaved as a self- congratulatory narrative of national success. The problem, Downs explains, is that “assumptions about continuity shape how people see the country and how scholars analyze its past. These assumptions constrain our political history and our political imagination” (15). The book begins with a strong argument for the war as a violent revolution that, instead of preserving the Union, overthrew it. The old Constitution of the Founders, having proven inadequate to the challenge of slavery, was effectively replaced, not just amended. This marked the death of America’s First Republic and the birth of its Second Republic. No sooner does his interpretation of revolutionary change settle in, however, than Downs insists the revolution failed for lack of nerve. Instead of a sweeping transformation to set America right, Republican leaders settled for a “reluctant, managerial revolution.” The author calls it “bloody constitutionalism,” a halfway revolution that sought to limit violence, return to peace and national unity, then “whitewash” its history as an optimistic narrative of national perseverance (6). There was “no greater example of this whitewashing than the Gettysburg Address,” in which Abraham Lincoln portrayed the war as a fulfillment of the nation’s founding ideals and the means to a “new birth of freedom.” The Civil War “was defanged long before it was completed,” Downs protests (51). Chapter 2, “The Civil War the World Made,” decenters the familiar national focus on the causes of the war to locate its origins in Cuba. Downs wants to do for the Spanish Caribbean something like what Edward Rugemer did for the British Caribbean by linking turbulence in a neighboring slave regime to the heightened tensions inside the United States.1 Although events in Cuba “seem a world away from the Civil War, the road from Santiago to Fort Sumter . . . reveals the political and ideological fractures in global affairs that turned isolated rebellions into interconnected revolutions, a general American crisis that disrupted the Gulf World and the surrounding Caribbean” (59). Cuba experienced nothing so dramatic as the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt of 1831–32 or Britain’s subsequent decision to abolish slavery, which served Rugemer’s case for the Caribbean origins of the war. As a site for southern imperialist ambitions, however, we see Cuba playing a crucial role in mounting sectional tensions within the United States. [End Page 420] In chapter 3, “The World the Civil War Might Have Made,” the author returns to Spain and Cuba to illustrate the failure of the U.S. Civil War to transform the world. Spanish liberals were elated by the U.S. victory in 1865. Men like Emilio Castelar, an ardent republican (and brilliant historian), admired America as a model Spain might emulate. The chance to do so came in September 1868, when a revolutionary cabal of generals and politicians drove Queen Isabella II into exile and set about building a new liberal state. At the same time, Cubans, fed up with Spanish exploitation, seized their chance to break with Spain. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a wealthy sugar planter imbued with revolutionary ideals, proclaimed independence in October 1868 and issued vague promises of freedom to slaves...

Mujeres de refugiados, mujeres refugiadas en la Francia del siglo XIX (años 1830-1870)

El artículo se interroga sobre el lugar ocupado por unas mujeres extranjeras consideradas como “étrangers réfugiés” por la administración francesa desde la Monarquía de Julio hasta el final del Segundo Imperio. Después de las Tres Gloriosas, una serie de emigraciones políticas europeas contribuyó a ampliar los rangos de los extranjeros tratados en Francia como unos “refugiados”: liberales italianos, españoles y portugueses, polacos de la “Gran Emigración”, pero también carlistas españoles que atravesaron la frontera durante la primera guerra carlista.Nuestro estudio analiza la manera con la que la administración francesa privilegió el reconocimiento del título de “refugiado” a los padres de familia, descartando a las mujeres que eran sin embargo numerosas, tanto extranjeras como francesas. Las mujeres aisladas, solteras o viudas en exilio representaban un grupo aparte que recibía peculiar atención. ¿Cómo, en ausencia de hombres adultos en su entorno, consiguieron ser designadas y reconocidas como unas refugiadas? ¿En qué medida la administración francesa desarrolló la idea de vulnerabilidad para ellas? Mostraremos el papel que aquellas mujeres pudieron desempeñar en las relaciones con la administración francesa y con la sociedad local.

The Felon King: Ferdinand VII in British Print Culture (1814–1833)

This article examines the public image of King Ferdinand VII of Spain in Britain during his reign (1814–1833) by exploring his portrayal in British newspapers, caricatures, non-fiction books and literary texts, including the works published in English by Spanish liberals exiled in Britain. On the whole, the king’s efforts to restore absolutism, the re-establishment of the Inquisition, and his changeable and hypocritical behaviour were severely criticized. He was depicted as a tyrant by Tories, Whigs and Radicals alike, although there were some differences in the tone and focus of their criticism. Whereas some authors ridiculed his conduct, others tried to exculpate him by blaming his advisors, and others ruthlessly condemned his cruelty and ingratitude towards his people. None the less, all of them depicted him as an inept ruler and provided a very negative image of his reign.

Deudores de Cádiz: La Constitución de 1812 y la educación

En el presente artículo, desde la historia política de la educación, se analiza la importancia e influencia en el ámbito educativo, que ha tenido la Constitución de 1812, uno de los documentos jurídicos más importantes y de trascendencia en la historia de España a nivel político, legislativo y social. Efectivamente, la Constitución de 1812, pasará a la historia como la primera que dedicó un Título entero de su articulado a la educación, con elementos esenciales de renovación educativo de nuestro país. Esos nuevos elementos se concretan en su defensa de la universalidad de la educación Primaria para toda la población, sin excepciones y la uniformidad de los planes de enseñanza para todo el Estado. Se debe recordar que en el siglo XIX, el liberalismo español se encontraba con un gran obstáculo a la hora de instaurar un sistema político basado en la soberanía de la nación, la igualdad de derechos, la libertad y la inserción del ciudadano en la vida política: la ignorancia del pueblo, el analfabetismo endémico de España en aquella época histórica. Por eso, y como hiciera antes la Ilustración, los liberales pretendieron dar respuesta a esa situación, promocionando la enseñanza y el nueva y moderna Nación. De este modo, desde fuentes primarias y sustentadas en la legislación educativa, se concluye que, los liberales españoles hicieron una clara declaración de intenciones al situar a la educación no solo como importante factor de progreso, sino también, como base del nuevo régimen político que se estaba pergeñando.

Between Tradition and Revolution: The Curious Case of Francisco Martínez Marina, the Cádiz Constitution, and Spanish Liberalism

Histories of liberalism have neglected the existence of a distinctive Spanish liberalism. Influenced in part by British and French thinkers, Spanish liberals also sought to reconnect Spanish political thought with the tradition of the Scholastics. The resulting liberalism combined the two traditions, incorporating both individualist and communitarian features. This article exhibits this unique liberalism through an examination of Francisco Martínez Marina and the 1812 Constitution which he influenced. A proper understanding of this work is important both for developing a more comprehensive understanding of liberalism’s history and for its subsequent influence in Spain and Spanish America.

Discovering Shakespeare in Exile: Spanish Emigrés in England (1819-1840)


 The first few decades of the 19th century saw a considerable number of highly educated and professionally qualified Spanish liberals in exile in England. For some of them, their painful experience held a certain compensation in the form of a direct contact with English life, culture and literature and, in particular, a more immediate and deeper acquaintance with Shakespeare’s work. However, this contact with Shakespeare and its effects differed; it reconfirmed some in their Neoclassical faith, it led others to ambiguity or to a calculated eclecticism, while in others it wrought a transformation or a literary conversion. Manuel Herrera (who remained basically indifferent to Shakespeare), José Joaquín de Mora (who then began to be won over by Romanticism and its fervor for Shakespeare) and José Blanco White (who devoted himself wholeheartedly to the cause of Shakespeare) could be taken, respectively, as representative examples. The aim of this article is to analyse the way in which exile in England had a decisive effect on the perception of Shakespeare in some outstanding Spanish exiles, noting the differences between the exiles and the consequences of this perception for each of them.

EL PRIMER CONSTITUCIONALISMO ESPAÑOL Y PORTUGUÉS (UN ESTUDIO COMPARADO)

This essay tries to show the resemblances, differences and influences between the facts, ideas and constitutional articles of the first Spanish and Portuguese constitutionalism. I study the constitutional model both of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and the Portuguese Constitution of 1822. These Constitutions used the political philosophy of the French Revolution as a model. Using it, the “doceanistas” Spanish liberals, and the “vintistas” Portuguese liberals tried to build a Assambleary Monarchy close to that of the French constitutionalism between 1789 and 1792. In such Monarchy there would be a unicameral Parliament, which would be elected through a wide suffrage. The Legislature would also be the main department of the brand new State, and it would be superior to the King, who was absent both in Spain between 1808 and 1814, and in Portugal , between 1807 and 1821. Fecha en envio / Submission Date: 17/04/2012 Fecha de aceptacion / Acceptance Date: 10/05/2012

Spanish Identity: Nation, Myth, and History

In the last two centuries, conservatives and liberals have offered two mutually exclusive visions of Spanish history, each with distinct myths, symbols, and heroes. The conservative image, formed in the Middle Ages, was based on the myth of the Reconquest and the need to restore (or keep) the homogeneity of a country characterized by its Christian religion and Latin culture. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, faced with Napoleon’s invasion, Spanish liberals understood the danger of associating their modern ideas with France and invented a progressive and democratic Spanish tradition. According to their interpretation, the most authentic Spain was not the one identified with the Reconquest and the Empire, but the Spain of all those who had been excluded from the nation-building process because of their religion or ideas: the tolerant al-Andalus Muslims, the freedom-fighter comuneros and the defenders of the democratic medieval fueros. The great success of the transition to democracy and the Constitution of 1978 resided in the ability of all different tendencies and parties to overcome this division, to build bridges and create a common national project. For the first time in history, Spaniards managed to build a successful society based on consensus, pluralism and democracy. However, as a reality based on agreements, its nature is fragile. What is at stake now in Spain is to strengthen the viability of this model. This introductory material is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol33/iss2/2 Spanish Identity: Nation, Myth, and History Jesus Torrecilla University of California, Los Angeles (Translated by Margarita Pillado) In the last thirty years, Spanish society has experienced a radical transformation that few would have dared to predict in light of the conflictive record of the country’s past. In a very short time and with few internal disruptions, Spain broke free from the centuriesold bondage of endemic civil strife and social inequality, dissipated the repressive atmosphere of authoritarianism, and embraced a Constitution that granted broad political freedoms and recognized the cultural and linguistic diversity of its people. Moreover, with its modern infrastructure, strong investments abroad, and a dynamic economy that attracts millions of foreign immigrants, Spain has become an important player in the economic landscape of the European Union, and is a peer among countries that a few decades ago seemed unreachable models of progress and social welfare. One cannot but echo the conclusion of a recent report on Spain by the British publication The Economist: “over the past 30 years few other places have been as successful” (20). To a significant extent, this success is due to the Constitution of 1978.1 The referendum that validated the Constitution (the culmination of an impressive effort to redefine the nation after Franco’s death) was the first indication that perhaps the dream of several generations of Spanish liberals—routinely silenced, executed, or uprooted into exile since the return of Ferdinand VII in 1814 —finally had become a reality. Indeed, it is possible to affirm that the Constitution of 1978 reproduces in spirit the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, as well as all the liberal legislation that ensued. And although the former does not make explicit reference to its immediate predecessor, the Constitution of 1931, “a comparison of the two texts would 1 Torrecilla: Spanish Identity: Nation, Myth, and History Published by New Prairie Press

El Ensayo sobre las opiniones políticas en España de Antonio Escudero (1837), o el anticlericalismo rabioso de un liberal tibio

In December 1837, a work of anti-Carlist propaganda entitled Essay on Political Opinion in Spain was published in Paris. By publishing it in France, its author, Antonio Escudero, was endeavouring to persuade the government of Louis Philippe to agree to give firmer support to the struggle of the Spanish Liberals, so that they could put an early end to the civil war that had been ravaging the country since 1833. However, the said Essay is also a damning indictment of the Spanish clergy, whom Escudero blames for all the ills that had affected his country since time immemorial. Therefore, the work serves to justify the religious policy of the cristinos and, since its author was a half-hearted Liberal, it also provides clearer and further proof of the fact that, by that time, a fierce anticlericalism had spread among the Liberal ranks, shared by both the progressives and the moderates.

Actividad científica realizada por los liberales españoles exiliados en

In 1823, after the squashing of Riego and the restoration of the absolutism of Fernando VII, most of the Spanish liberals went to England, where they carried out different scientific and technical activities. Among the émigrés there was reputed scientists, like Bauzá, Lagasca o Seoane, that in London were able to continue with their scientific activities. Other émigrés carried out an important activity of diffusion of scientific and technical advances through papers and notes that appeared in different magazines of general character published in the Spanish language; of special interest was El Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes, directed and edited by J. J. Mora, and dedicated entirely to the scientific and technical divulgation. There was, likewise, another activity related to the scientific education, the «scientific catechisms», brief textbooks on mathematics, geography, chemistry, natural sciences, etc., directed towards elementary teaching and aimed to Latino American people, published by Ackermann. In the present work, we offer a comprehensive description of thes  activities.

The Peninsular War: A New History

The Peninsular War: A New History

Pedro I do Brasil e IV de Portugal e o constitucionalismo ibérico

Spanish liberals tried to find a constitutional king for Spain. King Pedro, constitutional imperator of Brazil, became king of Portugal after his father’s dead, bestowing his kingdom a Constitutional Charter, which convinced the Spanish liberals on his liberal beliefs. This compulsory exile did not made them forget their ideology, on the contrary, they followed on searching the establishment of a constitutional system in order to guarantee a political life within liberal schemas. Submission date: 05/02/2004 Acceptance date: 22/04/2004

Retrato de un Liberal de Izquierda: Alvaro Flórez Estrada

By using first hand sources, the purpose of this essay is a biographical sketch of Alvaro Florez de Estrada (1766-1853), one of the most notable Spanish liberals of all time. It specially approaches his interesting and quite unknown constitutional thought, as well as his decisive contribution to Political Economy, not disregarding the intellectual footstep of this author in Spain all throughout the 19 th and 20 th Centuries. Submission date: 10/10/2003 Acceptance date: 05/01/2004

Mendizábal, García Gutiérrez, and the Property of Spanish Theater

Mendizábal, GarcÃ-a Gutiérrez, and the Property of Spanish Theater Lisa Surwillo is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University . Her fields of research include nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish Peninsular literature, especially theater, Spanuh literary production as intellectual property, and Spanish cultural studies. At the premiere of El trovador, on March 1, 1836, the audience at the Teatro del Principe, inspired by the ingenuity of the play just completed, was spontaneously overwhelmed by a uniform desire to call its unnamed author onto the stage in order discover the source of this piece of theatrical perfection and honor him with applause. So goes the well known anecdote that has served for almost 200 years to convincingly explain the origin of a supposedly just recognition of authorial genius in dramatic works in Spain. First composed at the time of the premiere of El trovador, it has been perpetuated and entered into the annals of Spanish literary history as fact, without having been subjected to critical inquiry. In the present essay, through an interpretation of the literary chronicles of the premiere, an investigation into the cultural context, and a review of contemporary political and economic measures , the famous call for the author is read as a pressdriven event that transformed the author into a celebrity and served as an argument for the derecho de autor (author's rights, or intellectual property) for dramatic literature. The ideologies of the Romantic project were closely allied with those of the post-Fernandine Spanish Liberal political economy (both in the poets' embrace and rejection of it on an individual level). While the former exalted individual subjectivity in the voice of the poet's ego, the latter legally promoted "the priority of the individual and the sanctity of property" (Rose 85). The Spanish variety of Liberalism that guided the government administration at the beginning of the campaign for dramatic literary property, in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 6, 2002 44 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies February, 1836 was grounded in natural law theories of property. In the Lockean conception of the individual, every person is his or her own property, and the product of the labor executed by die body (or mind) is die natural property of the same person. As Mark Rose has explained in his discussion of authorship in England, individual liberty and the right to control private possessions are indivisible according to classical Liberal discourse. Moreover, the freedom of the individual to employ his efforts to create property and die freedom to dispose of that property as he saw fit [...] were the principles inscribed by reason in the very order of nature. (85) This was the ideology manifested in early Spanish Liberal constitutions and codification of private property as "sagrada" in the Tabla de Derechos. This most fundamental of individual rights, in a nation built not of estates but of classes and individuals , was also found in the parallel glorification of the ego in Romantic literature. Political economy and literary school intersected in the issue of literary property under which the individual writer's craft is recognized first as labor and an extension of his person and his talents, a condition that allowed it to be then granted an independent, extra-literary value in society as "property." These ideas of Liberal political economy were circulated in Spain by, among others, Alvaro Flórez Estrada, a leading economist who, like many Spanish Liberals , was in exile in England during the reign of Fernando VII and associated there with the Holland House. He was influenced in particular by the work of David Ricardo, whose The principles of political economy and taxation (1817) specifically addressed the place of labor in the calculation of value and distribution in a national economy. Flórez Estrada presented his own influential ideas on property in Curso de economÃ-a polÃ-tica, reprinted four times in the 1830s. This text recognizes "propiedad' ("property" or "possessions") as the "justa recompensa del trabajo" [just recompense for work]. Both of these terms are historically coded: "work" (as opposed to leisure) is subject to the assumptions and expectations of a given society. In the case of Liberal...

Spain and the Independence of Colombia, 1810-1825

Spain and the Independence of Colombia, 1810-1825

Empire and antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874

In 1872, there were more than 300,000 slaves in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though the Spanish government has passed a law for gradual abolition in 1870, slaveowners, particularly in Cuba, clung tenaciously to their slaves as unfree labour was at the core of the colonial economies. Moreover, the Spanish bourgeoisie was deeply implicated in colonial slavery as Spain was the last European power to abolish the slave trade and bonded labour in the Americas. Nonetheless, people throughout the Spanish empire fought to abolish slavery, including the Antillean and Spanish liberals and republicans who founded the Spanish Abolitionist Society in 1865. The Society met massive conservative resistance in Spain and the Antilles, yet ultimately forced major changes in the imperial order. This book is an extensive study of the origins of the Abolitionist Society and its role in the destruction of Cuban and Puerto Rican slavery and the reshaping of colonial politics. The author builds his narrative around three pivotal moments. The first is the decade of the 1830s when Spanish revolutionaries consolidated a new imperial order that reconciled liberal institutions in the metropolis with slavery and nonrepresentative rule in the Antilles, provoking important criticisms of slavery, racial conflict and Spanish rule from members of colonial society. The second focal point is the Liberal Union (1854-1868), a period that witnessed dramatic transformations in both the Spanish and the imperial public spheres, setting the stage for antislavery mobilization and new transatlantic political alliances. Finally, Empire and Antislavery analyzes the Abolitionist Society's challenge to colonial slavery made in the aftermath of the Spanish and Cuban revolutions of 1868. In response to the colonial insurgency and slave rebellion, the abolitionists used revolution as a tool for destroying slavery and building a new colonial pact, a strategy that reached its high point during Spain's First Republic in 1873, the year Puerto Rican slavery was abolished. Based on research in Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the United States, Empire and Antislavery reconstructs how abolitionism arose as a critique of the particular structures of capitalism and colonialism in Spain and the Antilles. More generally, it tells a story central to the understanding of slavery, race and empire in the Atlantic world.