Latin America Between Colony and Nation: Selected Essays (review)

This collection of essays by John Lynch, published in honor of his distinguished career, brings together three previously unpublished papers and reprints of six articles, mostly from the 1980s to the early 1990s, two of which have been translated from Spanish.

In addition to books on early modern Spain, Lynch has specialized in the political history of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Latin America, the period before and after national independence. The articles which address this topic, and are based upon original research, are the strongest in the book. In contrast to the anti-colonial wars in Africa and Asia during the twentieth centuries, the case of Spanish America is distinct for its development over the course of several centuries of an elite descended from the European colonizers but born in America. Such “creoles” prided themselves on their racial purity, but some certainly had mixed ancestry and all had been raised in a multicultural context. This creole elite, and their interactions with the Spanish state, are the chief focus of Lynch’s analysis.

The chapter which will likely be of greatest interest to scholars of comparative decolonization is a reprint of Lynch’s introduction to the anthology Latin American Revolutions, 1808–1826: Old and New World Origins (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). He argues that the grievances of creoles which precipitated the wars of independence were of relatively recent origin rather than having built up over the centuries. The Bourbon dynasty, which came to occupy the Spanish throne in the eighteenth century, instituted a series of reforms designed to bring the colonies under greater metropolitan control and increase revenues. Creole elites found themselves paying higher taxes and increasingly displaced in bureaucratic positions by natives of Spain. As Lynch points out, “a society is more likely to accept the absence of rights it has never experienced than the loss of rights it has already secured” (86). In some cases, such as Peru, growing protest among the lower classes and Indians, posed enough of a threat that creoles hoped to win back concessions from Spain while remaining within the empire. But in other regions, such as Venezuela, many landowners complained that the Crown was not doing enough to suppress the upward mobility of free people of color and the unrest among slaves. The changes in the form of colonial rule are also explored in an essay on the colonial state, which provides a good introduction to the Spanish American case for scholars of other regions.

Several other chapters focus on more specific aspects of the creole rebellions against Spanish authority. One focuses on the role of the Catholic Church during this period. The creoles within ecclesiastical institutions experienced a similar decline in position as compared to natives of Spain, and some joined the anti-colonial rebellions. The Church hierarchy remained staunchly loyal to the Spanish crown, but pragmatically hoped to come to terms with the new national governments once independence was achieved. Another chapter considers a group of Spaniards, Canarian immigrants to Venezuela, who were not part of the creole elite and were associated with the loyalist forces in that country. And two essays analyze the political theory and practice of South America’s most prominent leader of the independence movements: Simón Bolívar. The first argues that although Bolívar was influenced by philosophers of the European enlightenment, his proposals for political institutions in the new nations were pragmatically adapted to the American context. Bolívar saw a need for several balancing acts: between liberty and anarchy, equality before the law and race war, free trade and protectionism. His solution was to advocate republicanism, but with a strong, centralized executive. The second essay on Bolívar examines his relationship to the emerging military strongmen (caudillos) who would come to dominate the post-colonial political landscape of Latin America. According to Lynch, Bolívar favored the establishment of institutions and laws, but relied upon the military support of caudillos, and ironically “the source of the dictator’s [Bolívar’s] legitimacy was his own personal...