[Access article in PDF] Book Review
The Independence of Spanish America
Colonial Period
The Independence of Spanish America. By Jaime E. Rodríguez O. Cambridge Latin American Studies, no. 84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xviii, 274 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $19.95. This is a revised and updated version of a book published in Spanish in 1996. Non-Hispanic readers will benefit from its close attention to context. The author also includes considerable new material, in particular from the Ecuadorian archives. The book is a succinct summary of the process of independence as seen through its author's eyes. Although this work refers to some standard accounts in the bibliographical literature, its does not engage directly with the ongoing literature on the subject but sets out an interpretation of the process, which itself might become a subject of debate. Although written in a clear and unassuming style, which is in no sense polemical, the author clearly regards his work as a manifesto. He also has a hidden agenda. He reveals this on the last page, though it becomes evident during the reading of the text. Rodríguez wants to explain why the Hispanic world has been consigned to a secondary role in world affairs since the collapse of the Spanish imperial system.
The author plays down the actual struggle for independence in the early sections of the book in favor of accentuating the impact of the political changes which took place in Spain between 1808 and 1823. Accordingly, he opens the book by asserting the political and cultural continuities between Spain and Spanish America rather than stressing the breach. In terms of space allocated in the text, the mechanics of rupture do, however, receive considerable treatment in the last chapters. By emphasizing the importance of the Spanish constitutional changes, though, the author encounters a problem that he never satisfactorily resolves. It is correct to stress the importance of these measures for nineteenth-century Spanish American history, particularly for Mexico and New Granada (Colombia), where they had the deepest impact. Traditional interpretations have put excessive emphasis on the role of caudillos and caciques, instability, and pronunciamientos in the struggle to establish constitutional legitimacy. Nevertheless, the Cádiz constitutional tradition envisaged a "Spanish nation" and, accordingly, set out to construct a unitary state. Rodríguez is clear on that, but he assumes that autonomists in the Americas, who wanted home rule but also wanted to preserve the monarchy and the empire, found the constitutional system of 1810-14 and 1820-23 congenial. As I understand it, the agenda of 1808 was substantially different from the type of system enacted in accordance with the Constitution of 1812.
The theory that the entire monarchy consisted of "kingdoms," juridically equal to one another, whether they were located on the peninsula or in the Americas, resulted in the 1808-9 claim that in the absence of the monarch, sovereignty reverted to the "people." At first, the "people" were interpreted as the "constituted bodies of the realm," that is, the principal corporations and orders within each component realm. Such a view precluded the notion that sovereignty reverted to an entity described as the "Spanish nation," as well as distinct representative institutions within the Americas. The Cortes's self-attribution of sovereignty in September 1810 and the Constitution of 1812 reserved [End Page 172] the plenitude of sovereignty for this "nation" (which until that time had never existed) and concentrated all parliamentary representation in the peninsula. Yet Rodríguez states that "the Spanish parliament provided American autonomists with a peaceful means of obtaining home rule" (p. 238). It seems to me that autonomy and Cádiz constitutionalism were two distinct projects. That is not to say that autonomists did not take advantage of whatever legislation corresponded to their objectives. However, when Mexican autonomists, for instance, finally gained power in 1821, they opted for the creation their own state, with Ferdinand VII as a hypothetical Mexican emperor, rather than for the notion of a unitary monarchy offered to them...
The Independence of Spanish America (review)
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