The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century (review)

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara resorts to a transatlantic approach in order to examine the political agenda behind the uses of history in Spain during the 1800s vis-à-vis those in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Peninsular historians defended for the most part Spanish practices overseas because they claimed that their compatriots, unlike the English, shared with their colonial subjects the benefits of the Spanish civilization –language, culture, religion, miscegenation, and so on. Schmidt-Nowara explains, however, how this rewriting of history served in reality as an ideological tool for Spain to reinforce its hegemony over the last remaining colonies.

This book runs deliberately counter to the current scholarship in that it emphasizes the importance of la España ultramarina in shaping Spain's national identity prior to 1898. As one may recall, victory against Napoleon in the Peninsular War (1808-1814) was followed by the collapse of the empire after the Latin American Wars of Independence (1810-1830). To make matters worse for Spain, the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand VII (1814-1833) hindered the country's entry into modernity almost to a point of no return. After the king's demise in 1833 and the end of the First Carlist War (1833-1840), the successive liberal governments felt the urgency to make up for the setbacks that had relegated Spain to a subsidiary position in the international arena. To that effect, Schmidt Nowara argues convincingly, they embarked upon a project of national reconciliation that included "colonialism at its core" (3); hence the need to integrate Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines into this newly imagined Spanish community, albeit with a caveat: to maintain the subordinate status of the colonies so that control and exploitation of their resources would continue to operate from the metropolis.

Equally relevant for the author's purposes is to show the extent to which Spain's conquest of history met with utmost resistance on the part of the Cuban, the Puerto Rican and the Filipino intelligentsia. Opposition to the so-called virtues of the Spanish legacy to the colonies was meant to loosen the ties with the peninsula, in the hope that a rebellion against the oppressor would ensue that could successfully lead to independence, as it was indeed the case. On the other hand, this intellectual elite, made up mostly of Creole politicians and men of letters, was fully aware that confronting the political views of the Spaniards would not suffice. It was also imperative that they engaged in crafting their own historical narratives, and in doing so that they loaded them with nationalistic overtones that would counteract the delusions of grandeur emanating from Spain. An array of discourses thus emerged from the colonies highlighting the uniqueness of their insular experience. Among others issues, Schmidt-Nowara focuses on how the commemoration of Columbus in 1892 was fiercely contested in the Caribbean as well as in the Pacific; he also deals with the idealization of an idyllic indigenous past prior to the conquest that took place in the three islands, along with the categorization of the Indian as a national symbol; finally, he delves into the Creoles's identification with the pioneering work of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, whom they regarded as "the first American rebel" (135).

The Conquest of History is a major contribution to 19th-century Hispanic history and cultural studies on account of its groundbreaking thesis and the quality of the research. While Schmidt-Nowara provides a thorough analysis supported by painstaking documentation, he makes use of his resources wisely without overwhelming the reader with too much information. Moreover, he presents his arguments with clarity and cohesion, in a language that is elegant and free of jargon. Intrinsic qualities aside, the publication of this book could not occur at a more opportune time. In the years to come, the Hispanic nations will be commemorating the bicentennial of their nineteenth-century revolutions and wars of independence, starting with Spain as early...