Propaganda e información en tiempos de guerra: España y América (1700–1714) (review)

In the aftermath of a constitutional court rescinding Catalonia’s 2006 Statute of Autonomy—a decision which brought over a million protestors onto the streets of Barcelona on July 10, 2010—issues of identity and culture in Spain have received renewed attention in the press. Many Catalans trace the loss of their autonomy to the defeat of the Habsburg contender for the Spanish throne in the early eighteenth century. During and immediately after the war, the Bourbon King Philip V punished the rebellious kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia by decreeing a series of reforms that established uniform legal codes in lieu of their regional privileges (fueros). Contemporary Barcelona commemorates the 1714 siege of the city with a monument to Catalan liberties, taken away at the hands of a centralizing monarch. The prominence of the period is such that, since the early twentieth century, Catalans celebrate their National Day on September 11, the anniversary of the end of the war. In Propaganda e información en tiempos de guerra, historian David González Cruz concludes that the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1714) did not precipitate separatism or protonationalism in provinces such as Catalonia. While a great deal of propaganda appealed directly to Catalans in their own language, and questions concerning foralism became increasingly contentious, González Cruz maintains that the war must be understood as a struggle for legitimacy between competing dynasties rather than as a battle between nations.

Scholars have noted the importance of economics in the contest for dynastic supremacy in early-eighteenth-century Europe. The English and French invested a tremendous amount of resources into the War of the Spanish Succession precisely because they coveted the trade and mineral wealth of Spanish America. Drawing upon the paradigm of Atlantic history, González Cruz thus offers a corrective to the view of the war as a purely European affair. Mining the archives of more than ten nations, including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and France, the author demonstrates the interconnectedness of the Hispanic monarchy, even in times of crisis and conflict. Propaganda was spread through the networks that linked far-flung provinces together, from European and Atlantic trading routes to religious and even academic circles. In spite of censorship and attempts to control information across war-torn regions of Spain, many printing presses functioned at the margins of legality and distributed potentially subversive materials. For example, champions of the Bourbon cause deliberately fabricated news of the death of Archduke Charles, published in an official-looking gazette in Seville. Strategies of dissimulation were pervasive, and networks of spies worked assiduously to gather intelligence. The importance of overseas opinion was not underestimated, as clerics from Catalonia and Valencia, areas of strong support for Charles, were prohibited from travel to the Indies by 1706. Documents indicate that Philip worried particularly about the effects of religious propaganda on the indigenous peoples of America. Smuggling became increasingly fraught, as ships from ports not authorized to engage in transatlantic commerce might be carrying seditious letters to Spanish America. Ensconced in Curaçao, the Dutch circulated periodicals along the coast of Venezuela that may have induced the city of Caracas to embrace the cause of the Habsburgs in 1702. Agitators in English Jamaica likewise attempted to sway officials in the Spanish Antilles to the Austrian side. For the most part, however, America remained an outpost of almost unanimous support for Philip during the course of hostilities.

The Church served as a crucial conduit for selling the claims of competing factions to the populace. Even the Papacy weighed in on the subject, initially supporting Philip prior to recognizing Charles in 1709. González Cruz describes the posting of edicts on cathedral doors and university walls, the reciting of pastorals during días festivos and the careful crafting of personalized correspondence in which candidates vying for legitimacy made their cases. The high clergy, including the Bishop of Salamanca, implored...