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Identity, Enlightenment and Political Dissent in Late Colonial Spanish America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Anthony McFarlane
Anthony McFarlane
Affiliation:
The Institute of Historical Research, London
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Extract

During the long crisis of the Spanish empire between 1810 and 1825, the Creole leaders of Spanish American independence asserted a new identity for the citizens of the states which they sought to establish, calling them ‘Americanos’. This general title was paralleled and often supplanted by other political neologisms, as movements for independence and new polities took shape in the various territories of Spanish America. In New Spain, the insurgents who fought against royalist government during the decade after 1810 tried to rally fellow ‘Mexicans’ to a common cause; at independence in 1821, die Creole political leadership created a ‘Mexican empire’, the title of which, with its reference to the Aztec empire which had preceded Spain's conquest, was designed to evoke a ‘national’ history shared by all members of Mexican society. In South America, die leaders of the new republics also sought to promote patriotic feelings for territories which had been converted from administrative units of Spanish government into independent states. Thus, San Martín and O'Higgins convoked ‘Chileans’ to the cause of independence in the old Captaincy-General of Chile; shortly afterwards and with notably less success, San Martín called upon ‘Peruvians’ to throw off Spanish rule. Bolívar was, likewise, to call ‘Colombians’ to his banner in die erstwhile Viceroyalty of New Granada, before advancing south to liberate Peru in the name of ‘Peruvians’, and Upper Peru in the name of ‘Bolivians’, where the Republic which his military feats and political vision made possible was named after him.

Type
Identities and Empires
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 8 , December 1998 , pp. 309 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1998

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References

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