Integration and Disintegration during the Revolutionary Cycle

Two long-term processes developed in parallel fashion throughout the vast Spanish Empire from the late eighteenth century to the 1820s: the collapse of Spanish sov­ereignty in America and the development of a new colonial cycle in the Antilles (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Spanish part of the island of Santo Domingo) and the Philippines.

And yet, the empire did not commence an inevitable decline in the second half of the eighteenth century. Instead, it began splitting off in various directions as old mechanisms of imperial stability could not easily be replaced. Neither demography nor economic history point toward a systemic crisis, although it is true that there were striking contrasts among regions and sectors. As we have seen, the first serious conflict grew out of the implementation of a more efficient fiscal system.

These modifications of colonial policy did not change the underlying foundations of colonial loyalty. But the last decades of the eighteenth-century were marked by frequent social conflict and the definition of new colonial identities that would be the origin of the final crises of the empire. These conflicts were very diverse. Some were caused by fiscal measures that affected certain privileged groups through increased consumer prices, the forced purchase of European products, or labor obligations. This financial strain was what provoked the 1765 revolt in Quito against a new liquor tax and the revolt of the comuneros in New Granada in 1781 against fiscal monopolies and new taxes on sugar and other regional raw materials. It also was responsible for the large-scale uprising in the Andes the following year, when the Quechua and Aimara rediscovered their long-dormant ability to mobi­lize. These conflicts were motivated by increased indigenous tribute and sales taxes but they also pointed toward more complex social arrangements.

It was a commonplace of the times to describe the Spanish Empire in terms that had little to do with notions of political representation and equality before the law, the ideology found in the North Atlantic after the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. In Enlightenment debates concerning the nature of European societies, Spain and its world, especially Spanish America, occupied the bottom rung.^[2293] This perception was strengthened during the nineteenth century and intensified with the Spanish American War and the loss of the Antilles and the Philippines in 1898, which exemplified the ideological struggle against the Spanish world. But a linear interpretation of a declining empire omits several basic questions, several of which have recently been raised. To what degree was the universal language of rights and representation, underlying the American and French revolutions, also projected onto societies of the Hispanic world? To what degree was the ideological response to the crisis of the monarchy a general impulse toward political change? And how were these processes split into two distinct possibilities: preservation of imperial integrity or secession of the colonies, the latter process initially taking on both re­publican and monarchical forms but ending up entirely republican?

The first question is key for understanding the nature and outcome of the se­cession movements. The crisis, which had been visible since the end of the eight­eenth century, required an alternative to monarchical legitimacy and the imperial ethos as such, particularly after the French and North American cases revealed that monarchical empires rested on unstable foundations.

In this context, the collapse of monarchical legitimacy after Napoleon's “kid­napping” of the Spanish royal family triggered an enormous crisis, as a result of which only appeals to national sovereignty could guarantee ties between varied and distant societies.

Loyalty by Americans and Filipinos was encouraged from the start by promises of general imperial reforms by a center that was very weak in 1808-1809 and needed financial assistance from the colonies and from the British. Starting in 1810, the promises were kept as Spain guaranteed equality for the colonies in the refurbished monarchy. As had been the case in similar processes in North America and the French world, the key point of the reforms was not so much the elimination of colonial servitude as it was the establishment of effective political representa­tion. In the old empire, representation of colonial subjects had always been rejected. The proposal by the territories that assumed authority to form a single representa­tive assembly (the Cortes) was unprecedented. That endeavor was the outcome of an outdated constitutional tradition and competition by Napoleon and his Spanish supporters in Bayonne (France), and the example of the Atlantic revolutions. When the Cortes met in Cadiz under British protection, it appeared that reconstruction of the empire along conservative lines was assured, pending only the outcome of an international war which, in 1812, appeared to be tipping toward the anti-French al­liance. But competition between Spaniards and Americans, along with Haitian and British intrusion and the insurrections of Venezuelans, Chileans, and Rio de Plata, made any such solution almost impossible.

Today we know more about the causes behind the rivalry between Spanish and American (and Filipino) representatives at what was the largest elected assembly in the history of the empires.^[2297] Debates in Cadiz centered on two issues: the na­ture of representation and the form the new liberal monarchical state should take. Demands for legislative pluralism and representation in America, usually within the former boundaries of the audiencias, colonial courts of law that were the empire's political space par excellence, indicated who would have the ability to transform these societies through legislation. The second set of thorny issues followed from the first: suffrage and elections. These would determine the degree to which the po­litical system would be open to dominant social forces. The contest between united sovereignty and legislative pluralism was resolved in favor of the former after a long battle, resulting in the 1812 Constitution and legislation. Throughout this ideolog­ical battle, the Americans were accused again and again of wanting disaggregation along the lines of North America, evoking the specter of federalism. The second de­bate concerned who would dominate the future legislative chamber, the center and guide of the Crown's new political architecture. Political equality between metrop­olis and colonies, as in the French constitutions of 1793 and 1795, made the number of (free) male inhabitants over the age of 25 critical. Given the impossibility of ensuring peninsular parliamentary majorities in the future, the constituent Cortes, which had been elected under different criteria, imposed a clear separation between nationality and citizenship, excluding mixed-blood people known as castas pardas (afrodescendants) from the latter. Spanish liberals, doing their best to increase divisions among the Americans (Cubans favored exclusion while New Spain was radically opposed), tried to undermine the likely political majority of Americans by introducing controversial phenotypic criteria. Nevertheless, despite some doubts, the peninsulares themselves admitted that local citizenship had a historical legiti­macy that could not be denied without undermining Spanish sovereignty as such.

The debates in Cadiz and again at the liberal Cortes of 1820-1823 definitely di­vided American societies and undermined a liberal consensus, favoring those (and their international allies) who wished for separation. Attempts to restore mili­tary rule during the absolutist interregnum of Ferdinand VII (1814-1820), one of which (led by Pablo Morillo y Morillo) was partially successful, further eliminated any chance of an empire-wide solution. The collapse of negotiations in 1822 with Mexico and Peru, and the defeat of the royal army in Peru in Junin and Ayacucho between August and December 1824, put an end to the prospect of maintaining the unity of the Empire.