JAIME E. RODRÍGUEZ O.

AHR Forum

The Emancipation of America

Since the Europeans believe there is no other America than the one their nation possesses, an erroneous nomenclature has formed in each nation . . . In France, generally, when one speaks of America one means Saint Domingue; in Portugal, Brazil. The English call their islands in the Caribbean Archipelago, our Indies or the West Indies; and for the English there is no other North America than the United States. All Spanish North America is to them South America, even though the largest part of the region is in the north. The people of the United States follow that usage and they are offended when we, in order to distinguish them, call them Anglo Americans. They wish to be the only Americans or North Americans even though neither name is totally appropriate. Americans of the United States is too long; in the end, they will have to be content with the name guasintones, from their capital Washington, . . . just as they call us Mexicans, from the name of our capital.

Servando Teresa de Mier, Washington, 1820.

The emancipation of most of America—that is, the Western Hemisphere—may be best understood as a series of reactions by the settlers to the actions and events that occurred in their mother countries. Although Spanish-American, British-American, and French-American societies were profoundly different, they each began the process toward independence in response to metropolitan threats to their self-interests and to their sense of being an integral and important component of their monarchies.¹ The leaders of the independence movements considered themselves to be Spaniards, Britons, and Frenchmen defending their Spanish, British, and French rights. The social and political structure, resource base, and, most of all, the timing and context of each region's emancipation affected the process and determined the future of the newly independent nations. 1

The monarchies that conquered and settled the New World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not modern nation-states.² Although the Spanish, English, and French crowns first gained ascendancy over neighboring territories in the Old World, the nature of those conquests forged different kinds of relationships between the newly included peoples and the dominant society. The Spanish rulers, for instance, initially incorporated into their Iberian kingdoms peoples—Jews and Muslims—who, though Caucasian, were perceived as belonging to different cultures. Further expansion into North Africa and the Canary Islands brought other groups into the confederation that was the Spanish Monarchy. At its height, the Spanish crown claimed the entire Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, parts of Italy, France, and the Germanies, Flanders and the Netherlands, parts of North Africa, islands in the Mediterranean and off the west coast of Africa, as well as America, islands in the Pacific, the Philippines, and parts of India.³ Although the Spanish monarchs imposed religious unity by force in 1492, they sought neither linguistic nor cultural uniformity.⁴ Heirs to centuries of Muslim domination of the Iberian Peninsula, the Spanish rulers conceived their universal monarchy as being composed of many lands, peoples, and cultures, not all of equal status. The Indians of America constituted one more, albeit special, group. 2

"La América Septentrional," or North America, a map published in Madrid by Isidor Antillón, 1802, shows Spain's maximum claims in North America.

     The Spanish New World was organized into two legal systems: the república de indios, Republic of Indians, and, for everyone else, the república de españoles, Republic of Spaniards. The Indians became subjects of the Spanish crown, though in a subordinate status, much as the Jews and Christians had been under Muslim rule.⁵ The distinction, however, proved impossible to maintain: the Spanish Monarchy was too vast and the lands it occupied too populous for Europeans to become the largest group in America. Over the years, miscegenation and economic development transformed the kingdoms of Spanish America into multi-racial societies in which the Indians, though legally protected and kept in a secondary status, entered the larger society as cultural and often as biological mestizos. The Africans and Asians who were brought to the New World underwent a similar process of cultural and biological integration. Although a racial hierarchy of castes emerged, economic development and population growth resulted in considerable racial and social mobility, particularly during the second half of the eighteenth century.⁶ 3

     The English experience was significantly different. Although the conquest of Ireland and the incorporation of Wales and Scotland were at times violent, they did not constitute the inclusion of fundamentally different cultures. Nevertheless, the English viewed the Catholic Irish as barbarous savages "only nominally Christian, and generally intractable."⁷ Later, they perceived the North American Indians in the same way: wild, savage peoples who could not be incorporated into "civilized society."⁸ Thus the Indians in the regions conquered and settled by the English crown found themselves displaced. As Patricia Seed explains: 4

The basic aims of English colonization were the assertion of authority over indigenous land, proclaiming North America "a vacant land," whose occupants were not using fertile agricultural ground in useful and appropriate ways. While the Spanish Crown officially declared all Indians its subjects and vassals in 1542, Indians collectively never became subjects of the English Crown (save in isolated instances), and did not become citizens of the United States until 1924.⁹

Moreover, both the free people of color and the large African-origin slave population, who lived principally in the south, remained at the margins of society. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the British-American colonies were dominated by a people who excluded non-whites—and even some whites—from full participation and abhorred racial mixing.¹⁰

     French explorers, missionaries, traders, and settlers established themselves in North America—in Canada and the Mississippi River basin ("Louisiana")—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later in the Caribbean islands. France lost its thinly populated possessions in North America in 1762–1763 as a result of the Seven Years' War; Britain obtained Canada, and Spain, Louisiana.¹¹ The extremely valuable islands in the Caribbean, however, remained French. Initially, during the late seventeenth century, indentured servants (engagés) were recruited in France for three-year terms in the West Indies. As the plantation economy expanded, large numbers of African slaves replaced the indentured servants because they were a cheap and more reliable labor force. By the end of the eighteenth century, the planters of Saint Domingue imported 30,000 African slaves a year to meet their labor needs. 5

     The exploited slave majority formed the base of the social pyramid. Above them stood a group of free people of color, the gens de couleur, composed primarily of racially mixed persons and a few blacks. Some of them formed a wealthy, sophisticated, and cultured elite with ties to France. The Europeans of Saint Domingue did not constitute a socially homogeneous group. The grands blancs, the planters, high officials, and large merchants, constituted the political, social, and economic elite of Saint Domingue. In contrast, the petits blancs, many of them descendants of the seventeenth-century engagés, found themselves in an ambiguous position. They considered themselves to be racially superior to the gens de couleur elite but lacked their wealth and education. 6

     As Franklin Knight indicates, the social structure of the French colony revealed the structural distortion of a "slave plantation exploitation society."¹² People were divided by race as well as by socioeconomic status: the grands blancs held the petits blancs in contempt; the latter feared and despised the free people of color, who were often their economic and cultural superiors; and the gens de couleur, while disdainful of the petits blancs, feared and loathed the slaves.¹³ 7

The three monarchies governed their American possessions by consent, not force. All three were obliged to grant their settlers greater autonomy than the people of the metropolis, both because the crowns lacked the resources to develop the regions themselves and because the New World offered more economic opportunities to its inhabitants than the Old. As a result, to somewhat different degrees, the three crowns exercised a form of rule that has been characterized as "benign neglect." During the seventeenth and first part of the eighteenth centuries, royal power was scarcely felt by the new inhabitants of America; they essentially governed themselves. Despite these similarities, the three monarchies maintained their authority in the New World in very different ways. 8

     The structure of the Spanish Monarchy appears to have been highly centralized. The king administered his American possessions through the Council of the Indies, which oversaw viceroyalties, captaincies-general, and other administrative subdivisions governed by viceroys and other royal officials. In reality, however, the crown lacked the fiscal and coercive resources to enforce its will. Although representative assemblies (cortes) were not established in the New World, numerous other bodies represented the interests of its inhabitants. 9

     Native society, which enjoyed rights to lands, language, culture, laws, and traditions under the Republic of Indians, also possessed its own governments, popularly known as repúblicas. Located in the settled pre-Hispanic areas, these regional governments consisted of the principal town and seat of administration (cabecera) and subordinate villages (pueblos sujetos). The repúblicas did not exist in isolation. Even in areas of dense Indian population, those polities coexisted with Spanish cities, mestizo and mulatto towns, and rural estates of various kinds. Indeed, San Juan Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco, the successors of the two island cities that made up pre-Hispanic Mexico City, coexisted during the entire colonial period with the Spanish capital city of Mexico, itself the largest city in the Western Hemisphere.¹⁴ 10

     The Republic of Spaniards, which expanded over time not only because of population growth but also because of miscegenation and acculturation, included countless representative corporate bodies. Municipal councils that governed provinces (ayuntamientos), universities, cathedral chapters, convents, confraternities, mining and merchant organizations, and numerous craft guilds elected officials who represented their constituents. All these corporate entities, as well as the repúblicas, enjoyed a large measure of self-government and transmitted their views to the higher authorities such as the high courts (audiencias) and viceroys or directly to the Council of the Indies and the king.¹⁵ 11

     Spanish Americans considered their patrias (lands) to be kingdoms in the worldwide Spanish Monarchy, and not colonies. They believed that an unwritten constitution required that the royal authorities consult the king's New World subjects. As John Leddy Phelan observed, "usually there emerged a workable compromise between what the central authorities ideally wanted and what local conditions and pressures would realistically tolerate."¹⁶ 12

     British America, like its Spanish counterpart, was in Jack Greene's words "a consensual empire."¹⁷ The great difference, however, was that it had a substantially larger white settler population than either Spanish or French America. They—not the Indians, the free people of color, or the slaves—are the ones whom U.S. historians have in mind when they write about the rights and opportunities available in the thirteen colonies.¹⁸ Only if one limits consideration to that important group, and ignores all of the others, is it true that the British Americans possessed greater rights and liberties than the other Americans. They alone enjoyed the right to convene local assemblies. (Although Spanish Americans, in theory, had the right to convene their own representative assemblies, that did not occur.) Moreover, the British Americans probably exercised a greater degree of self-government than the Spanish Americans or the inhabitants of Saint Domingue. 13

     The French West Indies also developed a form of self-government by the early eighteenth century. Limited to the white minority and dominated by the grands blancs, a system of superior councils emerged that proved strong enough to disregard royal ordinances not to their liking. Indeed, some councils aspired to play the role of the Parlement of Paris, claiming the right to register the king's laws. Although the nature of representation and negotiation was much weaker in French America than in Spanish or British America, the region nonetheless offered its minority white population more of both than the people of France possessed.¹⁹ Thus, in varying degrees, Greene's observation, "What was legal, what was constitutional, was determined not by fiat but by negotiation," is true of the three Americas.²⁰ 14

Life in the New World was determined substantially by the natural endowments of each region. The thirteen colonies of British America possessed extensive, fertile agricultural lands. They were united not only by easy coastal communications but also by magnificent river systems. (The Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which included the mouth of the Mississippi River, would further facilitate transportation and contribute to the dramatic expansion of the young United States.) Because of the greater availability of agricultural land and of efficient, low-cost water transportation, most white British Americans acquired property, and many were able to export a variety of agricultural products to Europe and the West Indies. These conditions helped create the dynamic propertied classes. They constituted the "egalitarian social orders of the free segments of these settler societies [who] would provide a sturdy foundation for the limited egalitarian impulses of revolutionary and early republican [British] America" described by Greene.²¹ By the end of the eighteenth century, about 5.5 million people, excluding the Indians, lived in the former British America, the United States. 15

     Spanish America, though claiming the vast majority of the continent, possessed very limited fertile land. The best soil was located in the thinly populated periphery in the extreme south and extreme north. Only about 15 percent of present-day Mexico is arable without irrigation, while the vast fertile Pampas of present-day Argentina—like the Great Plains of North America—were considered in the eighteenth century to be a desert because they could not be cultivated with the technology of the time. 16

     The settled portions of eighteenth-century Spanish America, the region's heartland, were characterized by massive mountain ranges, jagged canyons, great deserts, and vast rain forests, all formidable barriers to communication. Despite Spanish America's extensive shorelines on both sides of the continent, coastal shipping was restricted by the lack of good harbors and by the location of the major population and production centers in the highlands away from the coast. Moreover, as none of the settled areas possessed navigable rivers, the cost and difficulty of land transport, universally more expensive than water, limited external trade to a few tropical agricultural products and valuable exports such as silver. As a result, the Spanish-American kingdoms, though part of the same monarchy, had little contact with one another unless they were neighbors. 17

     The physical environment determined the nature of not only the economy but also the society. New Spain, blessed with vast deposits of silver, developed a complex and wealthy economy. Its large, advanced Indian population rapidly adapted to the new political and social system, learning to protect its interests within both the Republic of Indians and the Republic of Spaniards. The Viceroyalty of New Spain gradually became a multi-racial society whose members were integrated culturally and economically, to varying degrees, into a hybrid mestizo society that was neither Indian nor Spanish.²² At the end of the eighteenth century, New Spain—with a population of nearly 6 million—was the richest, most populous, most developed part of the Spanish Monarchy in America. In contrast, the Río de la Plata, a thinly populated peripheral region, far from Europe, remained isolated and economically marginal during most of the period. It was elevated to the status of a viceroyalty only in 1776. Previously, the interior sold its agricultural and livestock production to the silver mines in Upper Peru, while Buenos Aires and the Pampas raised livestock. The area did not expand rapidly until after 1776, when Buenos Aires became the outlet for trade from the interior, particularly the silver mines in Charcas, present-day Bolivia. By 1800, the region, excluding Upper Peru, had a population of about 500,000, composed of a tiny white urban elite, a small mestizo middle group, and a large nomadic Indian population. 18

     Saint Domingue, though occupying only the western third of the island of Hispaniola, became during the second half of the eighteenth century the most productive colony in the West Indies. As David Geggus observes, in the 1780s to 1790s Saint Domingue accounted for "some 40 percent of France's foreign trade, . . . On the coastal plains of this little colony little larger than Wales was grown about two-fifths of the world's sugar, while from its mountainous interior came over half the world's coffee."²³ Its productivity doomed most of Saint Domingue's inhabitants to exploitation. As Knight indicates, "Approximately 25,000 white colonists, whom we might call psychological transients, dominated the social pyramid, which included an intermediate subordinate stratum of approximately the same number of free, miscegenated persons . . . and a depressed, denigrated, servile, and exploited majority group of some 500,000 workers from Africa or of African descent."²⁴ 19

Two contradictory tendencies emerged in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century: the assertion by Americans—both Spanish and British—of a sense of unique identity (conciencia de sí) and the attempt of the Bourbon and Hanoverian monarchies to increase control of their Americas and transform them into profitable colonies. From the Río de la Plata in the south to New England in the north, the peoples of the settler societies identified with their patrias, their localities, which they thought of as America. Indeed, the name "America" became prominent at that time; earlier, the continent had been known as "the Indies." Whereas educated members of both communities emphasized the unique characteristics of their lands and peoples, the Spanish Americans incorporated their Indian heritage into their interpretation of American identity, while the British Americans did not. The distinction is exemplified in two great works of the time: Francisco Javier Clavijero's Historia antigua de México and Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.²⁵ The latter exalted white British Americans, while the former glorified the ancient Mexicans. 20

     Spanish Americans and British Americans considered themselves either true Spaniards or true Britons, the possessors of all the rights and privileges of those peoples. Spanish Americans developed a compact theory of government. They derived their rights from two sources: their Indian progenitors, who originally possessed the land, and their Spanish ancestors, who in conquering the New World obtained privileges from the crown, including the right to convene their own representative assemblies (cortes). The compact was not made between America and Spain, however, but between each New World kingdom and the monarch.²⁶ Similarly, British Americans based their claims to self-government on their rights as Englishmen. In particular, "they insisted that each of their own local legislatures enjoyed full legislative authority and exclusive power to tax within its respective jurisdiction."²⁷ 21

     Although both the Spanish and British crowns had considered asserting more control over their American possessions in the 1740s and 1750s, little was accomplished until the end of the Seven Years' War. That conflict, a world war fought in Europe, America—both north and south—and Asia, changed the balance of power in the New World. France withdrew from North America in 1763, leaving Spain and Britain as the principal contenders for control of the region. Both monarchies established standing armies in America for the first time, and both introduced new regulations and structures designed to enable them to exercise greater control over their vast and distant territories. Impressed by the great wealth that France extracted from its Caribbean islands, particularly Saint Domingue, Spain and Britain decided to transform their Americas into colonies in the modern sense of the word: they not only attempted to exercise greater control, they also sought to profit from them. Since these changes in the Spanish world are called the Bourbon reforms, the comparable transformations in the British are best conceived as the Hanoverian reforms. 22

     As was to be expected, both British and Spanish Americans objected to the new imperialism. Why British Americans objected so strongly to the new measures, such as the introduction of a standing army, the Stamp Act, the Navigation Acts, and the tea tax, and why the British government insisted on enforcing its authority is still not fully understood.²⁸ The British monarchy clearly feared that the colonials would insist on independence if their demands were met. At the same time, the colonists were convinced that the Hanoverian reforms sought to deprive them of their rights and liberties as Englishmen. Thus the American Revolution resulted from "the inability of the disputants to agree upon the nature of the British Empire."²⁹ But, in addition, the British, like the Spanish subsequently, proved unwilling to accept a settlement comparable to the later British Commonwealth. 23

The nature and process of the struggles for emancipation from the mother countries were as different as the three Americas. The war for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies became an international conflict in which France and Spain fought Britain on both land and sea. At the height of the struggle, France fielded a force of more than 10,000 men in North America—an army larger than the royal regular army in New Spain—while Spanish troops harassed the British along its border with New Spain, and the combined French and Spanish navies neutralized the British fleet at sea. As a result of foreign involvement, the United States obtained its independence through an international settlement, the Treaty of Paris of 1783.³⁰ 24

     Many of the founders of the new nation were members of the oligarchy. During the struggle for independence, the British-American upper and upper-middle classes shared moderate goals. Although other social groups participated in the struggle, they did not challenge the elites. No social revolution threatened their interests.³¹ The U.S. war of independence was characterized by traditional military engagements. Local insurgents with goals fundamentally different from those of the elites are notable for their absence. No rural insurrection occurred. The black slaves did not revolt against their masters. And the Indians did not take the opportunity to recover the lands from which they had been dispossessed.³² 25

     Although regional tensions existed, and although the first U.S. constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was rapidly discarded in favor of the stronger Constitution of 1787, the British-American elites managed to direct the new nation without serious challenges from other social groups.³³ As Greene has noted: 26

despite the universalistic pronouncements of the Declaration of Independence and the apparent inclusiveness of the phrase "We the People" in the Constitution, the American Revolution was a limited revolution that really fully applied, immediately, only to adult white independent men. Because such a large proportion of the American population fell into that category, the American Revolution seemed to contemporaries to be far more egalitarian and inclusive than it actually was. But whole groups of people—slaves, servants, propertyless workers, women, minors, free people of African and Amerindian descent, and even, in some places, non-Christians—were systematically excluded from the suffrage and the public space that the suffrage guaranteed.³⁴

The United States emerged as an oligarchic republic that slowly incorporated other groups into full participation, a process that continues today.

The origins of the revolution in Saint Domingue, as Knight observes, "lie in the broader changes of the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century."³⁵ The American Revolution, for example, directly affected France. The cost of aiding the British-American rebels contributed to the fiscal and constitutional crisis that destroyed the French monarchy. When the nobility refused to accept increased taxes, the monarchy was forced to convene the Estates General, and when that parliament met in 1789, a coalition of the Third Estate and a significant minority of liberal nobles transformed the body into a national assembly initiating the French Revolution. 27

     The French Revolution influenced the nature and process of the Haitian Revolution. As Knight indicates: 28

The grands blancs saw the Rights of Man as the rights and privileges of bourgeois man, much as the framers of North American independence in Philadelphia in 1776. Moreover, grands blancs saw liberty not as a private affair but rather as greater colonial autonomy . . . [In this, they were following the earlier political tradition of their superior councils.] They also hoped that the metropolis would authorize more free trade, thereby weakening the restrictive effects of the mercantilist commerce exclusif with the mother country. Petits blancs wanted equality, that is, active citizenship for all white persons, not just the wealthy property owners, and less bureaucratic control over the colonies. But they stressed a fraternity based on whiteness of skin color that they equated with being genuinely French. Gens de couleur also wanted equality and fraternity, but they based their claim on an equality of all free regardless of skin color, since they fulfilled all other qualifications for active citizenship. Slaves were not part of the initial discussion and sloganeering, but from their subsequent actions they clearly supported liberty. It was not the liberty of the whites, however. Theirs was a personal freedom that undermined their relationship to their masters and the plantation, and jeopardized the wealth of a considerable number of those who were already free.³⁶

     The violence in Saint Domingue was initiated by the whites in 1790. As the grands blancs and the petits blancs fought for control of the colony, they armed not only themselves but also their slaves. When the French National Assembly granted political rights to the free gens de couleur, the whites temporarily united to limit political power to their race only. Naturally, the free people of color also armed their slaves to defend their interests. After two years of fighting for the liberty and equality of the free people of Haiti—white and non-white—the slaves began to fight for their own freedom. Although Pierre-Dominique Toussaint Louverture won a temporary victory for the slaves in 1793, which the National Assembly in France appeared to ratify when it abolished slavery, the struggle continued for another decade. The British and the Spanish as well as the French intervened in the conflict, but Toussaint Louverture's forces drove them from the island, controlled internal dissent, and even captured Spanish Santo Domingo. 29

     When Toussaint Louverture had outlasted all his rival officials and named himself governor general for life in July 1801, however, he still did not declare independence. French attempts to reassert control of Saint Domingue caused the final rupture. The new emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, who wished to restore French power in America, seized Louisiana from the Spanish and, in 1802, dispatched a French army to restore order in Saint Domingue. Although Toussaint Louverture was captured and sent to prison in France, where he died, his cause survived. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, his successor, defeated the French, and declared Haitian independence on January 1, 1804.³⁷ As Knight observes, Haiti 30

was a unique case in the history of the Americas: a thorough revolution that resulted in a complete metamorphosis in the social, political, intellectual, and economic life of the colony. Socially, the lowest order of the society—the slaves—became equal, free, and independent citizens. Politically, the new citizens created the second independent state in the Americas, and the first independent non-European state to be carved out of the universal European empires anywhere. The Haitian model of state formation drove xenophobic fear into the hearts of all whites from Boston to Buenos Aires.³⁸

The upheavals in the Spanish world differed significantly from those in British and French America. The independence of Spanish America did not constitute an anti-colonial movement, as many assert, but formed part not only of the revolution within the Spanish world but also of the dissolution of the Spanish Monarchy. Indeed, Spain was one of the new nations that emerged from the break-up of that worldwide polity.³⁹

     Spain, like Great Britain, attempted to reorganize its new world possessions during the last years of the eighteenth century. It established a small standing army and a large force of provincial militias, formed new administrative boundaries, introduced a different system of administration—the intendancies—restricted the privileges of the clergy, restructured trade, and limited the appointment of Americans to government in their patrias. 31

     Although Spanish Americans objected, sometimes violently, to the Bourbon reforms, they did not imitate their northern brethren by seeking independence. The Spanish Monarchy was sufficiently certain of its Spanish-American subjects' loyalty that it fought Great Britain during the British-American struggle and signed the Treaty of Paris, which recognized the independence of the United States. 32

     The Bourbon reforms, however, did encounter massive opposition in Spanish America: those harmed by the changes used every legal remedy to stymie or modify the new system and on occasion turned to armed resistance to redress their grievances. Tax increases, the expulsion of the Jesuits, and other changes led to protests and to violent riots in Quito in 1765, in central New Spain the following year, and in Upper Peru during the years 1777 to 1780. The most serious upheavals—the Túpac Amaru revolt, which threatened to engulf the entire Viceroyalty of Peru during 1780–1783, and the Comunero revolt in New Granada in 1781—were overcome with great difficulty. Nevertheless, with a combination of compromise and the use of force, the Spanish crown managed to contain these conflicts. 33

     Spanish Americans opposed those innovations that injured them and managed to modify many to suit their interests. Although the Bourbon reforms initially harmed some areas and groups, even as they benefited others, the existing political and administrative structures appeared capable of negotiating acceptable accommodations and establishing a new equilibrium. The constitutional crisis of the Spanish Monarchy had not yet reached the breaking point. Events in Europe, however, prevented an orderly readjustment. The French Revolution, which unleashed twenty years of war in which Spain became an unwilling participant, further eroded stability. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Monarchy faced the greatest crisis of its history.⁴⁰ 34

     The political revolution of the Spanish world began, as Virginia Guedea observes, "with the imperial crisis of 1808."⁴¹ The collapse of the Spanish Monarchy, as a result of the French invasion of the Peninsula and the abdication of its rulers, triggered a series of events that culminated in the establishment of representative government throughout the Spanish world. The first step in that process was the formation of local governing juntas in Spain and America, which invoked the Spanish legal principle that, in the absence of the king, sovereignty reverted to the people. While the Peninsular provinces made that transition easily, the American kingdoms faced the opposition of royal officials, resident Europeans, and their New World allies. 35

     Events in Spain had profound effects in the New World. Unwilling to accept French domination, the people of Spain, as Guedea indicates, opposed the invader.⁴² Though initially divided, the provinces of the Peninsula ultimately joined forces on September 25, 1808, to form a government of national defense, the Junta Suprema Central Gubernativa del Reino (Supreme Central Governing Committee of the Kingdom), and to wage a war of liberation. The Spanish national government, however, could not defeat the French without the aid of its overseas territories. Therefore, the new regime recognized the equality of the American kingdoms and in 1809 invited them to elect representatives to the Junta Central. 36

     Although restricted to a small elite, the elections enhanced the political role of the municipalities, the ayuntamientos, and were the first in a series of elections that provided Spanish Americans with the opportunity to participate in government at various levels. When the Junta Central convened a national assembly, the Cortes, in 1810, it again invited the American kingdoms to send delegates.⁴³ The elections to the Cortes extended political participation more broadly than those for the Junta Central, including "Spaniards born in America and Asia, . . . those domiciled and resident in those lands as well as the Indians and the sons of Spaniards and Indians."⁴⁴ Before the Cortes met, the Junta Central dissolved itself, appointing a Council of Regency to act as the executive. 37

     The deputies from Spain and America, who enacted the constitution of the Spanish Monarchy in March 1812 in the city of Cádiz, transformed the Hispanic world. The Constitution of 1812 was not a purely Spanish document; it was as much an American charter as a Spanish one, because the American deputies to the Cortes played a central role in drafting it. The Charter of Cádiz abolished seigniorial institutions, the Inquisition, Indian tribute, forced labor—both in America and in the Peninsula—and asserted the state's control over the church. It created a unitary state with uniform laws for all parts of the Spanish Monarchy, substantially restricted the authority of the king, and entrusted the Cortes with decisive power. When it enfranchised all adult men, except those of African ancestry, without requiring either literacy or property qualifications, the Constitution of 1812 surpassed all existing representative governments, such as those of Great Britain, the United States, and France, in providing political rights to the vast majority of the male population.⁴⁵ 38

     The constitution of the Spanish Monarchy not only expanded the electorate, it also dramatically increased the scope of political activity. The new charter established representative government at three levels: the municipality (the constitutional ayuntamiento), the province (the provincial deputation), and the monarchy (the Cortes). By permitting cities and towns with a thousand or more inhabitants to form ayuntamientos, it transferred political power to the local level and incorporated vast numbers of people into the political process. Studies of the popular elections in Spanish America demonstrate that, although the elites dominated politics, hundreds of thousands of middle and lower-class men, including Indians, mestizos, and colored castes, participated in politics.⁴⁶ 39

     Despite the unparalleled democratization of the political system, civil war erupted in Spanish America because some groups that refused to accept the government in Spain formed local juntas, while others that recognized the new authorities in the Peninsula opposed them. Supporters of autonomy grounded their arguments on the unwritten colonial constitution, the compact between the individual kingdoms and the monarch. According to their interpretation, if that relationship were severed, for whatever reason, nothing bound an American kingdom to Spain or to any other New World realm. However, Spaniards and Spanish Americans in the New World, who believed that the Council of Regency and the Cortes constituted the only legitimate government, opposed the formation of local juntas. Conflicts also erupted in some American kingdoms when provincial cities concluded that they, too, possessed the right to form their own local governments, a view that the capitals of their realms rejected with force. In a few regions, the elites were divided among themselves. And, in some instances, conflict broke out between the cities and the countryside. 40

     Civil wars erupted in the New World that pitted supporters of the Spanish national government against the juntas, the capitals against the provinces, the elites against one another, and the towns against the countryside. Local conditions determined the nature and manner in which the conflict developed. As Guedea points out, because of the Europeans' coup d'état of 1808, the autonomist movement in New Spain began with urban conspiracies that subsequently erupted into widespread rural insurgencies. With the exception of Peru, the kingdoms of South America established governing juntas in 1809 and in 1810, which assumed authority in the name of the imprisoned King Fernando VII and sought to dominate their regions. 41

     Because all areas of the Spanish Monarchy possessed the same political culture, these movements, including the insurgencies in New Spain, all justified their actions on the same grounds and in virtually identical terms. They argued that because of the imprisonment of the king, sovereignty reverted to them. Most South American juntas initially consisted of both Peninsulars and Americans. Once it appeared that Spain might fall completely under French domination, however, more radical Spanish Americans took control, ousting the Europeans from government. Although most of the governing juntas acted as though they were independent and a few eventually declared independence from the Spanish Monarchy, the vast majority of the politically active population of Spanish America desired to retain ties with the Spanish Monarchy and proved reluctant to sever them completely. 42

An idealized portrait of King Fernando VII. Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico.

     The Spanish-American movements of 1810, like those in Spain in 1808, arose from a desire to remain independent of French domination. The great difference between the Peninsula and America was that the regions of Spain fought an external enemy, while the New World kingdoms grappled with internal divisions. The conflict in Spanish America waxed and waned during the first constitutional period, 1810–1814, and, at times, when the authorities acted with restraint, accommodation seemed possible. 43

     King Fernando's return from captivity in May 1814 provided an opportunity to restore the unity of the Spanish world. Virtually every act that had occurred since 1808—the struggle against the French, the political revolution enacted by the Cortes, and the autonomy movements in America—had been taken in his name. Although he abolished the constitution, at first it appeared that the king might accept moderate reforms, but ultimately he opted to rely on force to restore royal order in the New World. Free from constitutional restraints, the royal authorities in the New World crushed most autonomy movements, such as those in New Spain, Venezuela, Nueva Granada, Quito, and Chile. Only the isolated Río de la Plata remained beyond the reach of a weakened Spanish Monarchy. 44

     Repression by the crown prompted decisive action by the minority of Spanish America's politically active population that favored independence. In South America, self-proclaimed generals, such as Simón Bolívar, and former professional soldiers, such as José de San Martín, gained immense power and prestige as the leaders of the bloody struggles to gain independence. Although civilian and clerical institutions, such as ayuntamientos, courts, parishes, and cathedral chapters, continued to function, and although new governments were formed and congresses elected, military power predominated. 45

     It was clear by 1819 that King Fernando would have to send more troops if he wished to retain control of Spanish America, but raising yet another expeditionary force to reconquer the New World only increased discontent in the Peninsula. The liberals, exploiting the army's disenchantment with the war in America, eventually forced the king in March 1820 to restore the constitution. The return of constitutional order transformed the Hispanic political system for the third time in a decade. 46

     The restoration of constitutional government elicited disparate responses in Spanish America. When the news arrived in May, the people of New Spain and Guatemala (Central America) enthusiastically reestablished the constitutional system. In the ensuing months, they conducted elections for countless constitutional ayuntamientos, provincial deputations, and the Cortes. 47

     Political instability in the Peninsula during the previous twelve years, however, had convinced many New Spaniards that it was prudent to establish an autonomous government within the Spanish Monarchy. The autonomists, the members of the national elite who ultimately gained power after independence, opted for a constitutional monarchy. They pursued two courses of action: they sought autonomy within the Spanish Monarchy and they also worked to establish an autonomous government at home. 48

     New Spain's deputies to the Cortes proposed a project for New World autonomy that would create three American kingdoms governed by Spanish princes and allied with the Peninsula. This proposal to form a Spanish commonwealth resembled the later British Commonwealth. Indeed, the proponents argued that they did not wish to follow the example of the United States. Instead, like Canada, they sought to retain ties with the monarchy. The Spanish majority in the Cortes, however, rejected the proposal that would have granted Spanish Americans the home rule they had been seeking since 1808. 49

     At the same time, New Spain's autonomists convinced the prominent royalist Colonel Agustín de Iturbide to accept their plan for autonomy, which was similar to the one presented to the Cortes. Independence was assured in 1821 when Iturbide and his supporters gained the backing of the majority of the royal army. Mexico achieved its independence not because the royal authorities had lost on the battlefield but because New Spaniards no longer supported the crown politically.⁴⁷ Central America also declared independence and joined the new Mexican Empire. It seceded peacefully in 1823, after the empire was abolished, and formed a separate nation. 50

Hacienda account book whose images celebrate "Liberty," 1818. A woman (America), an eagle with the flag "Liberty," and an Indian overturning a castle (Spain). Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico.

     The newly independent Mexicans carefully followed the precedents of the Spanish constitutional system. Although they initially established an empire, they replaced it in 1824 with a federal republic, modeling their new constitution on the Spanish charter because it was part of their recent political experience. Distinguished New Spanish statesmen, like José Guridi y Alcocer and Miguel Ramos Arizpe, who had participated in writing the Constitution of 1812, also served in the Mexican Constituent Congress. To many Mexicans, the Constitution of 1812 was as much their charter as Spain's. In keeping with Hispanic constitutional practices, they also formed a government with a powerful legislature and a weak executive branch. Federalism in Mexico arose naturally from the earlier political experience; the provincial deputations created by the Spanish constitution to govern the provinces simply converted themselves into states.⁴⁸ Like Mexico, the new Central American republic established a federation based on Hispanic constitutional practices. 51

     In South America, the restoration of the Spanish constitution provided advocates of independence with the opportunity to press their campaign to liberate the continent. In contrast to New Spain, the South American insurgents defeated the royal authorities in battle. Two pincer movements, one from the south and the other from the north, eventually converged on Peru, ending Spanish rule. 52

     Two competing political traditions emerged during the independence period: one, forged in more than a decade of war, emphasized strong executive power, and the other, based on the civilian parliamentary experience, insisted on the preeminence of the legislature. They epitomized a fundamental disagreement about the nature of government. New Spain, which achieved independence through political compromise rather than by force of arms, is representative of the civil tradition. There, the Hispanic constitutional system triumphed and continued to evolve. Despite subsequent coups by soldiers, civilian politicians dominated Mexican politics. 53

     In contrast, military force liberated northern South America. Unlike Mexico, in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the men of arms dominated the men of law, and the Hispanic constitutional experience exerted little influence. The three newly independent South American nations established strong centralist governments with powerful chief executives and weak legislatures. In 1830, Colombia—sometimes called Gran Colombia—splintered into three countries: Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. The preponderance of the men of arms, however, was harder to eradicate. 54

     The Southern Cone, which also had gained independence by force, did not fall under the control of military men. There, warfare with royalist forces had been limited. Most of the fighting occurred among provinces that struggled for autonomy from their capital cities. Chile eventually established a highly centralized oligarchical republic while, in the Río de la Plata, the various provinces formed a loose confederation. Despite the differences between the two countries, civilians dominated both nations.⁴⁹ 55

The fate of the new nations of America depended to a great extent on timing. The British-American struggle for independence constituted part of a larger international conflict. The new nation gained both its independence and diplomatic recognition as part of an international agreement, the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Consequently, the United States had neither to spend large sums of money for its defense nor, like the Spanish-American countries, to devote years of political and diplomatic effort to obtain recognition from an aggrieved motherland. Fortuitously, the United States enjoyed a post-independence prosperity engendered by twenty years of war in Europe. The French Revolution of 1789 and the subsequent wars generated an insatiable demand for U.S. products. Moreover, Spain's involvement in those wars created a great commercial opportunity for the young republic because that monarchy had to rely on neutral shipping to conduct its trade with Spanish America. Thus political and social tensions within the United States were alleviated by its prosperity. 56

     The independence of the United States, moreover, did not result in the political and economic destruction of the British world. Despite brief and relatively minor conflicts, cultural, economic, and diplomatic relations continued between the former metropolis and the former colony. More significantly, during the nineteenth century, Great Britain became the preeminent industrial, commercial, financial, technological, and naval power in the world. The history of the United States would have been considerably different had Spain achieved that preeminence while Britain collapsed. In a world dominated by a country with a different language, religion, and culture, the United States would have been less privileged politically, less able to exploit its rich endowment of easily available resources, and, moreover, would have had to contend with powerful neighbors. That situation, of course, did not occur. Instead, the United States grew territorially through conquest, expanded economically, and maintained a stable political system that became increasingly democratic. 57

     Although Haiti began its process of independence, like the rest of America, by continuing patterns and processes that had been evolving for years, it experienced a dramatic social as well as political revolution. At first, Saint Domingue participated in the transformations of the French Revolution, but the slaves, who were not included in those changes, insisted on freedom and equality. The bloody and destructive wars that were necessary to achieve those goals jeopardized the country's economic and political future. As Knight observes, "the Haitians dramatically transformed their conventional tropical plantation agriculture, especially in the north, from a structure dominated by large estates (latifundia) into a society of minifundist, or small-scale, marginal self-sufficient producers, who reoriented away from export dependency toward an internal marketing system supplemented by a minor export sector."⁵⁰ In addition, a revolution of former slaves—people of African ancestry—terrified the white societies of both America and Europe. When their armies failed to subdue the Haitians, the Europeans isolated the country. Although some Haitians sought to continue sugar exports, most markets were closed to them. Instead, European nations introduced profitable tropical agriculture to other Caribbean islands. Thus the citizens of Haiti, an impoverished, isolated land, proved unable to form an economically prosperous and politically stable nation. 58

     The emancipation of Spanish America did not merely consist of separation from the mother country, as in the case of the United States. It also destroyed a vast and responsive social, political, and economic system that had functioned relatively well, despite its many imperfections. For nearly three hundred years, the worldwide Spanish Monarchy had proven to be flexible and capable of accommodating social tensions and conflicting political and economic interests. Despite inefficiencies and inequities, the monarchy functioned as an economic system and, as a unit, possessed the strength to participate effectively in the world economy. After independence, the former Spanish Monarchy's separate parts functioned at a competitive disadvantage. In that regard, nineteenth-century Spain, like the former American kingdoms, was just one more newly independent nation groping for a place in an uncertain and difficult world. 59

     By 1826, the overseas possessions of the Spanish Monarchy, one of the world's most imposing political structures at the end of the eighteenth century, consisted only of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and a few other Pacific islands. In contrast with the United States, which obtained its independence in 1783, just in time to benefit from the insatiable demand for its products generated by the twenty years of war in Europe that followed the French Revolution of 1789, the Spanish world achieved emancipation after the end of the European conflicts. Not only did the new nations have to rebuild their shattered economies, they also faced a lack of demand for their products. Instead, Europe and the United States were eager to flood Spanish America with their goods. The new countries thus did not enjoy prosperity during their formative years as the United States had. Rather, the Spanish-American states had to face grave internal and external problems with diminished resources. 60

     Spain and Spanish America's nineteenth-century experiences provide stark proof of the cost of independence. The two regions suffered political chaos, economic decline, economic imperialism, and foreign intervention. Both the Peninsula and the nations of the New World endured civil wars and military uprisings (pronunciamientos). In their efforts to resolve their political and economic crises, Spain and Spanish America experimented with monarchism and republicanism, centralism and federalism, representative government and dictatorship. Unfortunately, there was no simple solution for nations whose economies had been destroyed by war and whose political systems had been shattered by revolution. 61

     Only in the last third of the nineteenth century did the nations of Spanish America and Spain begin to consolidate their states. By then, Spain, and most Spanish-American countries, had established stable governments and undertaken the difficult process of economic rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the former Spanish Monarchy had languished during fifty crucial years in which Britain, France, Germany, and the United States had advanced to a different stage of economic development. In the period since the great political revolution had dissolved the Spanish Monarchy, the North Atlantic world had changed dramatically. Western European and United States industrial corporations and financial institutions had achieved such size and strength that the emerging economies of Spanish America and Spain simply could not compete. Consequently, the members of the former Spanish Monarchy had to accept a secondary role in the new world order. 62

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. He has published widely on the early nineteenth century. His works include The Emergence of Spanish America: Vicente Rocafuerte and Spanish Americanism, 1808–1832 (1975), The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico (1980, 2d edn., 1990) (with Colin MacLachlan), which was awarded the Hubert Herring Prize, and The Independence of Spanish America (1998). He has also edited a dozen volumes, among the most recent, The Origins of Mexican National Politics, 1808–1847 (1997) and, with Kathryn Vincent, Myths, Misdeeds, and Misunderstandings: The Roots of Conflict in U.S.-Mexican Relations (1997). He is currently completing two books: "The Formation of the Mexican Federal Republic, 1780–1826" and "The Creation of the Republic of Ecuador, 1780–1830."

Notes

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the XX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association held in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, April 17–19, 1997. I am grateful to Linda A. Rodríguez, William F. Sater, Kathryn Vincent, and María del Refugio González, as well as Michael Grossberg and two anonymous reviewers of the AHR for suggestions for improving this essay.
¹ In this essay, the term "monarchy" is used instead of the word "empire" for several reasons. First, monarchy is a form of government in the same manner that republic is. Second, the term empire implies a degree of subordination that did not exist at the time and that the people of those monarchies, whether in Europe or America, did not accept. That sort of subordinate relationship was characteristic of the later European empires of the nineteenth century. Third, the term empire suggests a degree of centralization and control that did not exist at the time.
² The Spanish Monarchy identified its component parts as kingdoms, principalities, counties, duchies, etc. The Spanish term virreinato, normally translated into English as "viceroyalty," means literally vice kingdom; it was used to refer to those areas administered by a virrey (viceroy in French or vice king in English). The Spanish Monarchy possessed viceroyalties in Europe as well as in America. The regions of Spanish America were called reinos (kingdoms), and its inhabitants did not consider themselved "colonists." See the essays in Mark Greengrass, ed., Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1991); and John H. Elliott, "A Europe of Composite Monarchies," Past and Present 137 (1992): 52–69.
³ Earlier historians, such as Roger B. Merriman, understood the Spanish Monarchy as a great confederation; see The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New, 4 vols. (New York, 1918–34). In contrast, more recent scholars tend to concentrate on individual parts of the monarchy. See, for example, Ernest Belenguer, El imperio hispánico, 1479–1665 (Barcelona, 1994), which examines only the European portion of the monarchy. Most syntheses of the New World possessions no longer limit themselves to those of the Spanish Monarchy but discuss all of Latin America; a good example is Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 2d edn. (New York, 1994).
⁴ Although Castilian—the language that is generally called Spanish—became the dominant tongue within the monarchy, it was not the only one spoken in the Peninsula. More important, Spanish scholars provided Indian languages with alphabets and grammars quite early. The first Castilian grammar was published in 1492, for example, whereas the first Nahuatl (the language of central Mexico) grammar appeared in 1531. (Miguel León-Portilla, personal communication with author, October 6, 1997.)
⁵ It is often asserted that the Indians were considered minors. That is not entirely correct. Spanish law, which was based on Roman law, distinguished between two forms of legal minority. The first, infantes and inpúberes—that is, persons sixteen years and younger—lacked legal independence and were supervised by a tutor. The second consisted of individuals younger than twenty-five years—the age of legal maturity—and older than sixteen. They possessed the right to act independently on all legal matters, but they were supervised by a curator who protected them in case others "abused their lack of experience, lack of malice, or incapacity." The Indians of Spanish America were considered minors in the second sense. In their case, the king—that is, the monarchy—functioned as their curator. See María del Refugio González, Historia del derecho mexicano, 2d edn. (Mexico City, 1997), 36.
⁶ Jaime E. Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998), 7–11. See also Colin M. MacLachlan and Jaime E. Rodríguez O., The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico, 2d edn. (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 196–248.
⁷ Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), 20.
⁸ Nicholas P. Canny, "The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 30 (1973): 575–98.
⁹ Patricia Seed, "'Are These Not Also Men?': The Indians' Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilization," Journal of Latin American Studies 25 (October 1993): 651.
¹⁰ Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 104.
¹¹ W. J. Eccles, France in America, rev. edn. (Markham, Ontario, 1990), 1–221; Jean Meyer, Francia y América del siglo XVI al siglo XX (Madrid, 1992); Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 41–68.
¹² Franklin W. Knight, "The Haitian Revolution," AHR 105 (February 2000): 108.
¹³ Thomas O. Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), 3–21; Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville, 1990), 15–28.
¹⁴ The best literature on the subject of repúblicas exists for Mexico. See, for example, José Miranda, Las ideas y las instituciones políticas mexicanas (1952; Mexico City, 1978); Andrés Lira, Comunidades indígenas frente a la ciudad de México: Tenochtitlan y Tlatelolco (Zamora, 1983); Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford, Calif., 1964); and Robert Haskett, Indigenous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial Cuernavaca (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 1991).
¹⁵ Rodríguez O., Independence of Spanish America, 19–22, 46–49.
¹⁶ John Leddy Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison, Wis., 1978), xviii.
¹⁷ Jack P. Greene, "The American Revolution," AHR 105 (February 2000): 96.
¹⁸ Gordon S. Wood, on the other hand, argues that free blacks possessed a status similar to that of white "plebeians." See The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 11–56.
¹⁹ Eccles, France in America, 158–66; Meyer, Francia y América.
²⁰ Greene, "American Revolution," 95.
²¹ Greene, "American Revolution," 97.
²² MacLachlan and Rodríguez O., Forging of the Cosmic Race, 144–228.
²³ Quoted in Knight, "Haitian Revolution," 107–08.
²⁴ Knight, "Haitian Revolution," 108.
²⁵ Rodríguez O., Independence of Spanish America, 13–19.
²⁶ Rodríguez O., Independence of Spanish America, 47–48. Father Servando Teresa de Mier, one of the most distinguished advocates of the thesis of American rights, declared: "Our kings, far from having considered establishing in our Americas the modern system of colonies of other nations, not only made our [kingdoms] the equals of Spain but also granted us the best [institutions] she possessed . . . In conclusion, it is evident that under the constitution granted by the kings of Spain to the Americas, these lands are kingdoms independent of her [Spain] without any other link but the king, . . . who according to political theorists, must govern us as though he were the king of each one of them [the American realms]." Servando Teresa de Mier, "Idea de la Constitución dada a las Américas por los reyes de España antes de la invasión del antiguo despotismo," in Jaime E. Rodríguez O., ed., Obras completas de Servando Teresa de Mier, Vol. 4, La formación de un republicano (Mexico City, 1988), 57.
²⁷ Jack P. Greene, Understanding the American Revolution: Issues and Actors (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 74–75.
²⁸ One explanation is offered by Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (1972; New York, 1991). Theodore Draper provides a somewhat different view in A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (New York, 1996).
²⁹ Greene, Understanding the American Revolution, 72.
³⁰ The struggle for U.S. independence is discussed in Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York, 1982); Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (New York, 1971); Marshall Smelser, The Winning of Independence (Chicago, 1972); and Willard M. Wallace, Appeal to Arms: A Military History of the American Revolution (New York, 1951).
³¹ On the other hand, Wood, wrongly in my opinion, argues that the American Revolution was "as radical and social as any revolution in history." Radicalism of the American Revolution, 5.
³² Some Indian groups supported the British government, but no large-scale Indian movement erupted that might have threatened the British Americans.
³³ See Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation (1940; rpt. edn., Madison, Wis., 1959); Roger H. Brown, Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, Md., 1993); and Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607–1861 (New York, 1965).
³⁴ Greene, Understanding the American Revolution, 389.
³⁵ Knight, "Haitian Revolution," 106.
³⁶ Knight, "Haitian Revolution," 110.
³⁷ The Haitian Revolution is well discussed in C. L. R. James's classic study The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 3d edn. (London, 1980); Ott, Haitian Revolution; and Fick, Making of Haiti. Two recent studies place the movement in its international context: Dolores Hernán