Reviewed by Margaret Ellen Newell | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.1

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Reviewed by Margaret Ellen Newell | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Margaret Ellen Newell, Ohio State University

Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution. By Karen Racine. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003. 336 pages. $65.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).
Venezuelan-born Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816), regarded as "the Precursor" of South American independence, always seemed to find himself at the center of dramatic historical events in Europe and the Americas. Miranda hobnobbed with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in the aftermath of the American Revolution. He debated constitutional theory with Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. He discussed history with Edward Gibbon and plotted an invasion of South America with the younger William Pitt even as Spanish spies dogged his every move. He mentored future liberators of South America such as Simon Bolivar and Bernardo O'Higgins. He romanced Lady Hester Stanhope (among many others) and captivated Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. He barely escaped the guillotine in revolutionary France. He was at various times a Spanish colonel, a French general, a Russian count, an English political consultant, and the governor-general of the First Venezuelan Republic. Accounts of Miranda's political—and amorous—adventures strain credulity, but as Karen Racine's fascinating new biography attests, the facts of his life surpass the most imaginative fiction.	1
Racine's fresh interpretation highlights Miranda's place in the late-eighteenth-century transatlantic Enlightenment. Like Thomas Paine and the Marquis de Lafayette, Miranda devoted himself to the advancement of liberty in general as well as to a particular nationalist cause. Living in exile for most of his adult life, Miranda was part of an international community of intellectuals, reformers, and quasi-professional revolutionaries who shared a common language of republicanism. Inspired by the successes of the United States and steeped in Enlightenment idealism, Miranda wished to be a historical actor, a heroic liberator in the mold of George Washington.	2
Using Miranda's own voluminous diaries and correspondence, Racine ably charts the process by which the Precursor self-consciously constructed an identity as the leader of Spanish American independence. Miranda claimed a "longer, whiter lineage" (3) in Venezuela, but in fact his father emigrated from the Canary Islands. Mercantile success did not insulate the family against conflicts with local creole elites that took the form of accusations about the Mirandas' racial purity. In part to escape the controversy, Miranda sought preferment in Spain where his father purchased him a captaincy in the army. (Interestingly, Racine speculates that Miranda's service in Spain's North African outposts gave the Venezuelan his first taste of a hostile local population's resistance to empire.) Army service also brought him into contact with the British at Gibraltar, which led to lifelong friendships. When in 1780 the Spanish crown threw its support behind the fledgling United States, Miranda was part of the fleet sent to attack British positions at Pensacola. While serving in the Caribbean, however, he alienated some powerful local administrators. With his career at a standstill, facing arrest and charges of spying for the English, Miranda fled to the United States in 1783.	3
Armed with introductions and his considerable personal charm, Miranda spent 1783–84 touring America from the Carolinas to New England. Racine quotes freely from Miranda's diary to supply a fascinating portrait of postrevolutionary society. Establishing patterns he would follow throughout his life, Miranda interviewed people from all walks of life and assiduously visited colleges, military installations, statehouses, and archives to try to understand the nature and practice of a successful revolutionary republic. He also cultivated contacts among the powerful, including Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton. By 1784 Miranda had broached the idea of an expeditionary force to liberate Latin America.	. . .

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