Rights in Revolution: state building, revolution, constitution-making and rights

How did Latin American elites understand citizenship during the process of state building? What systems of representation were introduced in Latin America after independence? What were the main political divides? How did indigenous groups, Afro-Latin Americans, peasants and working class groups participate in politics? How were tensions between group and individual rights played out? How did people claim political rights? What civil and political rights were afforded in constitutions? Were civil and political rights the only rights at stake in the issues arising?

Primary sources:

Jose Maria Morelos, Sentiments of the Nation, Chilpancingo, 14 September 1813.

The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy, 19 March 1812.

Declarations of Rights of 1789, 1793, 1795

A Digital History Project

Gendering Latin American Independence, University of Nottingham

Women and Independence in Latin America, University of Nottingham

Core Reading:

Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (North Carolina, 2006), Introduction + Chapter 1 ‘Insurrection and the Language of Rights’, 1-30. (See chapter scan)

Marcela Echeverri, "Popular Royalists, Empire, and Politics in Southwestern New Granada", 1809 – 1819. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 May 2011; 91 (2): 237–269.

Practical Assignment Preparation:

Take your pick of what you might be interested in thinking about for the reflecting on public history exercise:

1 Watch this episode of Henry Louis Gates Jr's Black in Latin America: Haiti and the Dominican Republic PBS, 2011.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Is a Harvard Professor, Journalist and Filmmaker. This is part of a series of PBS documentaries. We have an e-book in the library which is on the reading list below. How effective is this documentary as a piece of public History?

2 Look at this example of an online gallery. How effective is it as a piece of public history?

British Library Online Gallery: Spanish American Independence

3 Listen to this podcast about Revolts in Latin America. Do you think it draws on recent historical research? How effective is it as a piece of public history?

4 Look at the digital history resource, The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 1821-1876.

How accessible is it and how easy to navigate?

Background Reading:

Andrew Dawson, Latin America since Independence: A History with Primary Sources, 2011. (Chapter 1)

Oxford Handbook, "Independence in Latin America"

Further Reading:

Manuel Barcia. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the fight for freedom in Matanzas. Louisiana State University Press, 2012.

Manuel Barcia. West African Warfare in Bahia Cuba. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Manuel Barcia. Seeds of Insurrection: domination and resistance on Western Cuban Plantations 1808-1848. Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Peter Blanchard. Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.

Simon Bolivar, El Libertador: Writings of Simon Bolivar, Trans Fred Fornoff, David Bushnell (ed.) Oxford University Press, 2003.

Matthew Brown and Gabriel Paquette (eds.) Connections after Colonialism : Europe and Latin America in the 1820s, University of Alabama Press, 2013.

Simon Collier. “Nationality, Nationalism, and Supranationalism in the Writings of Simon Bolivar.” The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 63, no. 1, 1983, pp. 37–64.

Laurent Dubois. Avengers of the New World. Harvard: Belknap Press, 2004.

Marcela Echeverri. Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution: Reform, Revolution, and Royalism in the Northern Andes, 1780-1825. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Mallon, Florencia. Decolonizing Native Histories. Durham/ London: Duke University Press, 2012.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.. Black in Latin America. New York: New York University Press, 2011. (Chapters on Haiti and the Dominican Republic.)

Peter Guardino. The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750-1850. Duke, 2005.

Brian R. Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule on the American Continent, 1770-1830. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Anthony McFarlane. War and Independence in Spanish America. Routledge, 2013.

Mirow, M. C. Latin American Constitutions: The Constitution of Cadiz and Its Legacy in Spanish America Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Paquette, Gabriel. Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-Brazilian World, C.1770 -1850. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Jeremy D. Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery. Cambridge, 2010.

João José Reis. "African Nations in Nineteenth-Century Salvador, Bahia`". In Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs, and James Sidbury, eds. The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Mattias Rohrig Assuncao. Elite Politics and Popular Rebellion in the Construction of Post Colonial Order. The Case of Maranao, Brazil (1820-41). JLAS, 31:1 (1999), 1-38.

Mariza de Carvalho Soares. "African Barbeiros in Brazilian Slave Ports". In Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs, and James Sidbury, eds. The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Scott, Rebecca J. “Defining the Boundaries of Freedom in the World of Cane: Cuba, Brazil and Louisiana after Emancipation.” American Historical Review, 99:1 (February 1994): 70-102.

Joshua Simon. The Ideology of Creole Revolution: Imperialism and Independence in American and Latin American Political Thought Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Ward Stavig. “Ethnic Conflict, Moral Economy and Population in Rural Cuzco on the Eve of the Thupa Amaro II Rebellion,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol.68, (1988)

Steve J. Stern. Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World 18th to 20th Centuries. University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. (Relevant Chapters.)

Whitney Nell Steward and John Garrison Marks (eds.) Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

Camilla Townsend, “Half of my Body Free, the Other Half Enslaved: The Politics of the Slaves of Guayaquil at the End of the Colonial Era,” Colonial Latin American Review, 7:1 (1998): 105-28.

John Tutino (ed.) New Countries: capitalism, revolutions and new nations in Latin America. Durham NC; Duke University Press, 2016.

Richard Warren. Vagrants and Citizens: politics and the masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic. Scholarly Resources, 2001.

Charles Walker. The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. Harvard University Press, 2014.