Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic

Focuses on Spain's and Portugal's New World empires in a trans-Atlantic context. This book argues that modern notions of sovereignty in the Atlantic world have been unstable and equivocal from the start. It shows how much contemporary notions of sovereignty emerged in Americas as a response to European imperial crises in the age of revolutions.

"Sovereignty and Revolution has major implications for scholarship on imperial crisis and national independence in the Iberian world. It also calls the reader's attention to the strengths and weaknesses of Atlantic history."---Christopher Schmjdt-Nowara, Journal of Modern History

Autorentext

Jeremy Adelman

Klappentext

This book takes a bold new look at both Spain's and Portugal's New World empires in a trans-Atlantic context. It argues that modern notions of sovereignty in the Atlantic world have been unstable, contested, and equivocal from the start. It shows how much contemporary notions of sovereignty emerged in the Americas as a response to European imperial crises in the age of revolutions. Jeremy Adelman reveals how many modern-day uncertainties about property, citizenship, and human rights were forged in an epic contest over the very nature of state power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic offers a new understanding of Latin American and Atlantic history, one that blurs traditional distinctions between the "imperial" and the "colonial." It shows how the Spanish and Portuguese empires responded to the pressures of rival states and merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. As empires adapted, the ties between colonies and mother countries transformed, recreating trans-Atlantic bonds of loyalty and interests. In the end, colonies repudiated their Iberian loyalties not so much because they sought independent nationhood. Rather, as European conflicts and revolutions swept across the Atlantic, empires were no longer viable models of sovereignty--and there was less to be loyal to. The Old Regimes collapsed before subjects began to imagine new ones in their place. The emergence of Latin American nations--indeed many of our contemporary notions of sovereignty--was the effect, and not the cause, of the breakdown of European empires.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments ix Introduction The Labyrinth of Sovereignty 1 Chapter 1: Empires That Bleed 13 Chapter 2: Capitalism and Slavery on Imperial Hinterlands 56 Chapter 3: Between War and Peace 101 Chapter 4: The Wealth of Empires 141 Chapter 5: Spanish Secessions 175 Chapter 6: Brazilian Counterpoints 220 Chapter 7: Dissolutions of the Spanish Atlantic 258 Chapter 8: Crossing the Rubicon 308 Chapter 9: Revolution and Sovereignty 344 Afterword 394 Index 399