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L'atlantique Révolutionnaire: Une Perspective Ibéro-Américain

2016; Duke University Press; Volume: 96; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3484810

1527-1900

Marcela Echeverri,

Colonialism, slavery, and trade

This fascinating collection of essays is the result of a generative conference at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2010. The edited volume reflects the organizers' effort to include the Ibero-American world in the debate about the Atlantic age of revolutions by focusing on five broad themes: the paths to revolution in the Iberian world; enlightenment and commerce in the changing empires; ideas, models, and concepts in the revolutionary Atlantic; the role of the popular sectors in the revolutionary processes; and slavery and slaves in the revolutions. These topics are of the utmost relevance to historians of the Atlantic world and Latin America.The book is one of the most ambitious projects to encompass the Atlantic in a broader sense by establishing thematic links between Latin America, Europe, the United States, and Africa and by bringing together the work of scholars from these regions (thus, the book includes texts written in English, Spanish, and French). There are, of course, different approaches to the revolutionary age that are the result of historiographic traditions as much as the case studies that each region brings. For example, Manuel Covo's essay discusses the implications of including the Haitian Revolution in the age of revolutions paradigm or of looking at it as a case for the study of Atlantic history. It is also quite interesting that the book editors represent the European school that has been so central in the reinvigorated wave of studies about Latin American independence in the past 30 years. It was following the work of François-Xavier Guerra, who was based in France, that historians have redefined Latin America's independence as a revolutionary process. More broadly speaking, this new paradigm in turn has made it possible to link Latin America to the wider revolutionary Atlantic and its historiography.I want to refer specifically to two chapters that contribute to rethinking certain aspects of this current historiographic paradigm that situates Latin America in the age of revolutions. Marixa Lasso's piece is critical of Guerra's statements about popular participation in the independence wars. She draws from the rich work produced by historians of the politics of people of African descent (including her own work) to counter Guerra's portrayal of the popular classes as disengaged from the political process of independence. Lasso's chapter shows that by including people of African descent in the independence narrative or, in other words, the story of the rise of modern politics in Latin America, race becomes a crucial theme. What is most interesting is the way in which Lasso unearths the specific moments in the nineteenth century when—in the particular cases of Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela—local confrontations inaugurated this narrative that erases the participation of the lower classes in the rise of constitutional and representative politics in Latin America. A major figure in Colombia was none other than Simón Bolívar, who, Lasso argues, elaborated a rhetoric that presented popular demands for representation as deriving from the ideals of democracy of a few enlightened lawyers.Rossana Barragán warns against the tendency in the recent historiography to emphasize the nineteenth-century juncture of the Cádiz Cortes to explain the liberal measure to abolish the mita. Barragán digs into a series of local and imperial debates preceding the nineteenth century and shows the layers of political economic thought over which the liberal measures were built. She argues that discussions about the nature of indigenous people and the legitimacy of the mita preceded the Cádiz decision to abolish it; in other words, these conflicts and considerations had crucial influence on the changes that came as a result of the constitutional reform. Barragán's research explicitly challenges the assumption that the liberal debates in Cádiz resulted in a radical break. We learn from her work that only local analysis can yield sufficiently clear background and context to explain Cádiz liberalism.It is very refreshing and instructive to see the dialogue among these and the other cases treated in the book, which include biographies of revolutionaries in the Caribbean and the Americas; new approaches to the Bourbon reforms; indigenous peoples, women, and people of African descent as subjects of modernity and nation building in Peru and Mexico; and the role of slavery in revolutionary politics in South Africa and Brazil. Some work showcased in the book is comparative, adding to its contribution to transcending nationalist or imperial frontiers. João Paulo Pimenta, for instance, offers an analysis of the Spanish American and Brazilian independence processes. Tâmis Parron and Rafael Marquese study slave revolts and politics in Brazil and Cuba. Monica Henry looks at the Spanish American revolutions in relation to the United States. And many of the other chapters take panoramic views of Spanish America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world.This volume will be valuable reading for scholars seeking to establish connections across regional and historiographic fields and perspectives in the study of the Atlantic age of revolutions.