On Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic

This is a really tough text to get it—discussions of sovereignty tend to be rough, by their nature, and that is exacerbated by the seemingly impenetrable nature of Latin American revolutions (to a North American’s eyes).

In this text, Adelman largely rejects the paradigm that puts the Latin American independence movements within the “Age of Democratic Revolutions.” In fact, it seems that he largely—for the initial stages—rejects the argument that Latin Americans sought independence. Instead, the question is one of sovereignty. Unlike in North America and many of the decolonizing movements of the mid-20th century, this is not a case of peripheral colonies rejecting their imperial status and seeking independence. Instead, it was the center of the empire that imploded, and the peoples of the Americas were forced to come to terms with it. In this way, it almost reminds me of the collapse of the Soviet Union—the legitimacy of the Soviet Union began to implode in 1989, and by 1990-91, with an ineffective central committee and bureaucracy, the “peripheral” republics began to seek independence until, eventually, even Russia gained independence and the “Soviet Union” existed as an inner nucleus without any territory to govern, until it was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States and grew outwards again as a neutered body.

Anyways, I digress, the importance of the coming of Latin American independence was not a question of “why did the peoples of Spanish America rebel against imperial rule?” but “how did the peoples of Spanish America come to terms with living in an empire without a core?” It was only then that Adelman argues that the development of real independence proceeded in Latin America. Of course, the reinstatement of Ferdinand VII on the Spanish throne threatened to jeopardize the new identities established by American peoples (largely creoles). Given that they had already moved past mental frameworks that demand imperial systems, many were unwilling to renege on their new sense of sovereignty and state legitimacy. Yet, some were, cue the civil wars that absorbed Latin America until 1830. When independence-minded leaders succeeded in gaining independence, they faced the difficult task of not only producing a new state, but a new nation in the sense of a cohesive people. Given the splits caused by civil war, this was a difficult task indeed and, in many ways, still has not yet been resolved.

At least, this is what I gained from my reading of Adelman’s text. It is a difficult one, and I hope I did not misread Adelman. If someone disagrees with my reading, please let me know. I’m sure Adelman could have done more to make this text more approachable, and I took off a star for that. This is not a book for newcomers to the topic, and it might be best to weigh in on other texts engaged in the debate on Latin American independence movements before touching on this one.