On Insurrection or Loyalty

This book is infuriating. Here, Jorge Domínguez practices more methodologies practiced by political scientists, but also tries to frame the text as a history. In the end, Domínguez wants to open up discussion between both social scientists and historians. That’s fine, I guess, but the structure of the book almost physically repels me.

In it, Domínguez analyzes a number of hypotheses put forth by other scholars (mostly historians) about why different peoples within the Spanish Empire choses to rebel or stay loyal in the wake of disruptions caused by the Napoleonic Wars. A few of these hypotheses include things like “colonial elites didn’t revolt in Cuba because they liked Spanish people,” “revolutionaries rose up because Spanish restrictions on trade with insupportable,” “intellectual ideas arrived from Europe during the Enlightenment,” “distance from Spain made those in the Spanish Empire aware of their own identity.” Domínguez thinks that many of these have some truth to them, and they might have contributed to the rebellion against Spain, but they weren’t the deciding factor—although there are a few that he disagrees with in their entirety. In doing so, he analyzes four territories within the Spanish Empire: Mexico (the central parts of modern Mexico, given that he’s not looking at all of New Spain or anything), Venezuela, Chile, and Cuba.

Domínguez argues—perhaps obviously—that a centralized, bureaucratic empire (like Spain) requires “a balance of internal social, economic, political, religious, and intellectual forces.” Moreover, “resources must be adequate but limited” (or else something happens? I’m not sure on this one). Domínguez’s argument, in two sentences, is that “the Spanish American empire broke down when its internal balance and harmony collapsed” (obviously) and that “the empire broke down because it was too traditional and too modern” (what?). Essentially, the internal balance here is fundamentally about the role of elites in the system. The Wars of Independence, for instance, began in Caracas, where there were “severe economic pressures” and the “undermining of [Spain’s] legitimacy [during the Napoleonic Wars]” (two contributing factors!), but the choice for independence urged Creoles to usurp power from peninsulares, breaking the whole system. Similar events occurred everywhere in the Spanish American empire, including the regions that failed to revolt.

However, those that failed to revolt also had something that restrained their elites a bit more. In the case of Cuba and western Venezuela, Domínguez argues that racial issues were at play. Creoles from Cuba and Maracaibo both opted to side with peninsulares to push back against pressures from both regions’ large black (and largely enslaved, with a caveat that Venezuela did have many freed blacks) populations. The center of power during the revolutions rested largely on the Creoles, although the results of the revolutions could be more variegated—the Mexican War for Independence ended with peninsulares changing sides after Spain promulgated its 1820 constitution—they saw it as too radical and preferred to be able to play with their own little fief, which Domínguez says then underwent **de-**modernization.

The ideas in here are interesting, even if they seem a little obvious at first glance, but the text is so difficult to analyze because of the way it’s structured. I’m sure political scientists—especially comparativists who work on revolutions—will find it interesting, but historians won’t have nearly as much fun with it.