Check out these new publications from members of our Hispanic-Anglosphere research network on the period of the crisis of the Hispanic Monarchy:

• Iglesias-Rogers, Graciela. ‘The dislocation of the global Hispanic world’, in Alan Forrest and Peter Hicks, eds. The New Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars, Volume 3. Experience, Culture and Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 550-567. It includes a bibliographical essay in pages 641-2.

Abstract:

Seeking the origins of independence movements in Latin America always brings historians to the period of the Napoleonic wars. Explanations have tended to present developments in the Old Continent as mere backdrop, a trend seemingly validated by traditional Napoleonic scholarship doggedly focused on Europe. It is only recently that a single transoceanic perspective has begun to be applied to the subject. This chapter draws from original research and recent work by economic and cultural historians who moving away from fragmentary and teleological explanations have offered us a different understanding of the make-up and inner workings of the Hispanic world itself. It reveals several little-known facts and developments, including the rise of a vibrant Hispanic-Anglosphere. The emerging picture results from adopting an entanglement approach, well-suited for this volume’s purpose of tracing the legacy of the Napoleonic wars because it demands wide geographical and temporal outlooks commonly deployed by global historians while borrowing also from transnational methods interested more in connections than on drawing comparisons that often obscure the importance of borderless activities and lesser-known actors.

Keywords: Spanish Monarchy; financial crisis; liberalism; constitution; autonomy; Hispanic-Anglosphere; Americas; Philippines; Equatorial Guinea; entanglement

• Brownrigg-Gleeson, José. ‘Fighting an Empire for the Good of the Empire? Transnational Ireland and the Struggle for Independence in Spanish America.’ Radical History Review 2022, no. 143: 32-49.

Abstract:

This article traces Irish responses to the crisis of the Hispanic monarchy (1808-25) and the struggle for sovereignty in Spanish America, comparing reactions in Ireland to those of the Irish diasporic community in the United States. It argues that although the Irish were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the cause of the insurgents in Spanish America, their support took different forms and meanings. Whereas contemporaries in Ireland saw the benefits of Spanish American independence for the prosperity and security of the British Empire, Irish radical exiles in New York or Philadelphia viewed the struggle as an opportunity to emphasize the validity of revolutionary and republican principles across the New World. In stressing the relevance of the geopolitical context and of transnational interactions to the development of contradicting imperial and anticolonial views, the article moves beyond prevailing narratives of military involvement and highlights the richness of the Irish experience of the Age of Revolutions.

Keywords: Ireland, Irish diaspora, Spanish America, United States, Age of Revolutions

If you cannot get hand of a copy of these publications from your library in the coming weeks, drop us an email with your details to hispanicanglosphere@gmail.com and we shall try to help!