Gaditanian Spanish America: changes and continuities in the study of independence processes

Abstract

Nationalist historiography of the nineteenth century, and of almost the entire twentieth century, consolidated the history of independence movements as isolated events among themselves and as breakage with the age-old colonial structures. Historians marginalized the influence of Spanish liberalism and the Cadiz Constitution of 1812 to the formation of political groups and movements in Latin America. Also, the study of the Hispano-American independence movements was carried out before the revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hence it is imperative to review the foundations of independence historiography, and its descriptive legacy of socio-political transformations, from the perspective of hispanist history. The thesis supported here is that the processes of independence Hispanic Americans did indeed constitute a change in the colonial structures. However, beyond the national histories, the matrix that explains the series of transformations establishes a relationship between these and the process from Cádiz.