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The US and Spanish AmericanRevolutionsby Jay Sexton

Members of the Venezuelan Congress sign that countrys declaration ofindependence from Spain. Detail from El 5 de Julio de 1811, by Juan Lovero(Coleccin Concejo Municipal del Distrito Federal, Caracas)

If one says AmericanRevolution in the United States today, it is assumed that whatis being referred to is the North American liberation struggles against the BritishEmpire in the late eighteenth century. But the British North Americans were not theonly group of European colonists in the Americas to rebel against their distant rulersin this era. Beginning in 1808, those in Spains vast American empirespanningfrom Mexico in the north to Buenos Aires in the south; Peru in the west to the

present-day coast of Venezuela in the eastrose up against Spanish rule. As inNorth America, a combination of ideology, geopolitics, and material interestsmotivated the revolutionaries. The Spanish American revolutions were protracted andcomplex. They are better thought of in the plural than the singular given theirchronological progression and disparate geographical centers of action.

Of all the revolutions in modern history, those in Spanish America in the earlynineteenth century might be most closely related to eighteenth-century revolution thatcreated the United States. In both cases, centuries-old transatlantic colonial ties weresevered in wars of independence. Both revolutionary movements were also civil warsof sorts, pitting pro-independence factions against those who fought for the

continuation of the colonial connection. Historical actors in the United States and inSpanish America were alive to witness the revolutions in both regions. ConsiderThomas Jefferson, who authored the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 andlived until 1826, the year most historians cite as the end of the Spanish Americanrevolutions; or Jos de San Martn, the Argentine revolutionary leader, who was bornin 1778 during the American Revolution. Finally, both independence movementsbegan a protracted and contentious process of postcolonial nation-building. In time, asingle United States emerged from the ashes of British colonialism. In SpanishAmerica, several new states came into being, led by Mexico, Gran Colombia (whoseterritory included present-day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador), Peru,Buenos Aires (present-day Argentina), and Chile.[1]

Contemporaries often commented upon these affinities. Revolutionaries in SpanishAmerica pointed to the United States as an example of a successful rebellion againstOld World colonial rule. In the United States, observers viewed the revolts in SpanishAmerica as validation of their own revolution. Ourexample has animated the South-American provinces to declare themselves independent! exclaimed the NorthAmerican Review reporting on the conflict in Pernambuco in 1817.[2] There is noquestion that the inhabitants of North and Spanish America were deeply aware of thesimilarities of their revolutions. But can the US Revolution be said to have influencedthose in Spanish America several decades later, as the North American Reviewcontended?

The answer to this question hinges upon historical method. Assessing influence is anotoriously tricky business. One way forward is to explore the circulation of

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revolutionary ideas from North to Spanish America. The work of historian Peggy K.Liss provides a model study. Liss found that Thomas Paines Common Senseapublication crucial to promoting the revolutionary cause in North America in the1770swas circulated widely in Spanish America.[3] Translated into Spanish byVenezuelan Manuel Garcia de Sena in 1811 and published in a volume that included

translations of the founding national documents of the United States, this text waspopular in Spanish America during the revolutionary struggles of the 1810s.

The influence of the US revolution in Spanish America can be traced in other ways.The political ideas and practices of the new US republic, as well as the constitutionsof the individual states in the Union, can be found in the political documents andinstitutions of the new Spanish American republics. Venezuelas assertion ofindependence in 1811 so closely resembled that of 1776 that a Spanish officialbelieved its author was none other than Thomas Jefferson. George Washingtonposthumously became a celebrity figure in Spanish America, often serving as thearchetype of a successful revolutionary. Other connections can be found within the

United States. Spanish American diplomats and envoys, for example, traveled to theUnited States to lobby for support. Philadelphia, where US independence wasdeclared, became an important center of activity for Spanish Americanrevolutionaries and their North American sympathizers.

These networks and texts provide empirical evidence that links the North American1776 to the subsequent revolutions in Spanish America. The North Americanexample undoubtedly inspired and influenced the independence movements inSpanish America. Yet influence should not be confused with causation. Theinternational event that most directly triggered the revolts in Spanish America was theFrench invasion of Spain in 1808, not the US Declaration of Independence. In starkcontrast to North America in the 1770s, it was the crumbling of central imperial power

in Spain, not the exercise of it, that precipitated revolution.[4] Furthermore, SpanishAmerican invocations of the North American revolutionary model should not be seenas straightforward attempts at mimicry. Rather, when Spanish Americans invoked1776 or the writings of Thomas Paine, they sought not only to learn from the USexample, but also to validate their own actions, to appeal to wavering allies, or tocommunicate their determination to achieve independence to foreign audiencesnotleast the United States, which did not recognize Spanish American independenceuntil 1822. Political utility, as well as ideological inspiration, accounts for theprominence of references to the United States during the Spanish Americanrevolutions.

When assessing external influences in the Spanish American revolutions, it is alsoimportant to place the role of the United States in a broader, international context. If itis true that this era witnessed the forging of new links between the inhabitants of theAmericas, these were not the only international connections of significance. Manyindeed, mostSpanish Americans continued to look primarily across the Atlantic forexternal reference points. Tracts from the French Revolution also were translatedinto Spanish and widely circulated. That the violence and bloodshed in France in the1790s often led Spanish American elites to present it as a negative model does notdiminish its importance as an external influence.

The most important foreign reference point was Britain. It should come as no surprise

that Spanish American revolutionaries looked to Britain for support. Boasting theworlds greatest navy and serving as the Atlantic economys financial center, Britain

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had more to offer the cash-strapped Spanish American rebels than did any otherforeign power. But Spanish American elites also looked to Britain for politicalinspiration. Suspicious of fundamental social change and wary of US-styledemocracy, elite revolutionaries like Simn Bolvar found in Britain a model polity thatbalanced conservative institutions, such as monarchy, with the rule of law and a

tradition of gradual reform. Though he greatly admired the United Statesdeclaringafter his visit there in 1806 that for the first time in my life I saw national libertyBolvar doubted that its political system would flourish in Spanish America. I think itwould be better for [Spanish] America to adopt the Koran than the government of theUnited States, although it is the best in the world, Bolvar asserted. Britainsconstitutional monarchy, in contrast, held greater appeal: England is the envy of allCountries in the world, and the pattern all would wish to follow in forming aConstitution and Government.[5]

The potential that the new republics in Spanish America might gravitate toward theBritish caused much concern in the United States. The revolutions that had been

seen as validation of its own independence movement threatened to play into thehands of the United States former colonial master. No US politician trumpeted theSpanish American cause more than did Henry Clay. But for as much as Claypresented the revolutions as a triumph of the anti-imperialism of 1776, he alsoviewed them through the hard-headed lens of US national interest. Clay argued thatan independent Spanish America would become an important US export market, aswell as enhance US security by pushing European powers out of the westernhemisphere. Like many of his compatriots, Clay viewed the revolutions in SpanishAmerica as an opportunity for the United States to enhance its geopolitical positionby countering the designs of the British.

The famous Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was largely the work of Secretary of

State John Quincy Adams, struck a similar note. The document expressed solidaritywith Spanish Americans, but did not extend concrete support to them at a moment inwhich it was feared that reactionary European powers might intervene to re-establishcolonial authority. Instead, it was crafted to advance the unity of the United States, aswell as to counter British advances in Spanish America. In time, the Monroe Doctrinebecame less a symbol of a shared, pan-American anti-imperial ideology than anationalist justification for US territorial expansion across North America andimperialist intervention in the Caribbean.

Developments such as the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine from anti-imperialsymbol to imperialist instrument changed the way in which Spanish Americans

viewed the American Revolution. By the late nineteenth century, memories of 1776were less a model for Spanish Americans to follow than they were a mirror to hold upto the increasingly powerful United States. Anticolonial nationalists such as JosMart, who was a leader in Cubas struggle against Spain in the late nineteenthcentury, romantically looked back at US history. But Marts purpose was less to use1776 as a model for Cuban independence than it was to remind US statesmen to liveup to theirnations anti-imperial founding.

[1] Lester Langley, The Americas in the Age of the Revolution, 17501850 (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1996); Wim Klooster,Revolutions in the Atlantic World:

A Comparative History(New York: New York University Press, 2009).

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[2] Revolution in Pernambuco,North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal,July 1817, 226.

[3] Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 17131826(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 210.

[4] J. H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 14921830(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

[5] John Lynch, Simon Bolvar: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006),216217; Liss,Atlantic Empires, 203, 219.

Jay Sextonis University Lecturer in American History at Corpus Christi College,Oxford. He is the author ofThe Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (2011) and Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American ForeignRelations in the Civil War Era, 18371873 (2005) and co-editor, with RichardCarwardine, ofThe Global Lincoln (2011).

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