Table of Contents

Part I. One Sole Monarch: 'One Sole Nation' - Advocates, Critics, and Challengers: 1. Negotiation, networks, linkages; 2. An alternative vision? Andean perceptions of the Hispanic monarchy; 3. The idea of metropolis and empire as one nation; Part II. Salvaging the Greater Nation: Constitutionalism or Absolutism?: 4. Iberian monarchies in crisis: juntas, congresses, constitutions; 5. Hispanic America - violence unleashed; 6. The first Spanish constitutional experiment: the 'one sole nation' and its opponents (1810–14); 7. The counter-revolution and its opponents (1814–20); Part III. Shattering the Greater Nation: Fragmentation, Separate Sovereign States, and the Search for Legitimacy: 8. Metropolitan Iberia - focus of disunion (1820–30); 9. The divergence of the American territories (1820–30); 10. Independence - territory, peoples, nations; Final reflections; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

Brian R. Hamnett offers a comprehensive and comparative assessment of the independence era in both Spanish America and Brazil.

About the Author

Brian R. Hamnett is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the University of Essex. He has travelled and researched widely in Latin America, and in Spain and Portugal. His published works have focused primarily on Mexico in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with interest also in Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

Reviews

'This book is a masterly treatment of the dissolution of the Iberian empires by a master historian. Ranging deftly from Mexico to Peru to Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and beyond, Hamnett provides an innovative synthesis and a fresh interpretation of the Age of Revolutions.' Gabriel Paquette, The Johns Hopkins University

'In this work, Hamnett displays tremendous erudition and a mastery of politics and economics. In distilling a great deal of primary and secondary source research into a wide-ranging text, he forces us to re-evaluate key events and figures rather than fall back on simplistic binaries and dated interpretations.' Scott Eastman, Creighton University, Nebraska

'In this absolute tour-de-force Hamnett brings together the many disparate strands of the complex story of how the Iberian monarchies dissolved. Moving comfortably in time and from Spain and Portugal to their American possessions, a clear picture emerges of how and why the empires collapsed and new nations emerged.' Natalia Sobrevilla, University of Kent

'… must be considered the single most important work to summarize the pressures on the Iberian empires, which eventually drove them to implosion.' Jeremy Adelman, The Journal of Modern History

'… Brian Hamnett's book is an extraordinary contribution to our knowledge of a generation of politicians, men of letters, military officers, and popular leaders who, for better or for worse, changed the Ibero-American spectrum. Anyone interested in both the ideas and the material culture that enabled and gave legitimacy to these events should consult this work of rare comprehensiveness and consequence.' Juan Luis Ossa, H-LatAm