Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500–1830
ISBN: 9781496204707
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Nebraska Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Political culture -- Latin America -- History -- Case studies; Spain -- Colonies -- America;

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, selected by Choice



Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500-1830 examines the nature of Spanish American political culture by reevaluating the political theory, institutions, and practices of the Hispanic world. Consisting of eight case studies with a focus on New Spain and Quito, Jaime E. Rodríguez O. demonstrates that the process of independence of Spanish America differs from previous claims.



In 1188 King Alfonso IX convened the Cortes, the first congress in Europe that included the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the towns. This heritage, along with events in the sixteenth century, including the rebellion of Castilla and the Protestant Reformation, transformed the nature of Hispanic political thought. Rodríguez O. argues that those developments, rather than the Enlightenment, were the basis of the Hispanic revolution and the Constitution of 1812. Emphasizing continuity rather than the rejection of Hispanic political culture, and including the Atlantic perspective, Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500-1830 demonstrates the nature of the Hispanic revolution and the process of independence. Rodríguez O.'s work will encourage historians of Spanish America to reexamine the political institutions and processes of those nations from a broad perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the Spanish American countries that emerged from the breakup of the composite monarchy.


Jaime E. Rodr í guez O. is a research professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of several books, including "We Are Now the True Spaniards": Sovereignty, Revolution, Independence, and the Emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808-1824 and The Independence of Spanish America .

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