A Reflection on ‘Independence and the Creation of Nation-States in Iberian America’

Abstract

Marco A. Pamplona’s paper reminds the New Zealand reader that the category ‘Latin America’ embraces many very different nation-making histories which touch only at points on New Zealand’s own nation-making experience. In his wide-ranging and thoughtful paper Pamplona is concerned in particular to explain the contrast between Spanish America – what became the chain of independent states from Mexico to Chile and Argentina – and Portuguese America – what became Brazil.

Spanish and Portuguese independence movements arose in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). For the Spanish colonies in the Americas, Napoleon’s invasion meant the obliteration, even if temporarily, of metropolitan power. For Portuguese America, to which the Portuguese court and other institutions of government migrated, it represented an enhancement of that power. In that contrast, as much as any, can be discerned an explanation of Spanish America’s division and of Brazilian unity. Further, within Spanish America each of the ultimately 17 successor states had a different evolution. For some of those states, independence arose from a struggle against the returning Spanish; for others it was a struggle against their own neighbours.