barriomulas.com - From Cadiz to San Juan: Me on Revolutionary Spain

I had spent the first two weeks of February carrying out an intensive investigation for a course of mine on Puerto Rican history. The topic of discussion was the Peninsular War in Spain, the liberal 1812 Constitution that it gave birth to, and its effect on Spain's colonies. It has already been a week or so since I gave my presentation and turned in the paper but thought that some of my readers might enjoy it. Google Print was quite helpful in terms of finding aged documents from the 1900th century, scanned transcripts of letters, and other valuable goodies.

In the paper I attempt to answer the contradictions of the legislative assemblies that drafted the Constitution and present a theory that Spain was in fact not going through an authentic social revolution. The concepts of Quaker economist Jack Powelson and German political scientist Hannah Arendt are applied to the war and incorporated into my own theory.

Below is the introduction for the paper. Click on the PDF icon at the end of this post to download. The paper is in English.

During Napoleon's invasion of Spain during 1808 and 1814, Spain and its colonies found itself among a political chaos. Accustomed to centralized government - where administration poured from the metropolis of Madrid to the rest of Spain and its ultramarine territories - anarchy dawned over the kingdom, as the royal family were easily sacked by the French Army. Just like the French had their sociétés révolutionaires and the Soviets would later have their soviets, the Spanish population would create a series of improvised and spontaneous juntas, consejos, and cortes, which would temporarily supplement centralized government during the French invasion. The following pages explore the foundation, labor, transformation, and democratic qualities of these institutions along with their relationship with each other and their effect on the government of Puerto Rico. During the investigation of the subject, two questions continued to surface; "What are the popular and democratic credentials of these revolutionary organizations?" and "why is it that such organizations proclaimed the democratic sovereignty of the people while simultaneously calling for the return to monarchy?" These questions will be further explored in the concluding paragraphs of this report.