Re Imagining Democracy in Latin America and The Caribbean 1780 1870 Eduardo Posada Carbo All Chapter

Re-Imagining Democracy in Latin
America and the Caribbean, 1780-1870

Eduardo Posada-Carbo
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Francisco “Pancho” Fierro, Sigue la procesión cívica (1821) [civic procession
celebrating Peruvian independence]. Courtesy of the Pinacoteca Municipal
Ignacio Merino, Lima, Peru. Francisco “Pancho” Fierro Sigue la procesión cívica
de 1821 Pinacoteca Municipal Ignacio Merino. Municipalidad Metropolitana de
Lima
Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780-1870
Eduardo Posada-Carbo (ed.) et al.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197631577.001.0001
Published: 2023 Online ISBN: 9780197631607 Print ISBN: 9780197631577
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Copyright Page 
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197631577.002.0004 Page iv
Published: June 2023
Subject: Latin American History

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Posada-Carbó, Eduardo, editor. | Innes, Joanna, editor. | Philp, Mark, editor.
Title: Re-imagining democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780–1870 /
Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Joanna Innes, Mark Philp.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identi ers: LCCN 2022062197 (print) | LCCN 2022062198 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197631577 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197631607 |
ISBN 9780197631591 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Democracy—Latin America—History—18th century. |
Democracy—Latin America—History—19th century. | Democracy—Caribbean
Area—History—18th century. | Democracy—Caribbean Area—History—19th
century. | Latin America—Politics and government. | Caribbean
Area—Politics and government.
Classi cation: LCC JL966 .R3834 2023 (print) | LCC JL966 (ebook) |
DDC 320.4729—dc23/eng/20230124
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062197
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062198
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197631577.001.0001
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Maps
1. Colonial North, Central, and South Iberian America, circa 1800 ix

2. The Colonial Caribbean, 1803 x
3. Mexico, 1824–1867 xi
4. Central America, “Gran Colombia,” and the Greater Caribbean, 1830 xii
5. Emergent Powers around the Former Viceroyalty of the River Plate: The Era of
Independence (c1800–1830s) xiii
6. South America, 1862 xiv
Map 1. Colonial North, Central, and South Iberian America, circa 1800
Map 2. The Colonial Caribbean, 1803
Map 3. Mexico, 1824–1867
Map 4. Central America, “Gran Colombia,” and the Greater Caribbean, 1830
Map 5. Emergent Powers around the Former Viceroyalty of the River Plate: The
Era of Independence (c1800-1830s)
Map 6. South America, 1862
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197631577.001.0001
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Preface and Acknowledgments 


The present and future of democracy now arouse more anxiety and apprehension than they did in 2004
when we rst began work on the larger “Re-imagining Democracy” project, to which this book contributes.
At that time, prevailing attitudes were still colored by the triumphalism of 1989. Perhaps this shift has been
less disconcerting for us than for some, because it has always been a premise of our project that democracy
is not one given thing, still less a cast-iron formula for success, but rather a cluster of related ideas, fears,
aspirations and practices associated with the ever-challenging task of enabling people to live together
without doing too much damage and to some mutual bene t. Looking at how people have struggled with
these challenges in the past is not always encouraging, but it does provide perspective.
Historiographically, we are guided by three main ambitions. First, to explore ways of conceptualizing the
history of democracy—a challenge, when the concept is so mutable. Our solution to that (further explained
in our rst introductory chapter) has been to take the word as a guide to what we should be writing about—
to follow the word where it takes us, all the while paying attention to the kinds of work that the word was
used to do, and to the environments in which it was employed. A second ambition is to illuminate more
particularly the history of “democracy” and its applications through the late eighteenth and rst part of the
nineteenth century—the period in which (as we think) the ancient Greek, subsequently medieval Latin word
was “re-imagined” for modern use, in which the word and its cognates came to be employed relatively
routinely and consistently, in signi cant parts of the world, to assess features of the contemporary political
scene. Third, building on our early research ndings, we aim to show that this process of re-imagining
democracy took place roughly simultaneously across Europe and both Americas. These were regions in
which the word was known at the start of the period, at least to an educated few, then was employed in
attempts to describe, understand, and shape contemporary events, and as a result passed into more general
use. We do not think that “democracy” was comprehensively re-imagined in one part of this region and this
p. xvi understanding thence disseminated elsewhere. Rather, we think what unfolded were a series of
intercommunicating, but to a signi cant extent independent, learning processes, eventuating in varied
patterns of understanding and use. In this volume, we aim to explore how those learning processes were
worked through in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Eduardo Posada-Carbó was part of the support team for the previous Mediterranean book in the Re-
imagining Democracy series, and this volume has also been the product of teamwork, though di erent
members of the team have played di erent roles. Eduardo has provided intellectual leadership, recruiting
specialists for a variety of workshops and conference panels, forging links with contributors, and then
supplying expert input at all stages of the book’s production. Joanna Innes and Mark Philp have learned
most of what they know about the region from attending these events (and doing associated reading). They
have also played important roles in shaping the book, intellectually and presentationally. Joanna in
particular has kept the project on track and ensured that the essays achieve coherence and sustain dialogue
with each other. Joanna has also done most of the editorial work on the chapters, though always in
consultation with Eduardo and Mark.
Our funders have helped to make this book possible. Thanks to the Oxford John Fell Fund and the History
Faculty’s Sanderson Fund, we were able to conduct our rst conference to discuss plans for the book, in
Oxford, on March 23–24, 2017. Thanks to the Astor Fund, we held a seminar on our project with Jeremy
Adelman (Astor Visiting Professor) in October that year. Thanks to a research grant from Brasenose College,
we were able to host a book seminar with the contributors on January 24–25, 2020.
The Latin American History seminar at the University of Oxford has provided a venue for many helpful
presentations and discussions—and we are grateful for the funding provided by the Latin American Centre
at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies on those occasions. Panels at the annual Latin American
Studies Association studies conference also supplied opportunities to bring together contributors and other
interested parties over several years, and we are grateful to the Association for providing the organizational
framework for these meetings, and to all those who gave papers and joined in discussion. The Oxford
Maison Française hosted one of our reading-group sessions, and we are grateful for its hospitality. Thanks
to the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, in particular to its editor Gregorio Alonso, we were able to
publish a “dossier” on the subject comprising some early contributions. We were fortunate to hold our last
p. xvii planned contributors’ meeting in January 2020, before the onset of the pandemic, though some of our
work on the volume was disrupted by its e ects.
In addition to the authors of the chapters, a good number of colleagues participated in the various meetings
we organized in the development of this project, or advised us in other ways, and we are grateful for their
valuable contributions. With apologies to anyone we have inadvertently omitted, we would like to thank
Jeremy Adelman, Cristóbal Aljovín de Losada, Israel Arroyo, Arthur Asseraf, Ben A Bollig, José Brownrigg-
Gleeson, Francesco Buscemi, Gonzalo Butrón Prida, Alvaro Caso Bello, Celso Castilho, Gonzalo Capellán,
Martin Castro, Martin Conway, Michaela Coletta, Joanna Crow, Laura Cucchi, Malcolm Deas, Rolando de la
Guardia, Michael Drolet, David Doyle, Rosie Doyle, Rebecca Earle, Marcela Echeverri, Lisa Edwards, John
Elliott, Andrés Estefane, Javier Fernández Sebastián, Ludovic Frobert, Luis Gabriel Galán Guerrero, Klaus
Gallo, Karina Galperin, Carrie Gibson, Peter Hill, Graciela Iglesias-Rogers, Iván Jaksić, Andre Jockyman
Roithmann, Halbert Jones, Maurizio Isabella, Vitor Izecksohn, Alan Knight, Raymond Lavertue, Fabrice
Lehoucq, Annick Lempérière, Marcus Llenque, Tom Long, Jorge Luengo, Giuseppe Marcocci, Brian McBeth,
Viviana Mellone, Pablo Mijangos, Alfonso Moreno, Isadora Mota, Je rey D. Needell, Juan Ignacio Neves,
Hussein Omar, Ana María Otero, Gabriel Paquette, Carlos Pérez Ricart, Frank Sa ord, Jesús Sanjurjo,
Frédéric Spillemaeker, James Sta ord, Cecilia Tarruell, Clément Thibaud, Victor Uribe-Urán, Rebeca
Viguera Ruiz, Sarah Washbrook, and Laurence Whitehead.
We are grateful to the Pinacoteca Municipal Ignacio Merino in Lima, Peru, for allowing us to reproduce
Francisco “Pancho” Fierro’s watercolor, Sigue la procesión cívica (1821), which serves as the cover for our
book—we want to acknowledge in particular the valuable assistance of Mary Takahashi Huamancaja, Katia
Miluzca Alzamora Arce and Jessica Adriana Clemente Tejada. The editors would also like to join Paula Alonso
and Marcela Ternavasio in thanking Erika R. Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American, Early Modern and Modern
European, and Map Collections, Rare Books and Special Collections, Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre
Dame, for facilitating the selection and reproduction of some of the illustrations included in Chapter 8.
Benjamin Rymer provided invaluable help with the index. We are also grateful to members of OUP’s New
p. xviii York editorial o ce and the production team for shepherding our book through to publication.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197631577.001.0001
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Contributors 

José Antonio Aguilar Rivera is Professor of Political Science at the División de Estudios Políticos, CIDE
(Mexico City). He has been a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University
of Notre Dame, and the Institute for Advanced Studies, Warwick University, and a visiting scholar at the
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, as well as a Fulbright Scholar. He is the author of,
among other books: El sonido y la furia. La persuasión multicultural en México y Estados Unidos; En pos de la
quimera: re exiones sobre el experimento constitucional atlántico; La geometría y el mito. Un ensayo sobre la
libertad y el liberalismo en México, 1821–1970; and Ausentes del Universo. Re exiones sobre el pensamiento
político hispanoamericano en la era de la construcción nacional, 1821–1850. He is the editor of Liberty in
Mexico: Writings on Liberalism from the Early Republican Period to the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
and Las bases sociales del crimen organizado y la violencia en México. He has also authored articles in the
Journal of Latin American Studies, Historia Mexicana, Revista de Occidente, and Cardozo Law Review, among
others. He publishes regularly in Nexos, a leading Mexican intellectual magazine.
Paula Alonso is Associate Professor of History and International A airs at the George Washington
University and (correspondence) member of the Argentine National Academy of History. A historian of
Latin American politics and print culture, her publications include Between Revolution and the Ballot Box.
The Origins of the Argentine Radical Party in the 1890s (translated into Spanish); Jardines secretos,
legitimaciones públicas. El Partido Autonomista Nacional y la política argentina de nes de siglo XIX (2010);
(ed.) Construcciones Impresas: Pan etos, diarios y revistas en la formación de los estados nacionales en América
Latina, 1820-1920; and co-editor of El sistema federal argentino. Debates y coyunturas (1860-1910). Her
articles have also appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies and the Hispanic American Historical
Review. She is currently writing a book-length history of Argentina, and is working on a research project
on the history of democracy in Argentina and the Atlantic World, 1860–1930.
Nancy P. Appelbaum is Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Binghamton
University, State University of New York. Her research asks: How have Latin Americans de ned and
experienced race, region, and migration? How have inequalities been inscribed on landscapes and in
national imaginaries? How have race and gender played into the formation of Latin American nations and
regions? Her book Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Colombia examines
p. xx how mid-nineteenth-century geographers envisioned the racial and territorial composition of the
country that would become Colombia. An earlier monograph, Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local
History in Colombia, examines agrarian and regional history from the perspectives of a multiracial
community in Colombia’s co ee region over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She also
co-edited Race and Nation in Modern Latin America. Her books and articles have received prizes and
honorable mentions from the New England Council on Latin American Studies, the Latin American
Studies Association, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and the Conference on Latin
American History. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin.
Joanna Innes has retired from her Oxford teaching post but holds the status of Senior Research Fellow at
Somerville College Oxford, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. She was the
originator, with Mark Philp, of the Re-imagining Democracy project, and has co-edited with him related
books on America, France, Britain, and Ireland (2013), and the Mediterranean (2018). Her other research
and publications have mainly concerned British social policy and more broadly political culture in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Some of her work on the eighteenth century was collected in
Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in Eighteenth-Century Britain; she is at work on a new
book on changes in the social policy agenda and policymaking processes in the very late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.
Emmanuel Lachaud is an Assistant Professor of History at the City College of New York, City University of
New York. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2021, where his thesis focused on the origins of the
second Haitian Empire and the politics of freedom in the mid-nineteenth-century Caribbean and
Atlantic. His current manuscript builds on this initial research, bringing light to the relatively under-
studied imperial moment through a dialogue with the rich elds of emancipation studies, Latin American
studies, and Atlantic studies. He explores the pan-island state-building processes of Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, as well as post-slavery sociopolitical culture among peasant and urban poor
populations in the region.
Anthony McFarlane is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Warwick. His research has focused on
the history of Spanish America during the period c.1700–c.1850, especially the regions of Colombia and
Ecuador. It includes studies of Colombia’s economic history in the late colonial and early republican
periods, the history of rebellions, slave resistance, and crime in the late colonial period, and the
movements for independence in the early nineteenth century. He has published extensively on these
subjects, on the comparative history of late colonial Spanish America, on British American colonial
history, and on the history of violence and warfare in Spanish America. His books include Colombia before
Independence: Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule; The British in the Americas, 1480–1815; and
War and Independence in Spanish America.
p. xxi Nicola Miller is Professor of Latin American History in the History Department at University College
London and currently director of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies. She recently held a Leverhulme
Trust Major Research Fellowship to work on a history of nation-building knowledge in Spanish America
during the century after independence. Her ndings were published as Republics of Knowledge. She has
also worked on the intellectual and cultural histories of Latin American countries from a transnational
perspective, for example in America Imagined: Explaining the United States in Nineteenth-Century Europe
and Latin America (ed. with Axel Körner and Adam I. P. Smith), and “Reading Rousseau in Spanish
America during the wars of independence (1808–1826),” in Engaging with Rousseau (ed. Avi Lifschitz).
Juan Luis Ossa has worked at the Centro de Estudios Públicos (Santiago, Chile) as a full-time researcher
since March 2020. He obtained his BA in History from the Ponti cia Universidad Católica de Chile, and his
DPhil in Modern History from St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. Between 2011 and 2018, he
was the executive director of the Centro de Estudios de Historia Política at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
(Santiago, Chile). His research has focused on the political history of nineteenth-century Chile and Latin
America, with special emphasis on independence and the process of state-building. He has published in
numerous journals, such as the Journal of Latin American Studies, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, Revista de
Indias, Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, Parliament, Estates and Representation, and Bulletin
of Latin American Research. He authored Armies, politics and revolution. Chile, 1808-1826 and edited Volume
1 of the Historia Política de Chile, 1810-2010. In 2017 he received the award for the best researcher in the
areas of the social sciences and humanities of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.
Luis Daniel Perrone is Professor of History of International Relations at the Escuela de Estudios Políticos
y Administrativos, Universidad Central de Venezuela, and obtained a PhD in Political Science from the
same university. He is also researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas “Hermann Gonzalez
Otopeza S.J.,” Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. He is part of IBERCONCEPTOS, international research
group on the history of political and social concepts in Iberoamérica. He has published Veredas de libertad
e igualdad. Expresiones del pensamiento político y social de Juan Germán Roscio (1797-1818). His research
focuses on the history of political thought, political concepts, and political history of nineteenth-century
Venezuela and Latin America, with a particular emphasis on the intellectual history of popular
governments.
Dexnell Peters is currently Lecturer in Caribbean and Atlantic History at the University of the West Indies,
Mona Campus, Jamaica. He was formerly a Teaching Fellow in History at the University of Warwick, and
before that the Bennett Boskey Fellow in Atlantic History at Exeter College, University of Oxford He
completed his PhD in Atlantic History at Johns Hopkins University, and is now revising that for
p. xxii publication. His current research project—through the main themes of geography and the
environment, inter-imperial transitions, migration, the plantation economy, politics and religion—
makes a case for the rise of a Greater Southern Caribbean region (inclusive of Venezuela and the Guianas)
in the late eighteenth century, showing evidence for a very polyglot, cross-imperial and interconnected
world. He is broadly interested in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Atlantic World, and
cartography.
Mark Petersen is Associate Professor of History and Director of Latin American Studies at the University
of Dallas. He obtained his DPhil in History from Oxford University. His research focuses on the history of
inter-American relations, pan-Americanism, and Chilean foreign policy. He is the author of The Southern
Cone and the Origins of Pan America, 1888-1933 and several shorter works in edited volumes, Latin
American Politics and Society, and Estudios (Mexico). He is currently working on a digital humanities
project on twentieth-century hemispheric periodicals, as well as a book project on the international
history of Latin America.
Mark Philp is Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick and an Emeritus Fellow of
Oriel College, Oxford. He has worked extensively in the eld of political corruption and realist political
theory, as well as in the history of political thought and late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
European history. His books include Political Conduct; Reforming Political Ideas in Britain: Politics and
Language in the shadow of the French Revolution, and Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in
London 1789-1815, along with editions of J. S. Mill’s essays and his Autobiography. He was the originator,
with Joanna Innes, of the Re-imagining Democracy project, and has co-edited with her related books on
America, France, Britain, and Ireland (2013), and the Mediterranean (2018).
Eduardo Posada-Carbó is Professor of the History and Politics of Latin America at the Oxford School of
Global and Area Studies and the History Faculty, University of Oxford, and William Golding Senior
Research Fellow in Brasenose College. He edited Elections before democracy. The history of elections in
Europe and Latin America. He has authored and co-authored chapters in books and journal articles on the
history of elections and democracy, including the Hispanic American Historical Review, The Historical
Journal, Past & Present, the Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, and Estates, Parliaments and
Representation. With Andrew Robertson he is currently completing the edition of The Oxford Handbook of
Revolutionary Elections in the Americas, 1800-1910.
Carsten-Andreas Schulz is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Department of Politics

and International Studies (POLIS) and Tun Su an Lecturer at Gonville and Caius College, University of
Cambridge. He has previously taught at the Ponti cia University Católica Chile and held visiting positions
at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and Warwick University. Dr. Schulz is a co-investigator
in a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council on “Latin America and the peripheral
p. xxiii origins of nineteenth-century international order” (2021–2025). His research on the international
relations of Latin American states has appeared in the European Journal of International Relations,
International Studies Quarterly, and Latin American Politics and Society, among other outlets. He holds a
DPhil from Nu eld College, University of Oxford.
Andréa Slemian is Associate Professor at Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) History Department,
where she has taught Colonial History since 2011. Her research interests are in Latin American judicial
culture between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with an emphasis on courts and court
proceedings in a comparative key. She has also written about the independence process and state-
building in America, particularly in Brazil. She was Visiting Professor at Universitat Jaume I (Castellón de
la Plana, Spain), at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo do Mexico (ITAM, Mexico), at Univeristé Toulouse Jean-
Jaurès/FRAMESPA, Campus Mirail (France), at the University of Texas (Austin), and at Universidad del
País Vasco (Spain). She is co-editor of Jurisdicciones, soberanías, administraciones. Con guración de los
espacios políticos em la construcción de los Estados nacionales en Iberoamérica with Alejandro Agüero and
Rafael Diego-Fernandez, and De las independencias iberoamericanas a los estados nacionales (1810-1850):
200 años de historia with Ivana Frasquet. She is currently editor-in-chief of the journal Revista Brasileira
de História.
Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Kent. She obtained her
PhD at the University of London, has been a visiting fellow at the John Carter Brown Library, and held
grants from the British Academy, the British Library, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation. She has published The Caudillo of the Andes Andrés de Santa Cruz. She is the co-
editor of The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World, The Impact of the Cádiz
Constitution of 1812. Between 2015 and 2018 she led an international network of scholars researching the
idea of nation and the wars of independence, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She has published
extensively on the creation of the state in Peru, focusing on elections, constitutions, and the importance
of the armed forces. She is currently nalizing a book on the armed forces and the creation of the
Peruvian state in the nineteenth century.
Marcela Ternavasio is Professor of History at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Researcher of the
CONICET, teaches in the graduate History program at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina, and is
a member of the National Academy of History. She is the author of Candidata a la Corona. La infanta Carlota
Joaquina de Borbón en el laberinto de las revoluciones hispanoamericanas; Historia de la Argentina, 1806-1852;
Gobernar la revolución. Poderes en disputa en el Río de la Plata, 1810-1816; La revolución del voto. Política y
elecciones en Buenos Aires, 1810-1852, and editor of Historia de la provincia de Buenos Aires. De la
organización provincial a la federalización de Buenos Aires 1821-1880 Vol. 3; El pensamiento de los federales;
La correspondencia de Juan Manuel de Rosas; Bicentenario de la Independencia. Tucumán 1816-2016; and co-
p. xxiv editor of El laboratorio constitucional Iberoamericano: 1807/ 1808-1830; Historia de las elecciones en la
Argentina 1805-2011; and Halperin Donghi y sus mundos. Her current research focuses on the intersections
between politics and diplomacy in the Iberian world during the revolutions of independence and
restoration.
Guy Thomson is emeritus professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick, and
specializes in nineteenth-century Mexican and Spanish regional history. His doctoral research focused on
economic and social change in Mexico’s second city, Puebla de los Angeles, over the late colonial and
early republican periods. His research then shifted to the state of Puebla’s northern Sierra region,
focusing on the rise of liberal leaders through their control of indigenous communities and mastery of
the National Guard during the civil and patriotic wars from the 1850s and 1860s. During the mid-1990s,
his research assumed a broader Atlantic focus to explore the reception of democratic and republican ideas
in the borderlands of Granada, Córdoba, and Málaga during the mid-nineteenth century. He continues to
work on nineteenth-century Spain, Mexico, and the Mediterranean world with a particular emphasis on
popular and middle-class culture, religion, and politics.
Eduardo Zimmermann received a law degree from the University of Buenos Aires and a DPhil in Modern
History from the University of Oxford. He has been a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Latin
American Studies, University of London; a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre
Dame; a Visiting Professor at the Department of History, Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne; and Edward
Larocque Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He was awarded the Premio Ensayo Histórico La
Nación 120 Aniversario, Buenos Aires, and is a fellow of the Argentine National Academy of History. He is
currently Associate Professor at Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires. His research focuses on
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American history, particularly on state-building processes,
legal and political history, and the history of political thought. Among his publications are the following
books: Los liberales reformistas. La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1890-1916; (ed.), Judicial Institutions in
Nineteenth-Century Latin America; (co-ed.), Los saberes del estado; Las prácticas del estado; and Las fuerzas
de guerra en la construcción del estado. América Latina, siglo XIX.
1
The Project and the Setting
Joanna Innes
The Project and the Book
This book looks at the re-imagining of democracy, in Latin America and the
Caribbean, between the later eighteenth and later nineteenth centuries. By
“re-imagining” we mean the process of reconceptualizing the ancient word
demokratia (Greek) or democratia (medieval Latin) so as to frame thinking
about the modern world. That process unfolded across Europe and both
Americas over broadly the same time period, though with different in-
flection points. In all of these places, the ancient word was known and had
achieved some, if limited, currency in modern vernaculars before it was put
to vigorous and urgent new use in our period, against a background of revo-
lution, war, and more or less radical change in the institutions and practices
of government.
These processes shared some common features across this trans-oceanic
space, and there was much cross-referencing as people in each place were
exposed to information about experiences undergone and discourses and
interpretations developed elsewhere. But experiences differed from place
to place, and patterns in the use of the word also differed—and differed
all the more as the word was applied to characterize or interpret differing
circumstances and accordingly acquired local baggage. This being so, tracing
the history of the word in this important transitional phase of its re-imagining
has the potential to enrich and complicate our ideas about what “democracy”
might mean. It also has the potential to provide a comparative perspective on
the development of political cultures, and insight into interactions between
these cultures, within at least the more European or Europeanized parts of
this huge, heterogeneous cultural space.
In two previous collective volumes, we assembled international teams of
contributors to explore the “re-imagining” process as it unfolded across the
North Atlantic (in the United States, France, Britain and, Ireland) and the
Joanna Innes, The Project and the Setting In: Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780–1870.
Edited by: Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Joanna Innes, and Mark Philp, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197631577.003.0001
4 Re-imagining Democracy
Mediterranean (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Ottoman world).1

In this volume we turn our attention to Latin America and the Caribbean,
exploring what was common and what was idiosyncratic and particular in
the re-imagining of democracy within the region, as between one polity and
another and as between the region and elsewhere. We also explore how ways
of deploying and understanding the term were shaped by—and sometimes
employed to try to shape—understandings in other parts of the world.
It is important to our story that the Americas, including Caribbean islands,
were, from the sixteenth century, occupied and made subject to sovereignty
claims by European states, because it was Europeans who brought the word
“democracy” to the region, even if they initially had little use for it. As else-
where, it was at first a learned or at least bookish word. When it was more ad-
venturously taken up, sometimes at the end of the eighteenth and more often
in the early nineteenth century, it was quite often employed to challenge colo-
nial regimes. It was taken up by locals trying to imagine new and more inclu-
sive social systems, or new forms through which independent states could be
governed (though these commentators were often initially skeptical, or at the
very least tentative about whether “democracy” could really be the answer to
that). Later, the word won wider acceptance as a way of characterizing new
states, but it was also often deployed to challenge the achievements of those
states or of colonial regimes where these regimes survived (mostly on the is-
lands). When its equality dimension was stressed, it could be directed against
enduring social or racial hierarchies and exclusions. As the word was used to
do new kinds of work, it was pushed or passed on to new audiences, who in
turn sometimes put it to further new use. Nonetheless, it does not seem, even
at the end of our period, to have become a key word in the lexicon of the mar-
ginal. Rather, research to date suggests that it continued to be a word more
often used about than by “the people.” Moreover, it remained an ambiguous
term, one that could be used to disparage. People in the region could be said
to be capable of sustaining only a barbarous and turbulent form of democ-
racy (though it should be stressed that the viability of democracy as a polit-
ical form, at least in the current state of society, also continued to be debated
in Europe).
This chapter has three main objects. First it aims to do what its opening
paragraphs have already begun to do, that is, to introduce the larger project
to which the book contributes. Second, it explains the plan of this book.
1 Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions; Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

The Project and the Setting 5
Third, it provides a quick sketch of the region and its history through this
period—for the benefit of specialists, inasmuch as they do not usually work
on the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean, but even more for the ben-
efit of those who are interested in the history of democracy but know little
about the context in which it was re-imagined here.
The Project
Interest in writing the history of democracy has grown in recent years, but
there is no agreed way of approaching the task.2 Until recently historians,
wary of anachronism, rarely wrote histories of democracy except in rela-
tion to times and places where the word clearly had a central role in political
self-understanding: chiefly ancient Greece, the United States, Europe from
the later nineteenth century, and some other parts of the world (for example
India and Latin America) from the twentieth century. When R.R. Palmer
wrote a two-volume history of the “age of democratic revolutions” in 1959
(meaning by this the era of the American and French revolutions), he was
criticized for anachronism. He responded by writing one of the first articles
to try to chart uses of the word and its cognates, showing that although it was
not among the most-used political words in the era of the French Revolution,
and it was not always employed in ways we might find familiar today, none-
theless it was used to assess and to try to influence what was happening.3
It is certainly possible to construct extended histories of practices and
ideas that we now think of as defining democracy: thus histories of popular
participation, of representative government, of universal suffrage, or of the
principle that all men or all people are equal. But if the object is to write a
history of “democracy” specifically, our view is that that must entail paying
attention to the word and how the word was used—and we accordingly make
it central to our program of enquiry.4 This is because there is no one way of
2 Eugenio Biagini, ed., A Cultural History of Democracy, 6 vols. (London, 2021); Marku Peltonen,
ed., The Cambridge History of Democracy, 3 vols. (Cambridge, in preparation).

3 R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolutions: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-
1800, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1959; new edn. Princeton, 2014); R.R. Palmer, “Notes on the Use of the Word
‘Democracy’ 1789-1799,” Political Science Quarterly 68, no. 2 (1953): 203–26.
4 Other studies emphasizing the word include Jens Andreas Christophersen, The Meaning of
“Democracy” as Used in European Ideologies from the French to the Russian Revolution. An Historical
Study in Political Language (Oslo, 1966); Francis Dupuis-Déri, Démocratie: histoire politique d’un mot
aux Etats-Unis et en France (Montreal, 2013); Jussi Kurunmäki, Jeppe Nevers, and Henk te Velde,
eds., Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History (New York, 2018).
imagining what “democracy” consists in even now, and it seems arbitrary to

choose one among other contemporary definitions and use it to characterize
things in the past (which might rule out cases in which elections were indi-
rect, or where women did not have the vote, or where slavery was tolerated).
If we want to avoid anachronism and teleology, then we need to pay atten-
tion to how people configured things at the time and place under study; we
need to understand the challenges they saw themselves as facing and how
they tried to meet them. Democracy was not as frequently invoked in our pe-
riod as it would come to be in later centuries. Still, our research has provided
ample evidence to support Palmer’s claim that it was among the words that
people used to try to make sense of changing and confusing times, and the
spin they gave it continues in some ways to shape its trajectory. Pursuing the
early history of its application to modern settings has the potential to shed
broader light on this stretch of the past, and thereby on an interesting section
of the zig-zag route which links past to present.
Our choice to follow the word “democracy” does admittedly have some
odd and some limiting effects. Since the word has been used to characterize
different things in different times, an effect of focusing on it is that we do not
consistently explore the same thing. Moreover, limits to who used the word
and about what—especially pronounced at the start, but also evident at the
end of our period—tend to narrow one’s field of vision. We try to offset incon-
sistency of focus and narrowing of vision by offering broad characterizations
of the political and social context in which the word was employed. In any
case, what ultimately interests us is not how the word’s meanings changed as
a topic in its own right, but rather how and why these changes came about,
and what people were trying to do when they used the word in new ways—
so that the history of the word also becomes a history of aspirations and
achievements, of political cultures in the making. Still, we have to concede
that adopting this approach sheds more light on some people’s experiences
and aspirations than on others’, even when we identify its wider dissemina-
tion as an important and interesting part of the story.
It is probably helpful at this point to recap some of the findings of our pre-
vious volumes. Across all the regions we have studied so far, the word’s ini-
tial associations were predominantly negative. It could be used neutrally, to
characterize a particular way of organizing state power and placing it in the
hands of the many rather than in one or few—though even in that context it
had a bad reputation. Democracies were typically represented as unstable,
as prone to lurch toward either anarchy or tyranny. Moreover, the word was
often used in ways colored by ancient history to designate a form of political

culture or set of behaviors associated with the gathering of crowds or mobs,
speechifying by demagogues, and dramatic, erratic political mood swings—
akin to phenomena that are now sometimes termed “populism.” Even in the
United States, sometimes imagined to have been born democratic during the
era of the revolution and the making of the federal constitution, uses of the
word that have been documented were mainly negative. In the 1790s some
US political actors used it more positively, but at that time it designated a
contentious set of political values. Only from 1800 did it win wider accept-
ance there—though it retained partisan resonances, and these grew stronger
with the rise of the Democratic Party.5
Not only in America but also in Europe, from the 1830s the term was
more commonly given a positive spin.6 This was partly because represen-
tative institutions increasingly won acceptance but also because, whereas
once these institutions had been contrasted with tumultuous “democracy,”
increasingly they were conceptualized as embodying it, as incarnating “rep-
resentative democracy.” That renaming was two-edged. On the one hand, a
striking shift was involved in any form of “democracy” winning widespread
recognition as a possible and perhaps even inevitable feature of the modern
world; on the other hand, what was most strongly endorsed was an emphati-
cally bounded version of democracy. In the spirit of boundary-setting, people
were told not to aim at anything like “pure democracy” or any form of direct
action, but rather to channel their views through their representatives. Still,
attempts to deny the word alternative meanings failed. Democracy as repre-
sentation always remained (and remains) vulnerable to the charge that it is
not representative enough, or not democratic enough. So the word remained
ambiguous in its implications. It could be, as it still is, employed to legitimate
and celebrate representative government—but it has also always had the po-
tential to fuel challenges to any regime.
In turning our attention to Latin America and the Caribbean, we turn to
a part of the world in which usage tracked broadly the same course, but with
key differences. Differences sprang from the timing and character of struggles
for independence, the character of the regimes established or sustained and
adapted, and the social and cultural settings within which governments
5 Seth Cotlar, “Languages of Democracy in America from the Revolution to the Election of 1800,”
in Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions, 13–27.

6 Innes and Philp, “ ‘Democracy’ from Book to Life.”
operated. Central-state organs in the region often had little purchase on out-
lying provinces; even in small Caribbean islands, in some districts power was
ceded to runaway slaves and their descendants, “maroons.” Societies were
characteristically ethnically mixed and culturally divided.
Political experiences in the region during our period were diverse. The
most obvious divide lay between states which became independent and
those which remained colonies of European metropoles. All mainland states
and the island of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) fell into the first
category; most islands and some slivers of the Caribbean coast fell into the
second. The first set of places provided more obvious opportunities for the
word “democracy” to find purchase—though (as we shall see) this does
not imply that the term was always embraced at the start, or consistently
thereafter; nor did any single understanding of it consistently hold sway.
In those places that remained colonies, the term fit less well with prevailing
circumstances, yet nonetheless, as it became increasingly a talking point else-
where in Europe and the Americas, it entered local discourse and found local
applications, though possibly mostly by way of challenge to the status quo.
Observers in the United States and in Europe (as Carsten Schulz and Mark
Petersen explain in Chapter 10) recognized the new republics of this re-
gion as sites of democratic experiment, in fact the world’s largest contiguous
cluster of such sites. Yet they also often saw them as revealing the difficulties
of the form—because their regimes enjoyed uneven success in facing down
challenges (often in the form of armed insurgencies or secessions), and,
when challenges were faced down, that was often by ramping up executive
power. Critical accounts which highlighted turbulence and instability fre-
quently also entailed racial or religious disparagement: Latin Americans and
Caribbeans were said to be too ethnically mixed, or not “white” enough to
make democracy work or, alternatively or additionally, too Catholic.
Yet the pattern on the ground was variegated. Furthermore, we need to
pause and consider what comparators we are applying if we judge the region’s
experience to have been peculiarly disheartening. Republics elsewhere expe-
rienced similar troubles, including Switzerland (with its Sonderbund War,
1844) and the United States, with its often-contested processes of internal
regulation and expansion and, at the end of our period, its own Civil War.
France opted for kings and emperors to bring stability through much of the
nineteenth century but still experienced a succession of revolutions and
coups. Perhaps such problems were endemic to contemporary states, and the
spread of democratic values at most exacerbated them.
Some recent historians have been more upbeat about Latin American ex-
perience at this time, stressing the region’s pioneering role in the democratic
experiment (or liberal experiment, or republican experiment—different
commentators press different values and descriptions to the fore).7 We
broadly endorse this perspective. Large parts of our region saw strikingly
daring attempts to instantiate new forms of the ancient mode “democracy”
in challenging modern environments. In this region, this venture usu-
ally entailed incorporating into formal politics populations that were both
scattered and diverse—meaning, among other things, diverse in their ethnic
origins, which some European commentators saw as inherently risky.8
Many of the reasons why such experiments were undertaken were prag-
matic. They arose from the exigencies of war and from the need to estab-
lish and give legitimacy to new institutions of government. But they were
also clearly influenced by political ideas that, if not wholly new, had at the
very least been invigorated and given new twists by recent developments in
Europe and other parts of the Americas, under similar exigencies. In all these
experiments there was also an element of idealism (in some interpretations
of the time, and since, foolhardy idealism).
Latin American and Caribbean experiments at this time certainly
underlined the inherent difficulty of “democratic” enterprise. If government
is believed to be bound to give force to the wishes of the people, then it is
always in principle open to challenge. It can always be delegitimized by dis-
content, and discontent can be cultivated and exploited by the ambitious.
Those problems are intrinsic to any approach to governance that aims to
count all people as equal and give them a voice in how they are ruled. These
problems manifest themselves in different ways in different times and places,
but—as even some of the most “advanced” states have rediscovered in recent
decades—they never go away. During the period under study here, some
people came to think that “democracy,” for all its problems, was the only vi-
able form of government in the modern world. We may think that is true.
Yet, insofar as democracy gives voice to the “people,” that inevitably entails
channeling tensions and contradictions, so will never guarantee an easy ride.
7 Hilda Sabato, Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-
Century Latin America (Princeton, NJ, 2018); James E. Sanders, The Vanguard of the Atlantic
World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Durham,
NC, 2014).
8 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton,
NJ, 2005), for Tocqueville on political options for Algeria.

Plan of the Book
Though adopting the same overall approach, different books in our series
have varied in plan. The plan of this book reflects our desire to make it acces-
sible to, among others, readers who are interested in the history of democ-
racy but have little knowledge of the regional context. Accordingly, following
two introductory chapters (this, and another focusing more particularly on
language), we offer a series of thematic chapters that explore topics we judge
important because of the part they played in shaping uses of the word “de-
mocracy,” We hope that specialists will also find these surveys useful, and
suggestive in relation to our main concern.
The thematic chapters explore successively colonial inheritances, the
processes by which new independent states were formed, patterns of ethnic
diversity, and how ethnic relations were reframed over the period. Also
explored are the local uses made of the (then quite innovative) device of the
state (or provincial) “constitution,” and the nature of urban and other political
cultures that developed in interaction with new governmental and political
institutions. We had hoped to include a chapter on church and religion—
on the ways in which religious institutions and practices shaped political life
and, in some places, became major objects of contention—but the pandemic
intervened and frustrated our efforts. Two final thematic chapters explore
the role assigned to education in fitting populations for the challenges of life
in the new states, and external perceptions of Latin American and Caribbean
democracy.
The thematic chapters focus above all on the settings in which talk of de-
mocracy developed. But along the way, many of them also shed light on how
“democracy” and associated terms were employed: what baggage they carried,
what subjects they were used to talk about, and what work they were used to
do. In Chapter 4, Dexnell Peters looks at Caribbean islands which remained
colonies of France or Britain and explores briefly how “democracy” made its
appearance in local political vocabularies, mainly from the mid-nineteenth
century, in what might be thought to have been unpromising settings. In
Chapter 7, José Antonio Aguilar Rivera and Eduardo Zimmerman among
other things look at ways in which “democracy” figured in constitutions and
constitutional debates. Paula Alonso and Marcela Ternavasio, in Chapter 8,
show how changes in political cultures in Argentina and Peru aligned with
changes in talk about “democracy.” In Chapter 9, Nicola Miller shows that
national education projects were sometimes conceptualized as serving
“democratic” ends. Mark Petersen and Carsten Schulz explore US and

European discourses about Latin American and Caribbean “democracy” in
Chapter 10.
Language moves to the fore in the final six chapters, which build upon
but aim to move beyond previous work by providing sketches of the word’s
use in a variety of local settings. Emmanuel Lachaud looks at the word’s his-
tory in Hispaniola: that is, in Saint Domingue/Haiti and Santo Domingo/
the Dominican Republic. Andrea Slemian looks at imperial Brazil, and
Luis Daniel Perrone looks at Venezuela—his chapter focuses especially on
how democracy was and was not invoked in discussions of slavery and ra-
cial issues, in a state where many inhabitants were of African descent. Guy
Thomson in Chapter 13 looks at how the language of democracy figured as a
vehicle for social as well as political criticism in Mexico, and in Chapters 15
and 16 respectively, Eduardo Posada-Carbó and Juan Luis Ossa explore its
relatively early and widespread adoption in two of the region’s more stable
and lively representation-based political cultures.
Overview of the Region
This introduction has already stressed the heterogeneity of the region that
this book explores. We aim now to enlarge on that assertion, to encourage
specialists to keep in view the region as a whole, and to begin to orient readers
with little prior knowledge of these places and their histories.9
The region that we are concerned with stretched down the North
American west coast, from San Francisco southward through Central and
South America toward its southernmost part, Patagonia, and eastward to
the Caribbean islands as they arced from Cuba down to Trinidad, through
the Greater Antilles—that is, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and Santo
Domingo) and Puerto Rico—and then the Lesser Antilles, the smaller,
mainly British and French Leeward and Windward Islands.
At the start of our period, the vast bulk of this land was (at least according
to European conceptions) subject to the crown of Spain. Mainland Spanish
territories were organized into four viceroyalties: New Spain (which in-
cluded Central America); New Granada (which included modern Panama,
Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela); Peru (which included modern Chile), and
9 See Further Reading for general studies which inform this account.
the Rio de La Plata or River Plate (which included modern Bolivia, Paraguay,
Uruguay, and Argentina). This last viceroyalty was a late foundation, dating
only from 1776. Spain also held several of the larger Caribbean islands: Cuba,
the Santo Domingo section of Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. Excepting only a
chunk of coast called Guiana (divided among the Dutch, the British, and the
French), the remaining colonized chunk of the South American mainland
was Portugal’s Brazil. Spain’s viceroyalties represented one jurisdictional ge-
ography, but one that sat over or overlapped with others—captaincies within
viceroyalties (like Chile within Peru) and audiencias, areas subject to the ju-
risdiction of a single court. The post-colonial political geography that ulti-
mately emerged roughly followed the lines of these smaller units. Portugal’s
Brazil, for its part, from 1774 constituted a single viceroyalty, but it was di-
vided into captaincies which, after the formation of a separate Brazilian
kingdom, morphed into or were redistricted to form around twenty
provinces.
Anthony McFarlane in Chapter 3 explains how Iberian lands were
governed—at the top level, by people sent out from metropoles. These were
highly unequal societies, with overlapping (but not identical) governing
and landowning elites, some of whom had noble titles. He also emphasizes
the importance of cities as central nodes in networks of government and as
powerful entities in their own right, with some self-governing capacity. It
was in such cities that many of the more ethnically and culturally European
members of these societies lived. Major cities in Spanish (though not
Portuguese) America had their own universities, so were equipped to repro-
duce local professional elites.
Among other powers with footholds in the Caribbean, we concern our-
selves here only with the most powerful, the French and the British. France’s
largest island was Saint Domingue (the western part of Hispaniola); Britain’s
was Jamaica. Dexnell Peters in Chapter 4 aims to give a general picture of
patterns of French and British rule. Insofar as he pays attention to partic-
ular places, these are those large islands and, among the Lesser Antilles,
French Martinique and Guadeloupe, and British Barbados (a small island
with a particularly successful plantation economy) together with Trinidad,
a late British acquisition lying at the southern end of the Antillean arc just
off the Venezuelan coast. Like Spain and Portugal, France and Britain sent
governors from the metropole. Major landowners were often absentees, run-
ning their plantations through managers, but some family members moved
back and forth between colony and metropole, and there were also long-term
European settlers, who sometimes played a part in the islands’ government

(some but not all British islands had elected legislatures).
All in all, this was an enormous region with hugely varied topography and
climatic conditions, population mixes and economies, and, already in the co-
lonial period, systems of rule.
The population of Spanish (including Spanish island) territories at the
start of our period was perhaps in the region of 10 million, on the same order
as Spain. The population of Brazil, at around 4 million, was at least half as
much again as that of Portugal. British and French metropolitan populations,
by contrast, dwarfed those of their colonies. Britain (still more, Britain and
Ireland) had a population several times that of all British colonies in North
America and the Caribbean combined (even if we include those North
American colonies which, in 1780, were in the process of asserting their in-
dependence). France, with its larger population—over 25 million in 1780—
had a still more decisive lead. Considering all the Caribbean islands together,
the four largest had more than one million inhabitants among them (France’s
Saint Domingue being the most populous); the smaller islands totaled some-
thing less.10
Europeans, and mainly European “creoles” (of European descent, but lo-
cally born), were generally a minority across this space, though least so in
cities and some coastal regions. But mixes varied from place to place. Two
of Spain’s viceroyalties, New Spain and Peru, had once been home to major
indigenous civilizations, and more or less assimilated indigenous people
continued to bulk large within their populations. Enslaved Africans were
particularly numerous around tropical coasts suitable for plantation agricul-
ture: thus in New Spain, New Granada, Brazil, and above all on the islands.
But enslaved people, who formed vast majorities on the most successful
plantation colonies—Saint Domingue, Barbados—were less numerous in
others: thus in the early years in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Dominica (which
the British acquired from the French in the Seven Years War), and Dutch
Trinidad (subsequently acquired by the British). In some places—Caribbean
New Granada, Saint Domingue, Trinidad—there were substantial free black
or mixed Afro-European (“mulatto”) populations; in others (Cuba, Jamaica,
Barbados) initially less so. One effect of these varying mixes was that
10 I have relied on Leslie Bethell ed. Cambridge History of Latin America Vol. 2, Part I, “Population”,
1–64, for Spanish and Portuguese America; Watts, The West Indies, chap. 7–8, 10 for other parts of the
Caribbean.
attitudes to the indigenous heritage varied. In Mexico, an emerging nation-

alism claimed Aztec roots; there was little of this in the River Plate or on the
islands, where the indigenous, insofar as they survived, were marginalized.
Another effect was that cultures of privilege and the contestation of priv-
ilege took different forms in different places. Peru faced a major rebellion
under indigenous leadership, the so-called Tupac Amaru rebellion, in 1780–
1782. In Saint Domingue, the free mulatto population was instrumental in
destabilizing the political and social order in the early years of the French
Revolution, but then faced a more radical challenge from insurgent slaves.
Colonial economies were in important part export-oriented, with plan-
tation crops, especially sugar, and minerals being key exports—the latter
figuring especially prominently in the economies of New Spain, Peru, and
Brazil. In mainland colonies there was also much small, sometime subsist-
ence, farming; stock-raising (favored on poor land); and some manufacture,
especially of textiles, catering to domestic, more or less local markets. Regions
that had once been home to complex and buoyant indigenous civilizations
sometimes had lots of villages, providing a focus for local social, cultural,
and some form of political life. To draw just one contrast, rural life in Chile’s
extended central valley focused on haciendas and associated peasant-worker
communities. Caribbean island economies were export-oriented to varying
degrees. They often depended for strategic imports (such as timber) and
manufactures (such as cloth) on imports mediated by their metropoles. They
also featured small farming. Many islands, along with mainland regions with
significant slave populations such as New Granada and Brazil, featured “ma-
roon” communities of escaped slaves, often located in relatively inaccessible
and perhaps forested regions, supporting themselves by farming, foraging,
and hunting.
In the course of our period, the region underwent two major institutional
transformations affecting different parts of it in different ways. The first
followed from the destabilization of the Iberian monarchies, initially as a re-
sult of Napoleon’s initiatives; the second from abolitions of slave trades and
slave statuses. The second development energized competitive growth in re-
maining slave economies such that, though slavery declined overall, it also
changed its geography. These twin transformations helped to promote, and
were conditioned by, other political, economic, social, and cultural changes.
Both Anthony McFarlane (Chapter 3) and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea
(Chapter 5) explain that the Napoleonic push to dominate the Iberian
peninsula from 1807 to 1808 precipitated massive turbulence in the
region—capsizing existing institutions in Spanish America and reconfiguring

them in Brazil. As Sobrevilla Perea chronicles, this turbulence lasted for the
best part of two decades—longer, indeed, inasmuch as the new territorial
and political order did not quickly settle into an enduring shape. This crisis of
authority interacted with existing tensions and conflicts over where the locus
of power should be, as between metropoles and colonies and within colo-
nies.11 Nonetheless, the geopolitical shock surely precipitated more rapid
and radical change than might otherwise have occurred.12 One might com-
pare the effect of these developments to the similarly long-term destabilizing
effects upon Europe of the French Revolution and Napoleonic expansion.
In Europe, that sequence of events inspired, first, new interest in democracy
(enthusiastic or critical, as the case might be), then disillusionment and dis-
paragement. Finally, in the longer term, it helped to effect changes in political
structures and cultures within which “democracy” found new applications.
Something along these lines transpired in Iberian America, too.
The political crisis unfolded in stages. Initially authorities in Spanish
America mostly tried to align themselves with peninsular Spaniards
resisting French rule. These metropolitan opponents of the French project
encouraged the establishment of provisional “juntas,” then a central junta for
the whole monarchy, then a pan-monarchical constitutional convention at
Cádiz, 1812, where they enunciated their own version of popular sovereignty
as a basis on which monarchy might be reconstructed. In Spanish America,
some powerholders initially tried to defend a more traditional version of the
political order. In parallel, however, alternative leaders emerged, perhaps
not previously so well placed, who championed self-rule for their localities.
Meanwhile, Portugal’s Bragança dynasty called on the British to help them
relocate in Brazil, then ruled for the next decade and more from the court in
Rio de Janeiro.
Across the Iberian-American mainland, attempts to reinstate the old order
following the defeat of Napoleon and “restoration” of old dynasties failed;
revolutions in both metropoles in 1820 played their part in complicating
11 John Lynch, Latin American Revolutions, 1808- 1826. Old and New World Origins (Norman,
OK, 1994) and Brian Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule on the American Continent (Cambridge, UK,
2017) offer contrasting analyses, but both emphasize the long background to conflict.
12 François-Xavier Guerra, Las revoluciones hispánicas: independencies americanas y liberalismo
español (Madrid, 1995), a much-debated account, offers a particularly emphatic version of this ap-
proach: he portrayed European political crisis as having forced modernity on what remained in
many ways an ancientrégime society.
matters.13 By the mid-1820s, former Spanish territories had all proclaimed

independence (though these claims were only slowly recognized by Spain)
and the Bragança dynasty had split, one part remaining in Rio. Almost all
the newly independent states equipped themselves with constitutions and
elected legislatures, though disputes over such matters as the division of
power between executive and legislative bodies, where territorial boundaries
should lie, and how much power should be devolved to localities rumbled
on for decades, provoking armed conflicts (sometimes termed civil wars)
and also inter-state wars. Strong leaders, some ruling constitutionally, some
otherwise, were much in evidence (especially at the start). Constitutions
did not always operate for long before being overhauled or replaced. Armed
uprisings provided vehicles for political challenges throughout our pe-
riod: sometimes termed “revolutions,” they often represented, at least nomi-
nally, a bid to promote the will of some section of the people.14
That regimes should be representative and their makeup determined by
elections was nonetheless commonly accepted in principle. Many elections
were held, and their outcomes were sometimes (though not always) ac-
cepted. Franchises were characteristically broad, though indirect (involving
the choosing of higher-tier voters who made more decisive choices). Chile
and Buenos Aires were unusual in opting for direct elections from the start,
Chile in the context of a slightly constrained franchise, Buenos Aires in the
context of a very expansive one. Elections were often conducted with carrots
and sticks—patronage, bribery, force—and also fraud (though those were
also features of contemporary European and US elections). Various asso-
ciational forms—militias, confraternities—were used to organize voters.
Political competition usually had an ideological dimension, most elabo-
rately articulated in print, not least in the newspaper press, prefigured in a
few colonial official newspapers but flourished freely only following the crisis
of monarchies, and grew thereafter with some ebbs and flows.15 The pro-
fessed stances of contending parties affected their conduct in power. As time
passed, they increasingly equipped themselves with ideological names, often
Liberal and Conservative, or some local variant. By the end of our period
a handful of countries had adopted universal male suffrage, and a growing
13 For crisis in the Iberian peninsula, Hamnett, End of Iberian Rule and chapters by Fernández
Sebastián and Capellán and by Ramos in Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

14 For the terminology of ‘revolution,’ Sabato, Republics, 112–21 and Diccionario II, ed. Fernández
Sebastián Vol. 9, Revolución.

15 For these sites of public engagement, Sabato. Republics, chap. 2–4.
number were practicing direct election; elections had become the normal
means for presidencies to change hands in Chile, and handovers of power
to the opposition as a result of the ballot box had taken place at least once in
both Venezuela and New Granada. Elsewhere, including in Brazil, elections
routinely exposed powerholders to challenge and contestation, even if
they normally remained in place. Difficulties in dislodging powerholders
through electoral challenges meant that it remained common for thwarted
challengers to conclude that they must resort to other means.
The first successful effort to abolish slavery across a whole territory was
the work of slaves and ex-slaves, with mulatto and some white allies. The
slave rebellion of 1791, which radicalized the already destabilizing effects of
the French Revolution in Saint Domingue, played out against a background
of Franco-British conflict.16 Given French reluctance to accept the transfor-
mation of the colony’s political and social structures, but their inability to re-
instate their agents in power, what eventuated was the constitutional Empire
of Haiti, which in the following decades went through processes of territorial
splits and unifications (for a period with neighboring Santo Domingo); shifts
between monarchical and republican state forms; and shifts in the balance of
power between executive and legislative bodies—in many ways paralleling
instabilities over the same period in Spanish America and also (though gen-
erally in a more contained way) in independent Brazil.
Elsewhere, though slave resistance played a part in undermining con-
fidence in the institution of slavery— most obviously in Guadeloupe
and Martinique during France’s 1848 revolution—key decisions to end
slave trading and slavery were made by established authorities: imperial
authorities in the case of British and French islands (and more generally in
relation to slave trading in international waters), and domestic authorities in
the case of formerly Spanish republics. In the new republics, the trade was
quickly abolished, and slavery itself sometimes too (as in Chile, Bolivia, and
Mexico). Although in places where slavery had been more important, abo-
lition strategies were more commonly gradual, initially taking the form of
rulings that all newborns were free. By contrast, this form of human bondage
survived and even flourished in Brazil and Cuba, and especially in Cuba
16 For a general study published at the start of the current surge of interest, Carolyn Fick, The
Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville, 1990). For recent research
Jeremy D. Popkin, “The Haitian Revolution Comes of Age: Ten Years of New Research,” Slavery &
Abolition 42, no. 2 (2021): 382–401.
where investors saw the chance to take over Saint Domingue’s place in the
market. The importation of slaves to Cuba peaked in 1835–1840.17
On the islands especially, policy toward slavery and its legacies had im-
portant political consequences, as relations between metropoles, local elites,
and wider local populations were all affected. This led sometimes to unrest,
and sometimes to systemic change, as in Jamaica (where, in the wake of the
Morant Bay rebellion, the old assembly voted to surrender its power to a
stronger executive). In Cuba, the slavery question was one factor in the “Ten
Years War” for independence, which began in 1868, though this did not im-
mediately change the status quo.18
When slavery was officially ended, this did not always change societies
and economies as much as might be supposed. Haiti lost its former com-
manding export role (along with a sizeable chunk of its population), but its
new leaders, desperate for foreign income, maintained a forced-labor re-
gime so as to be able to sustain plantation production. The British, when they
moved to end slave labor, planned a transitional period of “apprenticeship,”
though this did not last long. Asian “indentured laborers” were soon brought
in to take over some of the work formerly done by slaves—and not only in the
islands but also in the cotton and sugar plantations of Peru (traditionally cul-
tivated by a mix of slave and indigenous coerced labor).19
Economies also changed for other reasons.20 Mexican silver production
underwent vicissitudes, and over the longer term lost its once critical role
in the global economy. The British had coveted access to Latin American
markets through the eighteenth century and had allied with Portugal partly
to gain some entrée. Political convulsions opened new opportunities. Britain
pushed to the fore in recognizing the independence of the new states, partly
to secure its trading position. Britain retained a dominant role in trade there-
after, though its share declined as other players—the United States, France,
Germany—entered the game, which they did chiefly from the middle of the
nineteenth century as assessments of the trading environment became more
positive. When more manufacturing imports arrived, they undermined
17 Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London, 1988); Ada Ferrer,
Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (New York, 2014).
18 Franklin Knight, ed., The General History of the Caribbean. Vol. 3, Slave Societies of the Caribbean;
Vol. 4, The Long Nineteenth Century (London, 1997, 2003).

19 David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge, UK, 1995).
20 Tulio Halperin Donghi, “Economy and Society in Post- Independence Spanish America,”
in Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell Vol. 3, 299–345; John Tutino, ed., New
Countries: Capitalism, Revolution, and Nations in the Americas, 1750-1870 (Durham, NC, 2016) has
as one of its primary aims integrating stories of economic, social, and political change.
some domestic production. In a competitive global market, Latin America

found itself, like many other parts of the world (including some within
Europe), shunted into the position of manufacturing importer, primary
goods exporter—though, since the price of manufactured goods fell more
over the period, this was not entirely disadvantageous. Brazil developed its
role in coffee production (relying on slave labor for this); Peru exported the
natural fertilizer, guano; Chile exported grain. Across less fertile lands, no-
tably in the River Plate, the practice of stock-raising was extended and in-
creasingly geared to export markets in leather, salt beef, and tallow. Meat
factories became one species of local industry (in Brazil they too were
manned by slaves). Europeans who had initially hoped to unleash some-
thing more dramatically dynamic sometimes dealt with disappointment by
blaming the character of the people. But, insofar as wealth pooled in cities,
a cross-section of town dwellers enjoyed chances to profit in the retail and
service sectors and to savor, or at least observe and form views about, the
sweets of modernizing urban life.21
By the end of period, the population of the region was on the order of three
times its size at the start: over 40 million on the mainland and Spanish is-
lands, more than a million on British and French islands (Jamaica alone ac-
counting for almost half a million); Haiti and Santo Domingo, having grown
more sluggishly, added another 1.5 million.22 Population growth was not
strongly associated with cities, which were often slow to recover from years
of turbulence. In general, population growth was most associated with the
expansion of the agricultural frontier, and therefore especially with the once
more thinly populated south. The islands’ demographic experience varied—
Cuba grew notably—but overall growth seems to have been lower than on
the mainland. To put the regional population of around 43 million into
perspective, by the final decade of our period, the population of the then–
United States was something under 40 million; the densely populated United
Kingdom was home to about 30 million; the rest of Europe, excluding Russia,
held 210 million.
21 Woodrow Borah et al., eds., “Urbanization in the Americas: The Background in Comparative
Perspective,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, special issue, outside series (1980).
A recent overview (in any language) of the character of mid-nineteenth-century urban social and
cultural life seems to be lacking, but see, for a case study shedding some light, Camilla Townsend,
Tales of Two Cities. Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America (Austin,
TX, 2000).
22 See note 10 above.
At our period’s end, the mainland was home to some dozen republics,
whose borders had stabilized by mid-century (US annexation of a huge part
of Mexico’s territory in the 1840 Mexican-American war was a relatively
late and the largest single change). In the 1860s, the French-led invasion of
Mexico and installation of the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor,
though supported by some conservative Mexicans, was fiercely and within
a few years successfully resisted, and Mexico was reinstated as a republic.
Mainland republics were at that point undergoing various kinds of change,
in practice and in self-conception, as a new generation of “liberal reforms”
was enacted, popular mobilizations prompted some new thinking about how
best to sustain bonds between government and people, and US and European
adventurism encouraged the development of celebratory narratives about
what made the region’s political and social institutions worth defending.23
Neighboring Brazil nonetheless remained an empire and a slave state—as
such presenting another foil (though it would cease to be either within a gen-
eration). Among the islands, Haiti and Santo Domingo both ended the pe-
riod as independent republics (the Dominican Republic had re-acquired that
status only recently, after conflicts with both Haiti and Spain). Other islands
remained tied to Spanish, French, and British metropoles.
The name “Latin America”—which we use in this book as familiar and
convenient—had come into occasional use by the 1860s, though, as Nancy
Appelbaum explains in Chapter 6, it had (and has) no fixed meaning, being
variously applied according to the work it is used to do. In our period, it was
used to indicate any of a language region, a series of independent states, of re-
publics, and states considered to share a common “Latin” culture (sometimes
interpreted as including French culture).24 We use it to chiefly to refer to
states which, at the start of our period, were ruled by Iberian monarchs. Our
overlapping category of “Caribbean” includes Spanish, French, and British
islands (Dexnell Peters also invokes a “greater Caribbean” including neigh-
boring coasts and their hinterlands).
Among independent states in the region, both mainland and island, the
establishment of constitutional and representative regimes had set govern-
ment and political culture on a radically new course. On the majority of
23 Vincent C. Peloso and Barbara A. Tenenbaum, eds., Liberals, Politics, and Power: State Formation
in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Athens, GA, 1996); Guy P. C. Thomson, ed., The European
Revolutions of 1848 and the Americas (London, 2002); Sanders, The Vanguard of the Atlantic World.
24 See also Michael Gobat, “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-
Imperialism, Democracy and Race,” American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (2013): 1345–75.
islands, political change had been less systemic—but by this time all their
metropoles had broadly based representative regimes. Although metro-
politan institutional changes were not directly replicated, and had complex
effects on the islands, nonetheless island-dwellers operated within broader
political cultures in which representation, political rights, and social rights
had currency as ideals.
Across the region, the new world that had taken shape was one in which
talk of “democracy” was easier to naturalize than it had been in the former
“new world.” But “democracy” also remained, as it always does, the name
of an aspiration that reality failed to match—accordingly a threat to some, a
beacon of hope for others.
2
The Language of Democracy
Eduardo Posada-Carbó
“So what really is democracy?”, a newspaper in New Granada asked in 1850.1

“As the idea of democracy is today so generally propagated,” its author rea-
soned, there was a need to examine its nature because “the happiness or
misfortune of any society rests on the understanding of this word.” It was
a question that occupied contemporaries elsewhere in Latin America and
the Caribbean, particularly those involved in public debate, often perplexed
by the inroads of an expression that had been rare in previous decades.
While the previous chapter provided an introduction to our larger project,
the structure of the book, and a historical overview of the region, we now
turn to the question of “democracy” and to the trajectories of the language
in the region. In this second introductory chapter, we first offer a survey of
the existing literature on “democracy”; this is followed by an overview of the
findings of our book, focused on the broad patterns of the uses of democ-
racy from the late eighteenth century to 1870. We finally identify some topics
for future research and conclude with some reflections on “re-imagining de-
mocracy” in the region in comparative perspective.
Historiographical Context
The history of language in Latin America has received increasing atten-

tion from scholars of the region over the last three decades. From various
perspectives, historians of ideas, concepts, and discourses— sometimes
converging, sometimes in dispute—have addressed the subject, though some
periods, countries, and topics have been better covered than others.2 For
1 “Qué cosa es democracia,” Ariete (Cali), January 26, 1850.
2 Javier Fernández Sebastián, Historia conceptual en el Atlántico Ibérico. Lenguajes, tiempos,
revoluciones (Madrid, 2021), 156–57. Fernández Sebastián acknowledges various authors that have
informed the historiography of the region, including Koselleck, Skinner, Pocock, Freeden, Richter,
and Rosanvallon.
Eduardo Posada-Carbó, The Language of Democracy In: Re-imagining Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean,
1780–1870. Edited by: Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Joanna Innes, and Mark Philp, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197631577.003.0002
The Language of Democracy 23
example, the period of independence, of particular relevance to our book,

has received much attention.3 There also exist valuable monographs on the
republican discourse of the Rosas regime (the dictatorial rule of Juan Manuel
de Rosas in the River Plate, 1829–1852)4 and on the political language of
nineteenth-century Mexico.5
Javier Fernández Sebastián has led the most wide and ambitious study
of words for the Iberian Atlantic world, Iberconceptos: a major editorial un-
dertaking which covers most of the countries that once formed part of the
Spanish and Portuguese empires in mainland Latin America and the Spanish
Caribbean.6 Contributions from over one hundred scholars explore key po-
litical concepts used during the age of revolutions. The first volume appeared
in 2009, covering the words America/Americans, citizen/vecinos, consti-
tution, federation/federalism, history, liberal/liberalism, public opinion,
people, and republic/republican. The second “volume” was published in
2014 in a different format: each concept was the subject of a separate book.
Democracia, edited by Gerardo Caetano, appeared as volume two, alongside
individual volumes on civilization, state, independence, liberty, order, party/
faction, and sovereignty.7 Histories that focused on the word democracy
were few before the Iberconceptos’ volume, though there were some notable
antecedents.8 Additionally, some scholars looked at “democracy” as part of
a wider revisionist exercise: they challenged the mode in which the intellec-
tual history of Latin America was written by advocating a turn to political
3 Rubén Darío Salas, Lenguaje, estado y poder en el Río de la Plata, 1816-1827 (Buenos Aires, 1998);
José Carlos Chiaramonte, Nation and State in Latin America: Political Language During Independence
(New Brunswick, NJ, 2012); Noemí Goldman, ed., Lenguaje y revolución. Conceptos políticos clave
en el Río de la Plata, 1780-1850 (Buenos Aires, 2008); Francisco A. Ortega and Yoben Chicangana-
Bayona, eds., Conceptos fundamentales de la cultura política de la independencia (Bogotá, 2012);
Francisco Ortega, “The Conceptual History of Independence and the Colonial Question in Spanish
America,” Journal of the History of Ideas 79, no. 1 (2018): 89–103.
4 Jorge Myers, Orden y virtud. El discurso republicano en el régimen rosista (Buenos Aires, 1995).
5 Elías José Palti, La invención de una legitimidad. Razón y retórica en el pensamiento mexicano del
silgo XIX (Un estudio sobre las formas del discurso político) (Mexico City, 2005).
6 Only Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay were excluded.
7 Caetano Democracia, 2. For the way this project was conceived and developed, see Fernández
Sebastián, “Iberconceptos. Hacia una historia transnacional de los conceptos políticos en el mundo
iberoamericano,” Isegoría, no. 37 (2007): 165–76.
8 One such antecedent was the work of Rubén Darío Salas, “Aproximación al léxico político
rioplatense (1816-1826). Democracia, república y federación: alcances semánticos del discurso de

sus detractores,” Jahrbuch fur Geschichte Lateinamerikas 31 (1994): 85–115. See also among a collec-
tion of early publications from the project, Gonzalo Capellán and Gerardo Caetano, eds., “Dossier: El
concepto Democracia en Iberoamérica antes y después de las Independencias,” Alcores. Revista de
Historia Contemporánea 9 (2010): 19–169. Some works have paid some attention to the language
of democracy, but this was marginal to their main concerns; see, for example: James Sanders, The
Vanguard of the Atlantic World. Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century
Latin America (Durham, NC, 2014).
language.9 Nonetheless, the Iberconceptos volume mapped the field in sub-

stantial ways, each chapter offering an overview of the trajectory of “democ-
racy” in a given place, from the 1770s to 1870, a period identified as one of
“profound” conceptual change.10
Throughout this period, as the Iberconceptos collection showed, “democ-
racy” was given different meanings and connotations by different actors; the
time and pace of its transformations also varied significantly from place to
place. A shared feature, however, was that it was used in only limited ways
during the colonial period. Shared too were major changes after indepen-
dence; indeed, that marked a major watershed, since thereafter the term was
gradually incorporated into the mainstream political vocabulary. However,
its itinerary did not follow a single path. At one end of the spectrum, it seems
to have been used relatively frequently and with some positive connotations
in New Granada and Venezuela, particularly during the early years of inde-
pendence, By contrast, the expression appears to have been rare in the mo-
narchical, slave-heavy states of Brazil and Cuba; and, when present, it was
often the target of criticism: “the democratic spirit is highly dangerous where
there is slavery,” the Cuban José de Arango y Núñez del Castillo noted in
1838.11 But the overall picture that emerged from Iberconceptos was one in
which “democracy” appeared timidly during the early decades of indepen-
dence (1810s–1820s), taking center stage in public debate only after 1850;
uses of the word in the decades in between were not much explored.
Taken in conjunction with other historiographical developments in
Europe and the United States, the Iberconceptos project sparked new in-
terest in the history of “democracy” in Latin America, prompting scholars to
deepen their knowledge about the trajectories of the word in particular coun-
tries or periods and to examine more deeply its transatlantic connections.12
Recent essays, for example, have examined how, in Chile, some endorsements
of “democracy” during the early days of independence were followed by
9 Elías Palti, El tiempo de la política. El siglo XIX reconsiderado (Buenos Aires, 2007), 203–44. For
his critical examination of the intellectual history of the region, see Palti, “Beyond Revisionism: The
Biccentenial of Independence, the Early Republican Experience, and Intellectual History in Latin
America,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70, no. 4 (2009): 593–614. See also Roberto Breña, “Tensions
and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America,” Contributions to the History
of Concepts 16, no. 1 (2021): 89–115.
10 A Sattelzeit, in Koselleck’s terminology; see Fernández Sebastián, “Iberconceptos,” 169.
11 Cited in Johanna von Grafenstein, “Caribe/Antillas hispanas,” in Caetano, ed., Democracia, 75.
12 See in particular, the two edited volumes by Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, Re-Imagining
Democracy in the Age of Revolutions and Re-Imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean, 1780-1860.
disenchantment after the failures of the first republican experiments;13 how,

in Mexico, the work of the liberal Mariano Otero in the 1840s paved the
way for the “redemption” of the word in the subsequent decade;14 how, in
Ecuador and in Chile, liberal Catholicism helped to widen its appeal;15 and,
throughout the region, how Tocqueville’s Democracy in America helped to
popularize the term, even though his work was “selectively appropriated.”16
Tocqueville’s impact on Mexico especially was the subject of an article in a
dossier published by the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, in
which other essays explored various aspects of the trajectory of “democracy”
in the region.17 Notwithstanding these advances, the number of studies on
the topic continues to be limited and scattered in journals rather than col-
lected in monographs.
Our book aims to contribute to the field in several ways. It widens its geo-
graphical scope by considering the non-Spanish Caribbean. It devotes more
attention to the 1830s and 1840s: periods in which “democracy” began to be
naturalized into political lexicons in the region, even if it was not yet fully
mainstream. While sharing the interest in words that has characterized the
developing historiography just surveyed, our book is also much concerned
to contextualize language use: to explore the institutional, social, and cul-
tural environments in which the term was taken up (the focus of the book’s
thematic chapters) and, in that context, to try to clarify what the word was
used to interpret or achieve—how it was used to assess options and suggest
responses to problems in a changing political scene. A broadly conceived
understanding of the word’s trajectories requires attention to these things.
Our interest in setting the word in a relatively richly realized context also
affects the way in which our country-specific “language” chapters have been
13 Gabriel Cid Rodríguez, “El temor al ‘Reinado del populacho.’ El concepto de democracia du-
rante la independencia chilena,” Universum 32, no. 1 (2017): 195–212.

14 José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, “La redención democrática: México, 1821-1861,” Historia
Mexicana 69, no. 1 (2019): 7–56.

15 Galaxis Borja González, “‘Sois libres, sois iguales, sois hermanos.’ Sociedades democráticas
en Quito de mediados del siglo XIX,” Jarhbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 53 (2016): 185–210;
Gonzalo Capellán, “Le moment Lamennais. Modern Slavery and the Re-description of People (and
Democracy) in Spain and Chile,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 15, no. 2 (2020): 51–79.
16 José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, “Democracy in the (other) America,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Democracy in America, ed. Richard Boyd (Cambridge, UK, 2022), 204–29.

17 Eduardo Posada-Carbó et al. “The History of Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean,
1800-1870,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 26, no. 2 (2020). See the essays by Javier
Fernández Sebastián, José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, Gabe Paquette, Carrie Gibson, Jesús Sanjurjo,
Eduardo Zimmermann, Marcelo Casals, Andrés Estefane, and Juan Luis Ossa. This “dossier” is an
outcome of one of the preliminary meetings we held in the planning of this book.
written. They cover fewer countries than the Iberconceptos project did, but
they do more to flesh out the context.
Talk about “Democracy” in the Region: an Overview
In the remainder of this chapter we offer an overview of what emerges from

our book about changes in talk about “democracy,” with special emphasis on
common patterns over time, which may not be easy to trace through the diverse
and often place-specific discussions that later chapters offer. While we rely pri-
marily on the findings of our contributors, this introduction sometimes adds
further instances of use, so as to generalize the narrative; it also suggests new
avenues for research.18
Our point of departure is the colonial era: neither the language chapters in
this volume nor most of those of Iberconceptos say much about that period,
but one of the premises of our larger project is that the ancient concept of de-
mocracy was already known to some—if possibly only a learned few—across
the regions that we study, and was then re-imagined for modern use. That
certainly applies to the Iberian world. Caetano reports that “democracy”
and “democrat” featured in the influential dictionary of the Real Academia
Española in 1734 and subsequent editions: the former was defined as “popular
government” and was listed as one of the three basic forms of government,
together with monarchy and aristocracy. The Vocabulário Portuguéz e Latino,
one of the first Portuguese dictionaries, published in 1712, also included
“democracy” defined as a form of government “directly opposed to mon-
archy.”19 The word figured in several publications from the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and was usually associated with assertions of the supe-
riority of monarchical government.20 Law students would have encountered
it in texts on law and government, perhaps including Aristotle, but also in
modern texts such as those of Heineccius, which, according to Chiaramonte,
were widely used in Spanish American universities.21 The New Granadian
18 We cite specific chapters only when it is not easy to infer which chapters support particular
sections of this account.

19 Caetano, “Itinerarios conceptuales de la voz ‘democracia’ en Iberoamérica, 1770- 1870,” in
Caetano, Democracia, 19–20.
20 See, for example, Discurso Ivridico historico- politico en defensa de la jurisdiccion real (Lima,
1685), 20; and Relación de la fundación de la Real Audiencia del Cuzco en 1788 (Madrid, 1795), 209.
Both are available in the digital collection of the John Carter Brown Library.
21 Aristotle’s Politica was at least cited in Edicto, carta circular y pastoral breve que el ilustrísimo
señor Don Fr Joseph Antonio de San Alberto dirige a todos sus diocesanos (Buenos Aires, 1793), 31. See
Antonio Nariño, who translated into Spanish the French “Declaration of the
Rights of Men,” cited Heineccius when equating “democracy” with “popular
government”—a nice illustration of academic study being given new appli-
cation in a new environment.22 Lettered men (and possibly women) more
broadly would have encountered discussions of the merits of democracy
in contemporary works such as those of Montesquieu and Rousseau.23 The
word is likely to have been encountered by educated people in the British
and French Caribbean in similar contexts at this time, and possibly also in
pamphlets and the newspaper press in societies where print media were less
intensively policed. However, before the French Revolution the term was not
much in use, and even less in favorable use, in the political lexicons of either
Britain or France or in those of British or French America, and it probably
had little if any presence in their island colonies.24
The French Revolution gave new reasons to discuss the merits or demerits
of democracy (however conceived). One might have expected that if the word
achieved an enhanced presence anywhere, it would have been in turbulent,
revolutionizing Saint Domingue. However, as Emmanuel Lachaud tells us in
Chapter 11, little evidence has yet been found to suggest that it had much
place in discourse there. Given that rank-and-file talk was rarely recorded, si-
lence is not conclusive. Luis Perrone’s report that French soldiers—captured
on Hispaniola and held captive in La Guaira, on the Venezuelan sea coast—
inspired hopes in some locals for “democratic” revolution is tantalizing.
Nonetheless, as Jeremy Popkin has recently underlined, we should not as-
sume any easy mingling of sentiments between French forces and Haiti’s re-
currently insurgent black majority.25
Public discussion of any kind remained rare in Iberian America at this
time: the press was highly restricted and freedom of expression not operative.
also Mercurio Peruano (Lima), November 17, 1791: 196–207; Gazeta de Literatura (Mexico City),
November 30, 1790: 53–59—all available in the JCB digital collection, 473. José Carlos Chiaramonte,
“The ‘Ancient Constitution’ after Independence (1808-52),” Hispanic American Historical Review 90,
no. 3 (2010): 453.
22 Isidro Vanegas, “Democracia—Colombia/New Granada,” in Caetano, Democracia, 119.

23 For the significant diffusion of Rousseau before independence, see Jefferson Rea Spell, Rousseau
in the Spanish World Before 1833. A Study in Franco-Spanish Literary Relations (Austin, TX, 1938),
129–39 and 217–43; and on Montesquieu, Raynal, and Filangieri, pp. 130, 134, 220, 221, 227.
24 For the case of French, later British Canada, Francis Dupuis-Déri, “Histoire du mot ‘démocratie’
au Canada et au Québec. Analyse politique des stratégies rhétoriques,” Canadian Journal of Political
Science 42, no. 2 (2009): 321–43.
25 Jeremy D. Popkin, “Sailors and Revolution: Naval Mutineers in Saint-Domingue, 1790–1793,”
French History 26, no. 4 (2012): 460–81.

One such rare discussion took place in another part of the viceroyalty of New
Granada, in the pages of the Papel Periódico de Santafe de Bogotá, following
the 1794 arrest of the aforementioned Antonio Nariño, who was prosecuted
together with some students for plotting against the Spanish authorities. In a
series of articles that focused on Montesquieu’s notion of mixed government,
the paper stated that “The government of any republic, be it democratic, aris-
tocratic, or mixed, is a repulsive government” and instead defended mon-
archy as a government “established by God . . . the most just, the wisest, the
most perfect.”26
The impact of the revolution on talk about democracy deserves more at-
tention. We do not know, for instance, how much it figured in counterrevo-
lutionary discourse.27 Enlightenment ideas, US independence, and French
revolutions must have been topics of many a private conversation. Though
prohibited by colonial authorities, texts that helped diffuse positive talk
about democracy did circulate. Some educated people had access to them at
home; others when traveling in Europe and the United States—as Francisco
de Miranda and Simón Bolívar both did.28 Still, the underdevelopment of the
public sphere must have helped to limit their circulation.
The struggles for independence which unfolded, first in Spanish and then
in Portuguese America between 1808 and the early 1820s, both presented
new challenges and opened up new sites in which to canvass ideas, not least
those provided by the newspaper press, which expanded from meagre offi-
cial beginnings. “Democracy” gained a little more currency in debate at this
time, alongside other terms including sovereignty of the people and repre-
sentative government, as people pondered what their political options were
and how to choose between them.29
In Spanish America the essential choice was often seen as that between
monarchy and republic. The modern republic, as constituted in the United
26 Papel Periódico de Santafé de Bogotá, November 20, 1794. In later editions, the paper insisted
that the “government of God” leads to “pure Monarchy” and that hereditary Monarchy is the greatest
work of human wisdom; while it condemned the “popular republic” as the “resort of turbulent,
mutineers and seditious men” . . . “no honest people . . . would prefer Democracy”; see December 5, 9,
and 12 editions of the same paper. See also Vanegas, “Democracia,” 118–20.
27 Guy Thomson cites one example.
28 Spell, Rousseau in the Spanish World, 129–39 and 217–43. In his diary of his visit to the United
States (1783–84), Miranda used “democracy” several times, mostly positively, including in a conver-
sation with Samuel Adams when Miranda critically observed the contradictions of privileging “prop-
erty” over virtue in the US Constitution, whereas virtue was the basis of democracy. See Miranda,
Diario de viaje a Estados Unidos, 1783-1784 (Santiago, 1998), 152; for other references to democracy
in that volume see pp. 48, 66, 153, 168.
29 See François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidades e independencias (Madrid, 1992).
States, France, and elsewhere, had at its heart “representation,” primarily

via the mechanism of election. Representative government was routinely
contrasted with “democracy,” often glossed as “pure” or “absolute,”—the
ancient form, though conversely it was sometimes equated with a non-
adjectivally qualified “democracy”; Perrone cites several examples of this.
But “representative government” was the more common formulation. As
Aguilar Rivera and Zimmerman report, almost all the early constitutions
that defined a form of government favored “representative” or “popular rep-
resentative” (for example, Cundinamarca, 1812; Gran Colombia, 1821; Peru,
1823; Mexico, 1824; Chile, 1828; Uruguay, 1830). The choice of term some-
times followed public deliberations, as in the constituent assemblies of Gran
Colombia in 1821 and Uruguay in 1829. “Democracy” certainly had a pres-
ence in the larger repertoire of terms used to explain and interpret choices
made. Political catechisms subsequently published to explain the features of
the new republics, either to children at schools or to the wider public, not
uncommonly characterized them as democracies but used the term with the
very general meaning of popular government. By the end of the 1820s, some
such texts used the phrase “representative democracy,” although the two
words were not yet habitually yoked.30
“Democracy” was sometimes employed with reference not to political
institutions but to society: to the social foundation or correlate of republican
political institutions. Luis Perrone in Chapter 14 cites several instances from
the early period of Venezuela’s independence struggles in which “democ-
racy” was glossed as entailing equality (even if the character and extent of
that equality was often not spelled out). Guy Thomson in Chapter 13 cites
instances from Mexico in which the democratic many were contrasted, fa-
vorably or unfavorably, with the aristocratic few, and “aristocracy” (not al-
ways explicitly contrasted with democracy) was lambasted in discussions
elsewhere, too.31 Demands for equality in the face of “aristocracy,” “tyranny,”
or “despotism” were sometimes described as manifestations of democracy.32
And when early, loosely structured political parties—political groupings
30 There were instances where the direct democracy of the ancient world was endorsed—notably
by the Venezuelan Juan Germán Roscio in his Triunfo de la libertad sobre el despotismo (1817), a
text of continental resonance, republished in Mexico in 1824, 1828, and 1857. These were, however,
exceptional.
31 Bernardo O’Higgins, the leader of Chilean independence, wrote in 1812 that “by nature, I detest
aristocracy”; cited in Simón Collier, Ideas y política de la independencia chilena, 1808-1833 (Santiago,
2012), 250.
32 “Continúan las observaciones didácticas,” Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, February 21, 1812.
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Aucun des deux frères n’eut le moindre soupçon des graves
intérêts qui reposaient sur Christophe, une fois assurés qu’il était
bien le fils du bon catholique Lecamus, fournisseur de la cour, et qu’il
ne venait que pour se faire payer.
—Mène-le auprès de la chambre de la reine, qui sans doute va le
demander, dit le cardinal au chirurgien en lui montrant Christophe.
Pendant que le fils du pelletier subissait son interrogatoire dans
la salle du conseil, le roi avait laissé la reine en compagnie de sa
belle-mère, après avoir passé dans son cabinet de toilette où l’on
allait par le cabinet contigu à la chambre.
Debout dans la vaste embrasure de l’immense croisée, la reine
Catherine regardait les jardins, en proie aux plus tristes pensées.
Elle voyait l’un des plus grands capitaines de ce siècle substitué
dans la matinée, à l’instant, à son fils, au roi de France, sous le
terrible titre de lieutenant-général du royaume. Devant ce péril, elle
était seule, sans action, sans défense. Aussi pouvait-on la comparer,
dans son vêtement de deuil, qu’elle ne quitta jamais depuis la mort
de Henri II, à un fantôme, tant sa figure pâle était immobile à force
de réflexion. Son œil noir nageait dans cette indécision tant
reprochée aux grands politiques, et qui chez eux vient de l’étendue
même du coup d’œil par lequel ils embrassent toutes les difficultés,
les compensant l’une par l’autre, et additionnant, pour ainsi dire,
toutes les chances avant de prendre un parti. Ses oreilles tintaient,
son sang s’agitait, et néanmoins elle demeurait calme, digne, tout en
mesurant la profondeur de l’abîme politique au-dessus de l’abîme
réel qui s’étendait sous ses pieds. Après celle de l’arrestation du
Vidame de Chartres, cette journée était la seconde de ces terribles
journées qui se trouvèrent en si grand nombre dans le reste de sa
vie royale; mais ce fut aussi sa dernière faute à l’école du pouvoir.
Quoique le sceptre parût fuir ses mains, elle voulait le saisir et le
saisit par un effet de cette puissance de volonté qui ne s’était lassée
ni des dédains de son beau-père François Ier et de sa cour, où elle
avait été peu de chose, quoique dauphine, ni des constants refus de
Henri II, ni de la terrible opposition de Diane de Poitiers, sa rivale.
Un homme n’eût rien compris à cette reine en échec; mais la blonde
Marie, si fine, si spirituelle, si jeune fille et déjà si instruite,
l’examinait du coin de l’œil en affectant de fredonner un air italien et
prenant une contenance insouciante. Sans deviner les orages
d’ambition contenue qui causaient une légère sueur froide à la
Florentine, la jolie Écossaise au visage mutin savait que l’élévation
de son oncle le duc de Guise causait une rage intérieure à
Catherine. Or, rien ne l’amusait tant que d’espionner sa belle-mère,
en qui elle voyait une intrigante, une parvenue abaissée toujours
prête à se venger. Le visage de l’une était grave et sombre, un peu
terrible, à cause de cette lividité des Italiennes qui, durant le jour, fait
ressembler leur teint à de l’ivoire jaune, quoiqu’il redevienne éclatant
aux bougies, tandis que le visage de l’autre était frais et gai. A seize
ans, la tête de Marie Stuart avait cette blancheur de blonde qui la
rendit si célèbre. Son frais, son piquant visage si purement coupé,
brillait de cette malice d’enfant exprimée franchement par la
régularité de ses sourcils, par la vivacité de ses yeux, par la
mutinerie de sa jolie bouche. Elle déployait alors ces grâces de
jeune chatte que rien, ni la captivité, ni la vue de son effroyable
échafaud, ne purent altérer. Ces deux reines, l’une à l’aurore, l’autre
à l’été de sa vie, formaient donc alors le contraste le plus complet.
Catherine était une reine imposante, une veuve impénétrable, sans
autre passion que celle du pouvoir. Marie était une folâtre, une
insoucieuse épousée, qui de ses couronnes faisait des jouets. L’une
prévoyait d’immenses malheurs, elle entrevoyait l’assassinat des
Guise en devinant que ce serait le seul moyen d’abattre des gens
capables de s’élever au-dessus du trône et du Parlement; enfin elle
apercevait les flots de sang d’une longue lutte; l’autre ne se doutait
pas qu’elle serait juridiquement assassinée. Une singulière réflexion
rendit un peu de calme à l’Italienne.
—Selon la sorcière et au dire de Ruggieri, ce règne va finir; mon
embarras ne durera point, pensa-t-elle.
Ainsi, chose étrange, une science occulte, oubliée aujourd’hui,
l’astrologie judiciaire servit alors à Catherine de point d’appui,
comme dans toute sa vie, car sa croyance alla croissant, en voyant
les prédictions de ceux qui pratiquaient cette science réalisées avec
une minutieuse exactitude.
—Vous êtes bien sombre, madame? dit Marie Stuart en prenant
des mains de Dayelle ce petit bonnet pincé sur la raie de ses
cheveux et dont les deux ailes de riche dentelle tournaient autour
des touffes blondes qui lui accompagnaient les tempes.
Le pinceau des peintres a si bien illustré cette coiffure, qu’elle
appartient exclusivement à la reine d’Écosse, quoique Catherine l’ait
inventée pour elle quand elle eut à prendre le deuil de Henri II; mais
elle ne sut pas la porter aussi bien que sa belle-fille, à qui elle seyait
beaucoup mieux. Ce grief n’était pas le moindre parmi ceux de la
reine-mère contre la jeune reine.
—Est-ce un reproche que me fait la reine? dit Catherine en se
tournant vers sa belle-fille.
—Je vous dois le respect et n’oserais, répliqua malicieusement
l’Écossaise qui regarda Dayelle.
Entre les deux reines, la femme de chambre favorite resta
comme la figure d’un chenet, un sourire d’approbation pouvait lui
coûter la vie.
—Comment puis-je être gaie comme vous, après avoir perdu le
feu roi et en voyant le royaume de mon fils sur le point de
s’embraser?
—La politique regarde peu les femmes, répliqua Marie Stuart.
D’ailleurs mes oncles sont là.
Ces deux mots étaient, dans les circonstances actuelles, deux
flèches empoisonnées.
—Voyons donc nos fourrures, madame, répondit ironiquement
l’Italienne, et nous pourrons nous occuper alors de nos véritables
affaires pendant que vos oncles décideront de celles du royaume.
—Oh! mais nous serons du conseil, madame, nous y sommes
plus utiles que vous ne croyez.
—Nous, dit Catherine avec un air d’étonnement. Mais moi, je ne
sais pas le latin.
—Vous me croyez savante! dit en riant Marie Stuart. Eh! bien, je
vous jure, madame, qu’en ce moment j’étudie pour être à la hauteur
des Médicis, afin de savoir un jour guérir les plaies du royaume.
Catherine fut atteinte au cœur par ce trait piquant qui rappelait
l’origine des Médicis, venus, disaient les uns, d’un médecin, et selon
les autres, d’un riche droguiste. Elle resta sans réponse. Dayelle
rougit lorsque sa maîtresse la regarda en cherchant ces
applaudissements que tout le monde et même les reines demandent
à des inférieurs quand il n’y a pas de spectateurs.
—Vos mots charmants, madame, ne peuvent malheureusement
guérir ni les plaies de l’État, ni celles de l’Église, répondit Catherine
avec une dignité calme et froide. La science de mes pères, en ce
genre, leur a donné des trônes; tandis que si dans le danger vous
continuez à plaisanter, vous pourrez perdre les vôtres.
En ce moment, Dayelle ouvrit la porte à Christophe, que le
premier chirurgien annonça lui-même en grattant.
Le Réformé voulut étudier le visage de Catherine, en affectant un
embarras assez naturel dans un pareil lieu; mais il fut surpris par la
vivacité de la reine Marie qui sauta sur les cartons pour voir son
surcot.
—Madame, dit Christophe en s’adressant à la Florentine.
Il tourna le dos à l’autre reine et à Dayelle, en profitant soudain
de l’attention que ces deux femmes allaient donner aux fourrures
pour frapper un coup hardi.
—Que voulez-vous de moi? dit Catherine en lui jetant un regard
perçant.
Christophe avait mis le traité proposé par le prince de Condé, le
plan des Réformés et le détail de leurs forces sur son cœur, entre sa
chemise et son justaucorps de drap, mais en les enveloppant du
mémoire dû par Catherine au pelletier.
—Madame, dit-il, mon père est dans un horrible besoin d’argent,
et si vous daignez jeter les yeux sur vos mémoires, ajouta-t-il en
dépliant le papier et mettant le traité en dessus, vous verrez que
Votre Majesté lui doit six mille écus. Ayez la bonté de nous prendre
en pitié. Voyez, madame! Et il lui tendit le traité.—Lisez. Ceci date de
l’avénement au trône du feu roi.
Catherine fut éblouie par le préambule du traité, mais elle ne
perdit pas la tête, elle roula vivement le papier en admirant l’audace
et la présence d’esprit de ce jeune homme; elle sentit d’après ce
coup de maître qu’elle serait comprise, et lui frappa la tête avec le
rouleau de papier.
—Vous êtes bien maladroit, mon petit ami, de présenter le
compte avant les fourrures. Apprenez à connaître les femmes! Il ne
faut jamais nous présenter nos mémoires qu’au moment où nous
sommes satisfaites.
—Est-ce une tradition? dit la jeune reine à sa belle-mère qui ne
répondit rien.
—Ah! mesdames, excusez mon père, dit Christophe. S’il n’avait
pas eu besoin d’argent, vous n’auriez pas eu vos pelleteries. Les
pays sont en armes, et il y a tant de danger à courir sur les routes,
qu’il a fallu notre détresse pour que je vinsse ici. Personne que moi
n’a voulu se risquer.
—Ce garçon est neuf, dit Marie Stuart en souriant.
Il n’est pas inutile, pour l’intelligence de cette petite scène si
importante, de faire observer qu’un surcot était, ainsi que le mot
l’indique (sur cotte), une espèce de spencer collant que les femmes
mettaient sur leur corsage et qui les enveloppait jusqu’aux hanches
en les dessinant. Ce vêtement garantissait le dos, la poitrine et le
cou contre le froid. Les surcots étaient intérieurement doublés en
fourrure qui bordait l’étoffe par une lisière plus ou moins large. Marie
Stuart, en essayant son surcot, se regardait dans une grande glace
de Venise pour en voir l’effet par derrière, elle avait ainsi laissé à sa
belle-mère la facilité d’examiner les papiers dont le volume eût excité
sa défiance sans cette circonstance.
—Parle-t-on jamais aux femmes des dangers qu’on a courus,
quand on est sain et sauf et qu’on les voit? dit-elle en se montrant à
Christophe.
—Ah! madame, j’ai votre mémoire aussi, dit-il en la regardant
avec une niaiserie bien jouée.
La jeune reine le toisa sans prendre le papier, et remarqua, mais
sans en tirer alors la moindre conséquence, qu’il avait pris dans son
sein le mémoire de la reine Catherine, tandis qu’il sortait le sien, à
elle, de sa poche. Elle ne vit pas non plus dans les yeux de ce
garçon l’admiration que son aspect excitait chez tout le monde; mais
elle était si occupée de son surcot, qu’elle ne se demanda pas
d’abord d’où pouvait venir cette indifférence.
—Prends, Dayelle? dit-elle à la femme de chambre, tu donneras
le mémoire à monsieur de Versailles (Loménie), en lui disant de ma
part de payer.
—Oh! madame, si vous ne me faites signer une ordonnance par
le roi ou par monseigneur le Grand-Maître, qui est là, votre
gracieuse parole resterait sans effet.
—Vous êtes plus vif qu’il ne sied à un sujet, mon ami, dit Marie
Stuart. Vous ne croyez donc pas aux paroles royales?
Le roi se montra vêtu de ses chausses de soie, et du haut-de-
chausses, la culotte de ce temps, mais sans pourpoint ni manteau; il
avait une riche redingote de velours, bordée de menu-vair, car ce
mot de la langue moderne peut seul donner l’idée du négligé du roi.
—Quel est le maraud qui doute de votre parole? dit le jeune
François II qui malgré la distance entendit le dernier mot de sa
femme.
La porte du cabinet se trouvait masquée par le lit royal. Ce
cabinet fut appelé plus tard cabinet vieux, pour le distinguer du riche
cabinet de peintures que fit arranger Henri III à l’autre extrémité de
cet appartement, du côté de la salle des États-Généraux. Henri III fit
cacher les meurtriers dans le cabinet vieux, et envoya dire au duc de
Guise de venir l’y trouver, tandis qu’il resta caché dans le cabinet
neuf pendant le meurtre, et il n’en sortit que pour venir voir expirer
cet audacieux sujet pour lequel il n’y avait plus ni prison, ni tribunal,
ni juges, ni lois dans le royaume. Sans ces terribles circonstances,
l’historien reconnaîtrait aujourd’hui difficilement la destination de ces
salles et de ces cabinets pleins de soldats. Un fourier écrit à sa
maîtresse à la même place où jadis Catherine pensive décidait de sa
lutte avec les partis.
—Venez, mon ami, dit la reine-mère, je vais vous faire payer,
moi. Il faut que le commerce vive, et l’argent est son principal nerf.
—Allez, mon cher, dit en riant la jeune reine, mon auguste mère
entend mieux que moi les affaires de commerce.
Catherine allait sortir sans répondre à cette nouvelle épigramme;
mais elle pensa que son indifférence pouvait éveiller un soupçon,
elle répondit vivement à sa belle-fille:—Et vous, ma chère, le
commerce de l’amour! Puis elle descendit.
—Serrez tout cela, Dayelle, et venons au conseil, monsieur, dit
au roi la jeune reine ravie de faire décider en l’absence de la reine-
mère la question si grave de la lieutenance du royaume.
Marie Stuart prit le bras du roi. Dayelle sortit la première en
disant un mot aux pages, et l’un d’eux, le jeune Téligny, qui devait
périr si misérablement à la Saint-Barthélemi, cria:—Le Roi!
En entendant ce mot, les deux arquebusiers se mirent au port
d’arme, et les deux pages allèrent en avant vers la chambre du
conseil, au milieu de la haie de courtisans et de la haie formée par
les filles des deux reines. Tous les membres du conseil se
groupèrent alors à la porte de cette salle, qui se trouve à une faible
distance de la porte de l’escalier. Le Grand-Maître, le cardinal et le
Chancelier allèrent à la rencontre des deux jeunes souverains qui
souriaient à quelques-unes des filles, ou répondaient à des
demandes de quelques courtisans plus familiers que les autres.
Mais la jeune reine, évidemment impatiente, entraînait François II
vers l’immense salle du conseil. Quand le son lourd des arquebuses,
en retentissant sur le plancher, annonça que le couple était entré, les
pages remirent leurs bonnets sur leurs têtes, et les conversations
particulières entre les seigneurs reprirent leur cours sur la gravité
des affaires qui allaient se débattre.
—On a envoyé chercher le connétable par Chiverny, et il n’est
pas venu, disait l’un.
—Il n’y a aucun prince du sang, faisait observer l’autre.
—Le Chancelier et monsieur de Tournon étaient soucieux!
—Le Grand-Maître a fait dire au garde-des-sceaux de ne pas
manquer d’être à ce conseil, il en sortira sans doute quelques lettres
patentes.
—Comment la reine-mère reste-t-elle en bas, chez elle, en un
pareil moment!
—On va nous tailler des croupières, disait Groslot au cardinal de
Châtillon.
Enfin chacun disait son mot. Les uns allaient et venaient dans
cette immense salle, d’autres papillonnaient autour des filles des
deux reines comme s’il était donné de saisir quelques paroles à
travers un mur de trois pieds d’épaisseur, à travers deux portes et
les riches portières qui les enveloppaient.
Assis en haut de la longue table couverte en velours bleu qui se
trouvait au milieu de cette salle, le roi auprès de qui la jeune reine
avait pris place sur un fauteuil, attendait sa mère. Robertet taillait
ses plumes. Les deux cardinaux, le Grand-Maître, le chancelier, le
garde-des-sceaux, tout le conseil enfin regardait le petit roi en se
demandant pourquoi il ne donnait pas l’ordre pour s’asseoir.
—Délibérera-t-on en l’absence de madame la reine mère? dit
alors le chancelier en s’adressant au jeune roi.
Les deux princes lorrains attribuèrent l’absence de Catherine à
quelque ruse de leur nièce. Excité d’ailleurs par un regard significatif,
l’audacieux cardinal dit au roi:—Le bon plaisir du Roi est-il que l’on
commence sans madame sa mère?
François II, sans oser se prononcer, répondit:—Messieurs,
asseyez-vous.
Le cardinal expliqua succinctement les dangers de la situation.
Ce grand politique, qui fut dans cette circonstance d’une habileté
merveilleuse, amena la question de la lieutenance au milieu du
profond silence des assistants. Le jeune roi sentit sans doute une
oppression et devina que sa mère avait le sentiment des droits de la
couronne et la connaissance du danger où était son pouvoir, il
répondit alors à une demande positive du cardinal:—Attendons la
reine ma mère.
Éclairée par le retard inconcevable de la reine Catherine, tout à
coup Marie Stuart réunit en une seule pensée trois circonstances
qu’elle se rappela vivement. D’abord la grosseur des mémoires
présentés à sa belle-mère, et qui l’avait frappée, quelque distraite
qu’elle fût, car une femme qui paraît ne rien voir est un lynx; puis
l’endroit où Christophe les avait mis pour les séparer des siens.—Et
pourquoi? se demanda-t-elle. Enfin elle se souvint du regard froid de
ce garçon, qu’elle attribua soudain à la haine des Réformés contre la
nièce des Guise. Une voix lui cria:—Ne serait-ce pas un envoyé des
Huguenots? Obéissant comme les natures vives à son premier
mouvement, elle dit:—Je vais chercher moi-même ma mère! Puis
elle sortit brusquement, se précipita dans l’escalier au grand
étonnement des courtisans et des dames; elle descendit chez sa
belle-mère, y traversa la salle des gardes, ouvrit la porte de la
chambre avec des précautions de voleur, glissa comme une ombre
sur les tapis, et ne l’aperçut nulle part; elle pensa devoir la
surprendre dans le magnifique cabinet qui se trouve entre cette
chambre et l’oratoire. On reconnaît encore aujourd’hui parfaitement
bien les dispositions de cet oratoire, auquel les mœurs de cette
époque avaient donné dans la vie privée le rôle que joue maintenant
un boudoir.
Par un hasard inexplicable quand on songe à l’état de
dégradation dans lequel la couronne laisse ce château, les
admirables boiseries du cabinet de Catherine existent encore, et
dans ces boiseries finement sculptées, les curieux peuvent encore
de nos jours voir les traces de la splendeur italienne et reconnaître
les cachettes que la reine-mère y avait établies. Une description
exacte de ces curiosités est même nécessaire à l’intelligence de ce
qui allait s’y passer. Cette boiserie était alors composée d’environ
cent quatre-vingts petits panneaux oblongs dont une centaine
subsistent encore, et qui tous offrent au regard des arabesques de
dessins différents, évidemment suggérées par les plus charmantes
arabesques de l’Italie. Le bois est du chêne vert. Le rouge qu’on
retrouve sous la couche de chaux mise à propos du choléra,
précaution inutile, indique assez que le fond des panneaux a été
doré. Les endroits où le caustique manque, font supposer que
certaines portions du dessin se détachaient de la dorure en couleur
ou bleue, ou rouge, ou verte. La multitude de ces panneaux révèle
bien l’intention de tromper les recherches; mais si l’on en pouvait
douter, le concierge du château, tout en vouant à l’exécration des
races actuelles la mémoire de Catherine, montre aux visiteurs, au
bas de cette boiserie et au rez du plancher, une plinthe assez
grossière qui se lève et sous laquelle existent encore des ressorts
ingénieux. En pressant une détente ainsi déguisée, la reine pouvait
ouvrir ceux de ces panneaux connus d’elle seule, et derrière
lesquels il existe dans la muraille une cachette oblongue comme le
panneau, mais plus ou moins profonde. Encore aujourd’hui, l’œil le
plus exercé reconnaîtrait difficilement, entre tous ces panneaux,
celui qui doit tomber sur ses charnières invisibles; mais quand les
yeux étaient amusés par les couleurs et par les dorures habilement
combinées pour cacher les fentes, il est facile de croire que vouloir
découvrir un ou deux panneaux entre deux cents était une chose
impossible.
Au moment où Marie Stuart mit la main sur le loquet de la serrure
assez compliquée de ce cabinet, l’Italienne, qui venait de se
convaincre de la grandeur des plans du prince de Condé, venait de
faire jouer le ressort caché dans la plinthe, un des panneaux s’était
brusquement abaissé sur sa charnière, et Catherine se retournait
pour prendre sur sa table les papiers afin de les cacher et veiller à la
sûreté de l’émissaire dévoué qui les lui apportait. En entendant
ouvrir la porte, elle devina que la reine Marie pouvait seule venir
sans se faire annoncer.
—Vous êtes perdu, dit-elle à Christophe en s’apercevant qu’elle
ne pouvait plus serrer les papiers ni fermer assez promptement le
panneau pour que le secret de sa cachette ne fût pas éventé.
Christophe répondit par un regard sublime.
—Povero mio! dit Catherine avant de regarder sa belle-fille.—
Trahison, madame! je les tiens, cria-t-elle. Faites venir le cardinal et
le duc. Que celui-ci, dit-elle en montrant Christophe, ne sorte pas.
En un moment cette habile femme avait jugé nécessaire de livrer
ce pauvre jeune homme: elle ne pouvait le cacher, il était impossible
de le faire sauver; et d’ailleurs, huit jours plus tôt il eût été temps,
mais depuis la matinée les Guise connaissaient le complot, ils
devaient avoir les listes qu’elle tenait à la main et attiraient
évidemment les Réformés dans un piége. Ainsi tout heureuse d’avoir
reconnu chez ses adversaires l’esprit qu’elle leur avait souhaité, la
politique voulait que la mèche éventée, elle s’en fît un mérite. Ces
effroyables calculs furent établis dans le rapide moment pendant
lequel la jeune reine ouvrit la porte. Marie Stuart resta muette
pendant un instant. Son regard perdit sa gaieté, prit l’acutesse que le
soupçon donne aux yeux de tout le monde, et qui chez elle devint
terrible par la rapidité du contraste. Ses yeux allèrent de Christophe
à la reine-mère et de la reine-mère à Christophe en exprimant des
doutes malicieux. Puis elle saisit une sonnette au bruit de laquelle
arriva une des filles de la reine-mère.
—Mademoiselle du Rouet, faites venir le capitaine de service, dit
Marie Stuart à la demoiselle d’honneur contrairement à l’étiquette,
nécessairement violée en de semblables circonstances.
Pendant que la jeune reine donnait cet ordre, Catherine avait
toisé Christophe en lui disant par son regard:—Du courage! Le
Réformé comprit tout et répondit par un regard qui voulait dire:—
Sacrifiez-moi comme ils me sacrifient!
—Comptez sur moi, dit Catherine par un geste. Puis elle se
plongea dans les papiers quand sa belle-fille se retourna.
—Vous êtes de la religion réformée? dit Marie Stuart à
Christophe.
—Oui, madame, répondit-il.
—Je ne m’étais pas trompée, ajouta-t-elle en murmurant quand
elle retrouva dans les yeux du Réformé ce même regard où la
froideur et la haine se cachaient sous une expression d’humilité.
Pardaillan se montra soudain, envoyé par les deux princes
lorrains et par le roi. Le capitaine demandé par Marie Stuart suivait
ce jeune gentilhomme, un des plus dévoués guisards.
—Allez dire de ma part au Roi, au Grand-Maître et au Cardinal
de venir, en leur faisant observer que je ne prendrais point cette
liberté s’il n’était survenu quelque chose de grave. Allez, Pardaillan.
—Quant à toi, Lewiston, veille sur ce traître de Réformé, dit-elle à
l’Écossais dans sa langue maternelle en lui désignant Christophe.
La jeune reine et la reine-mère gardèrent le silence jusqu’à
l’arrivée des princes et du roi. Ce moment fut terrible.
Marie Stuart avait découvert à sa belle-mère et dans toute son
étendue le rôle que lui faisaient jouer ses oncles; sa défiance
habituelle et constante s’était trahie, et cette jeune conscience
sentait tout ce qu’il y avait de déshonorant dans ce métier pour une
grande reine. De son côté, Catherine venait de se livrer par peur et
craignait d’être comprise, elle tremblait pour son avenir. Chacune de
ces deux femmes, l’une honteuse et colère, l’autre haineuse et
tranquille, alla dans l’embrasure de la croisée et s’appuya l’une à
droite, l’autre à gauche; mais elles exprimèrent leurs sentiments
dans des regards si parlants qu’elles baissèrent les yeux, et, par un
mutuel artifice, regardèrent le ciel par la fenêtre. Ces deux femmes
si supérieures n’eurent alors pas plus d’esprit que les plus vulgaires.
Peut-être en est-il ainsi toutes les fois que les circonstances
écrasent les hommes. Il y a toujours un moment où le génie lui-
même sent sa petitesse en présence des grandes catastrophes.
Quant à Christophe, il était comme un homme qui roule dans un
abîme. Lewiston, le capitaine écossais, écoutait ce silence, il
regardait le fils du pelletier et les deux reines avec une curiosité
soldatesque. L’entrée du jeune roi et de ses deux oncles mit fin à
cette situation pénible. Le cardinal alla droit à la reine.
—Je tiens tous les fils de la conspiration des hérétiques, ils
m’envoyaient cet enfant chargé de ce traité et de ces documents, lui
dit Catherine à voix basse.
Pendant le temps que Catherine s’expliquait avec le cardinal, la
reine Marie disait quelques mots à l’oreille du Grand-Maître.
—De quoi s’agit-il? fit le jeune roi qui restait seul au milieu de ces
violents intérêts entre-choqués.
—Les preuves de ce que je disais à Votre Majesté ne se sont pas
fait attendre, dit le cardinal qui saisit les papiers.
Le duc de Guise prit son frère à part, sans se soucier
d’interrompre, et lui dit à l’oreille:—De ce coup, me voici lieutenant-
général, sans opposition.
Un fin regard fut toute la réponse du cardinal, il fit ainsi
comprendre à son frère qu’il avait déjà saisi tous les avantages à
recueillir de la fausse position de Catherine.
—Qui vous a envoyé? dit le duc à Christophe.
—Chaudieu le ministre, répondit-il.
—Jeune homme, tu mens! dit vivement l’homme de guerre, c’est
le prince de Condé!
—Le prince de Condé, monseigneur! reprit Christophe d’un air
étonné, je ne l’ai jamais rencontré. Je suis du Palais, j’étudie chez
monsieur de Thou, je suis son secrétaire, et il ignore que je suis de
la religion. Je n’ai cédé qu’aux prières du ministre.
—Assez, fit le cardinal. Appelez monsieur de Robertet, dit-il à
Lewiston, car ce jeune drôle est plus rusé que de vieux politiques, il
nous a trompés, mon frère et moi, qui lui aurais donné le bon Dieu
sans confession.
—Tu n’es pas un enfant, morbleu! s’écria le duc, et nous te
traiterons en homme.
—On voulait séduire votre auguste mère, dit le cardinal en
s’adressant au roi et voulant le prendre à part pour l’amener à ses
fins.
—Hélas! répondit la reine à son fils en prenant un air de reproche
et l’arrêtant au moment où le cardinal l’emmenait dans l’oratoire pour
le soumettre à sa dangereuse éloquence, vous voyez l’effet de la
situation dans laquelle je suis: on me croit irritée du peu d’influence
que j’ai dans les affaires publiques, moi la mère de quatre princes de
la maison de Valois.
Le jeune roi devint attentif. Marie Stuart, en voyant le front du roi
se plisser, le prit et l’emmena dans l’embrasure de la fenêtre, où elle
le cajola par de douces paroles dites à voix basse, et sans doute
semblables à celles qu’elle lui adressait naguère à son lever. Les
deux frères lurent alors les papiers livrés par la reine Catherine. En y
trouvant des renseignements que leurs espions, monsieur de
Braguelonne, le lieutenant-criminel du Châtelet, ignorait, ils furent
tentés de croire à la bonne foi de Catherine de Médicis. Robertet vint
et reçut quelques ordres secrets relatifs à Christophe. Le jeune
instrument des chefs de la Réformation fut alors emmené par quatre
gardes de la compagnie écossaise qui lui firent descendre l’escalier
et le livrèrent à monsieur de Montrésor, le prévôt de l’hôtel. Ce
terrible personnage conduisit lui-même Christophe, accompagné de
cinq de ses sergents, dans la prison du château, située dans les
caves voûtées de la tour aujourd’hui en ruine, que le concierge du
château de Blois vous montre en disant que là se trouvaient les
oubliettes.
Après un pareil événement, le conseil ne pouvait plus être qu’un
simulacre: le roi, la jeune reine, le Grand-Maître, le cardinal de
Lorraine y revinrent, emmenant Catherine vaincue, et qui n’y parla
que pour approuver les mesures demandées par les Lorrains.
Malgré la légère opposition du chancelier Olivier, le seul personnage
qui fît entendre des paroles où poindait l’indépendance nécessaire à
l’exercice de sa charge, le duc de Guise fut nommé lieutenant-
général du royaume. Robertet apporta les provisions avec une
célérité qui prouvait un dévouement qu’on pourrait appeler de la
complicité. Le roi, donnant le bras à sa mère, traversa de nouveau la
salle des gardes en annonçant à la cour qu’il allait le lendemain
même au château d’Amboise. Cette résidence avait été abandonnée
depuis que Charles VIII s’y était donné très-involontairement la mort
en heurtant le chambranle d’une porte qu’il faisait sculpter, en
croyant pouvoir entrer sans se baisser sous l’échafaudage.
Catherine, pour masquer les projets des Guise, dit avoir l’intention
de finir le château d’Amboise pour le compte de la couronne, en
même temps qu’on achèverait son château de Chenonceaux. Mais
personne ne fut la dupe de ce prétexte, et la cour s’attendit à de
grands événements.
Après avoir passé deux heures environ à se reconnaître dans
l’obscurité de son cachot, Christophe finit par le trouver garni d’une
boiserie grossière, mais assez épaisse pour rendre ce trou carré
salubre et habitable. La porte, semblable à celle d’un toit à porc,
l’avait contraint à se plier en deux pour entrer. A côté de cette porte,
une grosse grille en fer ouverte sur une espèce de corridor donnait
un peu d’air et de lumière. Cette disposition du cachot, en tout point
semblable à celle des puits de Venise, disait assez que l’architecte
du château de Blois appartenait à cette école vénitienne qui, au
Moyen-Age, donna tant de constructeurs à l’Europe. En sondant ce
puits au-dessus de la boiserie, Christophe remarqua que les deux
murs qui le séparaient, à droite et à gauche, de deux puits
semblables étaient en briques. En frappant pour reconnaître
l’épaisseur, il fut assez surpris d’entendre frapper de l’autre côté.
—Qui êtes-vous? lui demanda son voisin qui lui parla par le
corridor.
—Je suis Christophe Lecamus.
—Moi, répondit la voix, je suis le capitaine Chaudieu, frère du
ministre. On m’a pris cette nuit à Beaugency; mais heureusement il
n’y a rien contre moi.
—Tout est découvert, dit Christophe. Ainsi vous êtes sauvé de la
bagarre.
—Nous avons trois mille hommes en ce moment dans les forêts
du Vendômois, et tous gens assez déterminés pour enlever la reine-
mère et le roi pendant leur voyage. Heureusement la Renaudie a été
plus fin que moi, il s’est sauvé. Vous veniez de nous quitter quand
les guisards nous ont appris.
—Mais je ne connais point la Renaudie...
—Bah! mon frère m’a tout dit, répondit le capitaine.
Sur ce mot, Christophe s’assit sur son banc et ne répondit plus
rien à tout ce que put lui demander le prétendu capitaine, car il avait
assez pratiqué déjà les gens de justice, pour savoir combien il fallait
de prudence dans les prisons. Au milieu de la nuit, il vit reluire la
pâle lumière d’une lanterne dans le corridor, après avoir entendu
manœuvrer les grosses serrures de la porte en fer qui fermait la
cave. Le grand-prévôt venait lui-même chercher Christophe. Cette
sollicitude pour un homme qu’on avait laissé dans son cachot sans
nourriture parut singulière à Christophe; mais le grand
déménagement de la cour avait sans doute empêché de songer à
lui. L’un des sergents du prévôt lui lia les mains avec une corde, et le
tint par cette corde jusqu’à ce qu’il fût arrivé dans une des salles
basses du château de Louis XII, qui servait évidemment
d’antichambre au logement de quelque personnage. Le sergent et le
grand-prévôt le firent asseoir sur un banc, où le sergent lui lia les
pieds comme il lui avait lié les mains. Sur un signe de monsieur de
Montrésor, le sergent sortit.
—Écoute-moi bien, mon ami, dit à Christophe le grand-prévôt qui
jouait avec le collier de l’Ordre, car ce personnage était en costume
à cette heure avancée de la nuit.
Cette petite circonstance donna beaucoup à penser au fils du
pelletier. Christophe vit bien que tout n’était pas fini. Certes, en ce
moment, il ne s’agissait ni de le pendre, ni de le juger.
—Mon ami, tu peux t’épargner de cruels tourments en me disant
ici tout ce que tu sais des intelligences de monsieur le prince de
Condé avec la reine Catherine. Non-seulement il ne te sera point fait
de mal, mais encore tu entreras au service de monseigneur le
lieutenant-général du royaume, qui aime les gens intelligents, et sur
qui ta bonne mine a produit une vive impression. La reine-mère va
être renvoyée à Florence, et monsieur de Condé sera sans doute
mis en jugement. Ainsi, crois-moi, les petits doivent s’attacher aux
grands qui règnent. Dis-moi le tout, tu t’en trouveras bien.
—Hélas! monsieur, répondit Christophe, je n’ai rien à dire, j’ai
avoué tout ce que je sais à messieurs de Guise dans la chambre de
la reine. Chaudieu m’a entraîné à mettre des papiers sous les yeux
de la reine-mère, en me faisant croire qu’il s’agissait de la paix du
royaume.
—Vous n’avez jamais vu le prince de Condé?
—Jamais, dit Christophe.
Là-dessus, monsieur de Montrésor laissa Christophe et alla dans
une chambre voisine. Christophe ne resta pas longtemps seul. La
porte par laquelle il était venu s’ouvrit bientôt, donna passage à
plusieurs hommes, qui ne la fermèrent pas et qui firent entendre
dans la cour des bruits peu récréatifs. On apportait des bois et des
machines évidemment destinés au supplice de l’envoyé des
Réformés. La curiosité de Christophe trouva bientôt matière à
réflexion dans les préparatifs que les nouveaux venus firent dans la
salle et sous ses yeux. Deux valets mal vêtus et grossiers
obéissaient à un gros homme vigoureux et trapu qui, dès son entrée,
avait jeté sur Christophe le regard de l’anthropophage sur sa victime;
il l’avait toisé, évalué, estimant en connaisseur les nerfs, leur force et
leur résistance. Cet homme était le bourreau de Blois. En plusieurs
voyages, ses gens apportèrent un matelas, des maillets, des coins
de bois, des planches et des objets dont l’usage ne parut ni clair ni
sain au pauvre enfant que ces préparatifs concernaient, et dont le
sang se glaça dans ses veines, par suite d’une appréhension
terrible, mais indéterminée. Deux personnages entrèrent au moment
où monsieur de Montrésor reparut.
—Hé! bien, rien n’est prêt? dit le grand-prévôt que les deux
nouveaux venus saluèrent avec respect.—Savez-vous, ajouta-t-il en
s’adressant au gros homme et à ses deux valets, que monseigneur
le cardinal vous croit à la besogne.—Docteur, reprit-il en s’adressant
à l’un des deux nouveaux personnages, voilà votre homme. Et il
désigna Christophe.
Le médecin alla droit au prisonnier, lui délia les mains, lui frappa
sur la poitrine et dans le dos. La science recommençait
sérieusement l’examen sournois du bourreau. Pendant ce temps, un
serviteur à la livrée de la maison de Guise apporta plusieurs
fauteuils, une table et tout ce qui était nécessaire pour écrire.
—Commencez le procès-verbal, dit monsieur de Montrésor, en
désignant la table au second personnage vêtu de noir, qui était un
greffier. Puis il revint se placer auprès de Christophe, auquel il dit fort
doucement:—Mon ami, le chancelier ayant appris que vous refusiez
de répondre d’une manière satisfaisante à mes demandes, a résolu
que vous seriez appliqué à la question ordinaire et extraordinaire.
—Est-il en bonne santé et peut-il la supporter? dit le greffier au
médecin.
—Oui, répondit le savant qui était un des médecins de la maison
de Lorraine.
—Eh! bien, retirez-vous dans la salle ici près, nous vous ferons
appeler toutes les fois qu’il sera nécessaire de vous consulter.
Le médecin sortit.
Sa première terreur passée, Christophe rappela son courage:
l’heure de son martyre était venue. Il regarda dès lors avec une
froide curiosité les dispositions que faisaient le bourreau et ses
valets. Après avoir dressé un lit à la hâte, ces deux hommes
préparaient des machines appelées brodequins, consistant en
plusieurs planches entre lesquelles on plaçait chacune des jambes
du patient, qui s’y trouvait prise dans de petits matelas. Chaque
jambe ainsi arrangée était rapprochée l’une de l’autre. L’appareil
employé par les relieurs pour serrer leurs volumes entre deux
planches qu’ils maintiennent avec des cordes, peut donner une idée
très-exacte de la manière dont chaque jambe du patient était
disposée. Chacun imaginera dès lors l’effet que produisait un coin
chassé à coups de maillet entre les deux appareils où la jambe était
comprimée, et qui, serrés eux-mêmes par des câbles, ne cédaient
point. On enfonçait les coins à la hauteur des genoux et aux
chevilles, comme s’il s’agissait de fendre un morceau de bois. Le
choix de ces deux endroits dénués de chair, et où par conséquent le
coin se faisait place aux dépens des os, rendait cette question
horriblement douloureuse. Dans la question ordinaire, on chassait
quatre coins, deux aux chevilles et deux aux genoux; mais dans la
question extraordinaire, on allait jusqu’à huit, pourvu que les
médecins jugeassent que la sensibilité du prévenu n’était pas
épuisée. A cette époque, les brodequins s’appliquaient également
aux mains; mais, pressés par le temps, le cardinal, le lieutenant-
général du royaume et le chancelier en dispensèrent Christophe. Le
procès-verbal était ouvert, le grand-prévôt en avait dicté quelques
phrases en se promenant d’un air méditatif, et en faisant dire à
Christophe ses noms, ses prénoms, son âge, sa profession; puis il
lui demanda de quelle personne il tenait les papiers qu’il avait remis
à la reine.
—Du ministre Chaudieu, répondit-il.
—Où vous les a-t-il remis?
—Chez moi, à Paris.
—En vous les remettant, il a dû vous dire si la reine-mère vous
accueillerait avec plaisir.
—Il ne m’a rien dit de semblable, répondit Christophe. Il m’a
seulement prié de les remettre à la reine Catherine en secret.
—Vous avez donc vu souvent Chaudieu, pour qu’il fût instruit de
votre voyage.
—Le ministre n’a pas su par moi qu’en apportant leurs fourrures
aux deux reines, je venais réclamer, de la part de mon père, la
somme que lui doit la reine-mère, et je n’ai pas eu le temps de lui
demander par qui.
—Mais ces papiers, qui vous ont été donnés sans être
enveloppés ni cachetés, contenaient un traité entre des rebelles et la
reine Catherine; vous avez dû voir qu’ils vous exposaient à subir le
supplice destiné aux gens qui trempent dans une rébellion.
—Oui.
—Les personnes qui vous ont décidé à cet acte de haute
trahison ont dû vous promettre des récompenses et la protection de
la reine-mère.
—Je l’ai fait par attachement pour Chaudieu, la seule personne
que j’aie vue.
—Persistez-vous donc à dire que vous n’avez pas vu le prince de
Condé?
—Oui!
—Le prince de Condé ne vous a-t-il pas dit que la reine-mère
était disposée à entrer dans ses vues contre messieurs de Guise?
—Je ne l’ai pas vu.
—Prenez garde! Un de vos complices, La Renaudie, est arrêté.
Quelque fort qu’il soit, il n’a pas résisté à la question qui vous attend,
et il a fini par avouer avoir eu, de même que le prince, une entrevue
avec vous. Si vous voulez éviter les tourments de la question, je
vous engage à dire simplement la vérité. Peut-être obtiendrez-vous
ainsi votre grâce.
Christophe répondit qu’il ne pouvait affirmer ce dont il n’avait
jamais eu connaissance, ni se donner des complices quand il n’en
avait point. En entendant ces paroles, le grand-prévôt fit un signe au
bourreau et rentra dans la salle voisine. A ce signe, le front de
Christophe se rida, il fronça les sourcils par une contraction
nerveuse en se préparant à souffrir. Ses poignets se fermèrent par
une contraction si violente, que ses ongles pénétrèrent dans sa chair
sans qu’il le sentît. Les trois hommes s’emparèrent de lui, le
placèrent sur le lit de camp, et l’y couchèrent en laissant pendre ses
jambes. Pendant que le bourreau attachait son corps sur cette table
par de grosses cordes, chacun de ses aides lui mettait une jambe
dans les brodequins. Bientôt les cordes furent serrées au moyen
d’une manivelle, sans que cette pression fît grand mal au Réformé.
Quand chaque jambe fut ainsi prise comme dans un étau, le
bourreau saisit son maillet, ses coins, et regarda tour à tour le
patient et le greffier.
—Persistez-vous à nier? dit le greffier.
—J’ai dit la vérité, répondit Christophe.
—Eh! bien, allez, dit le greffier en fermant les yeux.
Les cordes furent serrées avec une vigueur extrême. Ce moment
était peut-être le plus douloureux de la torture: les chairs étaient

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Re-Imagining Democracy in Latin

America and the Caribbean, 1780-1870

Subject: Latin American History

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers

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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Title: Re-imagining democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780–1870 /

Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Joanna Innes, Mark Philp.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2023. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identi ers: LCCN 2022062197 (print) | LCCN 2022062198 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197631577 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197631607 |

ISBN 9780197631591 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Democracy—Latin America—History—18th century. |

Democracy—Latin America—History—19th century. | Democracy—Caribbean

Area—History—18th century. | Democracy—Caribbean Area—History—19th

century. | Latin America—Politics and government. | Caribbean

Area—Politics and government.

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062197

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Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

1. Colonial North, Central, and South Iberian America, circa 1800 ix

Preface and Acknowledgments 

Subject: Latin American History

Subject: Latin American History

Carsten-Andreas Schulz is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Department of Politics

The Project and the Book

Mediterranean (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Ottoman world).1

1 Re-​imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions; Re-​imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

ed., The Cambridge History of Democracy, 3 vols. (Cambridge, in preparation).

imagining what “democracy” consists in even now, and it seems arbitrary to

often used in ways colored by ancient history to designate a form of political

in Re-​imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions, 13–​27.

NJ, 2005), for Tocqueville on political options for Algeria.

Plan of the Book

“democratic” ends. Mark Petersen and Carsten Schulz explore US and

Overview of the Region

European settlers, who sometimes played a part in the islands’ government

attitudes to the indigenous heritage varied. In Mexico, an emerging nation-

region—​capsizing existing institutions in Spanish America and reconfiguring

matters.13 By the mid-​1820s, former Spanish territories had all proclaimed

Sebastián and Capellán and by Ramos in Re-​imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

Sebastián Vol. 9, Revolución.

Vol. 4, The Long Nineteenth Century (London, 1997, 2003).

some domestic production. In a competitive global market, Latin America

“So what really is democracy?”, a newspaper in New Granada asked in 1850.1

The history of language in Latin America has received increasing atten-

example, the period of independence, of particular relevance to our book,

rioplatense (1816-​1826). Democracia, república y federación: alcances semánticos del discurso de

language.9 Nonetheless, the Iberconceptos volume mapped the field in sub-

disenchantment after the failures of the first republican experiments;13 how,

rante la independencia chilena,” Universum 32, no. 1 (2017): 195–​212.

1 Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions; Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

in Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions, 13–27.

region—capsizing existing institutions in Spanish America and reconfiguring

matters.13 By the mid-1820s, former Spanish territories had all proclaimed

Sebastián and Capellán and by Ramos in Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean.

rioplatense (1816-1826). Democracia, república y federación: alcances semánticos del discurso de

rante la independencia chilena,” Universum 32, no. 1 (2017): 195–212.

Mexicana 69, no. 1 (2019): 7–56.

to Democracy in America, ed. Richard Boyd (Cambridge, UK, 2022), 204–29.

22 Isidro Vanegas, “Democracia—Colombia/New Granada,” in Caetano, Democracia, 119.

French History 26, no. 4 (2012): 460–81.