From the Idea as Origin to Culture as Mediation: The Intellectual History surrounding the Independences in Spanish-America

Abstract

The article reviews the literature of the Intellectual History surrounding the independence process and state formation in Spanish-America. It considers the transformations in the Intellectual History from the Patriotic History supported on a romantic History of Political Ideas, to the History of Political Languages, the History of the Political Culture or Conceptual History based on the ethnographic, iconological, and linguistic methods of the different historical turns. However, the article discusses the literature structuring it through specific ideological bodies: Creole patriotism, Enlightenment, Natural Law, the law of the Indies and Partidas, liberalism, the «paradigm revolution» of republicanism and the intellectual political conceptions of the Indians. Though this structure, which follows old conceptions of the History of ideas, the article shows some shortages of this kind of history, questioning some of its basic presuppositions. In addition, the article reviews the literature that studies the independences as a part of the Atlantic revolutions, the influence of the Bourbon reforms, and the importance of the collapse of the Spanish empire as trigger for independence.