Number of results to display per page
Search Results
4102. The “Perfidious Invasion” of 1808: Ideological Disquiet and Certainty in Moratín
- Author:
- Jes´us P´erez Magall´on
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper revisits the afrancesados' role in Spanish historiography as well as their political positioning prior to, during and after the French invasion of 1808. Taking the famous playwright Leandro Fern´andez de Morat´ın as a case study, the paper explores his political ideas beyond established labels such as “supporter of enlightened despotism” coined by S´anchez Agesta. To this end the article reviews a variety of Morat´ın's texts, including Carta de un vecino de Foncarral a un abogado de Madrid sobre el libre comercio de los huevos, Apuntaciones sueltas de Inglaterra, Viaje a Italia, a Prologue to Isla's Fray Gerundio de Campazas, as well as Morat´ın's correspondence. The essay argues that despite his confessed social, economic and even political liberalism, Morat´ın never supported any specific form of political organization, neither absolutist nor liberal. His open skepticism locates him beyond prevailing ideologies.
- Topic:
- History
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Spain
4103. The Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro and Napoleon's Black Legend
- Author:
- Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- Napoleon and the European war were not the primary concerns of Brazil's inhabitants. They had their own agenda and saw the British as their mercantile competitors. Most of all they resented the 1810 treaty of alliance and the article on the abolition of slave trade. Not even a a Constitution was asked for in Brazil because Brazilians were happy enough with the presence of the royal family to think of a change in government.
- Topic:
- History
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Brazil, and South America
4104. Mexican Silver for the Cortes of Cadiz during the War against Napoleon, 1808-1811
- Author:
- Carlos Marichal Salinas
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- In this essay attention is focused on the persistence of colonial loyalties despite the profound crisis at the center of the Spanish monarchy as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula. One clear indicator of colonial support can be found in the review of the numerous loans and donations collected in colonial Mexico for the purpose of assisting the patriot forces in Spain in their struggle against Napoleon. The financial contributions were considerable. Between late 1808 and early 1811, over 25 million pesos in tax monies, loans and donations were sent from New Spain to C´adiz, principal seat of patriot resistance in southern Spain.
- Topic:
- History
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Spain, Mexico, and Iberia Peninsula
4105. Slavery, Science, and the end of the Old Regime in the Luso-Brazilian Empire
- Author:
- Kirsten Schultz
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper provides a preliminary examination of some of the late eighteenthcentury bases for the reception of liberalism and debates on slavery, specifically the Luso-Brazilian engagement with natural science and the work of the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences. The Academy's work most directly concerned with the question of slavery and the slave trade appealed to economic principles of utility, efficiency and productivity to identify ways to reform the practice of enslaving Africans in the interest of increasing the wealth generated within the colonial and imperial economies. Thus, even as slavery was being assailed internationally on both philosophical and religious grounds, Luso-Brazilian Academic writing insisted it was an economic rather than moral problem. At the same time, however, Academic inquiries into the question of human difference often undercut claims about Africans that were invoked elsewhere in the Atlantic world to justify the perpetuation of slavery and the slave trade. As Academic reformism thus grappled with the humanity of Africans, civilization and barbarism emerged as privileged categories of analysis for discerning the future of slavery, reasserting the moral dimensions of the institution.
- Topic:
- Human Rights and History
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Brazil, South America, and Spain
4106. Staging the Revolution(s)
- Author:
- David T. Gies
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- Spanish playwrights in the period between the French Revolution and the Spanish War of Independence became increasingly sensitized to militarization and conflict. Manuel José Quintana's ground-breaking Pelayo (1805) drew on tropes from Spain's historical past to discuss current and coming events. A new reading of Quintana's play suggests that he, among others, marked this rapidly changing cultural and political milieu with works that projected a growing nationalism and defense of Spain against the threats from north of the Pyrenees.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, War, History, and Arts
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Spain
4107. Forging Catholic National Identities in the Transatlantic Spanish Monarchy, 1808-1814
- Author:
- Scott Eastman
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- By 1810, with the convening of the Cortes of Cádiz, the opening of the public sphere and war threatening to tear apart the monarchy, Spaniards began to forge a new national identity and an inclusive transatlantic nation. The common cultural idiom of religion and the language of national sovereignty provided a unifying symbolic repertoire for Spanish national identities during the transition from the Old Regime to liberal ascendancy. Yet American independence severed the ties of a transatlantic Spanish monarchy and an inclusive national identity as prescribed in the Constitution of 1812. The Virgin of Guadalupe, which had been appropriated by royalists as well as insurgents during the War of Independence in New Spain, soon emerged as the symbolic image of the Mexican nation. Religious imagery that had served to unite Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic fragmented into regional identifications in the Americas, and Spain itself emerged as a sovereign nation that had broken with the Old Regime.
- Topic:
- Nationalism, Religion, and History
- Political Geography:
- America, Europe, Spain, and Mexico
4108. Crown, Empire and Nation (1807-1834)
- Author:
- Miriam H. Pereira
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- Before 1807, in Portugal the new liberal ideals had mainly an indirect influence, reflected in the enlightened elite. The wave of a more profound political change came about only in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the whole Iberian area was involved in the European wide struggle between old regime and the new liberal society and state, that was enhanced by the Napoleonic wars. Between 1807 and 1820, Portugal went through one of the most complex period of its whole History, when the British informal occupation of twelve years, followed the French invasion, short but very destructive. The Crown survived in the hands of the House of Bragança and kept Brazil and the rest of the its colonial territories for over a decade. This makes the Portuguese and Brazilian history of this period somewhat different from that of both Spain and its American colonies. It provides an interesting case for the study of the evolution of three main institutions and political concepts involved in the end of the Old Regime: the Crown, the Empire and the Nation, whose changes during this period are analysed in this paper..
- Topic:
- Civil Society and History
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, America, Europe, Brazil, South America, and Portugal
4109. Partnership or Power Play? How Europe should bring development into its trade deals with African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries
- Publication Date:
- 04-2008
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Europe is negotiating new trade deals with African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries. A true partnership in trade could radically transform the lives of one-third of all people living in poverty, providing farmers and small businesses with sustainable incomes and workers with decent jobs. But Europe is choosing power politics over partnership. The deals currently on the table will strip ACP countries of important policy tools they need in order to develop. They will fracture regional integration, exacerbate poverty and make it harder for countries to break away from commodity dependence. Despite massive pressure, many ACP countries are holding out for a fair deal. Europe needs to rethink, and agree to change course. Ultimately, it is in its own interests to do so.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Australia/Pacific, and Caribbean
4110. Fast Forward: How the European Commission can take the lead in providing high-quality budget support for education and health
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Developing-country governments desperately need more long-term and predictable aid, given through their budgets, to finance the expansion of health care, education, and other vital social services. The European Commission (EC) is one of the biggest donors providing this kind of essential budget support, and has innovative plans to further improve and increase this aid. European Union (EU) member states must support these ambitious plans. The EC in turn must do more to improve on this good start, delinking this aid from harmful International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions, putting an end to unnecessary bureaucratic delays, and doing more to make its aid accountable to citizens in poor countries.
- Topic:
- Development, Education, and Health
- Political Geography:
- Europe