Synopses & Reviews
In The People and the King, John Leddy Phelan reexamines a well-known but long misunderstood event in eighteenth-century Colombia. When the Spanish colonial bureaucratic system of conciliation broke down, indigenous groups resorted to armed revolt to achieve their political ends.
As Phelan demonstrates in these pages, the crisis of 1781 represented a constitutional clash between imperial centralization and colonial decentralization. Phelan argues that the Comunero revolution was not, as it has often been portrayed, a precursor of political independence, nor was it a frustrated social upheaval. The Comunero leaders and their followers did not advocate any basic reordering of society, Phelan concludes, but rather made an appeal for revolutionary reform within a traditionalist framework.
Review
In this his final book, the late John Phelan made a significant and lasting contribution to the historical literature relating to the late eighteenth century in the New Kingdom of Granada [and] an important addition to the historiography of the social and economic protest movements of the pre-independence epoch.”George A. Brubaker, Hispanic American Historical Review
Review
“A major contribution to our understanding of late colonial Spanish America.”—John Fisher, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
Review
“The People and the King skillfully unites narrative with analysis, and achieves its effects with a fine economy. It is Phelan’s best book and indeed it is one of the best and most readable books written on the eighteenth century in Spanish America.”—D. A. Brading, Centre for Latin American Studies, Bulletin of the Society for Latin American Studies
About the Author
John Leddy Phelan (1924–76) was professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of The Hispanization of the Philippines, Portuguese Society in the Tropics, and The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century, all published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Maps
Preface
Introduction
I Charles III
1. From Kingdoms to Empire: The Political Innovations of Charles III
2. From Kingdom to Colony: The Fiscal and Economic Program of Charles III
II Juan Francisco Berbeo
3. The Crowd Riots
4. Patricians and Plebeians in Socorro
5. A Utopia for the People
6. A Utopia for the Nobles
7. A Utopia for the Indians: The Resguardos
8. A Utopia for the Indians: Indians in Revolt
9. Confrontation at Puente Real de Vélez
10. A Non-Battle in Bogotá and the Invasion of Girón
11. "War, War, On to Santa Fe"
12. Rendevous in Zipaquirá
13. The Capitulations of Zipaquirá
14. The First Written Constitution of New Granada
III Antonio Caballero y Góngora
15. José Antonio Galán: Myth and Fact
16. The Second Enterprise against Santa Fe
17. The Reconquest of Socorro from Its "Infidelity"
18. The Carrot and the Stick
19. Caballero y Góngora and the Independence of Colombia
Note on the Sources
Notes
Index