The Limits of Sympathy: The United States and the Independence of Spanish America

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Gleijeses
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Congressional Debates ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Us ◽  
Private Collections

Sir, is there to be no limit to our benevolence for these People? There is a point, beyond which, even parental bounty and natural affection cease to impose an obligation. That point has been attained with the States of Spanish America.1Of course there was sympathy for the Spanish American rebels in the United States. How could it have been otherwise? The rebels were fighting Spain, long an object of hatred and contempt. This alone justified goodwill, as did the hope for increased trade and the prospect of a significant loss of European influence in the hemisphere.2 But how deep did this sympathy run?In the Congressional debates of the period there was much more enthusiasm for the cause of the Greeks than that of the Spanish Americans.3 Similarly, the press referred frequently to private collections of funds (‘liberal donations’) for the Greek fighters – not for the Spanish Americans. This is not surprising. The US public could feel a bond with the Greeks – ‘it will become even quite fashionable to assist the descendants of those who were the bulwark of light and knowledge in old times, in rescuing themselves from the dominion of a barbarian race'.4 Unlike the Greeks, however, the Spanish Americans were of dubious whiteness. Unlike the Greeks, they hailed not from a race of giants, but – when they were white – from degraded Spanish stock.5 Some US citizens felt for them the kinship of a common struggle against European colonial rule; others agreed with John Quincy Adams: ‘So far as they were contending for independence, I wished well to their cause; but I had seen and yet see no prospect that they would establish free or liberal institutions of government.

Henry Clay and the Poinsett Pledge Controversy of 1826

1972 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-440
Author(s):  
Randolph Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Initial Task ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
American Nation

It is well known that the initial task of interpreting the Monroe Doctrine as a functional policy in international relations fell largely on John Quincy Adams. Somewhat ironically, the noncolonization principle in Monroe's famed Annual Message of 1823 for which Adams, then Secretary of State, was most responsible, received relatively little attention in the 1820's. Leaders in the United States and Spanish America alike were more concerned with the meaning of the other main principle involved in the Message—nonintervention. What were the practical implications of Monroe's warning that the United States would consider intervention by a European power in the affairs of any independent American nation “ as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States ” ? John Quincy Adams laid the groundwork for an answer to this question in July, 1824, when Colombia, alarmed by rumors of French interference in the wars for independence, sought a treaty of alliance. The President and Congress, Adams replied, would take the necessary action to support nonintervention if a crisis arose, but there would be no alliance. In fact, he added, it would be necessary for the United States to have an understanding with certain European powers whose principles and interests also supported nonintervention before any action could be taken or any alliance completed to uphold it. The position taken by the Secretary of State cooled enthusiasm for the Monroe Doctrine, but Spanish American leaders did not accept this rebuff in 1824 as final.

Mexico’s Chinaco Guerrillas During the French Intervention

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Mark Moreno
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Mexican War ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Us ◽  
Major Loss

Chinacos were mounted guerrillas of the War of the Reform and the French Intervention (1857–1860, 1862–1867) who fought on the liberal republican side, operated out of central Mexican regions, and were known for their wide-brimmed sombreros and battle lances. What is known about them is largely the product of popular perception shaped by print depictions, some of which were created long afterward. They first appeared in the press when the War of the Reform was winding down and the victorious Juárez government, in carriage and on horseback, prepared to enter Mexico City in January of 1861. Before the French invasion that began in October of 1861 with the naval landing at Veracruz, the “chinaco” designation applied to irregular fighters. The newspaper and propaganda organ La Chinaca gave such fighters an image and narrative that endures to the present day. Still known among many Mexicans, their appearance in print media resulted from times of crisis as Mexico, after a military defeat by the United States and a major loss of territory, encountered the French Intervention in the 1860s. Chinacos as symbolic figures on horseback exemplify a historic pattern of guerrilla warfare in Mexico, dating at least to the US-Mexican War. There are different versions of the label chinaco, although there is strong evidence that it has roots in the chino designation assigned to Afro-Mexicans during the colonial era. It is also linked to “china,” or rural women known for their distinctive attire as depicted in popular reading.

The Spanish American Aspect of Henry Clay’s American System

1967 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph B. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
American System ◽  
Emerging Nations ◽  
Henry Clay

Henry Clay of Kentucky first offered his American System as a plan to guide the growth of the United States during the period of awakening nationalism that followed the Peace of Ghent in 1815. When asked just before his death in 1852 to make up a list of his most important public services for use by some friends who were having a medal struck to commemorate his career, Clay prepared a list of fourteen items which included the American System with the date, 1824. Thus, at the end of his long career, the Kentuckian identified this phrase with his most famous speech in support of the protective tariff. It may then seem surprising that his first recorded use of the term came on May 10, 1820, in a speech supporting recognition of the emerging nations of Spanish America. Clay’s use of “American System” in these two apparently different areas of discussion has led to two separate connotations for the phrase. The two meanings call for careful discrimination. Equally important, however, is the significant connection between them in the thought of Henry Clay.

The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America

1978 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Reid
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
The North ◽  
Primary Image ◽  
Literary Device

Seldom has a literary device had such international political resonance as the famous Ariel-Caliban contraposition of José Enrique Rodó's essay. In the decades immediately following its publication in 1900 Ariel was an exceptionally valued credo for Spanish American youth, not only for its intrinsic grace, but also because it provided a timely answer to a widespread need. To a generation depressed by the frequently pessimistic conclusions of racist doctrines and an uneasy sense of inferiority, and irked by the admonitions of ninteenthcentury “Nordomaniacs,” Ariel offered in sonorous periods a set of values assumed to be peculiarly Latin and therefore the patrimony of Latin America. As Alberto Zum Felde says, “It was the longed-for reply of this weak backward America to the Titanic potentiality of the North: its self-justification, its compensation, its retaliation.” Luis Alberto Sánchez's generation must have derived, as he says he did, its primary image of the United States from Ariel. Arturo Torres-Ríoseco describes it as “the ethical gospel of the Spanish-speaking world.”

Freedom of Communication in the US and Europe

ICL Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Tenorio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Us

AbstractThis paper compares the freedom of communication in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States and the European Court of Human Rights, departing from the judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is noted that there are differences, as specified herein. Regulatory texts invite to speak of two distinct models, though this may be a far-fetched statement. This paper makes the following concluding remarks: 1) There are many concepts of freedom of expression that are compatible with democracy; the one derived from the Sullivan Judgment in the US (and in Europe from the Lingens Judgment) is not the only one, although it is currently considered the most consist­ent with democracy. This point is not discussed here. 2) Major changes sometimes occur through seemingly small details. In this sense, the shift of the burden of proof in defama­tion cases (Sullivan) has created an earthquake in the legal regime governing the press. The Sullivan doctrine can be summarized as follows: first, errors are inevitable, as freedom of speech requires ‘breathing room’; second, the malice of those accused of defamation must be proven; third, it is necessary to prove the lack of veracity of the slanderer. This doctrine allows the press to play its role as the watchdog of freedom. 3) In Spain, the press also appears to play this role, thus requiring us to ask whether there is, or ever was, a Sullivan Judgment in Spanish jurisprudence. We tend to attribute the privileged position of the press in Spain to the fact that the Constitutional Court has given preferential consid­eration to freedom of speech when it is in conflict with honor, intimacy and self-image privacy. This preference is justified by its connection to democracy. Since the judgment of the Spanish Constitutional Court (STC hereafter) 6/1981 of 16 March, the Spanish Consti­tutional Court has stressed the importance of freedom of information for democracy, and since the STC 159/1986 of 16 December, the Constitutional Court has suggested the pref­erential position of freedom of expression. However, the incorporation of the Sullivan doc­trine into the Spanish system occurred through STC 6/1988 of 21 January, almost ten years after the passage of the Constitution into law.

Harry Bridges’s Australia, Australia’s Harry Bridges

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cherny
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Similar Process ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Harry Bridges, longtime leader of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU, representing Pacific Coast workers), was born in Australia in 1901 and came to the United States in 1920. Bridges brought Australian concepts of labor and politics to the docks of San Francisco in the early 1930s and injected Australian examples into his discussions of US working conditions and politics thereafter. When faced in 1939-1955 with deportation for being a Communist, he always attributed his political outlook to his early experiences in Australia. Bridges was frequently demonized in the US press, and a similar process occurred in Australia as the press there drew upon the US press in presenting Bridges. Just as business groups and conservatives in the United States saw Bridges as a dangerous radical, so too did conservative Australian politicians let their fear of Bridges carry them into a Quixotic campaign to prevent him from sneaking into their country. However, the Australian dockworkers’ union, the Waterfront Workers’ Federation, looked to Bridges and the ILWU as inspiration and exemplar, and Bridges and the ILWU worked closely with their counterparts in Australia. With the thaw in the Cold War aecline in anticommunist rhetoric in both nations, Bridges could be celebrated in both places as a “labor statesman.”

Francisco de Miranda

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Iserov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Military Commander

Francisco de Miranda (March 28, 1750, Caracas, Venezuela—July 14, 1816, La Carraca, Spain) was a Spanish American revolutionary who after a career in the Spanish Army from 1783 devoted his life to the cause of Spanish American independence. The various designs of Miranda in the 1780s–1800s were founded upon the idea of a military liberation expedition to Spanish America led by him and organized with the support of a power (Great Britain, United States, France) in conflict with Spain that would then foment existing discontent and lead to a wide-scale revolt and independence. Though these plans failed, as did his attempt to organize an expedition from New York without the support of any power (1805–1807), in 1810 the revolution in Spanish America started without his participation as a consequence of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. Miranda was called to Caracas and eventually led the short-lived First Venezuelan Republic in 1812. After its defeat he spent the last years of his life in Spanish jails. Miranda’s failure influenced the South American revolutionaries who adopted the tactics of unconditional warfare against the Spanish troops from 1813. A shrewd and sophisticated expert in world affairs and political intrigues and an acclaimed military commander, Miranda was persistently trying to use the conflicts between great powers to achieve his goal though he knew that these powers’ leaders were eager to use him as a trump card against the Spanish Empire in their geopolitical games. His contacts ranged from US Founding Fathers, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and Viscount Melville to the Prussian king Friedrich II and the Russian empress Catherine II. He was a respected peer in the high society of the European “republic of letters” in the Age of Enlightenment. In the United States his friends belonged to the Federalist Party, which represents an interesting phenomenon since Federalists are usually viewed as being generally skeptical toward foreign revolutions. In Spanish America Miranda’s ideas received no support until 1810–1812, as his failed expedition clearly shows—this is an excellent example of the interplay between “evental history” (histoire évenémentielle) and the longue durée, demonstrating how fast and unpredictable radical historical change may be. In spite of this long political solitude, Miranda entered the Spanish American symbolic pantheon as the precursor of independence.

Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Santiago De Cuba

The Spanish-American War is best understood as a series of linked conflicts. Those conflicts punctuated Madrid’s decline to a third-rank European state and marked the United States’ transition from a regional to an imperial power. The central conflict was a brief conventional war fought in the Caribbean and the Pacific between Madrid and Washington. Those hostilities were preceded and followed by protracted and costly guerrilla wars in Cuba and the Philippines. The Spanish-American War was the consequence of the protracted stalemate in the Spanish-Cuban War. The economic and humanitarian distress which accompanied the fighting made it increasingly difficult for the United States to remain neutral until a series of Spanish missteps and bad fortune in early 1898 hastened the American entry to the war. The US Navy quickly moved to eliminate or blockade the strongest Spanish squadrons in the Philippines and Cuba; Spain’s inability to contest American control of the sea in either theater was decisive and permitted successful American attacks on outnumbered Spanish garrisons in Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila. The transfer of the Philippines, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam, to the United States in the Treaty of Paris confirmed American imperialist appetites for the Filipino nationalists, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, and contributed to tensions between the Filipino and American armies around and in Manila. Fighting broke out in February 1899, but the Filipino conventional forces were soon driven back from Manila and were utterly defeated by the end of the year. The Filipino forces that evaded capture re-emerged as guerrillas in early 1900, and for the next two and a half years the United States waged an increasingly severe anti-guerrilla war against Filipino irregulars. Despite Aguinaldo’s capture in early 1901, fighting continued in a handful of provinces until the spring of 1902, when the last organized resistance to American governance ended in Samar and Batangas provinces.

The Spanish-American Works of Alexander von Humboldt as Viewed By Leading British Periodicals, 1800–1830

1973 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin P. Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
German Scientist ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt ◽  
The World ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Scientific Survey

Perhaps the most significant scientific works published about Spanish-America during the entire era 1800–1830 were the botanical and zoological findings of the German scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. He had traveled in the Spanish colonies from 1799 to 1804. Humboldt has been acclaimed as the greatest naturalist that the world had seen since Aristotle and as the foremost man in Europe during his lifetime with the exception of Napoleon. He had taken a scientific education in several German universities and had once held an appointment in Berlin as a mining official for the Prussian government. On his way back to Europe in 1804 at the conclusion of his scientific survey in Spanish-America, he stopped in the United States to visit President Thomas Jefferson who asked him to fix the new boundaries of the United States following the purchase of Louisiana. This side trip probably saved Humboldt’s life because the ship which sailed from South America with his specimens was lost at sea.

1898: The opposition to the Spanish-American war

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 681-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIERO GLEIJESES
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Congressional Record ◽  
The Press ◽  
Spanish Archives

This article focuses on the months before the Spanish-American war began in April 1898 and addresses two related questions: first, why was the opposition to the war so strong in the United States; second, why did it not prevail? To explore these questions, the papers of the McKinley administration are examined, along with the Congressional Record and forty-one US newspapers, as well as twelve major European newspapers (British, French, German and Spanish) and the relevant documents from the British and Spanish archives. It is only in the press that one can find a coherent, well-articulated and explicit explanation of the antiwar position.

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