The Enclosure of the Ejidos of Bogotá Imperial Wars and the End of Common Lands in Colonial New Granada

The article analyses the enclosure of the ejidos of the city of Bogotá in the second half of the 18th century, one century before the liberal government definitively abolished common property in Colombia. It shows how, as the land demand increased with population and economic growth, not only landowners but also the Crown sought to increase their income at the expense of common lands. Unlike the classic enclosures in England, the Cabildo kept control over the ejidos of Bogotá. By furthering the private use of municipal ejidos without expropriating Cabildos, the Crown sought to activate the agrarian economy safeguarding, at the same time, the local financial structure that sustained the empire. Emphasizing the fiscal nature of municipal ejidos, this article shows how imperial dynamics transformed land use on both sides of the Atlantic and explores the specificities of common-land enclosures in some of the Spanish colonies.

“So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand”. Famines in New Granada, 1690-1820

Desde finales del siglo XVII, y con mayor frecuencia a partir de la década de 1770, diferentes lu-gares de la Nueva Granada se vieron asolados por sequías y plagas que incidieron en la escasez de alimentos esenciales como el trigo, el maíz, el plátano y la carne. En este artículo, las hambru-nas se reconstruyen a partir de una concepción amplia de crisis de subsistencia, que no se limita a las cifras de muertes por inanición, con frecuencia difíciles de desagregar, sino a partir de un conjunto de condiciones demográficas, económicas y de control (o descontrol) social. Las men-ciones puntuales sobre hambrunas y los indicios de crisis de subsistencia, junto con los factores propicios para generar escasez, fueron buscados en fuentes documentales diversas, que incluyen órdenes para el abasto de las ciudades, visitas civiles y eclesiásticas, diligencias de traslado de indios y disolución de resguardos, reclamos de curas por sus pagos, procesos judiciales, relaciones de mando y solicitudes de exención tributaria. La carencia de víveres varias veces coincidió con epidemias y la hambruna fue propiciada por factores como las demandas de alimentos y materias primas impuestas por las principales ciudades, la inexistencia de graneros públicos, la supresión de resguardos, la migración a los centros urbanos, y las regulaciones sobre comercio exterior.

Simón Bolívar

Simón Bolívar was born in 1783 in Caracas, the capital city of the Captaincy-General of Venezuela (roughly corresponding to the present-day country of the same name), which was one of three territorial sub-units of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada, the others being New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama) and Quito (present-day Ecuador). The Bolívars were wealthy and prominent members of the city’s Creole—European-descended and American-born—upper class. Upon his parents’ death, Bolívar inherited significant agricultural and mining assets as well as a large number of slaves. After an excellent private education and two European tours, Bolívar devoted himself to the cause of Spanish American independence. Throughout the crisis provoked by Napoleon I’s 1808 intervention in Spain, Bolívar led a radical faction advocating within Caracas for the end of imperial rule. In 1811, Venezuela became the first Spanish American nation to formally declare independence. During the prolonged and brutal war that ensued, despite some devastating setbacks, Bolívar gained unrivaled influence over the patriots’ military, political, and diplomatic efforts throughout Andean South America. In 1816, Bolívar exchanged a promise to abolish slavery for material and logistical support from the president of the Southern Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion. Bolívar landed a small force at Puerto Cabello, built a base in the Venezuelan plains, and then led a spectacular assault on Spanish forces across the Andean highlands, taking the Viceregal capital at Santa Fe de Bogotá in 1819. Convinced that only an expansive state could guard its independence against Spanish reconquest, Bolívar designed a constitution for what historians now refer to as “Gran Colombia,” a federal union encompassing the entire former Viceroyalty of New Granada. He then pressed his attack southward, liberating the sometimes-reluctant populations of the Andean highland regions of Quito, Peru, and Upper Peru, which was renamed Bolivia in Bolívar’s honor. Even as Bolívar designed new constitutions and began planning a larger Federation of the Andes, regional leaders within Gran Colombia’s constituent states began agitating for greater autonomy. Bolívar employed increasingly dictatorial means in his efforts to suppress his domestic opponents, while at the same time issuing invitations to the governments of the other independent states of Spanish America—and, after some urging from his vice president, to the United States of America—to send representatives to a diplomatic congress in Panama, where he hoped they might forge a still-broader alliance against both internal and external threats to American independence. The Panama Congress met in 1826, and the delegates negotiated some important bilateral treaties, but the Congress did not fulfill Bolívar’s aspiration to create a permanent forum for arbitrating disputes and coordinating the foreign policies of the new American republics. Domestic politics in Gran Colombia spun out of control in this period as well, as first Venezuela and then Ecuador seceded from the union. Bolívar spent the final months of his life disillusioned and incapacitated by tuberculosis. He died in 1830 at the age of 47.

Bolivar’s Total War

This article proposes introducing the concept of total war into the study of Latin American Independence in the 1810s and 1820s. We argue that total war was not an exclusively North Atlantic phenomenon, but an experience that also manifested itself at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada. To prove it, we analyze the social militarization caused by the enlightened reforms of the eighteenth century, the impact of political revolution in the Atlantic world and the decisive role of religion in creating an enemy that should be exterminated. The article concludes by pointing out two topics that underline the uniqueness of total war in a region of Latin America: the spatial and temporal unity of different forms of regular and irregular warfare, and the fact that total war was not the consequence of state action, but the starting point for State-building.