The Latin American Revolutions

The Latin American Revolutions The political upheavals and independence movements that shook the foundations of empire in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century brought forth new expressions of individual rights and freedom that began to influence similar actions in the colonies of Latin America. The origins of the Latin American independence movements of the early 1800s might be traced to changes in imperial administration. After many years of semi-autonomous local rule and limited metropolitan intervention, new bureaucratic reforms in the eighteenth century caused some discomfort in the American colonies. Whatever problems these reforms caused were magnified by French invasion of Spain and Portugal in 1808. Following Napoleon’s disruption of royal power, some Latin American colonies established their own governments. When the Spanish and Portuguese tried to reassert control, their colonies began to move toward independence. The role of slavery and enslaved people in these places would be crucial in defining and maintaining independence. In Venezuela, for example, the 1811 constitution ended the slave trade, but enforced slavery and racial discrimination. Across South America, political and social actions toward independence gave enslaved people greater motivation and opportunities to work toward their own freedom. When rhetoric turned to warfare, free and enslaved people of African descent became important sources of manpower in revolutionary armies. As had been the custom throughout the revolutionary Atlantic, individual manumission was earned through military service. The new independent states—places like Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela—passed laws to end the slave trade. However, they acted less quickly on the issue of slavery, often legislating schemes for gradual emancipation. People of color who had not won immediate manumission (release from slavery) had to fight against legal and social barriers to full freedom, sometimes for decades. John Green moves through the different revolutions, and as he does so, think about how these revolutions are similar/different to each other and to the others you have watched videos about. QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR VIEWING: o What were the origins of the Latin American Revolutions? o How does each country in Latin America experience its revolution? How are they similar or different? o What are the outcomes of the revolutions? Conclusion In long-term perspective, the revolutions were mostly successful. They spread widely the ideals of liberalism, republicanism, the overthrow of aristocracies, kings and established churches. They emphasized the universal ideals of the Enlightenment, such as the equality of all men, including equal justice under law by disinterested courts as opposed to particular justice handed down at the whim of a local noble. They showed that the modern notion of revolution, of starting fresh with a radically new government, could actually work in practice. Revolutionary mentalities were born and continue to flourish to the present day. Abolitionism and the Enlightenment Web Page  Despite its brutality and inhumanity, the slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment began to criticize it for its violation of the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups condemned it for its un-Christian qualities. Enlightenment figures, such as French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu, both expressed their disapproval of the Atlantic slave system, as did writers like Aphra Behn, the author of Oroonoko (1688), the story of an African enslaved in Suriname. For the most part, these early critics focused on the inhumanity, cruelty, and immorality of the slave trade, themes that would be picked up by abolitionists in the 1780s. The case against colonial slavery was also greatly strengthened by political economists such as the Scottish economist Adam Smith, who argued that slave labor was costly and inefficient, certainly when compared to free wage labor. Others went further, condemning slavery on the grounds that it was harmful to the personal industry, profitable economy, and family life. Slavery was increasingly viewed by many eighteenth-century Britons (and Americans, too) as part of a "system" that appeared outmoded and in urgent need of repair. An important lead also came from the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers. Convinced of the utter sinfulness of physical coercion, American Quaker activists, following Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, succeeded in making abolition a test of religious truth. In 1758, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting made involvement in the slave trade a disciplinary offense, leading to exclusion from all its business meetings. Two years later Quakers in New England similarly changed their policy relating to slave merchants. Interestingly, there was an international or transatlantic dimension to this reform activity. In 1761 the London Yearly Meeting also announced that any of its members found guilty of involvement in the slave trade would merit disownment. Underpinned by an intricate web of family connections and business contacts, international Quakerism would prove to be one of the most dynamic and enduring factors in the campaign against both slavery and the slave trade. A small group of black abolitionists who formed a group known as the Sons of Africa played a key role in the abolitionist movement. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, of Nigerian origin. An ex-slave who traveled widely and was at one time or another a servant, a hairdresser, a miner, and a ship’s steward, Equiano emerged in his forties as an important spokesman for the early abolitionist movement. He described some of his experiences in his enormously successful Interesting Narrative (1789), which remains probably the most complete account of the enslaved experience in the eighteenth century. Together with Sharp and another free African, Ottobah Cugoano—a Fante from Ghana who had been enslaved in Grenada—Equiano also helped to publicize the 1781 Zong case, in which the British owners of the slave ship Zong attempted to claim insurance on 133 Africans from São Tomé who had been thrown overboard when an epidemic spread. By the late 18th century, moral disapproval of slavery was widespread, and antislavery reformers won a number of deceptively easy victories during this period. In Britain, Granville Sharp secured a legal decision in 1772 that West Indian planters could not hold slaves in Britain since slavery was contrary to English law. In the United States, all of the states north of Maryland abolished slavery between 1777 and 1804. But antislavery sentiments had little effect on the centers of slavery themselves: the great plantations of the Deep South, the West Indies, and South America. Turning their attention to these areas, British and American abolitionists began working in the late 18th century to prohibit the importation of African slaves into the British colonies and the United States. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, these forces succeeded in getting the slave trade to the British colonies abolished in 1807. The United States prohibited the importation of slaves that same year, though widespread smuggling continued until about 1862. Suppressing the Trade After the 1807 act, the British no longer participated in the slave-trade but illegal traders continued to smuggle enslaved people to the British West Indies, and to plantations owned by other countries until slavery was abolished. The harsh conditions, in many plantations, meant new African workers were constantly required to replace the dead. Prices rose sharply and huge profits could be made by illegal traders. For 60 years after the 1807 act, the Royal Navy was used to enforce the British ban by shutting down the slave trade routes and seizing slave ships at sea. The West Africa Squadron patrolled the seas liberating around 150,000 enslaved Africans. The majority of the British Slave Trade was suppressed very rapidly, but as the British ships withdrew from trading the French, followed by the Spanish and Portuguese, took their place. Gradually the traders were forced southwards down the coast away from the stronghold of Sierra Leone. But there were still many ships that could not be touched because they flew the flags of nations that did not have a treaty with Britain. American ships could not be touched unless there were actually slaves on board. This allowed the traders to arrive on the coast under the American flag, and then switch to the Brazilian flag (under this flag the crew could not be punished if caught). Almost all slavers carried multiple sets of papers to allow them to assume different nationalities as the situation required. By the end of the 1840s the health and effectiveness of the squadron were improving and in 1850 the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies announced that an earlier treaty with Britain would be enforced. The Brazilian trade rapidly collapsed. The Cuban trade still continued, mainly using American ships; but after Abraham Lincoln became President in 1860, he prevented slave ships being built or fitted out in the northern States. Then in April 1862, the 'Treaty of Washington' between America and Britain finally allowed vessels carrying slavery equipment to be seized along with a mutual right of search. The American squadron on the coast of Africa was withdrawn, at the onset of the Civil War, leaving the British squadron to act on behalf of both countries. With no protection to be had from any flag, the risks to the slave-traders were rising steeply. Slave-owners were becoming reluctant to invest in slaves and prices were falling. By 1866 the last of the transatlantic trade had been halted. The transatlantic trade was finally over but trade continued on the east coast of Africa and the Royal Navy continued to police the seas, especially around Zanzibar into the 20th century. The End of Chattel Slavery in the Americas The anti-slavery movement depended in part on the success of the movement to end the slave trade. While the two movements shared some of the same people and motivations, bringing an end to slavery proved more difficult than ending the trade. Plantation societies in the Americas provided great wealth to Europe, which some leaders were reluctant to abandon. More stringent ideas about race also made some leaders uncomfortable to accept a large, free population of African descent. Eventually, activist networks on both sides of the Atlantic brought positive legislative change to end the centuries-long practice of enslavement. Historians debate whether this change was due to humanitarian or economic impulses. Some policymakers clearly embraced the rights-based logic of the Enlightenment and revolutions when they voted for emancipation. Others believed that the plantation system was in decline and that states should turn their economic interests elsewhere. The mechanisms of emancipation varied across the Americas. In Haiti, the enslaved population successfully freed itself from imperial rule. In the United States, a long civil war won a legal end to slavery. In many other places, the process took longer, with governments passing gradual emancipation laws that delayed freedom for many. Emancipation schemes often included some provision for compensating former slave owners. Haiti, for example, was forced to pay France millions in restitution for the loss of slave property. Gradual emancipation and “apprenticeship” policies could also be seen as a form of compensation, where slave owners’ interests were protected above those of their workers. In the end, however, the nineteenth-century Atlantic world saw a dramatic shift, as empires and nations dismantled the formal policies of enslavement. The end of slavery came to most parts of the Americas in the middle decades of the 1800s. From the 1820s through the 1860s, Great Britain, France, the United States, and independent Spanish American nations outlawed slavery. Haiti stands as a noteworthy exception with its revolutionary emancipation in the first years of the century. Despite growing international pressure, Cuba and Brazil retained their slave systems until the late 1880s. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789 National Assembly of France The representatives of the people of France, formed into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of Government, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, these natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable rights: that this declaration being constantly present to the minds of the members of the body social, they may be for ever kept attentive to their rights and their duties; that the acts of the legislative and executive powers of government, being capable of being every moment compared with the end of political institutions, may be more respected; and also, that the future claims of the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable principles, may tend to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the general happiness. For these reasons, the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and favour, the following sacred rights of men and of citizens: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility. II. The end of all political associations, is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of men, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it. IV. Political liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every man, has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the free exercise of the same rights; and these limits are determinable only by the law. V. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society. What is not prohibited by the law, should not be hindered; nor should any one be compelled to that which the law does not require. VI. The law is an expression of the will of the community. All citizens have a right to concur, either personally, or by their representatives, in its formation. It should be the same to all, whether it protects or punishes; and all being equal in its sight, are equally eligible to all honours, places, and employments, according to their different abilities, without any other distinction than that created by their virtues and talents. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) I-2 VII. VII. No man should be accused, arrested, or held in confinement, except in cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. All who promote, solicit, execute, or cause to be executed, arbitrary orders, ought to be punished, and every citizen called upon, or apprehended by virtue of the law, ought immediately to obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance. VIII. VIII. The law ought to impose no other penalties but such as are absolutely and evidently necessary; and no one ought to be punished, but in virtue of a law promulgated before the offence, and legally applied. IX. IX. Every man being presumed innocent till he has been convicted, whenever his detention becomes indispensable, all rigour to him, more than is necessary to secure his person, ought to be provided against by the law. X. XI. X. No man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on account of his religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not disturb the public order established by law. XI. The unrestrained communication of thoughts and opinions being one of the most precious rights of man, every citizen may speak, write, and publish freely, provided he is responsible for the abuse of this liberty, in cases determined by law. XII. XII. A public force being necessary to give security to the rights of men and of citizens, that force is instituted for the benefit of the community and not for the particular benefit of the persons to whom it is intrusted. XIII. XIII. A common contribution being necessary for the support of the public force, and for defraying the other expenses of government, it ought to be divided equally among the members of the community, according to their abilities. XIV. XIV. Every citizen has a right, either by himself or his representative, to a free voice in determining the necessity of public contributions, the appropriation of them, and their account, mode of assessment, and duration. XV. XV. Every community has had a right to demand of all its agents an account of their conduct. XVI. XVI. Every community in which a separation of powers and a security of rights is not provided for, wants a constitution. XVII. XVII. The right to property being inviolable and sacred, no one ought to be deprived of it, except in cases of evident public necessity, legally ascertained, and on condition of a previous just indemnity. DOCUMENT TEXT For the National Assembly to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next legislature: Preamble Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the authoritative acts of women and the authoritative acts of men may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all political institutions; and in order that citizens' demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all. Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Woman and of Female Citizens. Portrait of Olympe de Gouges (via Wikimedia Commons) Woven Teaching | Human Rights Documents: Declaration of the Rights of Woman 2 Article 1 Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility. Article 2 The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression. Article 3 The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly from it (the nation). Article 4 Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason. Article 5 Laws of nature and reason proscribe all acts harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not command. Article 6 The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents. Article 7 No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained in cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this rigorous law. Article 8 The law must establish only those penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary... Article 9 Once any woman is declared guilty, complete rigor is exercised by law. Article 10 No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her Woven Teaching | Human Rights Documents: Declaration of the Rights of Woman 3 demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order. Article 11 The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of woman, since that liberty assures recognition of children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus may say freely, I am the mother of a child which belongs to you, without being forced by a barbarous prejudice to hide the truth; (an exception may be made) to respond to the abuse of this liberty in cases determined by law. Article 12 The guarantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted. Article 13 For the support of the public force and the expenses of administration, the contributions of woman and man are equal; she shares all the duties and all the painful tasks; therefore, she must have the same share in the distribution of positions, employment, ofÏces, honors, and jobs. Article 14 Female and male citizens have the right to verify, either by themselves of through their representatives, the necessity of the public contribution. This can only apply to women if they are granted an equal share, not only of wealth, but also of public administration, and in the determination of the proportion, the base, the collection, and the duration of the tax. Article 15 The collectivity of women, joined for tax purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to demand an accounting of his administration from any public agent. Article 16 No society has a constitution without the guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; the constitution is null if the majority of individuals comprising the nation have not cooperated in drafting it. Article 17 Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right no one can be deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of nature, unless the legally determined public need obviously dictates it, and then only with a just and prior indemnity. Postscript Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, Woven Teaching | Human Rights Documents: Declaration of the Rights of Woman 4 superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. In the centuries of corruption you ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of naturewhat have you to dread from such a fine undertaking?