Republicanism in Hispanic America. The Concept of Republic During the 1810 Rio de la Plata Revolution

QUENTIN SKINNER; PHILIP PETTIT; HENRIK ENROTH; OLEG KHARKHORDIN; MARTIN VAN GELDEREN; SUSAN JAMES; PETER HALDÉN; GABRIEL ENTIN

Sovremennaya Respublikanskaya Teoriya

European University at St. Petersburg

Año: 2015; p. 251 - 292

My hypothesis in this article is that the problematization of the concept of the republic is necessary to overcome our familiarity with the category of republicanism and to consider other ways of approaching of it. In the first and second part of this article, I will briefly introduce some uses of the concept of republic in political philosophers from Antiquity to the French revolution. From this history, I argue that there are two main meanings of the concept: on the one hand, the republic as a political community (res publica). On the other hand the republic as a particular form of government (a popular and non-monarchical form). In the third part, I will refer to the meanings of the republic in the Spanish Monarchy related to the res publica. In the fourth part, I analyze patriotic languages in Hispanic America during the late eighteenth century. In the fifth part, I study the references to the republic during the Spanish monarchical crisis of 1808 taking as an example the case of the main Spanish port in the South Atlantic, Buenos Aires. Next, I analyze how the republic was conceptualized in 1810 Rio de la Plata revolution, which was developed in the framework of the Hispanic revolutions. In the seventh part, I reconstruct the republican language of Rio de la Plata revolutionaries. Finally, I refer to the ambiguities of the republican experience during the revolution. My aim is to present some arguments to answer the question about why and how the republic spread in Hispanic America and, particularly, in Rio de la Plata revolution.