'The Storms of 1848' : the global revolutions in Spain

Abstract

This thesis explores the effect of the 1848 revolutionary cycle in Spain and its imperial space, focusing on its global connections and on the intersections between revolution, counterrevolution, and empire building. In doing so, it aims to contribute to a global approach to the 1848 revolutions that goes beyond perspectives that are exclusively centred on Europe as space. In this thesis, mid-nineteenth century Spain is understood not as a nation-state within the Iberian Peninsula, but as a fluid global empire with colonies, diasporas, and exile communities in various spaces. Considering the chronological frame of a “long 1848” and using various scales, this thesis stresses the continuities between the political upheavals and international reconfigurations that occurred around the year 1846, and the revolutionary events of 1848-1849. This thesis opposes the traditional image of Spain as an exception to the revolutionary cycle. It argues that the Parisian Revolution did in fact have a significant impact on the Iberian Peninsula, which prompted the Spanish government to develop counterrevolutionary measures on both sides of the Atlantic. Exile communities in Europe and spaces like Paris, Oran or New Orleans profited from the occasion presented by the 1848 revolutions to challenge either the political status quo in the metropole or the colonial order in the Caribbean. This generated a flow of transnational mobilities of revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary) actors, information, propaganda, and material; mobilities that diverse state actors tried to curtail through various means to prevent revolutionary contagion. At the same time, hundreds of political prisoners were sent to overseas possessions as part of a repressive repertoire that combined counterrevolution and colonisation through the relocation of convicts. Finally, this thesis explores the changes to several political cultures in the Spanish empire during the early 1850s as a result of the revolutionary cycle.