I am exploring the presence and impact of classical republican/ civic humanist discourse in the Spanish 'liberal' Generation of 1808 (Quintana, Blanco, Antillón, Flórez Estrada, etc.). I am interested in any secondary literature on the classical republican tradition pertaining to the Spanish-speaking world in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries.
In regard to early modern republicanism some contributions from Jose Angel Achon Insausti (University of Deusto, Bilbao) would be a good start (this is on early modern forms of republicanism in the Basque context). John Adams, second American President, mentions the aspirations of Basque republics in his travel diaries and also discusses aspects of the same theme in his various writings on constitutions and constitutionalism. The whole debate about Basque egalitarianism and universal nobility has also produced some insights that might be worthwhile pursuing. A closer look into early Catalan political history could also produce some results but I am less knowledgeable so will leave it to others to comment.
Jose you are probably familiar with these, but here are a few suggestions:
1. Jeremy Adelman, "Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic" (Princeton, 2006)
2. Jaime E. Rodriguez O., "The Independence of Spanish America" (Cambridge, 1998)
3. Francois-Xavier Guerra, "Revoluciones Hispanics y Liberalismo Espanol" (Madrid, 1995)
4. Cecilia Mendez, "The Plebeian Republic" (Durham, 2005)
and of course the classic John Lynch, "The Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1826" (2nd ed. NY, 1973)
These are foundational texts that offer a variety of accounts. There's plenty more where these come from, drawn from consortium grad courses at Princeton, NYU, and Rutgers. I could probably dig up the syllabi if you wanted to see them all; the literature is extensive. Without knowing how far you're going in the theory direction, some post-colonial material is helpful to track different emergent nationalisms. A good collection I recently finished is Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero eds., "After Spanish Rule" (Durham, 2003) which has essays by the current who's-who in the field. Hope this helps.
Thank you very much Andreas Hess. I am not familiar with Achón Insausti's work, I will check him out. J.M. Portillo Valdés has studied the development in the Basque Country and Navarra of a self-image as republics freely confederated with the Spanish monarchy, and the circulation of that image in Europe and America. There is interesting work on early republicanism in Aragón/Catalunya by Xavier Gil (for example his article in the collective volumes on Republicanism edited by Quentin Skinner and Martin Van Gelderen), but there must be more out there.
Thank you Kevin, that does help. I was familiar with some but not all of those texts.
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