Who Should Rule?

Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire

Mónica Ricketts

Based on archival research in Spain and Peru, this work studies developments in Spain and colonial Peru in parallel
Offers a new perspective on imperial competition and breakdown
Examines the rise of new political actors and the tensions between men of letters and military officers

Who Should Rule?

Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire

Mónica Ricketts

Description

When Philip V prevailed over his rival Archduke Charles of Austria in 1713, the Spanish Bourbon dynasty faced a divided elite. As a result the dynasty attempted to create new power elite, based on a more professionalized, modern, and educated military officer corps (men of merit, honor, good training, and loyalty). At the same time, the Bourbons wanted to govern by relying on "men of letters," who were well educated in a modern, enlightened curriculum, men of talent, skill, and good training. Both the military and the men of letters were often drawn from the provincial elite, not the traditional aristocracy, and they would form the core of the centralized Bourbon state, which replaced the more decentralized "composite monarchy" of the Habsburg era. These groups emerged first in Spain and in later the empire to defend and govern the Spanish Atlantic world. In the turbulent years after the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, a struggle in Spain and America developed over who would rule.

Writers and lawyers would produce new legislation to radically transform the Spanish world. They would reform the educational system and propagate useful knowledge. Military officers would defend the monarchy in this new era of imperial competition. Additionally, they would govern. From the start, the rise of these political actors in the Spanish world was an uneven process. Military officers came to being as a new and somewhat solid corps. In contrast, the rise of men of letters confronted constant opposition. Rooted elites in both Spain and Peru resisted any attempts to curtail their power and prerogatives and undermined the reform of education and traditions. As a consequence, men of letters found limited spaces in which to exercise their new authority, but they aimed for more. A succession of wars and insurgencies in America fuelled the struggles for power between these two groups, paving the way for decades of unrest.

Mónica Ricketts emphasizes the continuities and connections between the Spanish worlds on both sides of the Atlantic and the ways in which liberal men of letters failed to create a new institutional order in which the military would be subjected to civilian rule.

Who Should Rule?

Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire

Mónica Ricketts

Acknowledgments
Introduction .
Part I: Imperial Reform: Contentious Consequences, 1760-1808
Chapter 1.Towards a New Imperial Elite
Chapter 2. Merit and its Subversive New Roles
Chapter 3. The King's Most Loyal Subjects
Chapter 4. From Men of Letters to Political Actors
Part II: Imperial Turmoil: Conflicts Old and New, 1806-1830
Chapter 5. Liberalism and War, 1808-1820
Chapter 6. Abascal and the Problem of Letters in Peru, 1806-1816
Chapter 7. Pens, Politics, and Swords: A Path to Pervasive Unrest, 1820-1830
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Who Should Rule?

Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire

Mónica Ricketts

Author Information

Mónica Ricketts, Assistant Professor of History, Temple University

Mónica Ricketts is assistant professor of history at Temple University.

Who Should Rule?

Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire

Mónica Ricketts

Reviews and Awards

"...Ricketts's book...re-center[s] the history of ideas (and the actions they spurred)." - Jesse Zarley, Saint Joseph's College, Latin American Research Review

"A fascinating account of the many roles of intellectuals including the political position of men of letters in both Spain and the viceroyalty of Peru ... Ricketts ... shows that the struggle between men of letters and officers intensified after independence, with the definition of merit playing a key role. The violence of the period, both in Spain and in Spanish America is emphasized. An excellent work on the nature of self-styled elites ... it deserves much praise." - Jeremy Black, European Studies Journal

"Who Should Rule? is impressively broad in both its temporal and geographic scope. Ricketts's approach grants equitable attention to both Spain and Peru, while tracing connections and interactions of peoples and processes between the two regions.The book is exhaustively researched, reflecting intense archival investigations on both sides of the Atlantic.Ricketts usefully complicates our understandings of the Bourbon Reforms and makes a valuable contribution to our comprehension of elite politics." - James E. Sanders, American Historical Review

"Ricketts's analysis provides a nuanced depiction of Spanish (and Spanish American) liberalism that goes beyond constitutionalism and emphasizes parallel developments in Peru and Spain. It explains educational transformations, chronicles new public discourse, and depicts the rise of new political actors, all with a refreshingly transatlantic lens. Specialists and students of the Spanish Empire and its legacies will find their interest piqued by the book's many instructive individual examples." - Barry M. Robinson, H-Net

"...an interesting, well-researched and clearly written book...Monica Ricketts's book should be welcomed for several reasons: for delving ´into the Peruvian case from a political and intellectual (life) point of view during the transition from colony to independence, for a comparative perspective that takes into account the crucial events that took place in the metropolis from 1808 onwards (a perspective that was ignored for a long time by Latin American historians), and also for putting on the table of historiographic debate the highly complex relationship between the sword and the pen in the mundo hispanico during a time of reform, of revolution and of war that represents the birth of independent political life in Spanish America." - Roberto Brena, El Colegio de Mexico, History: The Journal of the Historical Association