Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on Spain's and Portugal's New World empires in a trans-Atlantic context. This book argues that modern notions of sovereignty in the Atlantic world have been unstable and equivocal from the start. It shows how much contemporary notions of sovereignty emerged in Americas as a response to European imperial crises in the age of revolutions.
Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2007 "This outstanding work analyzes sovereignty and its relationship to revolution as it affected the peoples of Brazil and Spain's Atlantic colonies of South America... Based on extensive secondary literature and archival and printed primary sources, this will be an immediate classic."--Choice "This is one of the few monographs in Latin American history, and the only one on the independence process that deals with both Spanish America and Brazil. Adelman characterizes each Iberian empire as a cohesive unit, as an integrated system that was both functional and more productive than the previous literature acknowledges... A complex, sophisticated, and magisterial merging of narrative theory on state, nation, economies, institutions, and sovereignty. [A] very substantial achievement."--Timothy E. Anna, International History Review "Adelman ... provides a good synthesis of how British, French and Iberian powers' policies and changing relations influenced transatlantic trade and the shape and speed of independence in Spanish and Luso-Brazilian South America."--Jordana Dym, European History Quarterly "Sovereignty and Revolution has major implications for scholarship on imperial crisis and national independence in the Iberian world. It also calls the reader's attention to the strengths and weaknesses of Atlantic history."--Christopher Schmjdt-Nowara, Journal of Modern History
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction The Labyrinth of Sovereignty 1 Chapter 1: Empires That Bleed 13 Chapter 2: Capitalism and Slavery on Imperial Hinterlands 56 Chapter 3: Between War and Peace 101 Chapter 4: The Wealth of Empires 141 Chapter 5: Spanish Secessions 175 Chapter 6: Brazilian Counterpoints 220 Chapter 7: Dissolutions of the Spanish Atlantic 258 Chapter 8: Crossing the Rubicon 308 Chapter 9: Revolution and Sovereignty 344 Afterword 394 Index 399
