Emigres and Citizens: Migrations and Identities during South American Independence from Spain

The contraction of the Spanish empire and gradual emergence of new nations in South America (c. 1810 to 1845) provides a critical case of shifting borders, migrating people and changing identities. With a twelve-month fellowship from NEH, I will complete archival research begun in Spain, Chile and Puerto Rico with trips to Venezuela and Colombia. I will also draft a book that will analyze the reception of royalists who fled the independence wars in South America for Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain, and the policies toward Spaniards who remained in the new republics. As the first book on the subject to go beyond case studies of one or two countries and to explore in depth how these transatlantic migrations contributed to the transformation of imperial identities (common subjects of the Spanish monarch) to national identities (e.g. Venezuelan or Cuban), it will contribute to scholarship in the humanities on global wartime migrations, the emergence of nationalisms and definitions of citizenship.