Search Results

Chapter 3 demonstrates that in the late 1950s, the pro-Europe group in the Spanish administration decided that trade liberalization and European integration were required to assure the survival of the Franco regime. The liberal officials in Madrid were cautious about progressive Europeanization. The official request of February 1962 to open negotiations with the EEC expressed Spain’s goal to obtain a commitment from the Six in favour of the country’s economic development and political evolution at the Franco regime’s desired pace. The official Spanish request brought the Six to assess their responsibility towards Spain’s future economic stability. The critical moment in the European rescue of the Franco regime took place in 1964 when the Six accepted that the Europeanization of Spain should not be limited to solving bilateral disputes, but should address Spain’s place in the future integration of Europe.

This chapter presents Vico's version of the failed Neapolitan revolt of 1701, known as the Coniuratio principum Neapolitanorum. Although commissioned by the political brokers of the Spanish regime, Vico's history failed to please the representatives of the status quo, as it challenged their neat incrimination of the urban underclasses with its attention to the unusual ways in which extrapolitical processes had both destabilized and reshaped the behavior of the traditional orders of the Kingdom in general and those of the capital city of Naples in particular. By examining Vico's account of revolt in light of the normative explanations of the period, this chapter underscores just what an astute critic of contemporary politics and society Vico was and the extent to which his keen sense of the obsolescence of civic citizenship and the municipality of Naples informed his alternative account of this episode of revolt.

This chapter takes a step back from these rural mobilizations to examine the organization unfolding in the urban centers of Matanzas, and to a lesser extent, Havana. During the early 1840s these urban centers became a crucible for scores of dissident men—rural and urban slaves, free men of color, and white creole patriots—hoping to organize against slavery and colonialism. The chapter explores the political dynamics that were radicalizing urban blacks and mulattos by the middle of the century, and the ways these ruptures brought together groups of privileged free men, a pair of British abolitionists, and a group of anticolonial white creoles who contemplated a rebellion against the Spanish regime.