Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Measures and Money
- Glossary
- Introduction
- Part One Society
- Part Two Economy
- Part Three Politics
- 5 Elites
- 6 Politics 1777–1808
- 7 The balance overturned 1808–1810
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Geographical distribution of haciendas and hatos in Caracas 1785–1787
- Appendix B Consulado membership
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Bibliographical appendix
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
7 - The balance overturned 1808–1810
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Measures and Money
- Glossary
- Introduction
- Part One Society
- Part Two Economy
- Part Three Politics
- 5 Elites
- 6 Politics 1777–1808
- 7 The balance overturned 1808–1810
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Geographical distribution of haciendas and hatos in Caracas 1785–1787
- Appendix B Consulado membership
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Bibliographical appendix
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Summary
Introduction
Napoleon's takeover of Spain in 1808 did not simply trigger the events which in Caracas led to the struggle for independence: it caused them. There was little presage of the conflict to come in the pre-1808 Caracas which has emerged in this study, nor was there anything inevitable about the collapse of the colonial order after 1808. Caracas during most of the late-colonial period had grown, prospered and matured as a society within the confines of the empire. The province's ruling elite had not broken up into warring factions defending inimical economic and political interests. Internal political, social and racial tensions were, if anything, on the decline when the crisis of 1808 and its ensuing ramifications destabilized Spain and the rest of the imperial order.
This is not to say that a potential for conflict did not exist in late-colonial Caracas. Tensions of all kinds – economic, social, racial, political – can be found in any society. The question is whether they are so strong that they throw the given society into disequilibrium, or whether they are contained enough by the fabric of commonly held social, political and cultural values to be seen as no more than part of the normal give and take of societal interaction. By the latter measure, and certainly in comparison with other Spanish possessions in the same period, late-eighteenth-century Caracas was a well-balanced and relatively tranquil society. This is not to say that the balance could not be disrupted; but when it was, from 1808 onwards, the principal catalysts were not internal tensions or latent liberationist, separatist or nationalist tendencies inside the colony.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pre-Revolutionary CaracasPolitics, Economy, and Society 1777–1811, pp. 146 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986