La España del siglo XVIII según la historiografía de la revolución liberal

Abstract

The research question that orientates this research has been: What vision of the 18th century did the historians of the 19th century have? During the liberal revolution years, historiography elaborated a vision of the past that served for legitimizing the national-buiding process. Between the period of “decline” under the Habsburgs and the “epic” uprising of the Peninsular War, there was a century whose nature was yet to be established. Spanish intellectuals had to adjust the remembrance of Bourbon Spain to a coherent account with the new national identity. Our research is framed as a history of historiography, meaning a historical study of the intellectual product that seeks to explain the operation and change of past societies. The relationship between this discipline and its ideological conditioning is our main interest. In order to do so, we combine an external and internal analysis. On the one hand, we address the biographical and political context of the writer. On the hand, we analyse systematically their treatment of the issues related to 18th century Spain. In the first chapter we discuss the historiography that emerged in the heat of the Cádiz Constitution proclamation of a new constitutional subject. In these first attempts, the 18th century was deliberately hidden and despised because of the rupture of the break of temporal order carried by the revolutionary turbulences. In the second chapter we discuss the pioneering work of William Coxe. With abundant sources, this Anglican clergyman elaborated an interpretation of Bourbon Spain as a failed empire that did not bend its dynastic and national interests. The translation and rewriting of Coxe’s book by Andrés Muriel, a French- speaking priest exiled in Paris, made him emphasize the regenerative possibilities of 18th reformism . In the third chapter we study the historical writing under the regency of María Cristina. We examine the complex reception process of French and English historiographical trends. The fourth chapter deals with the works produced from the start of the 1845 constitutional regime of 1845 until the Revolution of 1854. During this period visions continued to oscillate between pessimism and optimist appraisals. The fifth chapter deals with the contribution of Antonio Ferrer del Río, author of an enthusiastic History of the reign of Charles III, that rehabilitated the image of this era as a period of exemplary regeneration. The sixth chapter focuses on the ecclesiastical history of Vicente de la Fuente, who reformulated a counterrevolutionary and reactionary vision, rejecting of the effects of secularization. The seventh chapter focuses on the conciliatory synthesis of Modesto Lafuente, who since had been developing a true national history of a conciliatory spirit since the 1850’s. The last two chapters address the various challenges that Lafuente's approach received on the 8 one hand from the most reactionary and conservative sectors, and from anti-dynastic and Republican progressives on the other hand. Although there was a slow rehabilitation of the historiographic image of the relations between dynasty and nation in the 18th century, this was dependent on the political ups and downs. Historical writing was still very weakly institutionalized and reliant on on political initiatives. The image of the enlightened Spain, therefore, was closely linked to the expectations that moderate liberalism had for the gradualist reformism led by the Bourbon dynasty.