The past is never dead. It's not even past
In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian Peninsula, forcing King Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII to surrender their rights to the Spanish throne. While a brutal war ravaged the peninsula, various municipalities and corporate bodies throughout the Spanish Atlantic World formed juntas (councils) to govern in the absent monarch’s name. This episode opened […]
Martín Bowen’s most recent book, The Age of Dissent: Revolution and the Power of Communication in Chile, explores the turbulent period between 1780 and 1833 in which the inhabitants of the Captaincy General of Chile, a sparsely populated Spanish colony on South America’s Pacific Coast, witnessed an unprecedented scale of political experimentation and mobilization. Beginning […]