The (North) “western” historiographic of the revolution ... and (Hispanic) America?

Abstract

The triumph of the first liberalism —the revolutionary— against the french Old Regime, from the last third of the 18th century until 1848, invented national histories. The history of the 19th century began to be rewritten, and went from the chronicles to the heroic stories with national dimensions and romantic deeds. National history triumphed. Already in the 20th century, a central part of the interpretations of contemporary history became universal, especially because the cohesive vehicle of this contemporary universalism was the origin, growth, expansion, development and, also, crisis of the capitalist system and its diverse manifestations. Since the fifties, and especially since the sixties of the 20th century, in the context of the Cold War and in the process of the European decolonization in Asia and Africa, there was an intense criticism of this universalist conception of contemporary history for having a eurocentric approach. The present research will address and question this vision, and point out a great omission: the history of the revolutionary processes of Hispanic American independence in most of the contemporary universal histories.