Friends or Foes? Spain and the American Revolution
In recent years, the key role of Spain in the American Revolution, and more specifically the crucial support the Spanish Empire provided throughout the events, starting as early as 1775, has received increasing attention in academia and society. In both Spain and the United States, this interest has led to a series of publications, conferences, lectures, and exhibitions that have brought these topics to a broader audience. This effort has been necessary to correct the long-standing silencing of the various ways Spain supported the Patriots and to explain its motives for doing so.
The reasons for the creation of a narrative that, for much of the time since the American Revolution, has focused solely on France’s support are obvious: a considerable part of Spain’s crucial aid was sent through secret channels, so it received less public awareness and credit; the post-war rivalry between Spain and the United States contributed significantly to an intentional “downplaying” of Spain’s role during the Revolution; and from the beginning, the very idea of receiving support from the Spanish Empire, with its strongly Catholic orientation, was not well received by all patriots. A combination of persisting historical prejudices, negative stereotypes, and biases against Spain’s colonial empire, along with general resentments against Catholicism, were important factors in this context.
This lecture uses the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as an ideal platform to address this historical inaccuracy and shed light on Spain’s role in the American Revolution from a global perspective (1775-1883). It does so by using a prosopographical approach, given that Spanish involvement in the War was not simply a matter of state policy but rather a network of individuals – ministers, diplomats, military officers, merchants, financiers, governors, administrators, translators, intermediaries, and intellectuals – who connected Spain with the Viceroyalty of New Spain, particularly Cuba and Louisiana, with France and the emerging United States.
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Sandra Rebok is a historian and cultural scientist specializing in 18th- and 19th-century intellectual networks and transnational cooperation, imperial expansion and exploration voyages, with a particular focus on the connection between the Spanish Empire and the U.S. nation-building process. She has spent 16 years at the Spanish National Research Council, worked for the German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, and served as a 3-year Marie Curie Fellow at the Huntington Library, awarded by the European Commission. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies within the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, and a Research Associate in the History Department at the University of San Diego. Dr. Rebok has over twenty years of scholarship on Alexander von Humboldt, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading minds of the Enlightenment. Through her two current book projects, which analyze Jefferson’s strategic pursuits in the Spanish and Mexican Southwest and the role of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the American Revolution, she continues her research in global and interconnected history.
E-mail: sarebok@gmx.net
