Papers by Sarah C . Chambers
Deleted Journal, Dec 31, 2021
This article analyzes requests for aid and compensation from royalists displaced by war within th... more This article analyzes requests for aid and compensation from royalists displaced by war within the Spanish empire in a period of still unsettled borders. It unpacks the terminology used both by the émigrés (emigrados) and by officials in the receiving societies, such as Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, to demarcate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The term patria (homeland) expressed belonging but with ambiguous meanings that could refer to one's birthplace, the larger community of royal subjects, or an emerging nation. When émigrés complained of being treated as outsiders rather than compatriots, they expressed a bifurcated identity similar to those exiled in foreign countries.
Displaced by Revolution: Loyalists in Limbo within the Spanish Empire
Age of Revolutions, 2023
From Justice to Law: Late Colonial and Early Republican Eras
A Companion to the Legal History of Latin America , 2023
Rather than seeing independence as instigating a rupture in legal practice, this chapter argues t... more Rather than seeing independence as instigating a rupture in legal practice, this chapter argues that a gradual standardization and ascendancy of state law over other jurisdictions, such as ecclesiastical courts, began under Iberian monarchs in the mid-eighteenth century and intensified under subsequent national governments. Although constitutions marked an important shift in public law, most Spanish and Portuguese civil and criminal compilations remained in effect; changes, therefore, were implemented through shifts in interpretation and practice. Despite increased policing, reformed judicial institutions, along with enlightenment and republican ideas, also created spaces and discourses for subalterns to participate in transforming the legal culture. Women and the enslaved appealed to natural law in seeking written rulings that they were entitled to financial support and protection from abuse, and male criminal defendants invoked their rights to due process, often successfully. By the middle of the nineteenth century, increasingly exclusive definitions of citizenship shaped legal personhood. Those considered dependent on others, such as women and servants, could still access courts but had lost many protections and were unlikely to be treated as equal before the law, foreshadowing their status under new civil codes. Thus, the relative shift from pluralistic justice to positive law had uneven effects.
Beyond Heroes and Heroines: Gendering Latin American Independence
Cambridge Companion to Latin American Independence , 2023
Historiography has long relegated women’s roles in Latin American independence to stories of hero... more Historiography has long relegated women’s roles in Latin American independence to stories of heroines who briefly left their homes to support the movement only to return once battles were won. This chapter argues, by contrast, that shifting norms of femininity and masculinity were central to the political transformation from colonies governed by paternal monarchs to republics that de-emphasized colonial hierarchies based upon rank and race in order to celebrate national fraternity among male citizens. Using intersectional analysis, it traces the multiple ways in which roles for both women and men of various social strata were in flux from the eighteenth century through independence. By the mid-nineteenth century, ideologies of separate spheres had become dominant, allowing elite and middling women to extend their maternal influence into educational and charitable endeavors, but only by mobilizing as women. Poor women and women of color could neither live up to domestic ideals nor earn rights, like their male peers, through military service or as heads of households. Rather than being subordinated simply owing to a colonial legacy of patriarchal domination, then, women’s status and positions changed as they went from sharing with men differentiated ranks as colonial subjects to their exclusion from citizenship.
La mujer en las revoluciones liberales atlánticas: Roles entre lealtades, independencias y patrias (1780-1873) , 2023
Este libro tuvo un proceso de arbitraje doble ciego. El contenido del libro no representa la opin... more Este libro tuvo un proceso de arbitraje doble ciego. El contenido del libro no representa la opinión de la Universidad Sergio Arboleda y es responsabilidad de los autores.
Digital Resources: Latin American Independence
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, 2022
Between 1808 and 1825, political movements and warfare resulted in independence for the colonies ... more Between 1808 and 1825, political movements and warfare resulted in independence for the colonies of Spain and Portugal in the Americas, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico. The bicentennials of those events accelerated the availability of digital resources about Latin American independence. Libraries, archives, museums, and other educational institutions have created websites and mounted digital exhibits that provide overviews of the history for the general public, students, and researchers in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Many of the same institutions are in the process of digitizing collections of primary sources from the period. Particularly abundant are open-access digital editions of newspapers and periodicals as well as other printed material from the early 19th century such as proclamations, edicts, speeches, broadsides, and constitutions. Some digitized archival manuscripts relevant to research on the independence period are also accessible online, especially from archives in Spain, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Although the vast majority of primary sources have not been converted to digital formats, many archives and libraries do have digital finding aids and catalogs that can be consulted prior to research trips. Transcriptions of primary sources are also available online, some created specifically for web portals and others as digitized editions of earlier published document collections. The availability of digital resources on the history of independence varies by country, with more material for Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Argentina while Central America, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay are underrepresented.
Expatriados en la madre patria: El estado de limbo de los emigrados realistas en el imperio español, 1790-1830
Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe , 2021
This article analyzes requests for aid and compensation from royalists displaced by war within th... more This article analyzes requests for aid and compensation from royalists displaced by war within the Spanish empire in a period of still unsettled borders. It unpacks the terminology used both by the émigrés (emigrados) and by officials in the receiving societies, such as Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, to demarcate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The term patria (homeland) expressed belonging but with ambiguous meanings that could refer to one’s birthplace, the larger community of royal subjects, or an emerging nation. When émigrés complained of being treated as outsiders rather than compatriots, they expressed a bifurcated identity similar to those exiled in foreign countries.
“Gender during the Period of Latin American Independence”
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, 2021
Independence is foundational to national histories in Latin America, defined for this article as ... more Independence is foundational to national histories in Latin America, defined for this article as former colonies of Spain and Portugal in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the 19th and most of the 20th centuries, however, attention to women’s experiences during that period was limited to patriotic biographies of those considered heroines. With the growth of women’s history beginning in the 1970s, a few dissertations in the United States focused on women’s roles during independence, resulting in one monograph and a few articles. The field was more linked to social than political history, however, and most studies of women in Latin America focused either on the colonial period or on the 20th century. A few historians did analyze women’s status, particularly in family law, over a longer transitional period, from the late 18th century into the 19th century, that encompassed independence. Similarly, literary scholars undertook gender analysis of texts in the same timeframe. By the 1990s, feminist scholars within Latin America were overcoming institutional barriers, leading to a rise in works published in Spanish and Portuguese. Indeed, scholars within the region have undertaken most of the studies that focus on women specifically during the movements for independence in Spanish America between 1810 and 1825, and these publications have grown significantly with the bicentennial commemorations. Scholars in North America and Europe have also increased their attention to gender and politics, especially during the aftermath of independence, and they have added masculinity as a subject of analysis. The increase in scholarship was sufficient for some to undertake article-length overviews in the 2000s, and the time is ripe to reconsider larger debates over the extent and timing of changes in gender roles and dynamics. Most scholars argue that despite women’s contributions to the independence movements, their status remained little changed or even worsened within the new nations. While without doubt a rising ideology of domesticity for women occurred in the 19th century, the particular spaces for women’s agency merit closer investigation. Despite the considerable growth in the field, moreover, much research remains to be done. Brazil and especially Central America are underrepresented. Although studies of Indigenous women who participated in late colonial Andean rebellions have been done, much less work is available focused on Indigenous or on women of African descent during or after the wars of independence.
Una Nueva Mirada a las Independencias, 2021
“From One Patria, Two Nations: Historic Convergence and Political Divergence in the Andean Heartland, 1780-1850,” in John Tutino, ed., New Countries in the Americas: Diverging Paths to the World of Nations and Industrial Capitalism, 1750-1870 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 316-49.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
L'Atlantique révolutionnaire: une perspective ibéro-américaine , 2013
American Historical Review, 2012
IN 1811, AS CHILEANS RESPONDED to Napoleon's capture of King Fernando VII by forming local govern... more IN 1811, AS CHILEANS RESPONDED to Napoleon's capture of King Fernando VII by forming local governing councils, José Miguel Carrera recorded in his diary a conversation with another powerful elite, an ally poised to become a rival: Friar Joaquin [Larraín] said to me: "My family holds all the presidencies: I, President of the Congress; my brother-in-law, of the Executive; my nephew, of the High Court. What more could we desire?" Upset by his pride, I had the urge to reply imprudently by asking him who had the presidency of the bayonets? 1
Gender, War and Politics: The Wars of Revolution and Liberation - Transatlantic Comparisons, 1775-1820 , 2010
Public gratitude for good deeds can never be more justly awarded than when the blood of heroes is... more Public gratitude for good deeds can never be more justly awarded than when the blood of heroes is sacrificed for the Liberty of the Nation. The widows and mothers of the victors of Chacabuco deserve the recognition of the Government, for in them lives on the memory of the brave who extinguished tyranny; but the State's lack of funds cannot provide a worthy compensation. 1
Journal of Women's History, 2008
Most scholarship on republican citizenship has emphasized the domestication of women and their ex... more Most scholarship on republican citizenship has emphasized the domestication of women and their exclusion from politics in the wake of the Atlantic revolutions, but attention to such loyalist women as Kezia Coffin in Massachusetts and María Antonia Bolívar in Venezuela reveals the ongoing viability of female agency in several arenas. This comparative study argues that, in choosing to retain their
Justicia, poder y sociedad en Chile: Recorridos históricos , 2007
Sarah C. Chambers Manuela Sáenz has not suffered the fate of many women throughout history: she h... more Sarah C. Chambers Manuela Sáenz has not suffered the fate of many women throughout history: she has not been forgotten. But the image of her that has lived on, for all its vivid color, is strangely flat. She is remembered as the lover of Simón Bolívar, the renowned leader of South America's independence from Spain. 1 Novels and biographies alike depict her as the passionate beauty to whom Bolívar wrote, "I also want to see you, and examine you and touch you and feel you and savor you and unite you to me through all my senses." 2 Her passions extended into the public sphere, where she dramatically defended the image of This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at a conference entitled "Re-Thinking Nationalisms: Women's Writings of Resistance and Accommodation in the Modern Period" at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona in November 1996. I would like to thank
Araucaria Universidad de Sevilla [email protected] ISSN (Versión impresa): 1575-6823 ESPAÑA 2005 Sara... more Araucaria Universidad de Sevilla [email protected] ISSN (Versión impresa): 1575-6823 ESPAÑA 2005 Sarah C. Chambers CARTAS Y SALONES: MUJERES QUE LEEN Y ESCRIBEN LA NACIÓN EN LA SUDAMÉRICA DEL SIGLO XIX Araucaria, primer semestre, año/vol.
This article explores how gender and race infused meanings of the key concepts of virtue and pass... more This article explores how gender and race infused meanings of the key concepts of virtue and passion in the writings of Simón Bolívar (1783–1830). Even when coding dangerous passions as feminine, Bolívar was chiefly concerned with masculinity. Influenced by European moral philosophy, he believed that the passions of vengeance, jealousy, and ambition, which held sway over weak civilian politicians and ambitious men of colour, gave rise to political factions that threatened national order. His solution was to inculcate republican morality in the citizenry through institutions such as a hereditary senate, a moral power, or a chamber of censors. Such political ideas and models of masculinity, rooted in classical republicanism, differed from liberalism's faith that if men were free to pursue their economic interests, the passions would neutralize each other. Although Bolívar's most radical proposals were not enacted, his moralizing goals were widely shared and shaped Spanish American political traditions.