Grad - Mongey

Abstract

This paper examines the political projects of various multinational and multiracial revolutionary expeditions that fought the Spanish empire and attempted to create their own republican states in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions. Articulating philosophical and legal justifications for rebellion and independence, the founders of these short-lived republics had to convince the rest of the world that their authority was legitimate. They therefore created a state apparatus, including constitutions, that revealed how foreigners of different ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds attempted to constitute themselves as an imagined community.