Reviving Empire: French and Spanish Visions of Imperial Renewal in the Greater Caribbean (1800-1830)

This project investigates Spanish and French visions of imperial renewal in the Greater Caribbean during the early nineteenth century, a time of profound crisis and spatial disintegration for both empires in the region. It posits that this first wave of decolonization inspired projects (both abortive and actualized) to reform imperial power in existing colonies, reverse the tide of independence movements, or expand the empire into new spaces. This project’s methodological approach combines a micro-historical perspective along with the transimperial and transnational framework of analysis adopted by global history. Using a comparative and connected perspective, it will focus on distinct yet interrelated modes of imperial revival ([1] commercial improvement, [2] colonization and resettlement, [3] reconquest and pacification) as reaction to decolonization. By examining a range of proposals for revitalizing and reterritorializing the Spanish and French empires in the Greater Caribbean, with an emphasis on the prominent role of colonial exiles, this project challenges narratives of inevitable imperial collapse and linear transition from empires to nation-states, and from formal to informal imperialism. It delivers new insights on imperial actors as active agents of transformations that impacted the Atlantic world during the nineteenth century. This project’s reappraisal of the resilience of imperial power and imaginaries in a (post)revolutionary context will be achieved by retrieving archival materials from a dozen locations across Spain, France, Cuba, and Mexico. This project will be hosted at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) and conducted under the supervision of professor Clément Thibaud.