Popular Royalists and Revolution in Colombia: Nationalism and Empire, 1808–40

In this paper I investigate how the understanding and strategic defense of royalist discourse transformed in the Province of Popayán, viceroyalty of New Granada, between 1808 to 1840. I aim to show how the Indians and slaves who integrated into royalist militias or partidas in defense of the monarchy, in the context of the independence wars in Popayán, based their actions upon a historical comprehension of their rights within the monarchy. By focusing on popular royalists, my research attempts to illustrate the relevance of colonial political formations and dynamics to the study of independence and early state formation. Understanding the emergence of royalist alliances in the context of independence works against representations of the colonial world as benighted, irrational, and ultimately pre-political. I study royalism and royalist alliances in this fluid timeline to explore the historical contradictions of revolutionary ideologies and republican practices, as they were experienced on the ground by colonial subjects who were variously invested in imperial structures of rights and identities. My study seeks to explain why and how people who were the objects of imperial rule became its defenders. By inserting popular royalists into the narrative of the independence process, my re-envisioning of independence also speaks to the contingencies of national state formation in Colombia. I examine the process of defeat of the royalist groups and their incorporation by the republican project and its bearers until 1840. How did republican leaders negotiate with royalists in the aftermath of independence? My argument is that a better understanding of republican state formation in Colombia hinges on a deeper insight into the role that royalist subaltern groups played in that process.