Reviewing the Siege of Melilla (1774–75) by Francisco de Miranda, a Spanish Army Officer in the Enlightenment

Francisco de Miranda’s European courts tour of the last decades of the eighteenth century, his involvement in the French Revolution and his role as commander-in-chief of the revolutionary armies of northern France, his proposals and actions on behalf of Venezuelan and other Latin American independence movements and his legacy in the consolidation of national consciousness have been the subject of multiple works of research. A stage of Miranda’s biography that has seldom been examined, however, is his career as an officer in the Spanish army. After joining its ranks in 1770, Miranda participated in important armed conflicts in both Africa and the Americas. His first ideas as the "Precursor" of Venezuelan independence in the military, political, and social realms can be found in his writings from this period.

As infantry captain, Miranda participated in the campaign in Melilla, a Spanish North African enclave, during the siege of 1774. In a detailed diary, he made notes and descriptions, as well as maps of the main events of the siege. This and other related records highlight not only Miranda’s general interests and technical military know-how but also suggest the first manifestations of his enlightened ideas, those that configured new logics and understandings of society, life, and, above all, geopolitical power in Europe and the Americas in the decades prior to independence. The review and study of Miranda's time as an officer in the Spanish army contributes to the reconstruction of a full-length portrait of this historical figure and of the European and American historical context of the decades prior to the process of independence in Spanish America.