The Spanish Supreme Juntas: A Missing Link of Latin American Independence

There is an axiom in the study of Latin American independence, namely that the Supreme Junta of Seville (1808) and the Supreme Junta Central (Sept. 1808 to Jan. 1810) were too weak institutionally, too far geographically, and too concerned with the war against the French in the Peninsula to govern Spanish America meaningfully. In the case of the Captaincy General of Venezuela, I have shown that all these assumptions are wrong (2014). One of the reasons why the Spanish Supreme Juntas were established was to preserve Spanish America, and they acted accordingly. In this essay, I discuss how to write the history of independence to recover the monarchy-wide dialogue on governance and resistance that took place between the Supreme Juntas and the overseas viceroyalties and captaincy generals. This history, in part, has been obscured by the way archives were organized during the national period. In Latin America, the archives' stark divide between the colonial and independence eras fails to account for the Spanish monarchy’s radical reconfiguration from 1808 onwards to respond to the Napoleonic Invasion. In Spain, with some exceptions, the archives preserve the distinctiveness of the War of Independence against the French, while the focus remains on the developments in the Peninsula. To overcome the archives’ confines, I discuss the importance of outlining the Supreme Juntas’ institutions in greater depth; identifying their officials and determining their connections to the Americas; and tracing the Juntas’ orders and appointments regarding Spanish America as a whole. Understanding how the Supreme Junta governed the Americas provides a missing link in the history of independence: the beating heart that kept together a monarchy without a king against all odds.