by Tom Anderson
That it is the right of the American subjects to petition the Emperor, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
That the raising or keeping a standing army within the Empire in time of peace, unless it be with consent of the Continental Parliament, is illegal;
That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;
That election of members of the Continental Parliament ought to be free to all Protestant freeholders;
That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in the Continental Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of the Continental Parliament;
That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;
That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders;
That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;
And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Continental Parliaments ought to be held not less than every three years.
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From: “A Constitutional History of the World” by J. G. Flamboise (1987)—
The American Constitution of 1788 is notable for being a ‘test bed’ for many policies advocated by British Radicals for adoption within the Westminster Parliament; for example, the holding of Parliaments every three years rather than seven and the implicit lack of rotten boroughs (which, of course, had never existed in the first place in America). As the more conservative Whigs and Tories initially ignored the nitty-gritty of the American project, this meant they were unable to effectively respond some years later when the successful public trials of these policies in America resulted in the British Radicals, led by Charles James Fox, incorporating elements of them into the British Constitution in the opening years of the nineteenth century…
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Pylos: That should suffice for a brief overview of the background of the early Empire of North America.
Nuttall: Good. In that case, can we move o-
Lombardi: Of course, we should do the same for the United Provinces of South America, a country which in many ways is even more influential on this world’s history than the ENA.
Nuttall (sighs): Why am I not surprised. All right, go on…
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From: “A Constitutional History of the World” by J. G. Flamboise (1987)—
Although the Constitution of the United Provinces of South America in its original form was highly influential on the early French Revolution and other radical attempts at constitutionalism in the perioid, it was also a rather vague document and one in many ways rooted in a kind of soft patriarchal conservatism that did not gel well with the overall radical tone of the new state. It would take considerable rewriting and amendments over the course of the next fifty years before the constitution would settle into a form we would recognise. Some historians have criticised the founding fathers of the UPSA for their ‘slapdash job’, but we must recognise that the early UPSA—before it even had that name—represented a coming together of disparate regions of the former Viceroyalty of Peru and Captaincy-General of Chile that formerly had had little contact with each other, and had often been liberated by completely unconnected rebel groups with divergent aims. From this point of view, it is admirable—no matter what might have come later—that the founders were able to weld any kind of functional federation together at all.
Even the name of the new state was unsettled at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Córdoba in 1790, and Córdoba’s own status as the capital was notional and considered temporary. During the war the city had been chosen as the de facto capital of rebel Platinea because it was a long way from the coastline, and the French had conquered Buenos Aires while the Spanish raided places like Valvidia and Santiago de Chile. Later it remained the capital by default, just because the Platineans would veto Santiago while the Chileans would veto Buenos Aires, and Lima was hated by everyone else, so Córdoba represented the least bad compromise.
The name United Provinces of South America may seem obvious in retrospect, but also represented a slightly awkward compromise. Some delegates to the Convention favoured Federation, others Confederation, representing a disagreement over how much power the central government should have relative to the provinces. United Provinces was chosen as a deliberately vague term allowing both sides to claim victory, pushing that argument to a later date—where it would gradually be won, over a period of years, by the federalists. ‘South America’ was also a slightly ambiguous term to use, as the UPSA controlled less than half of the continent and it might be perceived as implicitly holding ambitions of conquest towards the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada and Portuguese Brazil. Once again, though, this term ended up being set into the constitution by default due to disagreements between those who wanted to use a pre-existing name for part of the new state (‘Chile’, ‘Peru’, etc.), those who wanted to use a native Indian name to distance themselves from Spain, and those who wanted to invent a new name out of whole cloth or name it after one of the heroes of the revolutionary war. ‘South America’ was chosen despite its ambiguity, and in any case the potentially misleading demonym was soon displaced by ‘Meridian’.
Given these kinds of arguments, it is remarkable that the Constitutional Convention achieved as much as it did. Despite the Sun of Córdoba ultimately being derived from a native symbol,[128] one can understand the story of it coming from the delegates finally walking out of the town hall to announce the final form of the constitution and the clouds parting, the sun shining dramatically upon them.
The Cortes Nacionales (literally National Court, but in practice meaning parliament) was the first and chief institution of government created by the original constitution. Members of the Cortes, referred to as deputies, were elected on a provincial basis, but the constitution importantly enshrined the right to universal householder suffrage—which would eventually be expanded even more radically to universal male suffrage. This clause would overrule any attempt by the provinces to decide how their deputies were elected, unlike the very different balance of federalism seen in the ENA. The Cortes was always intended as the primary organ of government, with the President-General initially being seen as effectively a republican stand-in for a ceremonial monarch, right down to serving for life. The original plan would even have had the President-General elected by the Cortes itself. At the last moment, however, this was changed to a national popular vote, and this measure would go on to give the President-General an unintended authority stemming from this popular mandate. The President-General’s executive power would grow over time: when the constitution was first drawn up, executive power was intended to rest collectively in the Cortes. Of course in practice, with the growth of factionalism, a ‘first among equals’ arose in the Cortes, known as the President of the Cortes (often translated as Prime Minister in English) but this position would not be formally recognised in the constitution until a later series of amendments—by which time he had become secondary to the President-General in any case.
The first President-General was, of course, Simón Riquelme de la Barrera Goycochea. Riquelme was the perfect choice: a hero from the war, but a decidedly backseat one, not the sort to be able to command the army to launch a coup if he felt like it; someone whose family had lived in South America since the 1600s, therefore being a statement against the peninsulares; and a Chilean, when most of the first government was of a Platinean background, thus balancing the government. He was also the only President-General ever to actually serve purely in the ceremonial, pseudomonarchical way that the constitution-writers envisaged.
Given the slant towards federalism from the start, provincial government was rudimentary, consisting of Intendants appointed by the Cortes (later
, appointed by the President-General and confirmed by vote of the Cortes) and councils appointed by the Intendants. Elected Intendants and provincial audiencias would not come until many years later. The power of individual Intendants tended to depend on the size and coherency of their provinces: the Province of Chile, the largest and wealthiest, tended to have a powerful Indendant, while some of the smaller and more arbitrary provinces did not.
This federalist-slanted form of government was in part intended to curb the ambitions of Lower Peru and Lima in particular. Lima was conservative and Spanish-loyalist in character, and more importantly furious at losing its formerly pre-eminent position as capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which had taken in most of what became the UPSA. It was in part a spiteful desire to stamp down on Lima and Lower Peru that led the delegates to decide to entertain the desires of Tupac Amaru II and Tomas Katari (now calling himself Tupac Katari) to establish autonomous states for the Tahuantinsuya and Aymara peoples under their traditional monarchies. This would carve territory out of Lower (and Upper) Peru and reduce its voting power in the Cortes, and so men who cared nothing for the romantic self-determination ambitions of the Indians eagerly voted for a policy that would let them realise their dreams…at least to a certain extent. The bad blood this stored up with Lower Peru would, of course, haunt the UPSA for years to come.
For now, though, the early UPSA’s rudimentary constitutional arrangements seemed to serve it fairly well, with none of the rebellions, fragmentations or coups that many had predicted for the young nation. The flaws in the constitution would not become apparent until European events, events which the UPSA itself had inspired, would start to intrude upon its politics…
MAP OF THE EMPIRE OF NORTH AMERICA IN 1788
EXCERPTED FROM “THE NEW AMERICAN WORLD ATLAS, 3rd EDITION” (1839)
Flag Plate #26 by Simon Beauchamp-Prince
9. National Flag of the Empire of North America (adopted 1788). Five stars stand for the five Confederations comprising the Empire.
10. The original ‘Jack and George’ flag preceding the one currently in use. The fifteen bezants (gold coins) are taken from the arms of the Duchy of Cornwall, Emperor Frederick I’s possession in exile.
11. Flag of the Confederation of Carolina. The Oak of England stands alongside the Palmetto of Carolina on a Red Ensign. Here the trees are depicted as white, but some versions of the flag colour them yellow instead. The Confederal General Assembly recently voted to use the latter as the standard.
12. Flag of the Confederation of New England. The pine tree was used on Massachusetts and New England flags as early as the seventeenth century, often together with the St George’s Cross of England. Along with Virginia, one of two Confederal flags not to feature the Union Jack.
13. Flag of the Confederation of New York. One of the less memorable designs, featuring the Confederal coat of arms (in which the sun rises over the Hudson River) against a Blue Ensign.
14. Flag of the Confederation of Pennsylvania. Much like New York’s, this design depicts the Confederal coat of arms (showing Pennsylvania’s agricultural wealth and shipping connections) against a modified White Ensign with no St George’s Cross. The original version of the flag used a Blue Ensign but it was officially altered by the Pennsylvania Council and General Assembly in 1798 due to persistent confusion with the similar New York flag.
15. Flag of the Confederation of Virginia. The most complex of all the American flags, this represents an attempt to depict the Virginian coat of arms in vexillogical form. It incorporates royal heraldic representations of England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Hanover (reflecting the possessions and claimed possessions of the House of Hanover at the time the coat of arms was made).
Chapter #17: Beaucoup de bruit et de chaleur, et qui ne signifie rien
From: “FRANCE’S TRAGEDY: A History of the Revolution” by A.J. Galtier (originally published 1973, English translation 1984)—
Many have tried to describe the causes of the Revolution in France (for so we must append it, the oft-quoted, blame-shifting title of ‘Jacobin Revolution’ applying properly only to the latter stages). Many, too, have attempted to provide a conclusive linear chronology of events leading up to the fateful incidents.
In truth, none of these attempts can end in anything other than failure, for the simple reason that no-one alive knows everything. Nor, indeed, did any one man in 1794. What records were made in those heady days were frequently destroyed almost immediately by the next phase of the Revolution as it acquired its own momentum and sought to dissociate itself with all that had gone before in a bonfire of memories. Indeed, what we do know is often derived more from contemporary visitors to France than from French writers. Those visitors, of course, can only have presented biased accounts thanks to the very reasons they were in France: either pro-Revolutionary accounts from sympathisers such as Thomas Paine, or anti-Revolutionary accounts from the more numerous visitors whose business and contacts depended on the ancien régime.
So one appreciates that it presents a challenge to any historian to recount any sort of coherent record of those days of infamy, much less attempt to explain why they came about. The fact that so many writers have not let ignorance of the facts stand in the way of their theories is doubtless all to their credit, but here stands an account that tries to be as neutral as possible given the nature of the world in which we live.
Many have noted the fact that France, historically, was particularly prone to peasant revolts of all stripes. The Jacquerie of the fourteenth century is an exemplar, and one which—for reasons that will become clear—was often compared to the early phase of the Revolution. Many other similar revolts followed throughout the history of France. It is true that no European state entirely escaped such struggles, but France seemed particularly unlucky, whether by chance or design. Some of these periods of strife took the form of religious wars, resulting in the fateful flight of many Huguenots to Britain, but the majority were simple peasant revolts precipitated by famine and heavy taxation. The policies of the King and the nobility-dominated Estates-General were blamed, whether by creating wars that resulted in the suffering of the people, or else simply drawing more riches to themselves at the expense of the peasantry.
The centralisation of power and Bourbon Absolutist policies of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, modelled on the ideals of the Enlightenment, can in part be considered an attempt to prevent further such revolts. The original Jacquerie had been precipitated by the fact that the Estates-General was paralysed between different interests. By effectively eliminating the Estates-General by simply never calling it, and centralising power in the hands of themselves and their chief ministers, the French monarchs hoped to achieve a more coherent and equitable national policy. The former goal was achieved, at least to some extent; the latter, however, only became harder to reach.
Louis XV’s reign was one of paradoxes. The King was known to be a something of a friend to his poorer subjects, but his attempts at reform were continually blocked by the nobility and clergy who had the most to lose. While the Estates-General no longer met, the Estates-Provincial and the local Parlements conspired to provide the very roadblock to reform that the Absolutist thinkers had hoped to remove. In particular, the Parlement of Paris, which in the absence of the Estates-General often acted as though it was the national legislature, acted as a voice for the whole establishment, and it was a voice raised in warning against the King’s attempts at reform.[129] Louis XV had to submit. This failure, coupled with his ill-judged return of the Austrian Netherlands after the Second War of Supremacy, served to make the once-loved king a highly unpopular man at his death in 1772.
His successor, Louis XVI,[130] at first seemed like an improvement. He was cultured, educated and modernist, disliking the usual ‘kingly’ pursuits of hunting and balls, and was also keenly interested in military affairs. He had previously fallen out with his father after making a rash charge at a battle during the Second War of Supremacy, and while
he had been kept out of the front line since then, he had remained interested in the theory of war. When he became King of France and Navarre in 1772, the new Louis gave patronage to several writers advocating radical reforms to the army. He also revived the work on Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot’s Fardier à vapeur, an early steam-tractor, which had previously been cancelled due to several accidents. In this way, then, all modern motor vehicles ultimately owe a debt to Louis (and, of course, Cugnot).[131]
The reforms of the French army typically focused on the artillery, using newer breakthroughs in mathematics to improve accuracy. The primary conceptual use of Cugnot’s fardier was also as an alternative means of towing artillery, though this did not become practical until some of the more refined designs produced by Cugnot’s team in the 1780s. While steam tractors were generally more troublesome than using horses—particularly since the army’s logistics were already in place to support horses, not feed steam engines with coal— some improvements in overall speed were noted when towing artillery on flat ground and good roads over long distances. As well as their use on the battlefield, fardiers were later commonly used in triumphal displays by the Republic, towing huge siege guns through the wider streets of the new Paris.
