Popular Royalism in Scandinavia and Spanish America Before 1814

Abstract

Absolutist monarchy functioned fundamentally in the same way in Spanish America and Scandinavia during the hundred years between 1715 and 1815. Absolutism engendered its own political culture. Scandinavians and Spanish Americans related to the monarch in a broadly similar fashion, attempting to use the absolutist system to their own advantage, pushing for greater local autonomy, and reacting—violently if necessary—against corrupt officials, excessive taxation and conscription and reforms affecting what the commoners perceived to be normal economic activities. Spanish Americans and Scandinavians in the eighteenth century frequently expressed loyalty to the monarch, but this popular monarchism was neither mystical, unconditional, naïve or irrational. Nor was it necessarily conservative, traditionalist or reactionary. Often the commoners’ demands were innovative and radical, although it was usually and successfully couched in a language of a return to a just and utopian past. The commoners displayed limited personal loyalty to particular kings, but they needed a strong monarch who could potentially overrule ill-informed bureaucratic decisions, remove corrupt officials and impart justice. The governments’ responses to popular demands were also broadly similar.