In his book Timothy Hawkins analyzes the impact of Napoleonic emissaries on Spanish diplomacy and bureaucracy in the Americas during the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. In doing so, the study adds to the broader discussion initiated some years ago by Jeremy Adelman and other researchers, who urge placing the late colonial and independence period of Latin America in the wider, transatlantic context of imperial competition, reform, and crisis.

As the title suggests, the book focuses not solely on the French emissary or spy, a historical figure who remains a historiographical enigma, but also on the reaction of Spanish American colonial officials to the—actual or supposed—threat of a French conspiracy and intervention in the Americas. Hawkins agrees with the dominant historiographical interpretation that there is little direct evidence of a serious threat of French subversion in the Spanish American colonies. The book argues, in contrast, that the rhetoric of...

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