Recent studies shed light on the local political struggles that enveloped Latin America in the half-century following independence. The role of the Cortes of Cádiz of 1810 – 14 in this revolutionary break remains less well known. The Cortes is said to have fostered a legislative, federalist tradition in some places and to have implanted a strongly executive, centralist pattern in others. In Peru, late to commit to independence, convention has it that executive preponderance was established quickly, and power-sharing between the center and the provinces was swept aside in the formation of a violently centralized state. Gabriella Chiaramonti challenges this convention in the first of two promised volumes that examine electoral representation as it emerged in late colonial Peru and prefigured the socio-legal structure of the later republic. She demonstrates convincingly that the Cortes was far more instrumental in fostering a federalist political culture in Peru — and Spanish...

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