This major work, intricate and fascinating, complements the author's earlier and equally distinguished work Repúblicas en armas: Los ejércitos bolivarianos en la Guerra de Independencia en Colombia y Venezuela (2003). Both works open new pathways into the history of the northern sector of Spanish South America, known as Tierra Firme. The present work is principally concerned with the process of legitimizing the revolutionary movements in New Granada (present-day Colombia) and Venezuela in the first half of the 1810s. While pointing to the broader Atlantic context, Thibaud stresses the primacy of mentalities, practices, and institutions inherited from the colonial era as the guiding lines of this political transformation. He rightly identifies the Hispanic natural law tradition at the core, derived in part from the University of Salamanca thinkers of the Golden Age and in part from Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and Emerrich de Vattel. This work provides an outstanding contribution to...

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