Hispanists wishing to study the Ibero-American Enlightenment will have an excellent guide in this volume. There are general and interpretative studies on Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Central America, Anglo-America, as well as specific ones on Antonio Alcedo, Félix Varela and Rafael Landívar. Also a most useful bibliographical essay, two articles on the philosophical contents of the luces and a most challenging one on the emergence of Spanish Romanticism. The volume is of considerable interest to Iberianists and merits a more detailed discussion than is appropriate here. Briefly, it attempts to redress the balance of the ilustración and makes a clear case for reopening the enquiry in a broader perspective.
However, as usual in volumes of such breadth, it is an uneven effort. One regrets a certain restricted view and since there are some areas where the volume does not tread firmly, it prompts a series of questions. All too frequently the Iberian luces is compared to France, England and the United States, giving rise to unfair parallelisms. Perhaps this could have been avoided by taking into consideration the Iberian clandestine thought and by trying to establish a firmer tie between literature and society. One must keep in mind that clandestine literature is particularly important in countries where censorship played a decisive role. Pertinent examples are Pablo de Olavide’s radical texts, published only recently, as well as José Campillo’s Lo que hay de más y de menos en España (1741-1742; Madrid, 1969), while hundreds of other manuscripts still fie in obscurity.
The volume is also too restricted to literary and intellectual problems. Further reading in historical fields would have shown that the changes in perception and style of the enlightenment reveal the temper and tempo of a deep social transformation. The works of Pierre Vilar (Histoire de Catalogne, Paris, 1962) and Gonzalo Anes (Economía e “ilustración,” Barcelona, 1969) provide perceptive insights into these changes. Had they been consulted, oversimplifications could have been avoided: e.g., the failure to relate culture and society, the exaggerated importance given to the individuals and the narrow view of the Hispanic luces as a monolithic structure. In contrast to all this, Anes has shown that the reformismo borbónico is the reorientation of already actively productive forces from the previous century. There is a close link between economic factors and enlightened ideas: the demographic explosion, the rise of agricultural prices and of land favoring the aristocracy and the clergy, brought these groups closer to the urban bourgeoisie. Literature was then used as a vehicle, together with the Sociedades Económicas; both disseminated economic liberalism. Far from being conservative, as Arthur Whitaker suggests, the sociedades were frequent focuses of subversion. In 1777 Francisco de Zeraín, of the Aragonesa, was imprisoned for his liberalism as a warning to other economists, and in 1787 the Matrietense commissioned the Jovellanos Informe which resulted in his exile.
Much remains to be done with related aspects of the Latin American eighteenth century, connecting economic and demographic crisis with ideologies and literature. More thorough work could reveal whether in Latin America the social tensions also created a climate for subversion and revolutionary thought. Perhaps some of these issues and aspects of the luces would be better understood if historians of ideas were to profit more fully from economic and social historians.
