In this his final book, the late John Phelan made a significant and lasting contribution to the historical literature relating to the late eighteenth century in the New Kingdom of Granada. The People and the King is also an important addition to the historiography of the social and economic protest movements of the pre-independence epoch. This is the first complete account in English of the Comunero Revolt and will serve as a companion to Lillian Fisher’s The Last Inca Revolt, 1780-1783 (Norman, 1966).
Professor Phelan dedicated his book “to the memory of Pablo E. Cárdenas Acosta—Every Historian of the Comuneros Is His Disciple,” and while Cárdenas Acosta’s work is not superseded, future historians of the revolt will have to reckon with Phelan’s study inasmuch as it offers new insights and interpretations.
Phelan’s assertions will be disputed particularly by Colombian Marxist historians who see the Comunero Revolt as a precursor to independence and as a movement of social protest betrayed by the creole elites. Phelan’s argument—and it is a convincing one—challenges Colombian revisionist historian Indalecio Liévano Aguirre’s view of the revolt as a social revolution aborted by the oligarchy (Los grandes conflictos sociales y económicos de nuestra historia (4 vols., Bogotá, 1960).
Phelan is less convincing in his challenge to Colombian historians— particularly Cárdenas Acosta and Horacio Rodríguez Plata—who saw the Comuneros as precursors of independence. Although he rejected the precursor theory, Phelan’s interpretation, in perhaps an overstatement of the success of the Comuneros in achieving their demands, could lead the unwary reader to conclude that the men and women from Socorro were indeed advocates of independence. Others have made stronger cases against the independence theory.
If The People and the King rejects the idea that the revolt was neither a social revolution nor a pre-independence movement, what then were the objectives of that army of New Granadans who walked from Socorro to Zipaquirá to present their demands to the Archbishop-Viceroy Antonio Caballero y Góngora? Overburdened with new and increased taxation and put upon by officious bureaucrats, namely the regent Visitor-General Juan Antonio Gutiérrez de Piñeres, the Comuneros sought a return to the “unwritten constitution” by which an informal decision making process had been worked out by the creole elites and nonelites with the authorities. The peoples’ army, and their leaders, wanted a return to sixteenth-century Habsburg efficiency, and, in the end, the Comuneros succeeded as far as they did through reaching an accommodation with the creole elites in Bogotá who also yearned for a return to the “unwritten constitution.” Again, I think Phelan overstated the case. One gets the impression that in 1781 almost every creole in Bogotá was steeped in the philosophy of Francisco Suárez and had a well-worn copy of Tractatus de Legibus in his pocket.
In some respects the book is disappointing. We get little feeling for the “people.” They appear on Phelan’s pages as mere bystanders who are manipulated by a few leaders who have been coopted by self-serving creoles in Bogotá. We are told that the well-ordered and well-disciplined army of Comuneros marched all the way to the outskirts of the viceregal capital without ever engaging in any unruly conduct or without ever taking so much as a drink of aguardiente or pilfering a cigarette. All of that aguardiente emptied into the streets, all of that tobacco burned, and none of it tempted the angry mob!
Finally, some problems with the book were probably unavoidable. Professor Phelan’s untimely death occurred before the final manuscript was prepared for the press. Especially burdensome to the reader is the constant reiteration of many major points. Surely much of this could have been eliminated by a more careful reading and copy-editing of the manuscript. Although there is a brief note on sources, a complete bibliography would have been helpful.
