Readers’ responses to the ideas of Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán and to the hoary subject of los precursores will largely determine how they assess this book. It strikes me as a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. As to Simmons’s scholarship there can be no doubt. That this is the definitive clarification of the literary work of Viscardo there can be no doubt. The book is based on Simmons’s discovery in the Rufus King collection of the Historical Society of New York of some 400 manuscript sheets of the writings of Viscardo—papers never before known, and published here in the original French in their entirety. The same collection contains the original French manuscript of the only published work of Viscardo, his Lettre aux espagnols américains (published by Francisco de Miranda in French in 1799, published by Miranda in Spanish in 1801, and disseminated by Miranda in his landing on the coast of Venezuela in 1806). Shortly before his death, Viscardo gave his papers to the United States minister in London, Rufus King. King in turn showed them to Miranda, who made plans to publish them but never succeeded in doing so, ending up making use only of the Lettre. Miranda then turned them back to King, and their existence, except for the famous Lettre, was not known for 184 years.
Methodologically, Simmons’s presentation is excellent. Since all the documents are in French, he assists the reader with brief discussions and abstractions in Spanish of each item. In addition, there are chapters tracing the historiography of Viscardo, extensive literary dissections of individual items, thorough and excellent bibliographies, and a discussion of Viscardo’s place in history. Fans of Viscardo will rejoice, since this is the first-ever complete edition of his known extant works.
The arguments put forward for Viscardo’s importance in history, however, do not convince. To what extent can we agree that Viscardo was not only a precursor, but, as Simmons insists, a precursor of unequalled preeminence, when the only published work of this former Jesuit, expelled from his Peruvian homeland at the tender age of nineteen, was a letter first published in French, in London, and a year after his death? Is it not closer to hyperbole to declare that: “No other manipulator of the pen approximates him, whether for antiquity as a conspirator, for the abundance of his writings, or for the richness and variety of his ideas”? (pp. 141–142). Certainly Miranda liked what Viscardo wrote and attempted to disseminate the letter to an unreceptive Venezuela on his first landing in 1806, but Simmons admits that Miranda does not seem to have been influenced by the writings of Viscardo. The only persons who ever read his works, other than the polemical Lettre, were Miranda, King, and the unnamed British government functionaries to whom they were directed.
In fact, the more we learn about Viscardo, the harder it is to avoid the feeling that his ideas were wrong. He was fully prepared to surrender Spanish America to unlimited British hegemony, trying to tempt the British to intervene with promises of wealth and world dominance beyond their dreams. He summarized the impact of Spain over three centuries in America in the historically inaccurate words: “ingratitude, injustice, slavery, and desolation.” Simmons does take every critic and gainsayer to task, but unconvincingly. What are we to make of a frustrated exile whose main efforts were designed to try to convince the government of William Pitt the Elder that Britain ought to launch an attack against Chile that would somehow magically spark the independence of all Spanish America? How are we to respond to a polemicist whose primary points added new passion and misinformation to the Black Legend of Spain in America for a British cabinet that already believed the worst allegations? How are we to assess the political sagacity of a man who insisted that the British government, in its liberation of Spanish America, was to make protection of the Catholic church its first object, when Britain would not emancipate its own Catholics until 1829? Does writing down ideas in manuscripts that, unfortunately, end up not being read again for nearly two centuries make one a major figure in the history of ideas?
The historiography on Latin American independence has undergone too much recent revision to accept uncritically the seminal role of the great man. One waits in vain for Simmons to explain what Viscardo’s real influence was. The closest we get is a revised discussion of who influenced Viscardo. Simmons insists that Viscardo can be compared with his North American contemporary Thomas Paine without too much exaggeration (p. 135). Paine, however, was an author whose works had an explosive and directly attributable revolutionary impact (not least because he was alive during the revolution). Can the same be shown for Viscardo? Repeated assertion does not make it so. It is possible that, in finally having available the complete works of Viscardo—works that to a great extent demystify him and show his worst foibles—historians will now have grounds to relegate him to a lower place in the pantheon.
