Envisioning Empire from Inside the United States: Exile, Constitutional Monarchism, and Ethnic Conflict in Post-Independence Mexico

Abstract

This article examines Tiburcio Campe's newspaper El Español, a brief yet concerted effort by exiled Spanish liberals in New Orleans that drew on the Cádiz constitutional experiment to demand the return of imperial rule in Mexico in the late 1820s. Exiled from Mexico as a consequence of the expulsion laws against Spaniards (españoles), Campe used his newspaper to criticize republican exclusionary policies and to militate against a possible expansion of abolitionism, ethnic conflict, and anti-white proposals in the Caribbean, promoting imperial constitutionalism as the only guarantor of the coexistence of Spaniards and Americanos and racial hierarchies in the Americas. Discussions regarding political and racial equality in Mexico and the United States, and the community's experience of exile in New Orleans, shaped these ideas, revealing how the banishment of Campe and other Spanish liberals renewed their advocacy of empire. Moreover, their exile in the United States facilitated their participation in the transatlantic public sphere and the circulation of their work, illustrating how the United States became a platform for envisioning and propagating imperial endeavors. Thus a study of El Español and Tiburcio Campe's actions allows us to comprehend the intricacies between exile and pro-monarchical discourses, as well as the nature of political and racial equality in the post-independence Americas.