Chapter 6 - The Republic of Eloquence

Summary

Chapter 6 turns to the disintegration of the political unity of the Iberian World, and addresses the role of the classical rhetorical tradition in spreading new and even revolutionary ideas in both the Atlantic and the Pacific (c. 1750–1850). It begins by showing that new Enlightenment wine was frequently put in post-humanist bottles, focusing on the orations delivered in the Patriotic Economic Societies (sociedades de amigos del país) in Spain and the Philippines. It then shows that a similar pattern can be seen in the oratory of the Age of Revolutions in Mexico. While the public ceremonial oratory of the early Mexican Republic is often portrayed as having arisen spontaneously to fulfill the needs of the new nation, this chapter argues that this was merely the last in a long line of applications in the Iberian World of a tool of social ordering inherited from Mediterranean antiquity.