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 Cambridge Imperial
and Post-Colonial Studies Series

Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, United Kingdom

Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of
studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which
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 Nicholas Tarling

Decolonisations
Compared
Central America, Southeast Asia, the Caucasus
Nicholas Tarling
New Zealand Asia Institute
University of Auckland
Auckland 0624, New Zealand

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

ISBN 978-3-319-53648-4 ISBN 978-3-319-53649-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53649-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936945

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now known or hereafter developed.
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In memory of my brother Michael
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I thank Brook Barrington and Rupert Wheeler for their ever-willing

assistance.

vii
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Central America 9

3 Southeast Asia 55

4 The Caucasus 105

Conclusion 127

Index 129

ix
 LIST OF MAPS

Map 2.1 Central America 20

Map 3.1 Southeast Asia 94
Map 4.1 The Caucasus 120

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract There are four chapters in this book and a brief conclusion. The
introductory chapter considers the emergence of the so-called Westphalia
state and the impact upon it of the concept of nation, and then turns
briefly to the breakdown of overseas empires and the emergence of inde-
pendent states. The following three chapters discuss this sequence of
events in three different regions and time periods.

Keywords Westphalia
Empire
Decolonisation

Empires have existed throughout many centuries, but none now exists.
‘American power has been hegemonic, rather than imperial’, as Mark
Beeson puts it.1 The word ‘empire’ has been applied in many ways, and
empires have taken many forms. The word has normally implied at least
two features: a wide extent of territory and a lack of any superordinate
ruler. Over time, for a variety of reasons, empires declined and fell. They
were succeeded by others, whether or not they had been destroyers. Some
were more structured than others, some more temporary. Their effective
reach was subject to the constraints of geographical as well as human
obstacles, of the lack of knowledge, the weakness of communications.
They might be founded in violence, but they were also facilitators of
peaceful change and the transmission of knowledge.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

N. Tarling, Decolonisations Compared, Cambridge Imperial
and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53649-1_1
2 N. TARLING

Information on those more remote in time is limited. On others it was

and is much more extensive. Either way they have been the matter of
wonder, the matter of legend, the matter of inspiration. Their past could
be invoked, their practices, or such knowledge of them as could be
secured, imitated, often being turned, of course, into something that
was new as well as old. It suited men in new times to invoke the sanctions
of antiquity and to gloss over discontinuities. That is still done in China, as
if the present Chinese state had thousands of years of history.
The Roman empire could, of course, make no such claims. It endured
in the West for some 500 years, in the East until it was destroyed by
Turkish empire-builders in the fifteenth century. But the memory of the
empire continued, and it was reinvoked by the crowning of Charlemagne
in AD 800, the Holy Roman Empire surviving in some form or other until
it was displaced by a French Emperor, Napoleon I, self-crowned in 1804.
In the meantime, Renaissance scholars and statesmen had turned their
understanding of the Romans to account, Latin was the language of the
Church and of international exchanges among the scholars of Europe, and
the core of much of the education that was given to young men. That
continued to be the case when Europeans built new empires overseas.
They were bringing civilisation to others as the Romans had to them.
Rome’s example, or what was thought to be such, could inspire other
ideas besides the imperial, however. Its earlier history was as a republic that
acquired an empire, and it was represented by the Senate and People of
Rome. It established no formal dynastic succession for the ‘Imperator’.
And it provided, as examples of Roman virtue, those who sacrificed
themselves to preserve the Republic from one-man rule. At times of special
crisis a strong man might be called in as dictator. The word ‘republic’ was
used in Renaissance Italy, in the Netherlands and Switzerland, in the USA.
The majority of the many independent states in the contemporary world
style themselves republics, whether or not they are also dictatorships.
But how was it that they became independent? Why were the empires
of the nineteenth century not succeeded in due course by other empires?
Some observers consider, of course, that they have been, describing the
activities of the most powerful among those states as ‘imperialism’. That
has indeed become an adverse description, and, as Beeson suggests, it is
perhaps not a very apt one for the exertion of superior power in the present
world. Unlike an empire, a state of this kind seeks no formal control over
other states, though it may intervene in them overtly or covertly, or even
deprive them of effective independence.
 INTRODUCTION 3

The building of overseas empires was encouraged by the rivalry among

the European states. This had other results, too. One was the devastating
Thirty Years War, a destructive religio-political struggle, brought to a
conclusion in the treaties of Westphalia of 1648. Those treaties have
with some justice been given a major role in the creation of the modern
state. They curbed the wider ambitions of the Holy Roman emperor. The
idea of an independent state, with which its neighbours should not inter-
fere either directly or indirectly for religious or other reasons, played a
major role first in European and then in world history.
Among others, Derek Croxton has questioned the extent of that role.
He has pointed to the way in which religious civil wars expanded into
international conflicts. ‘Because it was generally accepted that a state
needed to have a single religion to function properly, the presence of a
minority sect in large numbers created a serious constitutional problem.
Each side tried fervently to convert the state to its side. . . . This led to civil
wars, which were bound eventually to involve neighbouring states: even if
they lacked a religious motive to intervene, political chaos created major
dangers and opportunities that other states could not afford to ignore.’2
How the treaties became identified with the principle of state sover-
eignty puzzles Croxton. The imperial estates remained part of the Holy
Roman Empire, though gaining rights characteristic of sovereign states:
the right to choose their religion, to make foreign alliances, to take up
arms in their defence. But ‘the idea of a completely sovereign state, with
absolute authority over military, judicial and diplomatic affairs was still
evolving’.3 It seems clear that Westphalia marked not the birth of the
sovereign state system but a significant step in its emergence. Using it as an
adjectival description is inadequate, if convenient. But the notion of non-
interference, established in respect of religious affairs, was to expand its
coverage, and the question of settled frontiers was essential to all these
concepts.
Later in the seventeenth century Samuel Pufendorf, who held a new
chair at Heidelberg, rejected the notion of divisible sovereignty, and
interpreted Westphalia as providing ‘an iron-clad guarantee for the free-
dom and independence’ of the electoral princes, though in theory they still
owed fealty to the Emperor.4 What is often called the Westphalia system
was further consolidated by the French revolutionary wars. The legal
positivism of German counter-revolutionaries such as A.H.L. Heeren, C.
W. Koch, and F. Schoell argued that the treaties of 1648 had inaugurated
a European state system, regulated by those treaties, and that Europe was
4 N. TARLING

‘a constellation of mutually tolerant and fully sovereign entities which did

not brook interference in their own domestic affairs’. Napoleon had
destroyed the system, Heeren argued.5 Its object, claimed Koch and
Schoell, had been ‘to maintain public order, to protect the weak against
the strong, to put obstacles in the way of the ambitious projects of
conquerors, and to prevent dissensions that might lead to the calamities
of war’.6
The idea that the state was a nation-state composed of ‘citizens’ who
owed sole allegiance to it was endorsed by the French Revolution of 1789,
which insisted that the Republic that replaced the monarchy was ‘one and
indivisible’ and put down regional opposition, for example in the Vendée,
with great violence. Perversely the nation-state concept was also strength-
ened by Napoleon. Inheritor in some respects of the Revolution, he made
gestures towards nationalist aspirations in his conquests, in Poland and in
Italy, for instance. But those conquests also provoked nationalist opposi-
tion, in Spain, for example, and particularly in Germany. Some of the
strongest statements about the ‘nation’ and the citizens’ duty to it
emerged in the German states, notably in Prussia. ‘[T]he discourse on
the German nation was during the period of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars
increasingly politicized and militarized, because the patriots and reformers
sought to prepare the Prussian and German nation for a new war against
Napoleon.’7 The French were ‘a people of Jews’, E.W. Arndt declared.8
After the defeat of Napoleon, other would-be nations demanded states
of their own, including in particular those in the multinational Habsburg
empire. ‘The basic point was that modernity in general and ethnic nation-
alism in particular was making empires ever harder to manage. . . . the
threat . . . was already very real in 1914 and was likely to become worse as
modernity took hold.’ Already a major threat to empire, ‘it was a great
long-term challenge to the stability of a global order dominated by
empires’.9 The first climax came, of course, towards the end of the First
World War, when President Wilson, bringing the USA into the conflict,
endorsed the concepts of self-determination and nationality in his 14
Points.
Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, whom Wilson was seeking to counter,
derisively asked if they applied only to Czechs, Poles, and Yugoslavs, or
also to the colonial peoples.10 In some parts of the non-European world
the Europeans had respected existing states; in others they had dislodged
them; and by the nineteenth century large parts of the world had become
parts of European states, or, more often, dependencies and protectorates
 INTRODUCTION 5

in European empires, though Spain had already lost most of its empire as a
result of the Napoleonic invasion. The notion that the other colonial
territories, too, might become nation-states on the European model was
not totally unfamiliar, but the First World War, and the intervention of the
USA, made it much more likely. At the end of the Second World War, the
process gained an unexpected rapidity. The colonial empires of the Dutch,
the French, the British and finally the Portuguese came to an end, to be
replaced by some two hundred nation-states stretched round the world, of
very different size and power but all equal in sovereignty, and most of
them republics.
Those territories that had achieved national independence before the
First World War – Greece, Romania, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro –
had not become republics. They had installed monarchs, for the most part
finding a ready supply among German princelings. The Dutch Republic
was itself displaced by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and when the
Belgians broke away they too set up a monarchy. France itself wavered
between monarchy, empire, and republic. That was not perhaps the reason
why the republican implications of 1789 were not pursued elsewhere, and
nation-states were not republican. In a monarchical Europe, it may be that
republics were not respectable, even if they were the logical outcome of
national revolution. More republics emerged after a war that destroyed
great dynasties, but new kingdoms also emerged. In the decolonisation
after the Second World War monarchy was quite exceptional, though not
entirely absent. The new states followed the example of the states that had
emerged from the Spanish American empire in the nineteenth century,
which had toyed only occasionally with monarchy.
Though they did not have the status of independent states, the rulers of
the colonial states had believed that their inhabitants, even if not citizens,
owed their allegiance to one government. Other governments could not
intervene. Frontiers had to be settled, lest European powers quarrelled.
The Anglo-Dutch treaties of 1824 and 1871, for example, more or less
settled the boundary line between what became modern Malaysia and the
Indonesian republic. One of the most striking features of the decolonisa-
tion after the Second World War was that the independent states so largely
inherited and accepted the colonial frontiers of the past, even if they
sometimes had little more rationale behind them than the need to avoid
disputes among the European powers then ruling.
The settled frontier was indeed essential to the concept of the
‘Westphalia’ state. Without that there could be no sole allegiance, no
6 N. TARLING

insistence on non-interference, no more than a limited or shared sover-

eignty. With the accession of the idea of the nation-state, the concept
became yet more exclusive. Those within the frontiers had to accept
common norms, even common languages, as the accompaniment to and
reinforcement of citizenship. In Europe the successor states, as Rieber puts
it, ‘were in many ways miniature versions of their imperial predecessors’.
Remaining multinational, ‘they were ruled by representatives of single
dominant ethnic groups. They demanded from the minorities a more
all-encompassing allegiance to the nation – as they defined it – than did
the nationalizing policies of the imperial elites, which were either more
flexible or more inconsistent’.11
‘State formation did not stop at the borders of Western countries but
was exported to their colonies and adjacent territories as well. Colonial
state formation was an extension of western state formation.’12 But colo-
nial states, if such is the right term for them, had only some of the features
of the Westphalian state. They had frontiers, designed to exclude inter-
vention and to define the range of allegiance. But the frontiers were not
the same as those of the nation-state. They might encompass diverse
peoples, peoples who spoke different languages. Their inhabitants were
not citizens. Their rulers might even welcome division, which could
provide them with instruments of power, such as armed forces drawn
from minorities, and also enable them to pursue an arbitral role, so making
themselves necessary for political stability.
Those who struggled against imperial rule could seldom use the
weapon of linguistic unity often deployed in Europe. They nevertheless
saw the independent states they envisaged and in the event so largely
secured as nation-states. In this case the state had to make the nation,
not the nation the state. Minorities within the frontiers could no longer
rely on the imperial power. Peoples on the border, often largely left alone
by the imperial power, state evaders who earlier had been able to get
away with compromise or even change their ‘ethnicity’, found their tradi-
tions and their autonomy particularly at risk: choices were forced on them.
‘[E]mpire in its day – unlike very many nations – was often relatively
tolerant, pluralist and even occasionally benevolent in its attitude towards
the many communities who sheltered under its protection.’13
Yet arguably the use of the colonial frontiers was better than attempts to
redraw them. For, as European experience had shown, no state frontiers
could be drawn that reconciled the nationality principle with geographical
 INTRODUCTION 7

reality. Where the old frontiers were accepted, there was a better chance that
states would be able in the longer term to get along with one another and so
limit the interference of larger powers, even if the minorities had to pay a price
for it. Where a decolonising power left no frontiers behind, or where they
were disputable, the new states would fall out with one another. The lack of
an agreed frontier prevented their mutual accommodation, let alone any kind
of regional collaboration, and permitted or encouraged external intervention.
In this book I propose to examine that thesis by considering three cases,
covering three regions and two centuries. One (in Chapter 2) will deal with
what might be considered the second decolonisation, that of Spanish
America, in particular Central America, in the nineteenth century. The second
(in Chapter 3) will deal with the decolonisation of the European empires
in Southeast Asia in the latter part of the twentieth century. The third
(in Chapter 4), taking the break-up of the Soviet Union as a case in decolo-
nisation, will consider the emergence of the independent Caucasian states and
their struggles in the 1990s and the early years of the present century.

NOTES
1. Mark Beeson, ‘American ascendancy. Conceptualizing contemporary hege-
mony’, in M. Beeson, ed., Bush and Asia: America’s Evolving Relations with
East Asia, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 3–23, at p. 6.
2. Derek Croxton, The Last Christian Peace, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2013, p. 345.
3. Ibid., pp. 356, 360.
4. M.J. Ittersum, Profit and Principle, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. xxix, xxx.
5. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 3rd
ed., 2002, pp. 12–13.
6. Quoted in Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 20.
7. Karen Hagemann, Revisiting Prussia’s Wars against Napoleon, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 107.
8. Ibid., p. 116.
9. D. Lieven, Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia,
London: Allen Lane, 2015, p. 312.
10. Quoted in Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007, p. 38.
11. Alfred J. Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 379.
8 N. TARLING

12. Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, ‘Dutch expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago

around 1900 and the imperialism debate’, Journal of Southeast Studies, 25, 1
(March 1994), p. 110.
13. D. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, London: Allen Lane, 2009, p. 12.
 CHAPTER 2

Central America

Abstract The second chapter studies Central America. The collapse of

Spanish rule was followed by attempts to create some kind of unity in the
region, largely overtaken by the emergence of separate states with disputed
frontiers and at odds with one another. The region was thus highly
exposed to great-power intervention, particularly, of course, that of the
USA.

Keywords Frontiers
Intervention
Regionalism

On some occasions it might be considered that empires were lost rather

than independence won. Empires were dislodged by other empires. Or, in
attempts at reform, rulers unleashed change they could no longer control,
or that upset long-standing compromises that had moderated opposition
or inhibited its expression. Attempts to meet challenges to authority
provoked the radicalisation of opposition. Increasingly, too, there were
examples to draw upon or states to secure support from, supplementing
old ideas or traditions, invented or otherwise.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 avoided renewed civil war in
England. It found new and more effective ways of uniting the three king-
doms and of mobilising their resources, and it reached a new compromise
with the Atlantic colonies, designed to preserve the rights and properties

© The Author(s) 2017 9

N. Tarling, Decolonisations Compared, Cambridge Imperial
and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53649-1_2
10 N. TARLING

of the people, but also their dependence on the Crown.1 Britain’s struggle
with France, naturally extending to the Americas, put a strain on this
compromise. In the Seven Years War Britain incurred vast cost and vast
responsibility, and the country needed to keep regular troops in America
after it was over. ‘The ostensible purpose of this army was to bring order in
the new conquests and security to the older colonies. The undeniable
result was to bring disorder to the older colonies and insecurity to the
empire as a whole.’2
The measures the home government took breached the understandings
reached after the Glorious Revolution, and produced a declaration of
independence and a long struggle in which the British forces, faced as
well by the French and the Spaniards, were defeated. In the course of the
struggle, other social forces were liberated, including slaves on the British
side but not on the side of the patriots. Their declaration, however, was to
have long-standing impact, and their federation to be the basis of a
powerful and expansive state.
The Spanish empire in the Americas, then extending into much of what
is now, as a result of its Mexican war, part of the USA, was older than the
British colonies in the north, dating back to the conquests of the Aztec
and Inca ‘empires’ in the sixteenth century. It was not divided into
separate colonies, like British North America, but rather into vice-royal-
ties, instruments of royal rule, and within them, and more importantly,
into ‘cities’, seen as centres of civilising influence, but also replicating,
through their fueros (jurisdictional privileges), the compromise between
the monarch and the cities in Spain itself made during the reconquista, the
regaining of the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims. By the eighteenth
century the system had, like the British colonies, reached a number of
compromises. The administration possessed political and judicial power,
deriving its authority from the Crown and its own functions, and exercised
through the audiencia and its officers, but not much military power.
Secular sovereignty was backed by the Church, which had jurisdictional
and economic power. The greatest economic power lay with the elites,
property owners in town and country, who included a minority of people
born in Spain, peninsulares, and a much greater proportion of creoles,
whites born in the colonies.
‘By the eighteenth century local oligarchies were firmly rooted in
Spanish America, based on vested interests in land, mining and commerce,
on enduring ties of kinship and alliance with the colonial bureaucracy,
with the viceregal entourage and the judges of the audiencia, and on a
 CENTRAL AMERICA 11

strong sense of regional identity. The weakness of royal government and

its need for revenue enabled these groups to develop effective forms of
resistance to the distant imperial government. Offices were bought, infor-
mal bargains made.’ The bureaucracy bent to pressure, avoided conflict,
‘constituting in effect not the agents of imperial centralization but brokers
between Spanish Crown and American subjects’.3
The Seven Years War – in which Spain temporarily lost Havana (and
Manila) – had its impact on Spanish America as it did on British America.
The Crown had to improve its defences and for that, like the British, it
needed revenue. In consequence it implemented what are known as the
Bourbon reforms. ‘The reforms were designed to protect the empire from
foreign encroachment, and to enhance royal prerogatives as well as further
royal absolutism. Simultaneously, the Crown hoped to satisfy some of the
complaints voiced by the colonists, which it feared might lead to insurrec-
tion.’4 The result was to damage some of the compromises on which the
empire rested, as with the British in the North, but not to dissolve them.
One of the major changes was to prove consequential, though again
not in itself decisive. This was the creation of creole regular army units and
the expansion of the militia, both with creole officers. An all-peninsular
army would have made the Crown more secure, but expense ruled it out.
Creoles welcomed the change. It gave them a fuero that took the military
out of civil courts, and more generally it enhanced their status. For some it
was an avenue of social mobility; for others it became rather a burden. The
longer-term effect was to provide opponents of the Crown with the
capacity to call up troops, ‘sometimes fairly ragtag, poorly armed, and
undisciplined’,5 often in fact dependents and employees of the creoles who
led them. They became the basis of the patriot armies of independence,
though some remained royalist. But this was not an immediate effect.
The Bourbon reforms also included the freedom of trade decree, the
effects of which were again less than straightforward. Free trade did not
mean Smithian laissez-faire: it meant the opening of the colonial trade to
ports other than Cadiz, and permitting Spanish American ports to trade
both with Spain and with one another. The immediate result was the
reduction of smuggling, the expansion of trade, and an increase in rev-
enue. At the same time, however, a tobacco monopoly was introduced,
again enhancing revenue. But it eliminated an opportunity for private
entrepreneurship, and others also suffered from the trade reforms, not
only the Cadiz merchants, but also some local merchants and manufac-
turers, creoles as well as peninsulares.
12 N. TARLING

In a further attempt to enhance defence and revenue, the Bourbon

reforms established a system of intendancies. In Central America there
were four: in Chiapas, San Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua; there was
none in Costa Rica, which was a gobernación under Nicaragua, or present-
day Guatemala, often called a ‘kingdom’, though technically part of New
Spain (Mexico).6 The intendants replaced the provincial governors and had
greater powers, though still under the viceroys. Some stirred life into the
municipalities and the town councils (cabildos or ayuntamientos). Jealous
viceroys might limit them. The main problem was, however, that they were
peninsulares, and therefore alienated sectors of the creole population. But
the creoles had always to remember the Indian revolt, led by Tupac Amaru,
in Peru in the 1780s. No creole wanted a repeat of that kind of threat.
The Crown reduced the clerical fuero. But the main move in Church
affairs was the exclusion of the Jesuit order from the empire in 1767. Many
of their estates were sold to prominent merchants and so increased their
status. ‘Several of the Jesuits in exile became promoters of complete
independence for the colonies’, such as Juan Pablo Viscardo, though
their influence on the independence movement is not clear.7
Reforms in a political system often have unintended consequences, and
sometimes, by dislocating long-standing compromises, precipitate more
revolutionary changes. Such was not the case with the Bourbon reforms in
Spanish America. ‘If Napoleon’s actions of 1807 and 1808 had not
occurred, the Bourbon reforms might have accomplished their goals and
independence movements might not have got under way for quite some
time.’8

FRENCH CONQUEST
When the European war was renewed in 1803 after the treaty of Amiens,
France pressured Spain into a declaration of war against Britain. The Spanish
fleet, as well as the French, was destroyed at Trafalgar in 1805. Pursuing his
plan to isolate Britain commercially from the rest of Europe, Napoleon sent
an army through Spain to Portugal, Britain’s longest-standing ally. Spain had
expected to be rewarded for its compliance, but Napoleon remained in
occupation of northern Spain. A mob at Aranjuez drove King Charles IV’s
favourite, Godoy, from power, and Charles IV was persuaded to abdicate in
favour of his son, Ferdinand, who became Ferdinand VII. Napoleon refused
to recognise either, and installed his brother Joseph as King of Spain.
Ferdinand was detained in France for six years.
 CENTRAL AMERICA 13

A confrontation with the French military on 2 May 1808 began the

Spanish war of independence. ‘Juntas came into existence in many parts of
Spain to organize the war effort and to govern in the absence of the lawful
monarch’,9 and Ferdinand VII was seen as el deseado, the desired one. In
September 1808 the juntas established a central junta in Seville, the
suprema, and it sought to win the support of the American colonies. In
1810 it had to flee from the French and moved to Cadiz, where it was
replaced by a Council of Regency. That invited the colonies to send
delegates to a cortes, a legislative body.
In the colonies, as in Spain, juntas, elected by the town councils, sprang
up, to govern in the name of Ferdinand. But did that involve allegiance to
the juntas in Spain or to the Council of Regency? Or did the sovereignty
revert, in the absence of the king, to the people? That question was of
course raised more by the creoles than by the peninsulares. They could not
allow a political vacuum: the mostly Indian masses would threaten their
social hegemony. ‘They had to move quickly to anticipate popular rebel-
lion, convinced that if they did not seize the opportunity, more dangerous
forces would do so.’10 Haiti, where an independent ‘Black Republic’ was
proclaimed in 1804, was a warning not an example.
At a cabildo abierto, an open meeting of the city council, held in
Mexico City after the arrival of emissaries from Seville, it was argued that
New Spain was not a colony of Spain, but a separate kingdom also ruled by
Ferdinand VII. Similar approaches were followed in other cities. In
Caracas a junta sent a mission to London, including Simón Bolívar, with
credentials from ‘Don Fernando VII, King of Spain and the Indies, and in
his Royal Name, the Supreme Junta for his Rights in Venezuela’.11 Its
object was to counter the Council of Regency which it refused to recog-
nise, and which had ordered a blockade of the coast. No help was secured
from Britain, then supporting Spain against Napoleon. Back in Venezuela
with an old revolutionary, Francisco Miranda, Bolívar convened a congress
in Caracas that, after commemorating the Philadelphia events of 1776,
proclaimed Venezuela an independent republic in July 1811. It lasted less
than a year, faced by a great earthquake, opposition from juntas in other
cities and forces loyal to the Regency.
Following the lead of the central junta, the cortes of Cádiz expanded the
definition of the Spanish nation to include America and the Philippines.
About thirty delegates, led by Jose Mejia Lequerica of Quito, initially
attended the cortes; they were those who happened to be in Cadiz.
Others arrived later. Article 1 of the constitution was to define Spain as
14 N. TARLING

‘The gathering of all Spaniards of both hemispheres’. Sovereignty lay with

the ‘Nation’.12 But how was America to be represented in the future?
America’s population was larger than Spain’s, but Spain got three times
more representatives. The Spanish delegates argued that Indians and peo-
ple of African descent could not be counted. José Mejía Lequerica
objected, and then put up another proposal: what if only people of
African descent were disqualified? The delegate from Puerto Rico offered
the language of compromise by excluding blacks and mulattos. He speci-
fied ‘the indisputable concept that the Spanish dominions of both hemi-
spheres form a single monarchy, a single nation, a single family’, but also
that ‘natives derived from said European and overseas dominions are equal
in rights’. That still meant America was under-represented. ‘Monstrous
inequality’, shouted Father Antonio de Larrazábal from the kingdom of
Guatemala.13
Some emphasise that the 1812 constitution, influenced as it was by
British and French thinking, had ‘deep roots in Spanish philosophy and
traditional laws’, such as the fueros of Castile, Leon, and Aragon. One of
them was Karl Marx. ‘The truth is that the Constitution of 1812 is a
reproduction of the ancient fueros, but read in the light of the French
revolution, and adapted to the wants of modern society’, he wrote; ‘so far
from being a servile copy of the French Constitution of 1791, it was a
genuine original offspring of Spanish intellectual life, regenerating the
ancient and national institutions’.14
The 1812 constitution had relatively little impact on Spanish America
at the time. Viceroys resisted implementing some of its provisions, such as
freedom of the press, though they grudgingly called elections. But by
1812 the unanimity of the initial reactions to the crisis in Spain had clearly
vanished. ‘Loyalty to Ferdinand VII was not enough to maintain tradi-
tional lines of authority as americanos asserted home rule.’ On the other
hand, they lacked a new unanimity. There was no structure to develop it
and overcome the particular interests of the cities and the juntas they
created. The failed attempt to set up a republic in Venezuela only empha-
sised the point. Indeed, when patriots cast off the mask of loyalty and
revealed republican principles, their actions were still more divisive:
‘republicans, with their newfangled French ideas, were likely to lose any
popularity contest with monarchists in 1812 América’.15
Bolívar reframed the conflict as one between creoles and peninsulares and
proclaimed war to the death. In August 1813 he rode back into Caracas and
was welcomed as ‘the Liberator’: he was crowned, Roman-style, with the
 CENTRAL AMERICA 15

laurels of victory.16 The second republic, with Bolívar as dictator, really

included only a part of Venezuela: other cities remained royalist. and it lasted
no more than a year. By the beginning of 1815 Venezuela was again a royal
colony.
Other parts of Spanish America followed a different course. In New
Spain, for example, Miguel Hidalgo led a more radical movement –
though initially in the name of Ferdinand VII and the Virgin of
Guadalupe – in which thousands of Indians and others fought for a
government that would treat them more equitably. The Europeans and
the creoles saw this as a Mexican equivalent of Tupac Amaru’s rebellion in
Peru. Hidalgo and his forces appeared before Mexico City late in 1810,
but were no match for royalist troops, largely creole and mestizo. He was
captured and later executed. His movement was taken over by a mestizo
priest José María Morelos. He attracted more intellectuals to the move-
ment, and at a congress at Chilpancingo independence was declared and a
draft constitution prepared, to be promulgated the following year at
Apatzingan. In 1815, however, he too was captured and executed.
The Apatzingan constitution was in part a response to news from Spain.
The deseado had returned to Madrid from his French captivity, and he was
welcomed in Madrid on 13 May 1814. He refused to be a constitutional
monarch, however: he annulled the Cádiz constitution, dissolved the
cortes, and arrested liberal leaders, including Larrazábal. He also ordered
the preparation of an expedition of reconquest, ‘the largest military force
Spain had ever sent to América’.17
By 1816 rebels retained control only in the former Río de la Plata vice-
royalty. Peru had not even taken the first steps to independence, nor had
the Central American colonies or Cuba or Puerto Rico. ‘Not many people
would have thought that the independence movement would get under
way again in 1817, this time successfully.’18 The brutal character of the
reconquest, however, reduced the chance of reconciliation. ‘It would be
easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of Spain
and América’, wrote Bolívar in 1815.19

INDEPENDENCE
Two men dominated what now had to be independence movements,
rather than movements in the name of Ferdinand VII. One was Bolívar,
the other was José de San Martín. The latter ‘had come to believe that the
permanent independence of the Río de la Plata could not be achieved
16 N. TARLING

without the liberation of the rest of the continent’.20 Chile had to be

liberated first. In a major feat an army crossed the Andes, and, taken by
surprise, royalists there were quickly defeated. Santiago was taken, the
Chilean rebel Bernardo O’Higgins installed as governor, and indepen-
dence proclaimed.
In August 1820 San Martín’s expedition, made up of Chileans and
Argentines, moved on Peru, aided by the Chilean navy under Thomas
Cochrane. But there was no general uprising, as San Martín had expected.
Only in July 1821 did the Spanish general, José de la Serena, withdraw
from Lima, when the independence of Peru was proclaimed. San Martín
was made head of state as Protector, but he left the remainder of the task
to Bolívar.
He had retreated to Haiti, and in 1816 won support for a new expedi-
tion to Venezuela from the president, Alexander Pétion, on the under-
standing that he would free the slaves in any colony he might liberate. His
first effort was a failure. A second, begun late in 1816, was a success, partly
thanks to his ability to bring competing factions together under his leader-
ship, and partly to his readiness to recruit foreign troops, available because
the wars in Europe were over. ‘About 4000 European soldiers sailed to the
Orinoco and formed the patriots’ foreign legion.’21
Early in 1819 the congress of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar) con-
vened and created the Republic of Colombia, including the liberated
regions of Venezuela and New Granada, with Bolívar as the first president.
In less than three months he liberated much of New Granada, and in
August 1819 entered Bogotá in triumph. In December the constitution
for the Republic of (Gran) Columbia was ratified, divided into three
departments with capitals in Caracas, Quito (not yet liberated), and
Bogotá.
The army that Ferdinand VII had been gathering at Cádiz (14,000
men) in order to re-establish his authority might well have turned the tide
against the rebels, but in January 1820 it mutinied. Other elements joined
the mutineers, and, fearful for his throne, Ferdinand seized the initiative in
March by proclaiming the restoration of the 1812 constitution and calling
for the convocation of the cortes. That did not, of course, appease the
colonists; but it did mean that the independence movements would not
have to contend with a large military invasion.
In Mexico the royalists had fought the relics of the Hidalgo revolt with
counter-insurgency methods learned from their resistance to the French in
Spain, but when Ferdinand reinstated the 1812 constitution in 1820, the
 CENTRAL AMERICA 17

viceroy’s grip relaxed, and counter-insurgency could not be sustained.

Entrusted with the task of dealing with insurgents under the mestizo
Vicente Guerrero, Colonel Agustín de Iturbide made a deal with him
instead. In February 1821 they issued the Plan de Iguala. That declared
the independence of Mexico based on three principles: it should be a
monarchy, headed by Ferdinand VII or a member of his or another
royal house; it should be a Catholic country; and the principle of racial
equality should be established. That offered something for both conser-
vatives and rebels. The liberal Spanish cortes appointed Juan O’Donojú to
replace the viceroy. He came to terms with Iturbide. In September 1821
Iturbide marched into Mexico City. A junta, including O’Donojú,
appointed Iturbide its president and independence was declared. A search
began for a new monarch, but crowds and a congress that had replaced the
junta proclaimed Iturbide as Emperor Agustín I. Let ‘Colombia and
Mexico appear before all the world hand in hand and, what is more, one
at heart’, Bolívar wrote to Iturbide.22
The captaincy general of Guatemala joined the Mexican empire. The
liberal regime in Spain had freed the press, and a newspaper in Guatemala
City, the Genius of Liberty, published news of the Plan of Iguala and of
Iturbide’s triumphs. It also announced that Chiapas, a province of the
kingdom of Guatemala bordering on New Spain, had accepted the Plan.
‘Long live the Sovereign Guatemalan People!’ it proclaimed. ‘Long live
their Liberty and Independence!’23 A capital city’s cabildo abierto spoke
for an entire people, and a newly appointed governor accepted its desire for
independence. Subsequent voting in Central American towns confirmed
that the entire kingdom wanted to follow Iturbide, including the provinces
of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Now back home, the
gratified Larrazábal became Rector of the University of San Carlos.
Iturbide’s rule did not last long. The economy could not readily sup-
port a national government, the provinces were recalcitrant, and the
congress was unwilling to vote new taxes. A revolt against Iturbide, led
by Antonio López de Santa Anna and Guadelupe Victoria, began in
Veracruz late in 1822. In March 1823 Iturbide resigned and in May he
went into exile. A republican form of government was introduced, and it
adopted a federal structure under the Plan of Casa Mata formulated by the
rebels.
Federalism, though influenced by the US example, was in fact a
renewed indication of the particularism of the cities and towns that had
marked the old empire and continued to mark the new states. ‘Battlefield
18 N. TARLING

triumphs tell only part of the story. . . . battles of a few thousand soldiers on
each side defined control of vast territories only indirectly. Ultimately, the
reaction to such victories in a hundred surrounding cities and towns made
all the difference.’ By the mid-1820s ‘popular sovereignty, founded in a
vague idea of nation, undergirded all the new American governments. But
in the wake of independence, regional and local identities mattered more
than national ones. . . . Economic activities, and thus economic interests,
were organized more locally and regionally than nationally.’24
The ‘centrifugal tendencies’ that splintered the former vice-royalties of
New Granada and the Río de la Plata were ‘powerfully expressed in the
independent states that succeeded them’.25 Something similar happened
in Central America. ‘As the tidings of independence spread throughout
the isthmus, each city responded with its own resolutions phrased in its
own separate way.’26 After Bolívar’s victory in 1819, the Viceroy of New
Granada fled to Panama, where he died in 1821. When his successor left
for Ecuador, the city of Los Santos proclaimed freedom from Spain on 10
October 1821, and Panama City on 28 November. It was decided that
Panama should, as a ‘Hanseatic State’, become part of Colombia, now also
including Ecuador.27
Bolívar imagined an Andean Federation, and ‘spoke of uniting every-
thing from Mexico to Chile and Argentina’.28 His first thought was the
need for a defensive alliance, and he invited heads of several states to a
meeting in Panama in June 1826. The congress was attended by Mexico,
Central America, Gran Colombia, and Peru, and a treaty drawn up bind-
ing all parties to mutual defence. But only Colombia ratified it.29
‘America is ungovernable,’ Bolívar is supposed to have said at the end of
his life; ‘those who have served the revolution have plowed the sea.’30 The
divisions in the former Spanish empire were not paralleled in Portugal’s
dominion. Despite regional differences, it did not fall apart, and a break-
away movement in Pernambuco in 1817 was brutally repressed. One
reason maybe was the different course pursued by the monarchy.
Conveyed by the British navy, the court had moved from Lisbon to Rio
in 1807, and the king stayed there until 1821. Brazilian historians tend to
view Joao VI in a positive light: ‘he began the process of decolonization’,
Wilson Martins claimed, ‘not only by the act of elevating Brazil to a
kingdom, but by having so quickly provided the structures that constitute
a nation’.31 Independence followed in 1822, and Pedro, his eldest son,
became Pedro I, Constitutional Emperor and Perpetual Defender of
Brazil. The title had Napoleonic overtones; in fact ‘it sprang more from
 CENTRAL AMERICA 19

liberal masonic tradition and in the liberal José Bonifacio [de Andrada e
Silva]’s eyes was simply a reflection of the size of Brazil.’32

MONROE DOCTRINE
Bolívar did not invite the USA to his Panama meeting: Gran Columbia
did, but neither of the two US delegates made it. He believed that the
main threats to sovereignty would in fact come from the USA. He is
supposed to have said: ‘The United States seems destined by Providence
to plague America with misery in the name of Liberty.’33 That was in many
respects an accurate forecast. Certainly the USA was a strong power and
became of course much stronger. Could you protect your state from it?
Even if you sought its protection, it would come at a price and compro-
mise your independence.
In 1823 the Holy Alliance had decided to deal with Spanish liberalism
by military intervention, and a French army again entered Spain, this time
to support the monarchy. In December royal absolutism was established
once more. Britain and the USA were concerned lest the independence
movement in the New World were again attacked, and the trade they had
built up be cut off again. Britain sought a combined declaration, but
President Monroe got in first. Though it was the predominance of the
British navy that in fact protected the independent states, what later came
to be known as the Monroe Doctrine had a longer life.
Two separate parts of the president’s message of 2 December 1823
were relevant. One related to the discussions with Russia over the future of
the north-west Pacific. The principle had been asserted, the president
declared, ‘that the American Continents, by the free and independent
condition which they had assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to
be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European
powers’. The second statement related to the powers of the Holy
Alliance in general. The USA would not interfere with existing colonies.
‘But with the Governments who have declared their independence and
maintained it . . . we could not view any interposition for the purpose of
oppressing them, or controlling in any manner their destiny, by any
European power in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition towards the United States.’34
Even such a protective statement, of course, limited the options not
only of European states but also of the non-US independent American
states. No state could invite in a European power, even against the USA.
20 N. TARLING

In subsequent times, the Doctrine became an argument for US interven-

tion rather than an argument against that of any other power.

CENTRAL AMERICA
The challenges for the new states did not end there. Though there were
differential interests, they were not on a national basis (Map 2.1). The
common language of all the new states – except Brazil – was Spanish, and
the departed empire had left no frontiers behind, apart from those that
divided one form of Spanish rule from another. Not surprisingly, the new
states would readily fall out with each other over their borders. This was
particularly the case in Central America. Furthermore that region achieved
its independence without a military struggle, and so had no heroes for a
nationalist historiography to evoke. Assertions of unity themselves proved
divisive. Subsequent attempts to recreate it provoked interstate tension.
Without mutually accepted frontiers, disputes were guaranteed, coopera-
tion impossible. ‘Westphalia’ was not attained.

Map 2.1 Central America

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of An examination
of some methods employed in determining the
atomic weight of Cadmium
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
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eBook.

Title: An examination of some methods employed in determining

the atomic weight of Cadmium

Author: John Emery Bucher

Release date: September 4, 2023 [eBook #71561]

Language: English

Original publication: Baltimore, MD: John E. Bucher, 1894

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN

EXAMINATION OF SOME METHODS EMPLOYED IN
DETERMINING THE ATOMIC WEIGHT OF CADMIUM ***
Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain.
 An Examination of some Methods Employed in
Determining the Atomic Weight of Cadmium.

A Thesis

Presented to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins

University for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

by
John E. Bucher.

1894
Contents.
 I. Introduction and Historical Statement 1
II. The Oxalate Method 3
Preparation of Pure Cadmium 3
Preparation of Nitric Acid 4
Purification of Water 4
Purification of Oxalic Acid 5
Preparation of Cadmium Oxalate 7
Procedure 8
Results 13
III. The Sulphide Method 16
Preparation of Hydrogen Sulphide 16
Preparation of Nitrogen 17
Mode of Procedure 18
Results 24
Discussion of the Results 24
Discussion of the Method 26
IV. The Chloride Method 33
Preparation of Cadmium Chloride 35
The Filters 48
Analytical Process 52
Results 57
Discussion of the Results 58
V. The Bromide Method 69
Preparation of Cadmium Bromide and
Hydrobromic Acid 70
Method of Analysis 78
Results 80
Discussion of the Results 80
VI. Syntheses of Cadmium Sulphate 82
Results 90
Discussion of the Results 91
VII. The Oxide Method 94
Results 96
Discussion of the Results 97
Determination of Error 104
Discussion of the Oxalate Method 114
VIII. Other Methods 119
IX. Conclusion 122
 Acknowledgement.

The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness for advice

and instruction to Professor Morse at whose suggestion and under
whose guidance this work has been carried on. He also wishes to
express his thanks for instruction to Professor Remsen in Chemistry,
Professor Williams in Mineralogy, Dr. Ames in Physics and Mr.
Hulburt in Mathematics.
 Introduction and Historical Statement.

The atomic weight of cadmium has been investigated by a

number of chemists but the results obtained vary between wide
limits. The work described in this paper was undertaken with the
object of finding the cause of the discrepancy in some of the
methods employed. A complete historical statement has been given
by Morse and Jones, (Amer. Chem. Jour., 14. 261.) and it is only
necessary, here, to give a summary for the purpose of reference:
 Ratio. At. Wt.
Cd.
1818, Stromeyer, Cd : CdO 111.483
(Schweiggers Jour. 22, 336.)
1857, Von Hauer, CdSO4 : CdS 111.935
(Jour. f. Prakt. Chemie 72, 338.)
1859, Dumas, 1st series. CdCl2 : Ag 112.416
2d „ CdCl2 : Ag 112.007
(Ann. Chim. Phys. [3], 55, 158.)
1860, Lenssen, CdC2O4 : 112.043
CdO
(Jour. f. Prakt. Chem. 79, 281)
1882, Huntington and Cooke, CdBr2 : AgBr 112.239
„„ CdBr2 : Ag 112.245
(Proceedings Amer. Acad. 17, 28)
1890, Partridge, 1st Series CdC2O4 : 111.816
CdO
„ 2d „ CdSO4 : CdS 111.727
„ 3d „ CdC2O4 : 111.616
CdS
(Amer. Jour. Sci.[3], 40, 377)
1892, Morse and Jones, 1st Cd : CdO 112.0766
Method,
2d „ CdC2O4 : 112.632
CdO
1892, Torimer and Smithy CdO : Cd 112.055
(Zeit. f. Anorg. Chem. I. 364)

In this summary as well as in the rest of this paper the following

atomic weights are used:
Oxygen = 16.00
Sulphur = 32.059
Carbon = 12.003
Chlorine = 35.45
Bromine = 79.95
Silver = 107.93
The Oxalate Method
 Preparation of Pure Cadmium.
“Cadmium met. puriss. galv. reduc”, obtained from Schuchardt,
was used for preparing pure cadmium. It was heated to redness in a
current of hydrogen which had been purified by washing with both
acid and alkaline solutions of potassium permanganate. This
treatment converted the metallic powder into a bar which could be
distilled in a vacuum. The metal was then distilled nine times in the
same manner that Morse and Burton, Amer. Chem. Jour. 12, 219,
had distilled zinc. All distillations were made slowly except the last
one, which was made quite rapidly.
 Preparation of Nitric Acid.
Whenever pure nitric acid was required, it was purified by
distilling against a platinum dish and collecting the distillate in a
smaller one of the same metal. The nitric acid used was dilute and
free from chlorine.
 Purification of Water.
The water used in this work was purified by distilling twice from
an alkaline solution of potassium permanganate, always rejecting the
first part of the distillate. Whenever water was needed in the
preparation of a pure compound e.g. cadmium oxalate, oxalic acid,
cadmium nitrate, etc., it was subjected to the additional process of
being distilled against a large platinum dish which was kept cool by
placing ice inside it.
 Purification of Oxalic Acid.
Commercial oxalic acid was heated with a fifteen percent
solution of hydrochloric acid until all was dissolved. The solution was
then warmed for twenty four hours. On cooling, crystals of oxalic acid
separated out and these were washed with a little cold water to
remove the mother liquor. They were then dissolved in hot ninety-five
percent alcohol and allowed to crystallize slowly on cooling. The acid
was next crystallized from ether in which it is only sparingly soluble.
After this it was boiled with water until the odor of ethyl acetate had
disappeared. Finally it was recrystallized three times from water and
dried in the air at ordinary temperatures.
 Preparation of Cadmium Oxalate.
A weighed piece of cadmium was dissolved in nitric acid and the
excess of acid evaporated off. The nitrite was then dissolved in a
large quantity of water and an equivalent amount of oxalic acid in
solution added. The oxalate separated in a few moments as a
crystalline precipitate. It was collected on a porcelain filter and
washed thoroughly to remove nitric acid and ammonium nitrate. A
considerable amount of ammonium nitrate was formed during the
solution of the cadmium in nitric acid. The oxalate was finally dried in
an air-bath for fifty hours, at 150°C.
 Procedure
Enough cadmium oxalate for a determination was placed in a
weighing tube which had been tared against a similar vessel and
dried at 150°C. until the weight remained constant. It was then
poured into a weighed porcelain crucible. The tube and its tare were
now dried again at the same temperature to constant weight in order
to avoid any error resulting from moisture being absorbed by the
cadmium oxalate which adhered to the weighing-glass. The crucibles
used in these determinations were arranged in the same manner as
those employed by Morse and Jones in their work on this method. A
small porcelain crucible on whose edge were placed three short
platinum wires bent in the shape of the letter U, was placed in a
larger porcelain crucible. The platinum wires prevented the lid from
sticking to the crucible after heating and also allowed the products of
decomposition to escape. The glaze was removed from the outside
of the larger crucible with hydrofluoric acid to avoid sticking when
heated to a high temperature. A second pair of crucibles arranged in
the same manner was tared against the first one and in all cases
treated like it. After the oxalate had been poured into the weighed
crucible, it was decomposed by placing the crucible with its contents
in a cylindrical asbestus covered air-bath, and slowly raising the
temperature until the mass beams uniformly brown in color. In the
last five determinations, the temperature was not allowed to exceed
300°C and after from forty to eighty hours the loss in weight was
about ninety percent of the amount calculated for complete
decomposition. In the first four the temperature was much higher and
the time employed shorter. After the oxalate had been thus treated
nitric acid was added and the contents of the crucible dissolved
completely. The crucible was then transferred to a bath constructed
by placing a larger porcelain crucible in a still larger one of iron and
filling the intervening space with sand. It was slowly heated until the
nitric acid had all evaporated and the dry nitrate began to give off red
fumes. The crucibles were then removed to a similar bath containing