The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen Quotes

“Although he did not formally break with Jeremy Bentham until the later 1820s, Bolívar had long been sceptical about what he regarded as idealistic, purely rational schemes of government. Bentham was comfortably distanced for the most part from people who were very poor, or uneducated, or violent, and he had the luxury of writing from the security of his study in the centre of an affluent London undamaged by the ravages of war. Bolívar’s own experience was necessarily very different. ‘The cries of the human race on battlefields or in angry demonstrations’, he warned the delegates at Angostura firmly: rail against insensitive or blind legislators who mistakenly believed they could try out whimsical institutions with impunity. Every country on earth has sought freedom … only a few were willing to temper their ambitions, establishing a mode of government appropriate to their means, their spirit, and their circumstances.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“If Bolívar’s increasing melancholy by the 1820s appears particularly marked (‘the only thing one can do in America’, he wrote morosely towards the end of the decade, ‘is emigrate’), this was in part because he had fought too hard for too long, and because he was a man who luxuriated in words. But it was also the case that, from the outset, Bolívar – who was as much a voracious reader as Napoleon – had devoted serious thought to the question of what kinds of political systems might effectually replace Spanish imperial rule in South America while also guaranteeing order and stability.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“This was the innovating constitutional heaven brought into being by Spanish American independence struggles; and, in some regions, the impact was dramatic and long-lasting. By the mid nineteenth century, the political life of large stretches of South America was more inclusive in terms of social class and race – though not gender – than in the United States or much of Europe.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“In terms of voting rights for males, some of these documents were strikingly democratic. Again, Mexico serves to make the point. In the years immediately before independence, what became this territory had officially been governed in accordance with the constitution of Cádiz, which, as we have seen, excluded most Blacks from active citizenship. But, in 1821, the Mexican warlord General Agustín de Iturbide eliminated these racial restrictions and expanded the local franchise. He ‘effectively enfranchised every man over eighteen who had employment of any kind’.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“All successful revolutionary leaders have to worry about how to stabilise the new regimes that they create. After the American Revolutionary War, the likes of Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris had argued for the establishment of a hereditary senate in a still insecure United States quite as fervently as Bolívar did in Venezuela;”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World

“By the same token, Bolívar went on, and for all that they were rebelling against a Spanish king, a modified variant of monarchy might still be useful for ensuring ‘solidity’ in the new Venezuela: The veneration professed by the people for their monarch is a prestige that works powerfully to augment the superstitious respect given to that authority. The splendor of the throne, the crown, and the purple; the formidable support provided by the nobility; the immense wealth accumulated in a single dynasty over generations; the fraternal protection that all kings provide to each other – these are enormous advantages that militate in favor of royal authority, making it almost limitless. Thought should therefore be given as to how to secure and enhance the strength of the executive. ‘No matter how exorbitant the authority of the executive power in England may seem’, Bolívar warned, it would likely prove insufficient for an independent Venezuela.”
― Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World