- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
Just going to plonk all the proposals I'm aware of to establish monarchies based in post-colonial Latin America - not including the Empires of Brazil and Mexico, and the various Haitian escapades. Any additions are welcome!
Proposals to establish colonial monarchies emerged in the 18th century, with an idea put forward in 1736 to move the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro. A Spanish bureaucrat suggested to Carlos III at one point that he ought to send junior members of his family to rule as Kings in the Americas under the ultimate authority of the Spanish Empire (one in Mexico, one in Costa Rica and one in Peru), which is quite similar to the later proposal to put British princes in as Kings of the settler Dominions.
In terms of post-colonial ideas, the big one was the 'Inca Plan' associated with Manuel Belgrano of Buenos Aires, but it actually derives from Francisco de Miranda a few decades before. The Plan involved selecting a descendant of the old Inca rulers to rule an independent Empire covering most of South America, and marry a princess of the House of Braganza. Belgrano made firm proposals at the Congress of Tucuman in 1816, believing that the establishment of a mixed-race monarchy would win over the rebellious provinces of the interior of Argentina (plus Peru and Chile) into joining a centralised, unitarian state. However, the idea was rejected and ridiculed, with some of the criticism being based around the fact that the monarch would be of the 'chocolate caste'. I'm not quite clear on who exactly would have been crowned if this had gone ahead. Some sources say it would have been Dionisio Inca Yupanqui, who had been elected to the radical Cadiz Cortes in 1810 and gave a fiery speech on racial discrimination; others say that it would have been Juan Bautista Tupamaru, great-nephew of Tupac Amaru, who was then under arrest in Ceuta. Tupamaru arrived in Argentina a few years later and was given a house and a pension of one peso a month by the state until his death in 1827.
In the meantime, alternative options had sprung up around inviting a member of a European royal family to occupy an independent throne (similar to what happened in the Balkans later in the 19th century). In 1808, Carlos IV and Fernando VII of Spain had abdicated in favour of Napoleon and the Portuguese royal family had fled to Rio - which meant that there was an ambitious member of the Spanish royal family close by, looking to fill the power vacuum in the Americas. The Rio de la Plata and, to a lesser extent, Mexico, saw waves of 'Carlotismo', by which the Spanish possessions in America would be ruled by Fernando's sister and Joao of Portugal's wife, Carlota Joaquina, as Queen. The British Ambassador in Rio pushed this big-time, but nothing came of it because Carlota Joaquina's political views were massively at variance with those of the new leaders in Buenos Aires. Also, despite the fact that Joao and Carlota's marriage had failed by this point, it doesn't seem particularly convenient for her to go and rule in BA, and I'm not sure who was supposed to succeed her - presumably her second son, Miguel?
At the time of the Congress of Tucuman, one counterpoint to the Inca Plan was a constitutional monarchy under a Bourbon - the Bourbons, of course, had been restored in Spain and France at this point and republicanism seemed to have been discredited in Europe as a whole. Carlota was essentially out of the picture, with Belgrano and Rivadavia going so far as to ask the Spanish to let her brother Infante Francisco de Paula (future father-in-law of Isabel II) come and be their King. If this had come off, the Carlist Wars would be butterflied in their OTL form as Francisco and his wife were Don Carlos' main political opponents at court in the 1820s. However, after being rebuffed by Madrid, the Argentines went to Louis Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, and then the Duke of Lucca (the third or fourth round of 'Pin the Bourbon-Parma on the throne'). Back in Buenos Aires, Pueyrredon went for a variation on Carlotismo in 1818 and entered into negotiations with Rio de Janeiro for her seven-year-old grandson, Infante Sebastian of Portugal and Spain, to be sent to rule them as a constitutional monarch.
That pretty much concludes the monarchist story in Argentina, apart from that time when a random French guy went and convinced the indigenous Mapuche to elect him King of Araucania and Patagonia.
Later on, in 1865, the Uruguayans were despairing of their country after several decades of intermittent civil wars and foreign interventions, and some citizens believed that their best bet was to become a protectorate of another country, perhaps with said country sending a spare prince to be a constitutional monarch in Uruguay. This was pushed hard by the Italian Ambassador in Montevideo (the only plausible candidate for the throne would be Amadeo, later King of Spain), and other factions in Uruguay favoured the Empire of Brazil or the UK.
Rounding out the proposals that I'm aware of at this stage, there are some interesting notions surrounding Napoleon III. Before getting involved in Mexico as Emperor, he had long been fascinated by Latin America. During the rebellion of Pernambuco in northern Brazil in 1817, there was a plot to liberate Napoleon I from captivity in St Helena and put him at the head of an 'Empire of the Equator' on his way back to France. Louis-Napoleon enters the picture in 1844, when he was supposedly offered the throne of Ecuador - the only evidence of this is a letter from President Garcia Moreno dating from 1859, at a time when he was engaged in offering Napoleon III a protectorate over Ecuador. This later offer was ultimately rejected because the French were already stuck in the Mexican quagmire. But there was certainly some thought put into an Ecuadorian monarchy in the 1840s, as Juan Jose Flores offered the throne to Agustin Munoz, Duke of Taracon, a step-brother of Isabel II.
Louis-Napoleon's other option in the 1840s was a nebulous scheme in which he would be the face of a group of investors seeking to dig a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific - at its most grandiose, this involved Louis-Napoleon using the canal project as a basis of establishing an Empire in Central America. Indeed, while he was imprisoned at Ham in 1846, he pleaded with the British to negotiate his release on condition that he promise to stop bothering the French and go filibustering in Panama instead. I feel like he'd have been less likely to fall foul of Bismarck and von Moltke in this scenario.
So yeah, just a shallow traversal of the concept, hopefully it's been mildly interesting.
Proposals to establish colonial monarchies emerged in the 18th century, with an idea put forward in 1736 to move the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro. A Spanish bureaucrat suggested to Carlos III at one point that he ought to send junior members of his family to rule as Kings in the Americas under the ultimate authority of the Spanish Empire (one in Mexico, one in Costa Rica and one in Peru), which is quite similar to the later proposal to put British princes in as Kings of the settler Dominions.
In terms of post-colonial ideas, the big one was the 'Inca Plan' associated with Manuel Belgrano of Buenos Aires, but it actually derives from Francisco de Miranda a few decades before. The Plan involved selecting a descendant of the old Inca rulers to rule an independent Empire covering most of South America, and marry a princess of the House of Braganza. Belgrano made firm proposals at the Congress of Tucuman in 1816, believing that the establishment of a mixed-race monarchy would win over the rebellious provinces of the interior of Argentina (plus Peru and Chile) into joining a centralised, unitarian state. However, the idea was rejected and ridiculed, with some of the criticism being based around the fact that the monarch would be of the 'chocolate caste'. I'm not quite clear on who exactly would have been crowned if this had gone ahead. Some sources say it would have been Dionisio Inca Yupanqui, who had been elected to the radical Cadiz Cortes in 1810 and gave a fiery speech on racial discrimination; others say that it would have been Juan Bautista Tupamaru, great-nephew of Tupac Amaru, who was then under arrest in Ceuta. Tupamaru arrived in Argentina a few years later and was given a house and a pension of one peso a month by the state until his death in 1827.
In the meantime, alternative options had sprung up around inviting a member of a European royal family to occupy an independent throne (similar to what happened in the Balkans later in the 19th century). In 1808, Carlos IV and Fernando VII of Spain had abdicated in favour of Napoleon and the Portuguese royal family had fled to Rio - which meant that there was an ambitious member of the Spanish royal family close by, looking to fill the power vacuum in the Americas. The Rio de la Plata and, to a lesser extent, Mexico, saw waves of 'Carlotismo', by which the Spanish possessions in America would be ruled by Fernando's sister and Joao of Portugal's wife, Carlota Joaquina, as Queen. The British Ambassador in Rio pushed this big-time, but nothing came of it because Carlota Joaquina's political views were massively at variance with those of the new leaders in Buenos Aires. Also, despite the fact that Joao and Carlota's marriage had failed by this point, it doesn't seem particularly convenient for her to go and rule in BA, and I'm not sure who was supposed to succeed her - presumably her second son, Miguel?
At the time of the Congress of Tucuman, one counterpoint to the Inca Plan was a constitutional monarchy under a Bourbon - the Bourbons, of course, had been restored in Spain and France at this point and republicanism seemed to have been discredited in Europe as a whole. Carlota was essentially out of the picture, with Belgrano and Rivadavia going so far as to ask the Spanish to let her brother Infante Francisco de Paula (future father-in-law of Isabel II) come and be their King. If this had come off, the Carlist Wars would be butterflied in their OTL form as Francisco and his wife were Don Carlos' main political opponents at court in the 1820s. However, after being rebuffed by Madrid, the Argentines went to Louis Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, and then the Duke of Lucca (the third or fourth round of 'Pin the Bourbon-Parma on the throne'). Back in Buenos Aires, Pueyrredon went for a variation on Carlotismo in 1818 and entered into negotiations with Rio de Janeiro for her seven-year-old grandson, Infante Sebastian of Portugal and Spain, to be sent to rule them as a constitutional monarch.
That pretty much concludes the monarchist story in Argentina, apart from that time when a random French guy went and convinced the indigenous Mapuche to elect him King of Araucania and Patagonia.
Later on, in 1865, the Uruguayans were despairing of their country after several decades of intermittent civil wars and foreign interventions, and some citizens believed that their best bet was to become a protectorate of another country, perhaps with said country sending a spare prince to be a constitutional monarch in Uruguay. This was pushed hard by the Italian Ambassador in Montevideo (the only plausible candidate for the throne would be Amadeo, later King of Spain), and other factions in Uruguay favoured the Empire of Brazil or the UK.
Rounding out the proposals that I'm aware of at this stage, there are some interesting notions surrounding Napoleon III. Before getting involved in Mexico as Emperor, he had long been fascinated by Latin America. During the rebellion of Pernambuco in northern Brazil in 1817, there was a plot to liberate Napoleon I from captivity in St Helena and put him at the head of an 'Empire of the Equator' on his way back to France. Louis-Napoleon enters the picture in 1844, when he was supposedly offered the throne of Ecuador - the only evidence of this is a letter from President Garcia Moreno dating from 1859, at a time when he was engaged in offering Napoleon III a protectorate over Ecuador. This later offer was ultimately rejected because the French were already stuck in the Mexican quagmire. But there was certainly some thought put into an Ecuadorian monarchy in the 1840s, as Juan Jose Flores offered the throne to Agustin Munoz, Duke of Taracon, a step-brother of Isabel II.
Louis-Napoleon's other option in the 1840s was a nebulous scheme in which he would be the face of a group of investors seeking to dig a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific - at its most grandiose, this involved Louis-Napoleon using the canal project as a basis of establishing an Empire in Central America. Indeed, while he was imprisoned at Ham in 1846, he pleaded with the British to negotiate his release on condition that he promise to stop bothering the French and go filibustering in Panama instead. I feel like he'd have been less likely to fall foul of Bismarck and von Moltke in this scenario.
So yeah, just a shallow traversal of the concept, hopefully it's been mildly interesting.