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SummaryLiberalism arose alongside Romanticism but the two were qualitatively different. Romantic Liberalism in Italy and Spain, with roots in the Enlightenment, looked for the reasons why supposed past liberties had been lost and for methods to regain them. The constitutional issue, however, exposed the differences between the two countries, due principally to continued foreign rule in Italy, lack of political unity and the absence of an accepted common language. In both countries, however, the conjunction of Liberalism and Romanticism assisted the elaboration of national myths. Literature in both countries responded to the overriding issues but with different emphases. Spain Romanticism produced no writer of Alessandro Manzoni's stature.

The article attempts to identify the principal processes and patterns, divergences and contrasts that operated during the Independence period in Latin America. These are frequently lost among the detail involved in discussing this period either in monographic or general textual form. The method is to take Spanish and Portuguese America together. Comparison takes place here at a number of levels, not just between Spanish and Portuguese America. The article gives prominence to the regional and social dimensions, rather than to the economic, since this would require separate treatment in view of the issues that emerge.The argument is that: (1) Independence formed part of a broader historical process that covered the readjustments of the period from c. 1770–c. 1870 not just between metropoles and dominions but also within colonial territories; (2) there was not always a clear-cut dichotomy between Empire or Independence, but many different positions between the two polarities; (3) cross-class and multi-ethnic coalitions emerged in several instances; considerable evidence exists of popular participation; essentially, though, the process of Independence was elite-directed and led frequently to elite-dominated ‘national states’, within which pre-existing social issues remained unresolved; (4) nationalism did not make independent states; nation and national identity would have to be created after Independence.

Nv AAT ION AL-LEVEL Mexican history by itself reveals very little of the basic struggles during the Restored Republic. It is frequently necessary to reconstruct conflict at the provincial and local levels to understand the real political culture of Mexicans in this period. Although the importance of the national level and the federal government's nation-building enterprise should not be underplayed, most Mexicans dwelt in the rural and local environment: their mental vision of national events and issues derived from daily experiences. As the principal instrument of change during the broader period from 1833 to 1876, the Liberal Party (as the disparate movement described itself) sought to transform Mexico from a Hispanic Catholic bastion into a constitutional and secular republic. This process fell into three distinct phases: the preliminary developments in 1833-34 and 1846-53, the struggles of the Reform era and the French intervention between 1855 and 1867, and the period of attempted consolidation during the Restored Republic, from 1867 to 1876. The process was never easy and ultimately remained incomplete. Liberal ideas and politicians were vigorously contested throughout the period from 1833 to 1876.1