The consolidation of the history of international relations as a scientific discipline has reflected its shift from a perception of the world based on relations among states towards a more complex vision centred on relations among peoples. The polysemous character of the term ‘relations’ itself enunciates the multifaceted nature of this historical discipline.
The history of relations between Spain and the new nations that emerged in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Spanish colonial empire must be framed in this context, but this entails superseding the state-centred paradigm, which posits the state as the vertebral column of all such relations, and the gradual integration of new analytical perspectives. This is especially important when we discover that such visions are fundamental to the understanding of an international scenario that became more and more complex as the nineteenth century wore on, due, among other factors, to the multiplication of actors whose interactions determined, in the final analysis, the functioning of the system itself.
Relations between Spain and the emerging Spanish American republics in the nineteenth century reproduced the complexities that accompanied the separation of two territories which had been united for several centuries by links that continued to exist well beyond the disappearance of their colonial ties. I have pointed out elsewhere that the traumatic nature of Spanish American independence and the tortuous relations between the new nations and the former metropolis are closely bound to the problems that derived from the complex process of constructing the liberal nation-state in both territories, although it must be noted that those difficulties also emerged due to the initially undefined nature of a whole series of bilateral issues that affected the former metropolis and the new Spanish American republics and conditioned, to a great extent, their relations in the nineteenth century.
In this context Spanish–Uruguayan relations were by no means an exception, as Bárbara Díaz's interesting book reveals. La diplomacia española en Uruguay en el siglo XIX examines relations between the two nations from the death of Ferdinand VII in 1834 to the signing of the Spanish–Uruguayan Treaty of 1870. The book is divided into six chapters which analyse diverse aspects of those relations, including the establishment of formal diplomatic relations, the problems that affected the Spanish colony in Uruguay, the impact of Spanish interventions on the continent, bilateral trade, the functioning of Spain's naval base in the Río de la Plata, and the negotiations that led to the Treaty of 1870.
The result is a quite complete, panoramic view of relations between Spain and Uruguay during the second third of the nineteenth century, a topic previously marked by a noticeable historiographical gap, with the exception of Jerónimo Becker's studies of the establishment of relations between the two countries (La independencia de América: su reconocimiento por España, 1922) and Juan Carlos Pereira's article, ‘El establecimiento de relaciones diplomáticas entre España, Argentina, Paraguay y Uruguay’ (Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 2004). An additional merit of Díaz's book is that it is based on both Spanish and Uruguayan documentary sources, and thus provides a fairly balanced vision of the two countries' bilateral relations.
The book's guiding thread consists of reports by diplomatic representatives of the two nations, although Díaz avoids the pitfall of presenting a purely diplomatic analysis of Spanish–Uruguayan relations by widening her approach to include other, related features. In this sense, her examination of the characteristics of Spanish emigration to Uruguay and the hardships that the Spanish colony suffered there allows her to analyse the impact on bilateral relations of such problems as double nationality and the claims brought by Spanish citizens as a result of the turbulent times that the young South American republic experienced during the first few decades of its existence. Her exploration of bilateral commercial relations and the frustrated attempts to sign a trade agreement also complement the analysis of bilateral relations in the period under study. Finally, the book includes an interesting documentary appendix.
Nonetheless, Díaz's work does have certain limitations. For example, no reference is made to the cultural relations that, as in the case of other Spanish American nations, must have been of some relevance during the epoch she examines. Also surprising is the fact that the author barely touches upon the influence of the Cuban question on bilateral relations, especially during the Ten Years' War, when Spain's relations with the rest of Spanish America and the image of the metropolis in the region became severely constrained, as recent studies of this topic have shown. This would not have occurred if Díaz had framed her research on Spanish–Uruguayan bilateral relations more firmly in the wider context of the development of Spanish policy towards Spanish America in general during the period she examines. It should also be noted that the bibliography used is at times somewhat obsolete and includes some errors that suggest a certain lack of familiarity with the topic, such as Díaz's mention of Antonia Pi-Suñer and Agustín Sánchez's book Una historia de encuentros y desencuentros: México y España en el siglo XIX (2001).
Despite these drawbacks, La diplomacia española en Uruguay en el siglo XIX sheds considerable light on the history of the relations between the former metropolis and this small South American republic in the nineteenth century and, in a wider sense, constitutes an interesting contribution to the topic of Spain's troubled relations with its former colonies in that period.
