Francisco de Miranda, Part 1

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Back when I went to Philadelphia to see that Marie Lawrence exhibits, I spend some time just walking around that part of the city. One of my favorite things to do walking around exploring part of a city. So that exhibition was at the Barnes Foundation, which is on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. And if you've never been to Philadelphia, the Parkway is this broad, tree lined boulevard that runs about a mile from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and it goes diagonally across the grid like it's just its own thing. There are all kinds of museums and educational and cultural institutions alongside of it, and there's also just a ton of public art. The Association of Public Art has a tour called Along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway that includes thirty works of art just in that one mile. Uh, and I think all of those thirty we're not talking about art in the museums. These are statues and things outside. One of these, which is in front of the Franklin Institute is a statue of Francisco de Miranda, and he looks very dashing and determined, and the tail of his coat is kind of billowing around, and there's a plaque that reads Caracas, Venezuela, seventeen fifty Cadiz la Caraca Prison, eighteen sixteen, Great soldier of freedom who participated in the three greatest political upheavals of his time, the struggle for independence in the United States, the French Revolution, and the emancipation of Latin America. And so I obviously was like, who's that guy. This is not somebody I'm familiar with U. And so he became one of several ideas for future episodes that I jotted down on that day that included Natalie Clifford Barney. She already became a two part episode over Valentine's Day. This one also turned into a two parter because it turns out some of the things that Francisco de Miranda was connected to are things we have not explained that much on the show before, so two parts on him starting today. Francisco de Miranda was born in Caracas, which is the capital of Venezuela. And at the time was considered a part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. His parents were Francisca Antonio Rodriguez de Espinoza and Sebastian de Moranda Iravello. Most sources give Francisco's date of birth as March twenty eighth or twenty ninth, seventeen fifty, and he was baptized on April fifth of that year. This family was well off. Francisco's father was a successful linen merchant who owned other businesses as well, and Sebastian seems to have been respected by the Spanish authorities in Caracas, but he also ran into disputes with some of the local elite. Generally speaking, in Spain's colonies in the Americas, people from the Iberian Peninsula or Peninsulares had a higher social standing than creolos, or people born in the colony, and while there were a lot of inner marriages between people of Spanish, African and indigenous descent, there was also a focus on the idea of blood purity in Spanish society. In more recent years, historians have argued that earlier descriptions of all this as a very strict and layered caste system aren't really accurate that there was some more fluidity, with people of different ancestries able to have some social mobility depending on their circumstances. Regardless, questions of race and status affected the Miranda family directly. Sebastian, who was from Tenerife in the Canary Islands, became captain of a militia unit, and after he retired from that position, continued to wear his uniform. All of this angered the local Bosque aristocracy. Even his retirement seems to have been something he did to try to appease them. Someone eventually alleged that he had African ancestry, and only people with so called pure blood, meaning they had no African, Indigenous, Jewish or Muslim ancestry, could do things like attain government positions or attend university. Sebastian's efforts to document that he was of pure blood went on for years and ultimately involved King Carlos the Third. The King's confirmation of Sebastian's blood purity did not resolve the hostility that he was getting from the Basque elite. Though most likely Francisco and at least five siblings were educated at home when they were young, at the age of twelve, Francisco enrolled at the Academy of Santa Rosa and then in seventeen sixty five entered the Royal and Pontifical University of Caracas. He was awarded a bachelor's degree three years later, although there are some questions about whether he actually finished all of his studies before being awarded that degree. From there, Francisco de Miranda wanted to join the army, with something he decided to do in Spain rather than Venezuela because of his father's whole ordeal around that issue of blood purity and the social issues surrounding it. Francisco left in seventeen seventy one carrying various letters of support and money to purchase a commission. After arriving in Spain, he became a captain in the Princess's own infantry, and in addition to his military service, he continued to study things like mathematics, languages, and humanities. He started to develop a reputation for being well educated and well read, and for curating an extensive personal library. That's something that would continue for the rest of his life. He did not really have a reputation for being a good soldier or officer, though he was originally stationed in various parts of Northern Africa and Andalusia on the Iberian Peninsula, but he kept trying to get a transfer because he found this boring. He also had a pretty high opinion of himself. He was definitely intelligent. He seems to have had a real knack for learning languages, but beyond that, he just thought he was better than other people and that he naturally deserved his choice of assignments. Of course, that did not leave a favorable impression on his commanding officers, not generally how things work in most militaries. They wanted him to follow orders and not try to pick and choose what he wanted to do. But things became a little less boring for him in seventeen seventy four when Moroccan forces backed by the British, attacked Maleia on the North African coast. This led to a two month siege and Miranda's first real experience in combat in terms of his overall military service. This siege was not that long, but as it was going on, he started to get a sense of how Spanish colonialism was affecting people's lives in the areas being colonized, beyond his own experience among people of similar standing to his own family in Venezuela. After this siege ended in a victory for Spain, Miranda visited Gibraltar, which was under British control, and he started meeting and forming connections with British people living there, and also hearing about the ongoing unrest that was happening in Britain's colonies in the Americas. His personal study also started to include the works of Enlightenment thinkers who really criticized various aspects of Europe's colonial empires. This included works like Istuar Philosophique did du Zindi, which was attributed to Abe Gillom Thomas right now and this is somebody that Miranda later met and became friends with. This was an early work of world history that examined the impact of European colonization on the rest of the world, and it included criticisms of the institution of slavery and the use of religion to subject colonized people's and nation's own citizens. He also read and absorbed the works of writers like Voltaire and Rousseau, writers who argued against tyranny and corruption, and for liberty and freedom. Many of these writers were strident critics of the Spanish Inquisition, which banned their writings, and because of this, the Inquisition started keeping tabs on Francisco to Miranda. Miranda spent so much time focused on this self study that he was disciplined for reading too much, as well as for insubordination. Some of this was probably the product of his growing focus on these Enlightenment ideals, but he also just seems to have been all over the place. As a military officer, he was accused of ignoring behavior that should have led to discipline in some cases, but also using severe beatings as a form of discipline in others. He also had a lot of romantic and sexual relationships. That's something else that would continue throughout his life. He chronicled these relationships in detail in his diaries, describing a range of experiences with sex workers and servants, and longer term, more intellectual relationships with women that he thought of as educated or witty or respectable. For the most part, his diaries tend to treat these higher status women with more discretion and care than his more casual encounters. A number of biographies of Miranda have characterized him as merely a womanizer and a philanderer, but over the course of his life, he also seemed to recognize how the treatment of women in many societies was unjust, and he saw, at least to some extent, the kinds of sexual double standards that meant that he and his romantic partners were viewed differently for having the same relationship. He advocated for women to have legal rights and protections, and it's likely that he was personally acquainted with Mary Wolstoncraft during the years of the French Revolution. Yeah, it seems more like he was a philanderer and an advocate for women, right. He's one of those dudes that people might say today he just loved women in a lot of ways. Also, like a lot of the things that people characterized him for negatively in the nineteenth century seemed to have been viewed not as critically in the eighteenth century because of changing mores around sex and relationships. Anyway, to move back to the timeline, by seventeen seventy six, Miranda thought his military career in and around Spain had kind of come to a dead end, and he had also heard that the unrest in Britain's colonies had evolved into a full fledged revolution. This time he did get the transfer that he had wanted, and we will get to that after a sponsor break. If you're like me, you probably know that France provided significant assistance to the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, including money, troops, ammunition supplies, and naval support. My American history classes in school got into things like Benjamin Franklin's mission to France to negotiate an alliance and France's key role in the Battle of Yorktown in seventeen eighty one. Of course, in more recent years than I was in high school, the Marquis de Lafayette became one of the most memorable characters in the musical Hamilton, with the Conte de Rochambau getting a couple of name drops in that show as well. And then Lynn Manuel Miranda also wrote a Ben Franklin song alluding to that time in Paris, and that was performed by the Decembrists that came out later on a lot of stuff about France and the Revolutionary War, I did not get a similar story about the assistance that was provided by Spain. One reason for Spain's support of the Revolution in North America is that Spain was allied with France and France had allied with the Revolution. France and Spain were each ruled by monarchs from the House of Bourbon, and in the eighteenth century they signed three separate but similar defensive agreements known as the pac de Femie. The seventeen sixty one agreement was signed during the Seven Years War, which is of course a whole separate topic, but broadly speaking, it didn't work out all that well for either nation. Spain's support didn't make a huge difference to France, and Spain lost two of its key ports, Havana and Manila, to the British during the war. When the war ended, Spain was able to regain this territory under the Treaty of Paris in seventeen sixty three, but to do so it had to seede Florida to Britain. Spain wanted Florida back, as well as to retake Gibraltar on the southern coast of Spain and Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, both of which were under British control. Spain had also gained territory in North America that was the formerly French territory of Louisiana, which Spain gained from France under the secretly signed Treaty of Fontainebleau in seventeen sixty two. So Spain had an interest in protecting this territory from British expansion and possibly expanding it themselves. So with all that mind, on April twelfth, seventeen seventy nine, France and Spain signed the Treaty of arn Juez, in which Spain agreed to provide military support to France while France agreed to support Spain's efforts to retake Gibraltar, Minorca, and Florida. Spain declared war on Great Britain on June twenty first, seventeen seventy nine. Spain did not formally become an ally of the United States, though, among other things, Spain did not want its involvement in this revolution to encourage revolutionary activity in its own colonies in the Americas, so a lot of Spain's involvement in the Revolutionary War was a little bit less outwardly obvious than something like the French involvement at the Siege of Yorktown. Instead, Spain did things like opening all its ports to the United States ships, and engaging the British Navy around places like Gibraltar and Minorca, kind of tying up the Navy somewhere other than the colonies. Spain also provided things like weapons, gunpowder, fabric for military uniforms and boots, and a lot of that made its way into the United States through Mexico or Cuba. And there was also money. Spain provided financial assistance to France for its efforts in the war, and funneled loans to the United States through France and through a fictitious Caribbean trading enterprise called Rodrique hortalezm Company. This included critical financial support for the siege of Yorktown and alone to pay soldiers in the Continental Army toward the end of the war. According to the memoirs of Rochambeau's treasurer Claude Blanchard, this loan involved so many silver coins that they broke through the floor of the house where they were being stored. Spain also fought against the British in and around territory that it had previously lost to Britain in North America. In seventeen eighty eighty vessels set sail from Spain, carrying about twelve thousand men to be part of doing this. One of those men was Francisco de Miranda. Shortly after they arrived in Havana, he was assigned to act as aide de camp to General Juan Manuel de Cahigal in Montserrat, who was acting governor of Cuba. Miranda's transfer to Cahigal's service may have been a byproduct of his ongoing issues with military life. He really does seem to have had clear ideas about how things should be done and a very high opinion of his own abilities, and his commanding officer seems to have wanted him out of his hair. But Miranda and Cahigal worked well together. Cahigal gave him some freedom to make his own decisions or figure out for himself how to carry out his orders, so there was just less headbutting and accusations of insubordination. Cahigal eventually secured a promotion from Miranda to lieutenant colonel and later recommended him to be promoted to colonel. Cahigal also praised Miranda's work to Bernando de Galvez, governor of Louisiana and field marshal of Spain's forces in North America. Galvez had started smuggling supplies to the American rebels before Spain had declared war on England, and he planned a military campaign that would give the Spanish control of all the ports around the Gulf of Mexico and up into the Mississippi River, including defending New Orleans and capturing Baton, Rouge, Natchez, and Mobile from Britain. The culmination of this effort was the capture of Pensacola, which was then the capital of the British territory of West Florida. All of this forced the British to spread out their resources to fight on an additional southern front, and it cut off Britain's access to support and supply lines around the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the men who had originally sailed from Spain had sickened or died from tropical diseases, so they reinforced their numbers with men from Louisiana, Mexico, and Cuba, including enslaved and freed black men. After waiting out hurricane season, this multi racial army departed from Cuba to the mainland in February of seventeen eighty one, joining up with Galvaz's force. They arrived at the Barrier Islands outside Pensacola Bay on March ninth. After one of the ships ran aground, they regrouped and made their way into the bay on March eighteenth. The battles to capture Pensacola went on for about eight weeks before a Spanish shell hit the powder Magazine on May eighth, which destroyed Fort George and forced the British to surrender. Since Miranda was fluent in both English and Spanish, he was one of the people who helped negotiate surrender terms. Spain officially took control of Pensacola on May tenth. This was about four months before the Siege of Yorktown, which was the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War. There were still skirmishes on land after Yorktown, though, and the British Navy continued to fight the naval forces of other European powers at sea, including France, the Netherlands in Spain, but this is usually seen as something of an ending in the war. The Revolutionary War formally ended two years later under the Treaty of Paris in seventeen eighty three, and Britain also signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain known as the Treaties of Versailles. Under these treaties, Spain regained control of East and West Florida and Minorca, as well as Sacramento. Of course, Spain eventually returned Louisiana to France under another secret agreement in eighteen hundred, and the US purchased much of it in eighteen oh three. Today, the loss of Pensacola is seen as a turning point in the war, after which Britain thought it might not be possible to win it. In addition to cutting off Britain from the Gulf of Mexico, Galvez's campaign also meant that Britain had lost a colony in this war that was not actually one of the colonies that had rebelled against it. Without Spain's contributions of money, funds, and supplies, and its military efforts along the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, the Revolutionary War probably would have gone on for a whole lot longer. As a side note, Bernardo de Galvez is the namesake of Galveston, Texas, as well as other places in Texas and Louisiana. He was only one of eight people in history to have been given honorary US citizenship. That happened in twenty fourteen under Public Law number one one three DASH two two nine, which described this as an extraordinary honor and called him quote hero of the Revolutionary War who risked his life for the freedom of the United States people and provided supplies, intelligence, and strong military support to the war effort. We will get back to Miranda after another sponsor break. After the capture of Pensacola, Spanish forces took the opportunity to resupply, some of it by looting and commandeering, but also by making actual purchases. Francisco to Miranda bought at least twenty four books in English to add to his personal library. He also purchased at least three enslaved African peace Some historians have interpreted this as an attempt at benevolence, basically trying to ensure these people's safety and provide them with a better life than they might have had otherwise. But he also later sold these people to someone else, and at one point also accepted an enslaved person that someone gave him as a gift. In reality, Miranda had grown up in a slave society, his father had enslaved at least seven people during his youth, and he just doesn't seem to have been thinking about the issue very deeply at this point. Although Miranda later became connected to vocal abolitionists, the abolition of slavery was never really a focal point in his revolutionary ideas, and at first this was probably still a byproduct of just not putting a lot of thought into it, but later after the Haitian Revolution, it was also out of fear of sparking another similar uprising among enslaved Africans in the places that he wanted to live. He did advocate for the rights of free black people in a lot of contexts, but he just really does not seem to have considered what things like freedom and liberation could mean in the context of societies that were so deeply connected to the enslavement of African and indigenous peoples, or like really what it would take to achieve those ideals in that context. In August of seventeen eighty one, General Juan Manuel de Cahigau sent Miranda to Jamaica to negotiate a prisoner exchange and to make discrete inquiries about whether Spain might be able to purchase British ships and supplies. There, Miranda successfully negotiated for the release of nine hundred prisoners and arranged for their transport back to Cuba. Although he had a history of rubbing his own military superiors the wrong way, he was also described as extremely charming, and he convinced the British governor in Jamaica to give him free reign to go wherever he wanted. So, on top of making those requested discrete inquiries, he also took detailed notes about the British presence on Jamaica, including the fortifications, troops, and ships to deliver back to the Spanish. He also wanted to take the opportunity to continue to improve his English, so he bought some more English language books for his library, and he piled around with various English officials in Jamaica. While he had made those inquiries discreetly, he wasn't really as discreete when it came to talking about what was happening with Spain's forces in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. It might seem a little weird that he was either intentionally or by accident, revealing Spanish secrets to the British while fighting against the British and the Revolutionary War. At this point, Miranda was also starting to think about bringing a revolution to Spanish America, and in that war, Britain could be a potential ally. When Miranda returned to Havana after either intentionally working as a double agent or just being a little too loose lipped, he was immediately questioned about all of those meetings with the British, as well as other various intrigues that he had gotten into, like trying to secure some naval vessels for Kahigal, claiming they would be sailing under a flag of truce as a prisoner war transport while really intending to add them to the fleet. He also might have done a little light smuggling. Galvez, who had never thought as highly of Miranda as Khigal did, ordered his arrest and a formal investigation. Kahigal got him released, and soon after, in August of seventeen eighty two, Miranda fled from Havana. After spending some time in hiding, he traveled to the United States aboard an American ship called the Prudent in seventeen eighty three. By that point, the Spanish government considered him to be a conspirator against the crowned Kahigal was caught up in Miranda's intrigues as well, and was eventually forced to go to Spain to try to clear his own name. This doesn't really seem to have tarnished his relationship with Miranda, though much later, in April of eighteen hundred, it would be Kahigal who wrote to Miranda to inform him that King Carlos the Third had cleared him of all of these charges. Miranda's ship landed in newbern, North Carolina in June of seventeen eighty three, just a few months before the Treaty of Paris officially ended the Revolutionary War, and he spent the next year and a half traveling through the newly independent United States. He kept a detailed diary of his travels, covering everything from the names of the notable people he meant, to the social and religious customs of different areas, to the governments and systems people were in the process of establishing. Some of this seemed pretty strange to him, like in some areas that he passed through. He was criticized for doing things like playing music on Sunday. A lot of Protestants in North America saw the Sabbath as a day of content templative rest, while the Sabbath and Catholic Venezuela had been more festive in celebratory. He was particularly fascinated by the Quaker communities that he visited in Pennsylvania and how different their religious and cultural practices were than anything he'd really experienced elsewhere. He was also particularly impressed with how often he saw elected leaders and other elites meeting, conversing, and sharing meals with more common people. That was something that seemed more egalitarian to him than the more hierarchical ways that things had worked in Venezuela or Spain. During this tour, Miranda met seemingly every major figure of the American Revolution and had lengthy conversations with them about the revolution, the war, and the government they were establishing. He met George Washington for dinner in Philadelphia, and after meeting Alexander Hamilton, started a regular correspondence with him that would last for the rest of Hamilton's life. In Boston, he met Samuel Adams and Henry Knox, and at some point he also met poet Phyllis Wheatley. It's likely that Miranda had been thinking about the idea of starting a revolution in Spanish America for some time before this, but he wrote that in New York he quote formed a project for the liberty and independence of the entire Spanish American continent. In April of seventeen eighty four, Miranda received word that he had been sentenced for deserting the Spanish military, including being fined and stripped of his commission. He was also sentenced to exile, although at that point he hadn't been in Spanish territory for almost a year. That meant, though, that he couldn't legally return. On December fifteenth, seventeen eighty four, he set sail for London, and we're going to get into that part of the story next time. Uh, before we move on to next time Tomorrow, the next day, whatever day you're listening, I have listener mail. Hooray. This listener mail is from Jennifer, who wrote, after we did a six impossible episodes about etiquette manuals, Jennifer said, High, Holly and Tracy, I started listening to your podcast. A few years ago when my sister and her family were staying here with me and my parents. My mom, my sister, and I love to cross ditch, and we began gathering around the living room table to work on our projects and listen to podcasts. Recently, while listening to the Etiquette Manual episode, my mother and I both thought of Mark Twain. My dad is obsessed with his work, so it's been a major part of our lives growing up. He wrote a short piece in Letters from the Earth called from an unfinished burlesque of Books on Etiquette, which made fun of several poorly written etiquette manuals in common circulation at the time. The second section at of fire is my personal favorite. If you've never read it, we highly recommend it. It is still hilarious all these years later. It includes several of the elements you described in actual etiquette manuals, such as example texts and scenarios, but all with Twain's particular deadpan exaggeration added. As pet tax, I've included pictures of Delilah, our five year old gray kitty. She hates getting her picture taken, so I apologize for the if equality and Cleo the bengal belonging to one of our close friends who came by on a visit a few weeks ago. Thank you so much for all of the joy you bring to our lives. Kindest regards, Jennifer. Thank you so much, Jennifer for this email. Number one. I have not heard of this work by Mark Twain. I am definitely going to look into it, but I have not as of now. We have a picture a black kitty cat, all four paws up in the air and the front pause curled over, so sweet, so cute. Next picture, yes, this bengal is very eager to It looks like jump on top of a washing machine or a dryer, which is, you know, super appropriate thing for cats to do, jump up on top of things. But then also we've got some pictures of under a piece of furniture, including the flash from the camera or just the light for the camera causing glowing cat eyes. I love all of these pictures. I love learning that there was a satire by Mark Twain about the etiquette manuals. That sounds great. So thank you so much for sending this email. If you would like to write to us about this or any other podcast for History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and we're on social media kind of at Miston History on most of the places, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you miss in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.