Crisis, Court Factions and Popular Revolt in the Basque Country. The 1804 Riot

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contextualize the 1804 Biscay riot within the much broader structural crisis of the Spanish Empire. So far, scholars have analyzed the riot within a localist paradigm. The antagonism between the Basque Country and a gradually centralized Spanish Empire has traditionally been the main working hypothesis. Since the 1970s, a materialist interpretation of the subject, which sees the riot as the outcome of a conflict between merchant bourgeoisie, landowners and commoners, has come to join the aforementioned traditional interpretation. Without undervaluing these approaches, our work takes into consideration a triple - but closely linked - context: the Spanish Empire’s crisis, the regional effects of the courtesan power struggles and the grievance against the plebeian political values.