Monica Ricketts, “Who Should Rule? Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire” (Oxford UP, 2017)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Dec 7, 2017 · 55m

Monica Ricketts’ new book Who Should Rule? Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire (Oxford University Press, 2017) presents readers with the connected histories of military cadres and intellectuals in Peru and Spain c. 1770-1830. The book advances the argument that a Crown-sponsored change in the idea of “merit” in the Spanish Empire made possible the rise to power of new military cadres and the renewal of the Hispanic republic of letters. Ricketts argues that these changes had important consequences as these two cohorts of individuals battled over who had the…