Ultramar excepcional

Overview & Synopsis

Exceptional Overseas Territories: Constructions of the Legal Space in Colonial Spain (1837–1898) examines how the metropolis, Spain, the government and administration of its overseas colonies, during the period when the Spanish monarchy ceased to be imperial and had to face the challenge of rebuilding itself as a unitary European state with a scattering of remaining territories: a collection of distant islands, very different from one another, yet which, in contrast to mainland Spain, shared an identity rooted in their exceptional nature: the Overseas Territories. Exempt from the constitutional regime of the mainland, the Overseas Territories began their new colonial journey imbued with a sense of distinctiveness. The distinctiveness – whether natural or naturalised – of the Antillean and Philippine archipelagos in relation to a supposed generality represented by the mainland formed the basis of those metropolitan government policies, which shaped institutions, laws, administrative structures and constitutions. Constructing colonial distinctiveness in constitutional terms served, in turn, to shape a state—both internally and externally—which was itself still in the process of formation and which, in order to define itself, required the Overseas Territories to be exceptional.