Thomas Jefferson on Indigence in Spanish America The Power of the Republican Ideal

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Zoltán Vajda

Resumo

As has been amply documented, Thomas Jefferson expressed a sincere interest in the
peoples of Spanish America with the waning of colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. I
argue in this paper that a substantial portion of his vision was comprised by implying Spanish
American societies as ones defined through poverty. His understanding of indigence among
peoples of the region was not simply confined to describing their economic condition, but was
linked to a moral-political vision with the problem of independence as the major issue related
economic poverty. I also contend, at the same time, that Jefferson in fact articulated his hope that
Spanish American nations would be able to develop a republican structure of government, made
possible by the special economic situation of the Western hemisphere, thus also implying the
chance of tackling poverty there.

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Vajda, Z. (2020). Thomas Jefferson on Indigence in Spanish America: The Power of the Republican Ideal. Acta Hispanica, (II), 25–34. https://doi.org/10.14232/actahisp.2020.0.25-34
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Biografia Autor

Zoltán Vajda, University of Szeged

Zoltán Vajda is associate professor of American Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Szeged, Hungary. His main areas of research and teaching encompass early American intellectual and cultural history, antebellum Southern history, Thomas Jefferson and his times, John C. Calhoun, and US political thought. His current research interest includes the significance of sentimentalism in early US political thinking as well as the issue of poverty and political economy in the early Republic.

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