Filangieri and the “other America”: history of a reception

Abstract

This article analyzes the diffusion and the reception in Spanish America of the works of one of the most outstanding Neapolitan jurists in the time of the Enlightenment, Gaetano Filangieri, between the end of XVIII century and the first half of the XIX. In spite of the fact that this author is still considered as “secondary” in the context of the panorama of the European Enlightenment, his work had an extraordinary diffusion and a wide echo in the Hispanic world. Starting from this fact, we wonder in what measure the reception of these texts can clarify some elements that are still controversial of the passage of the Old Regime to the political modernity, as much during the period of the borbonic reforms as during the revolutionary period. Indeed, whereas in a first period his work was used to criticize the commercial relations between the metropolis and the colonies, during the revolutionary period and the consecutive liberal time, the reference to Filangieri served more as legitimation for the configuration of constitutional and republican regimes, as well as to reform the penal laws.