A Spanish Commune

The Paris Commune had a little Spanish sister, the Canton of Cartagena, whose impressive and neglected history is unearthed in this book. In July 1873, thousands of men and women proclaimed a Commune, or “Canton”, in the south-eastern Spain military port of Cartagena. Their aim was to build a federal Republic ‘from below’, while refusing to be sent to the colonial war in Cuba as soldiers or sailors. Confronted by the regular army and the intervention of the British Navy, they resisted for six months before finally surrendering in January 1874. This book shows the importance of this cantonal episode in the history of socialism and colonial emancipation. It gives a voice to categories neglected by the major accounts of the workers’ movement’s history: peasants, workers from southern Europe, conscripts and working-class women. It reveals unsuspected links between the Spanish drive towards a federal and social republic and the imaginaries of Atlantic abolitionism, and of workers’ internationalism. It thus places Spain and its empire at the heart of the global history of revolutions.