Antioquia's Independence Militias. Hispanic Heritage and Republican Transformation: Regulations, Financing and Regional Jurisdictions

Abstract

As Spain fought its Peninsular War, its American colonies sought political emancipation and tended to create new independent armed forces similar to those funded during the Spanish rule. In the viceroyalty of New Granada, the number of military forces was scarce, usually comprised of fixed garrisons and battalions brought directly from Spain or made up mostly of Peninsular troops, which were concentrated along the Caribbean coasts, configuring a reduced force in the inland jurisdictions. In the province of Antioquia, which had formerly possessed no army as such, a series of militias were formed and later designated as the army of the to-be-consolidated State.

The present text proposes an approach to three fundamental elements for the militia analysis, which allow us to recognize and evaluate a series of variations and adaptations with respect to the Spanish colonial military model in the Indies: the judicial jurisdiction or fuero, which attracted militiamen without assigning them a fixed payment; the regulations and military training, which constituted the very basis of the units' tactical capacity; and the financing, provisioning and supply, which ended up conditioning the operability of the troops. To this end, this research was conducted with resort to the "Independencia" bibliographic collection of the Antioquia Historical Archive, managing to identify the measures taken by the authorities of the Independent Free State of Antioquia to form its own armed forces, as well as the incentives granted to their members, and the logistical supply network that was structured. The marked dates correspond to the beginning of the French occupation of the peninsula until 1816, when Pablo Morillo's vanguard, led by Francisco Warletta, quickly subdued Antioquia. The aim of this work is to contribute to the analysis of the conformation of the Military Fiscal State in Antioquia after the fragmentation of the Spanish Empire, pointing out key aspects such as the supply, provisioning and training of the military, and how these trends evolved according to the performance of the fiscal system that supported it.