Order: From Plebeian Disorder to Popular Citizenship—Constitutional Imagination Between Contexts, 1766–1814

This chapter begins by analysing the reaction to the so-called Esquilache Riots of 1766 in the Spanish Bourbon Monarchy and its extensive empire. The return to order made it necessary to combine traditional corporate language with the emerging repertory of the mixed constitution. Supplementing one other, these two languages—also present among the rebels—enabled the development of reforms that entailed a strengthening of representation at the expense of participation, and defined a new subject excluded from representation, the plebe. The extensive last section of the chapter describes the process that, from the formation of popular juntas in 1808 until the drafting of the 1812 Constitution in Cadiz, turned this framework on its head, establishing an inclusive popular citizenship fostering the primacy of participation over representation.