Section 6: Independence Movements (1763–1830)

Locke argued that government is legitimate only when it protects the natural rights of the governed — life, liberty, and property — and rests on their consent. A government that violates these rights forfeits its claim to obedience.

Creole elites argued that Spain violated their liberty through mercantilist restrictions (denying free trade) and violated their effective political liberty by reserving viceroyalties, audiencias, and senior church posts for peninsulares, denying Creoles governance over their own affairs.

By Locke's logic, a ruler who imposes restrictions without consent and excludes subjects from power has broken the social contract. Creoles used exactly this framing: Spain had never genuinely obtained colonial consent and had actively denied the rights consent was meant to protect.

The correct answer describes the Lockean argument as applied in Spanish America: Spain's trade restrictions and political exclusion of Creoles constituted a violation of natural rights and a breach of the social contract, justifying resistance.

The question asks how Creole leaders specifically applied Locke's theory to justify resisting Spanish rule — requiring knowledge of both Locke's argument and its historical application.

The option claiming Spanish authority over pre-1689 colonies was automatically void misunderstands Locke entirely. Locke's theory concerns the ongoing relationship between ruler and governed, not a one-time founding date. This option conflates historical chronology with philosophical principle.

The option stating Locke's contract only applied to republics is factually wrong. Locke's Two Treatises were directed against monarchy as practised by Charles II and James II; the argument was that all governments, including monarchies, must protect natural rights to be legitimate.

The option suggesting natural rights were limited to Europeans contradicts Locke's universal framing of rights as pre-political and inherent to all persons. While Creole leaders in practice often excluded non-Europeans from the benefits of independence, they did not argue Locke's theory was racially bounded in principle.

The correct answer — that Spain broke the social contract through mercantilist restrictions and exclusion of Creoles from top offices — accurately reflects both Locke's theory and how Creole revolutionaries actually deployed it rhetorically against Spanish authority.

In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu's central concern was institutional design: how to structure government so that liberty is preserved after power is won. He proposed dividing authority among legislative, executive, and judicial branches that check each other.

Locke addressed the justification for resisting illegitimate government (natural rights argument). Rousseau addressed the source of legitimate authority (the general will). Montesquieu addressed neither of these but instead asked: once a new government is formed, how should power be distributed to prevent tyranny from emerging within it?

The clearest historical application within 1763–1830 is the US Constitution, which divided federal power into Congress, the President, and the judiciary — a direct institutional expression of Montesquieu's three-branch model.

The correct answer — preventing any single branch from accumulating despotic power through institutional separation — precisely captures Montesquieu's contribution, distinguishing it from Locke's justification for rebellion and Rousseau's general will theory.

The question tests whether students can distinguish Montesquieu's specific intellectual concern from those of Locke and Rousseau — a common area of confusion in essay responses.

'How to justify the initial decision to rebel against a tyrannical monarch' describes Locke's natural rights argument — specifically the idea that a government violating natural rights forfeits its legitimacy. This is not Montesquieu's focus.

'Which collective will should take precedence when factions disagree' relates to Rousseau's concept of the general will — the collective interest of the community as a whole. Montesquieu did not theorize the basis of political authority in this way.

Protection of property rights from mercantilist interference was a practical Creole grievance rather than Montesquieu's theoretical concern. While property rights connect to Locke's natural rights framework, they are not the subject of The Spirit of the Laws.

The correct answer — organizing governmental power to prevent any single branch from becoming despotic — is precisely what Montesquieu proposed through separation of powers, filling a gap that Locke and Rousseau's theories left unanswered.