Liberalism in the Ruins of Empire

Abstract

This chapter analyzes how Spain’s loss of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico in 1898 shaped Ortega’s early ideas about liberalism. Drawing from the first decade of Ortega’s published writings (1902–1914), it shows that Ortega treated the experience of imperial loss as a decisive rupture that shattered Spain’s cultural identity. As this identity had long sustained national cohesion, he argued that it was no longer clear what could ground Spain as a unified political community. But instead of indulging in imperial nostalgia, in response Ortega constructed a “new liberalism” that emphasized not just the preservation of individual rights and negative liberties, but also the need for new national enterprises that could unite Spain and orient its people toward the future. By tracking the post-imperial origins of the collectivist, vitalist, and nationalist dimensions of Ortega’s liberalism, this chapter shows how the historical entanglements between empire and liberal thought can persist even after empire’s formal demise.