Zeuske asks how far the French Revolution actually registered in Spain's American colonies, and answers mostly in the negative. Reading Alexander von Humboldt's travel diaries against the books he later built from them, he shows that Humboldt expected no Creole revolution, anticipated instead a white republic that would keep slavery intact, and referred to France chiefly in connection with the Enlightenment or Napoleonic politics.

What officials and Creole elites genuinely feared was Saint-Domingue. That fear shaped policy: the expulsion of French residents, bans on importing slaves from the French islands, and a habit of labelling every conspiracy French whatever its real sources. Venezuela, Santo Domingo, Cuba and Puerto Rico each absorbed the shock differently, through refugees, black auxiliary troops fighting for Spain, and planters who hired Saint-Domingue managers to build new sugar and coffee economies.

Independence, when it came, is treated here as a shallow social revolution that left caste hierarchy and slavery largely standing.