Spanish American wars of independence

Spanish American wars of independence
Part of the Atlantic Revolutions[4][page needed] and the Napoleonic Wars

From left to right, top to bottom: the Congress of Chilpancingo (1813), the Congress of Cúcuta (1821), the Crossing of the Andes (1817), the extent of the Spanish Empire on the eve of the conflict in 1810, according to the Cortes de Cádiz
Date25 September 1808 – 29 September 1833
Location
Spanish Empire[5][6]
Result Patriot victory
Territorial
changes

Disintegration of Spanish America[Note C]

List
Participants
Units involved
Strength
 Unknown
Casualties and losses
Unknown
  • 30,000 European soldiers lost
  • 35,000 Indigenous royalists killed[9]
Napoleonic Spain (1808-1813) preserved the integrity of the Spanish Empire.

The Spanish American wars of independence (Spanish: Guerras de independencia hispanoamericanas) took place across the Spanish Empire in the early 19th century. The struggles in both hemispheres began shortly after the outbreak of the Peninsular War, forming part of the broader context of the Napoleonic Wars. The conflict unfolded between the royalists, who were defeated and favored a unitary monarchy, and the patriots, who won and promoted either plural monarchies or republics, separated from Spain and from each other. These struggles ultimately led to the independence and secession of continental Spanish America from metropolitan rule,[12][13] which, beyond this conflict, resulted in a process of Balkanization in Latin America.[14] Thus, the strict period of military campaigns ranges from the Battle of Chacaltaya (1809) in present-day Bolivia, to the Battle of Tampico (1829) in Mexico.[15][16][page needed]

In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte, as part of his Continental Blockade strategy against the British Empire, forced the Spanish royal family to abdicate the throne, imposed the Bayonne Statute, and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as King of Spain. In the 18th century, the Habsburg dynasty was replaced by the Bourbons, and the Spanish Empire declined in Europe to a second-rate power following the War of the Spanish Succession,[17] but continued to be an important global power due to its possessions in the Americas. Similarly, the replacement of the Bourbons with the Bonaparte dynasty aimed to preserve the empire's integrity. However, Napoleonic Spain (1808-1813) was ultimately defeated in the Peninsular War. The rejection of this new dynasty created a power vacuum and led to the emergence of liberalism and a desire for liberties throughout the Spanish Empire. At first, some major cities or capitals formed local Juntas on the basis of laws from the Hispanic tradition. The armed conflicts started in 1809, with short-lived juntas established to govern in Chuquisaca, La Paz and Quito opposing the government of the Supreme Central Junta of Seville. At the beginning of 1810, new juntas appeared across Spanish America when the Central Junta fell to the French invasion. Although various regions objected to many crown policies, "there was little interest in outright independence; indeed there was widespread support for the Spanish Central Junta formed to lead the resistance against the French".[18] While some Spanish Americans believed that independence was necessary, most who initially supported the creation of the new governments saw them as a means to preserve the region's autonomy from the French. Although there had been research on the idea of a separate Spanish American ("creole") identity separate from that of Iberia,[19] political independence was not initially the aim of most Spanish Americans, nor was it necessarily inevitable.[20]

At the end of 1810, Ferdinand VII of Spain, captive, was recognized by the Cortes of Cádiz and by the governing juntas in the Americas as a king subordinate to popular sovereignty. The governing juntas across America wanted to reinstate Ferdinand VII as king and refused to accept the authority of the Council of Regency that was established with the dissolution of the Supreme and Central Governmental Junta of Spain and the Indies. In agreement on this, a military conflict arose between Royalists and Patriots over the unity or independence of the empire. These juntas gained their own levels of independence and autonomy from Spain through declarations in 1808-1812.[21] However, Ferdinand VII reimposed absolute monarchy in 1814 with a coup d'état, following the defeat of Napoleon and the Treaty of Valençay. He was able to defeat and repress the peninsular liberals, and abolished the liberal Constitution of Cadiz, although he could not defeat the revolutionaries in Spanish America, who resisted and formed their own national congresses. The Spanish navy had collapsed in the war against Napoleon, so therefore, in practice, it did not support the expeditionary forces who arrived in small groups. In 1820 the Spanish army, led by Rafael Riego, revolted against absolutism, restored the so-called Trienio Liberal, and ended the threat of invasion against the Río de la Plata, resulting in royalist collapse in the Americas. Over the course of the next decade, the Patriots' armies won major victories and obtained independence in their respective countries. Spain did not change the position against separatism, but the political instability in Spain, without a navy, army or treasury, convinced many Spanish Americans of the need to formally establish independence from the metropole. In Spain, a French army of the Holy Alliance invaded and supported the absolutists, restored Ferdinand VII, and occupied Spain until 1828.[22]

These conflicts were fought both as irregular warfare and conventional warfare. Some historians claim that the wars began as localized civil wars,[23][page needed] that later spread and expanded as secessionist wars[24][25][page needed][26][27] to promote general independence from Spanish rule.[28] This independence led to the development of new national boundaries based on the colonial provinces, which would form the future independent countries that constituted contemporary Latin America during the early 19th century.[28] Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until the 1898 Spanish–American War.

The conflict resulted in the dissolution of the Spanish monarchy and the creation of new states. The independence of Spanish America did not constitute an anticolonial movement.[29] The new republics immediately abandoned the formal system of the Inquisition and noble titles. In most of these new countries, slavery was not abolished, and racial classification and hierarchy were imposed. Total abolition did not come until the 1850s in most of the Latin American republics. A caste system, influenced by the scientific racism of the European Enlightenment, was maintained until the 20th century.[30] The Criollos of European descent born in the New World, and mestizos, of mixed Indigenous and European heritage, replaced Spanish-born appointees in most political offices. Criollos remained at the top of a social structure that retained some of its traditional features culturally, if not legally. Slavery finally ended in all of the new nations. For almost a century thereafter, conservatives and liberals fought to reverse or to deepen the social and political changes unleashed by those rebellions. The Spanish American independences had as a direct consequence the forced displacement of the royalist Spanish population that suffered a forced emigration during the war and later, due to the laws of Expulsion of the Spaniards from the new states in the Americas with the purpose of consolidating their independence.[31][page needed]

Events in Spanish America transpired in the wake of the successful Haitian Revolution and transition to independence in Brazil. Brazil's independence in particular shared a common starting point with that of Spanish America, since both conflicts were triggered by Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, which forced the Portuguese royal family to flee to Brazil in 1807. The process of Latin American independence took place in the general political and intellectual climate of popular sovereignty that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment that influenced all of the Atlantic Revolutions, including the earlier revolutions in the United States and France. A more direct cause of the Spanish American wars of independence were the unique developments occurring within the Kingdom of Spain triggered by the Cortes of Cadiz, concluding with the emergence of the new Spanish American republics in the post-Napoleonic world.

  1. ^ Owsley, Frank L.; Smith, Gene A. (1997). Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800–1821.
  2. ^ Meade, Teresa (2016). A History of Modern Latin America 1800 To The Present. Wiley. p. 78.
  3. ^ Robertson, William Spence (1941). Russia and the Emancipation of Spanish America, 1816–1826.
  4. ^ Klooster, Wim (2018). Revolutions in the Atlantic World. NYU Press. ISBN 9781479882403.
  5. ^ Struggle for Freedom. Rex Bookstore. 2008. ISBN 978-971-23-5045-0.
  6. ^ El Trienio Liberal Revolución e independencia (1820-1823). Los Libros De La Catarata. 2020. ISBN 978-84-9097-968-6.
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  8. ^ Archer, Christon I. (2000). The Wars of Independence in Spanish America. Wilmington, DE: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 301. ISBN 978-0-8420-2469-3.
  9. ^ Gral. Div. (R) Evergisto de Vergara. "The Eastern Front: Rivadavia and the War against Brazil in 1827." Archived May 15, 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Institute for Strategic Studies of Buenos Aires (IEEBA). August 2006. Quote: "Y fue una gran guerra civil, porque en Ibero América -para la época de las Guerras por la Independencia- había menos de 50.000 soldados españoles, de los cuales 20.000 nunca salieron de Cuba. Luego, en el proceso de las guerras por la independencia, nunca participaron más de 30.000 españoles. Por ejemplo, en Ayacucho, la última de las batallas por la independencia, menos del 20% de las tropas eran españoles, el resto eran nativos. Los nativos de Ibero América que murieron durante estas guerras fueron aproximadamente 35.000. Fueron verdaderas guerras civiles, y por lo tanto, dejaron mucho más destrucción y rencores."
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  11. ^ Silvio Arturo Zavala (1971). Revista de historia de América. Numbers 69-70. Mexico City: Pan American Institute of Geography and History, p. 303. "Para el primero, de 1400000 habs. que la futura Colombia tendría en 1809 (entre ellos 78000 negros esclavos), (...) mortaldad que él mismo señala a tal guerra (unos 400 000 muertos para la Gran Colombia, entre ellos, 250 000 venezolanos)."
  12. ^ Canal, Jordi (2006). "Civil War and Counter-Revolution in Spain and the Southern Europe on XIX Century". Ler História. 51. Archived from the original on 1 February 2024. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
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  14. ^ Mazzuca, Sebastian (2021). Latecomer State Formation Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America. Yale University Press.
  15. ^ Rufino Blanco-Fombona (1920). Fundación de la República - Biblioteca Ayacucho nº 61. p. 67.
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  17. ^ J. Patrick Rhamey JR; Bakich, Spencer D. (2024). The Sources of Great Power Competition Rising Powers, Grand Strategy, and System Dynamics. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-14792-4.
  18. ^ David Bushnell, " Wars of Independence: South America" in The Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 5, p. 446. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
  19. ^ D.A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and Liberalism, 1492–1866. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991
  20. ^ Brian Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule on the American Continent, 1770–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017.
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  23. ^ Kinsbruner, Jay (1994). Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment. University of New Mexico press. ISBN 978-0826321770.
  24. ^ Strachan, Hew (2011). The Changing Character of War. p. 206.
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  26. ^ Lu, Jing (2018). On State Secession from International Law Perspectives. p. 14.
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  28. ^ a b Hamnett, Brian R. (May 1997). "Process and Pattern: A Re-examination of the Ibero-American Independence Movements, 1808–1826". Journal of Latin American Studies. 29 (2): 279–328. doi:10.1017/s0022216x97004719 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 0022-216X. S2CID 145479092.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
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  31. ^ Ruiz de Gordejuela Urquijo, Jesús (2006). La expulsión de los españoles de México y su destino incierto, 1821-1836 (in Spanish). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos & Universidad de Sevilla. ISBN 978-840-0084-67-7.