history
Nation Building and Economic Transformation in the Americas, 1800-1890
Lecture 15
Independence in Latin America, 1800-1830
What were the causes of the revolutions for independence in Latin America?
Roots of Revolution, to 1810
The French invasion of Portugal and Spain created a political crisis in their American colonies that in turn led to independence movements.
1. Wealthy colonial residents of Latin America were frustrated by the political and economic power of colonial officials and angered by high taxes and imperial monopolies. They were inspired by the Enlightenment thinkers and by the examples of the American and French Revolutions;
2. The Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil, where King John VI maintained his court for over a decade;
3. Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal and Spain in 1807 and 1808 led dissenters in Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia to overthrow Spanish colonial officials in 1808–1809. The Spanish authorities quickly reasserted control, but a new round of revolutions began in 1810.
Spanish South America, 1810-1825
Under the leadership of Simon Boliver, several South American countries gained independence.
1. A creole-led revolutionary junta (colonial born whites, who organized a military or political group that rules a country after taking power by force) declared independence in Venezuela in 1811. Spanish authorities were able to rally free blacks and slaves to defend the Spanish Empire because the junta’s leaders were interested primarily in pursuing the interests of creole landowners, who defended slavery and opposed full citizenship for the colony’s free black and mixed-race majority;
Spanish South America, 1810-1825
Under the leadership of Simon Boliver, several South American countries gained independence.
2. Simón Bolívar emerged as the leader of the Venezuelan revolutionaries. Bolívar used the force of his personality in order to attract new allies (including slaves and free blacks) to his cause and to command the loyalty of his troops;
3. Bolívar defeated the Spanish armies in 1824 and tried to forge Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador into a single nation. This project was a failure, as were
Bolívar’s other attempts to create a confederation of the former Spanish colonies;
Spanish South America, 1810-1825
Under the leadership of Simon Boliver, several South American countries gained independence.
4. Buenos Aires was another important center of revolutionary activity in Spanish South America. In 1816, after Ferdinand regained the Spanish throne, local junta leaders declared independence as the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata. The new government was weak and the region quickly descended into political chaos and civil war.
Mexico, 1810-1823
Mexico gained independence after a long and destructive war.
1. In 1810, Mexico was Spain’s richest and most populous colony, but the Amerindian population of central Mexico had suffered from dislocation due to mining and commercial enterprises and from a cycle of crop failures and epidemics;
2. On September 16, 1810 a parish priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla urged the people to rise up against the Spanish authorities. The resulting violent rebellion took place under the leadership of Hidalgo and then, after Hidalgo’s capture and execution, under José María Morelos. Loyalist forces defeated the insurrection and executed Morelos in 1815;
3. In 1821, news of a military revolt in Spain inspired Colonel Agustín de Iturbide to declare Mexico’s independence with himself as emperor. In early 1823 the army overthrew Iturbide and Mexico became a republic.
Brazil, to 1831
Led by the son of the Portuguese king, Brazil gained independence as a monarchy.
1. King John VI of Portugal ruled his kingdom from Brazil until 1821, when unrest in Spain and Portugal led him to return to Lisbon. King John’s son Pedro remained in Brazil, where he ruled as regent until 1822, when he declared Brazil to be an independent constitutional monarchy with himself as king;
2. Pedro’s liberal policies (including opposition to slavery) alienated the political slave-holding elite, and he incurred heavy losses of men and money as he attempted to control Uruguay by military force. Street demonstrations and violence led Pedro I to abdicate in favor of his son, Pedro II, who reigned until republicans overthrew him in 1889.
The Problem of Order, 1825-1890
What major political challenges did Western Hemisphere nations face in the nineteenth century?
“All the new nations sought to establish constitutions and elected assemblies…failed to prevent bitter factional conflict, regionalism, and the threats posted by charismatic political leaders and military uprisings.”
Constitutional Experiments
The new nations of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, found it difficult to establish constitutional government.
1. Leaders in both the United States and in Latin America espoused constitutionalism. In the United States, the colonists’ prior experience with representative government contributed to the success of constitutionalism. In Latin America, inexperience with popular politics contributed to the failure of constitutions;
2. In Canada, Britain responded to demands for political reform by establishing responsible government in each of the provinces in the 1840s. In 1867 the provincial governments of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia entered into a confederation to form the Dominion of Canada with a central government in Ottawa;
3. In Latin America, lack of experience with elected legislatures and municipal governments led the drafters of constitutions to experiment with untested and impractical political institutions. Latin American nations also found it difficult to define the political role of the church and to subordinate the army and its prestigious leaders to civilian government.
Personalist Leaders
Charismatic military leaders with large followers, like the populists Andrew Jackson and Jose Antonio Paez, often took power and challenged constitutional limits on presidential power.
1. Successful military leaders in both the United States and Latin America were
able to use their military reputations as the foundations of political power. Latin
America’s slow development of stable political institutions made personalist
politics much more influential than it was in the United States.
Personalist Leaders
Charismatic military leaders with large followers, like the populists Andrew Jackson and Jose Antonio Paez, often took power and challenged constitutional limits on presidential power.
2. The first constitutions of nearly all the American republics excluded large
numbers of poor citizens from full political participation. This led to the rise of
populist leaders who articulated the desires of the excluded poor and who at
times used populist politics to undermine constitutional order and move toward
dictatorship. Andrew Jackson in the United States and Jose Antonio Paez in
Venezuela are two examples of populist politicians who challenged the
constitutional limits of their authority.
Personalist Leaders
Charismatic military leaders with large followers, like the populists Andrew Jackson and Jose Antonio Paez, often took power and challenged constitutional limits on presidential power.
3. Paez declared Venezuela’s independence from Bolivar’s Gran Colombia in 1829 and ruled as president or dictator for the next eighteen years. Jackson, born in humble circumstances, was a successful general who, as president, increased the powers of the presidency at the expense of the Congress and the Supreme Court;
4. Personalist leaders like Paez and Jackson dominated national politics by identifying with the common people, but in practice, they promoted the interests of powerful property owners. Personalist leaders were common in both the United States and Latin America, but in Latin America, the weaker constitutional tradition, less protection of property rights, lower literacy levels, and less developed communications systems allowed personalist leaders to become dictators.
The Threat of Regionalism
Secessionist movements and civil wars threatened the survival of many Latin American nations and the United States.
1. After independence the relatively weak central governments of the new nations were often not able to prevent regional elites from leading secessionist movements.;
2. In Spanish America, all of the post-independence efforts to create large multistate federations failed. Central America split off from Mexico in 1823 and then broke up into five separate nations; Gran Colombia broke up into Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador; and Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia declared their independence from Argentina.
The Threat of Regionalism
Secessionist movements and civil wars threatened the survival of many Latin American nations and the United States.
3. Regionalism threatened the United States when the issue of slavery divided the nation, leading to the establishment of the Confederacy and the U.S. Civil War;
4. The Confederacy failed because of poor timing. The new states of the Western Hemisphere were most vulnerable during the first decades after independence. The Confederacy’s attempt to secede from the United States came when the national government was well-established and strengthened by experience, economic growth, and population growth.
Foreign Interventions and Regional Wars
Wars with foreign powers and with neighboring states endangered the independence and national borders of many Western Hemisphere nations.
1. During the nineteenth century wars between Western Hemisphere nations and invasions from the European powers often determined national borders, access to natural resources, and control of markets. By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile had successfully waged wars against their neighbors and established themselves as regional powers;
Foreign Interventions and Regional Wars
Wars with foreign powers and with neighboring states endangered the independence and national borders of many Western Hemisphere nations.
2. European military intervention included the British attack on the United States in the War of 1812, the United States’ war with Spain in 1898–1899, French and English naval blockades of Argentina, an English naval blockade of Brazil, and Spanish and French invasions of Mexico. When the French invaded Mexico in 1862 they ousted President Benito Juarez and established Maximilian Habsburg as emperor. Juarez drove the French out in 1867.Maximilian was captured and executed;
Foreign Interventions and Regional Wars
Wars with foreign powers and with neighboring states endangered the independence and national borders of many Western Hemisphere nations.
3. The United States defeated Mexico and forced the Mexican government to give up Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado in 1848;
4. Chile defeated the combined forces of Peru and Bolivia in two wars (1836–1839 and 1879–1881). Chile gained nitrate mines and forced Bolivia to give up its only outlet to the sea;
5. Argentina and Brazil fought over control of Uruguay in the 1820s, but finally recognized Uruguayan independence. Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay then cooperated in a five-year war against Paraguay in which Paraguay was defeated, occupied, lost territory, and was forced to open its markets to foreign trade.
Native Peoples and the Nation-State
Native peoples throughout the hemisphere tried to defend their territories, but by the end of the nineteenth century, national governments had overcome native resistance.
1. When the former colonies of the Western Hemisphere became independent, the colonial powers ceased to play a role as mediator for and protector of the native peoples. Independent Amerindian peoples posed a significant challenge to the new nations of the Western Hemisphere, but Amerindian military resistance was overcome in both North and South America by the end of the 1880s;
Native Peoples and the Nation-State
Native peoples throughout the hemisphere tried to defend their territories, but by the end of the nineteenth century, national governments had overcome native resistance.
2. In the United States, rapid expansion of white settlements between 1790 and 1810 led to conflict between the forces of the American government and Amerindian confederations like that led by Tecumseh and Prophet in 1811–1812. Further white settlement led to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the resettlement of eastern Amerindian peoples to land west of the Mississippi River;
3. Amerindians living on the Great Plains had become skilled users of horses and firearms, and thus offered more formidable resistance to the expansion of white settlement. Horses and firearms had also made the Plains peoples less reliant on agriculture and more reliant on buffalo hunting. The near extinction of the buffalo, loss of land to ranchers, and nearly four decades of armed conflict with the United States Army forced the Plains Amerindians to give up their land and accept reservation life;
Native Peoples and the Nation-State
Native peoples throughout the hemisphere tried to defend their territories, but by the end of the nineteenth century, national governments had overcome native resistance.
4. In Argentina and Chile native people were able to check the expansion of white
settlement until the 1860s. When population increase, political stability, and
military modernization gave the Chilean and Argentinean governments the upper
hand. In the 1870s the governments of both Argentina and Chile crushed native
resistance and drove surviving Amerindians onto marginal land.
5. In Mexico, plantation owners in the Yucatán Peninsula had forced Maya
communities off their land and into poverty. In 1847, when the Mexican
government was busy with its war against the United States, Maya communities
in the Yucatán rose in a revolt (the Caste War) that nearly returned the Yucatán
to Maya rule.
Native Peoples and the Nation-State
Native peoples throughout the hemisphere tried to defend their territories, but by the end of the nineteenth century, national governments had overcome native resistance.