Spanish American Wars of Independence

The causes

In 1808, Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after obtaining the abdication of Ferdinand VII at Bayonne: this was the triggering context. In the colonies, the Creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in America, resented holding only a secondary place compared with officials sent from Spain, and Madrid's control of trade. Enlightenment ideas and the examples of the American and French revolutions also fed the desire for autonomy. When the Spanish monarchy faltered, juntas formed in the name of Ferdinand VII.

The Bourbon reforms, from the 18th century onward, strengthened Madrid's control over the colonies: higher taxes, administrators sent from Europe, and Creoles excluded from the highest posts. In 1780-1781, the revolt of Tupac Amaru II, in Peru, showed the fragility of this order, and the Saint-Domingue revolution, from 1791 to 1804, alarmed the white elites. In 1806 and 1807, British troops tried to seize Buenos Aires, but militias raised locally repelled them, which strengthened the Creoles' confidence in their own strength. When the Spanish monarchy collapsed under Napoleonic occupation, these accumulated tensions found fertile ground for a break.

The course of the war

From 1810 onward, juntas formed in Caracas, Buenos Aires and Santiago, at first in the name of Ferdinand VII. In Mexico, the priest Miguel Hidalgo launched a popular uprising in 1810, and the struggle there continued until 1821, after his execution in 1811. In South America, Simón Bolívar, born in Caracas, waged war in the north: after his victory at Boyacá in 1819, he liberated New Granada.

José de San Martín, born in Argentina, crossed the Andes in 1817 with the Army of the Andes and defeated the royalists at Chacabuco, then at Maipú in 1818, securing the independence of Chile. In 1821, he proclaimed the independence of Peru at Lima. The last major battles took place in the Peruvian Andes: at Ayacucho, in 1824, Bolívar's army, led by Antonio José de Sucre, defeated the Spanish forces. The last royalist troops surrendered at Callao in 1826.

In Mexico, the struggle continued after the execution of Hidalgo with José María Morelos, a priest like him, who had independence proclaimed by an insurgent congress at Chilpancingo in 1813, before being captured and executed in 1815. In Venezuela, Bolívar launched in 1813 a "war to the death" against the royalists, then a rapid campaign toward Caracas. In 1821, former royalist officer Agustín de Iturbide, who had switched to the independence camp, proclaimed the Plan of Iguala, which ended Spanish rule in Mexico through a compromise among the elites.

In 1819, the Congress of Angostura, on the Orinoco, laid the foundations of Gran Colombia, formalized in 1821 by the Congress of Cúcuta. In 1822, at Guayaquil, San Martín met Bolívar, then withdrew, leaving him to conduct the war in Peru. San Martín, for his part, went into exile in Europe and died in 1850 in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Bolívar won the battle of Junín in August 1824, then entrusted Sucre with the victory at Ayacucho, which closed the decisive phase of the war on the continent.

In Spain, the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812 established a liberal regime, but Ferdinand VII abolished it when he returned to the throne, in 1814. In 1820, troops gathered at Cadiz to leave for America to reconquer it rose under the orders of Rafael del Riego, and the king had to restore the Constitution. Meanwhile, British merchants found new outlets in the American ports. These political divisions lastingly weakened the Spanish military effort overseas, which lacked reinforcements and financial means.

The consequences

Spain lost almost its entire American empire, keeping only Cuba and Puerto Rico. The new states, often divided, experienced civil wars and long instability under military strongmen, the caudillos. Gran Colombia, created by Bolívar, broke apart in 1830. Creole elites remained in power, while Indigenous, mixed-race and Afro-descended populations remained largely excluded from political life. In 1823, the United States asserted the Monroe Doctrine, which opposed any new European colonization on the continent.

Historians debate the nature of these events: an emancipation revolution, a civil war between Spaniards born in Europe and Creoles, or a conflict in which Indigenous peoples and enslaved people, enlisted by both sides, defended their own interests. In several states, gradual emancipation laws were passed, such as the Colombian law of 1821, which freed children born to enslaved people from that date, while Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. Bolívar became a mythic figure, the "Libertador", whose successors claimed his legacy, while the states born of independence often remained unstable.

Timeline

1. 1810First uprisings and juntas in Spanish America
2. 1817San Martín crosses the Andes with the Army of the Andes
3. 1819Battle of Boyacá, victory for Bolívar
4. 1824Battle of Ayacucho, the last major battle; end of Spanish rule in continental South America
5. 1826Surrender of the last Spanish forces, at Callao

Key figures

• Simón Bolívar, military leader born in Caracas, who liberated New Granada and Venezuela
• José de San Martín, Argentine military leader, who liberated Chile and proclaimed Peru's independence
• Miguel Hidalgo, Mexican priest, who launched the 1810 uprising
• Ferdinand VII, king of Spain whose absence served as a pretext for the juntas, a prisoner of Napoleon