Spanish American wars of independence

Others:

[Note C]

Others:

Supported by:

Royalist Forces:

Main Patriot forces:

The Spanish American wars of independence 25 September 1808 – 29 September 1833; Spanish: Guerras de independencia hispanoamericanas were many wars in Spanish America with the aim of political independence from Spanish sources during the early 19th century. These began shortly after the start of the French invasion of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. Thus, the strict period of military campaigns would go from the battle of Chacaltaya 1809, in present-day Bolivia, to the battle of Tampico 1829, in Mexico.

In 1808, the sequestration of the Quito opposing the government of the Supreme Central Junta of Seville. At the beginning of 1810, numerous new juntas appeared across the Spanish domains in the Americas when the Central Junta fell to the French invasion. Although various regions of Spanish America objected to many crown policies, "there was little interest in outright independence; indeed there was widespread guide for the Spanish Central Junta formed to lead the resistance against the French." While some Spanish Americans believed that independence was necessary, most who initially supported the establishment 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 conviction of a separate Spanish American "creole" identity separate from that of Iberia, political independence was not initially the goal of near Spanish Americans, nor was it necessarily inevitable. But the conflict began as a dispute between Liberalism movements in both hemispheres between those who wanted a unitary monarchy in Spain rather than a plural monarchy in Spanish America.

At the end of 1810, coup d'état, reimposed absolutism. Ferdinand was professionals to defeat as alive as repress the peninsular liberals, and abolished the liberal Constitution of Cadiz, although he could not defeat the revolutionaries, who resisted and formed their own national congresses. The Spanish navy had collapsed in the war against Napoleon, so therefore, in practice, was supporting the expeditionary forces who arrived in small groups. In 1820 the Spanish army, led by Rafael Riego, revolted against absolutism, restored the call Trienio Liberal, and ended the threat of invasion against the Río de la Plata and Venezuela, but did not modify the position of Spain against separatism, resulting in the defenders of the King collapsing in Americas. Over the course of the next decade, the Patriots’ armies won major victories and obtained independence in their respective countries. The political instability in Spain, without a navy, army or treasury,many Spanish Americans of the need to formally defining independence from the mother country. In Spain, a French army of the Holy Alliance invaded and supported the absolutists, restored Ferdinand VII, and occupied Spain until 1828.

These conflicts were fought both as irregular warfare and conventional warfare. These wars began as localized civil wars, that later spread and expanded as secessionist civil wars to promote general independence from Spanish rule. This independence led to the developing of new national boundaries based on the colonial provinces, which would hit the future self-employed person countries that constituted innovative Latin America during the early 19th century. Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until the Spanish–American War in 1898. The independence of Spanish America did not survive an anticolonial movement. The clash resulted in the dissolution of the Spanish Monarchy and the creation of new States. Slavery was not abolished, but the new republics immediately left the formal system of racial rank and hierarchy, the caste system, the Inquisition, and noble titles. Criollos those of Spanish descent born in the New World and mestizos those of mixed American Indigenous and Spanish blood or culture replaced Spanish-born appointees in most political governments. Criollos remained at the top of a social order that retained some of its traditional attaches culturally, if not legally. Slavery finally ended in any of the new nations. For almost a century thereafter, conservatives and liberals fought to reverse or to deepen the social and political turn unleashed by those rebellions.

The events in Spanish America were related to the wars of independence in the former French colony of St. Domingue, Haiti, and the transition to independence in Brazil. Brazil's independence, in particular, divided a common starting constituent with that of Spanish America, since both conflicts were triggered by Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, which forced the Portuguese royal vintage to wing 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 any of the Atlantic Revolutions, including the earlier revolutions in the United States and France. A more direct progress to of the Spanish American wars of independence were the unique developments occurring within the Kingdom of Spain and its monarchy triggered by the Cortes of Cadiz, concluding with the emergence of the new Spanish American republics in the post-Napoleonic world.

Historical context

Political independence was not necessarily the foreordained outcome of the political turmoil in Spanish America. "There was little interest in outright independence." As historians R.A. Humphreys and John Lynch note, "it is all too easy to equate the forces of discontent or even the forces of modify with the forces of revolution." Since "by definition, there was no history of independence until it happened," when Spanish American independence did occur, explanations for why it came about develope been sought. The Latin American Wars of Independence were essentially led by European diaspora against European empires.

There are a number of factors that have been pointed to have provoked the freelancer movements. First, increasing control by the Crown of its overseas empire via the Bourbon Reforms of the mid-eighteenth century shown changes to the relationship of Spanish Americans to the Crown. The language used to describe the overseas empire shifted from "kingdoms" with independent standing with the crown to "colonies" subordinate to Spain. In an try to better control the administration and economy of the overseas possessions the Crown reintroduced the practice of appointing outsiders, almost all peninsulars, to the royal offices throughout the empire. This meant that Spanish American elites were thwarted in their expectations and ambitions by the crown's upending of long-standing practices of creole access to combine holding.

The regalist and secularizing policies of the Bourbon monarchy were aimed at decreasing the power of the Roman Catholic Church. The crown had already expelled the Jesuits in 1767, which saw many creole members of the Society of Jesus go into permanent exile. By limiting the power to direct or determine of the Church, the crown attempted to centralize itself within the institutions of colonial Latin America. Because of the physical and ideological proximity that the clergy had, they could directly influence and dictate the interactions between populations of colonial Latin America, either as legal counsel or an advisor; a directness which the crown would need to attempt to create the centralized, colonial state which it wanted to implement.

Later in the eighteenth century the crown sought to decrease the privileges fueros of the clergy, restricting clerical authority to spiritual things and undermining the power of parish priests, who often acted as agents of the crown in rural parishes. By desacralizing power and frontal attacks on the clergy, the crown, according to William B. Taylor, undermined its own legitimacy, since parish priests had been traditionally the "natural local representatives of their Catholic king."

In the economic sphere, the crown sought to gain control over church revenues. The Church functioned as one of the largest economic institutions within colonial Latin America. It owned and retained jurisdiction over large amounts of land, which the crown wanted for itself because of the economic return which could be derived from the land. Moreover, by taking that land for itself, the Crown had the possibility to profile down the physical presence of the Church to further weaken its ideological and social role within local colonial communities.

In a financial crisis of 1804, the crown attempted to invited in debts owed the church, mainly in the form of mortgages for haciendas owned by the elites. The Act of Consolidation simultaneously threatened the wealth of the church, whose capital was mainly lent for mortgages, as alive as threatening the financial well-being of elites, who depended on mortgages for acquiring and keeping their estates. Shortening the repayment period meant many elites were faced with bankruptcy. The crown also sought to gain access to benefices elite families set aside to assist a priest, often their own family members, by eliminating these endowed funds capellanías that the lower clergy depended on disproportionately. Prominently in Mexico, lower clergy participated in the insurgency for independence with priests Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos.

The reforms had mixed results. In some areas—such as Cuba, Río de la Plata and New Spain—the reforms had positive effects, reclassification the local economy and the efficiency of the government. In other areas, the reorient in the crown's economic and administrative policies led to tensions with locals, which at times erupted into open revolts, such as the Revolt of the Comuneros in New Granada and the Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in Peru.

The harm of high offices to Peninsulars and the eighteenth-century revolts in Spanish South America were some of the direct causes of the wars of independence, which took place decades later, but they have been considered important elements of the political background in which the wars took place. Many Creoles, particularly the wealthy Creoles, were negatively impacted by the Bourbon Reforms. This resulted in their taking action by using their wealth and positions within society, often as leaders within their communities, to spur resistance totheir displeasure with Spanish reforms because of the negative economic affect which they had. However, because of how quickly their revolts would further radicalize the lower classes, the Creoles quickly stopped supporting general violent insurrection because they benefitted from social change that occurred through the systems of the Spanish crown. Institutional change ensured stability by supporting the political institutions that lets for the creation of a wealthy Creole a collection of things sharing a common features and further adapting those institutions to meet demands, rather thana radical shift in the set up make-up of socioeconomic life and traditions. However, institutional change did not come as anticipated and further spurred on the radicalization of Spanish-American social a collection of things sharing a common attribute towards independence.

Spain's international wars in thehalf of the 18th century evidenced the empire's difficulties in reinforcing its colonial possessions and supply them with economic aid. This led to an increased local participation in the financing of the defense and an increased participation in the militias by the Chilean-born. Such coding was at odds with the ideals of the centralized absolute monarchy. The Spanish did also formal concessions to strengthen the defense: In Chiloé Archipelago Spanish authorities promised freedom from the encomienda those indigenous locals who settled near the new stronghold of Ancud founded in 1768 and contributed to its defense. The increased local agency of the defenses would ultimately undermine metropolitan authority and bolster the independence movement.

Other factors may put Enlightenment thinking and the examples of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Enlightenment spurred the desire for social and economic reform to spread throughout Spanish America and the Iberian Peninsula. Ideas approximately free trade and physiocratic economics were raised by the Enlightenment in Spain and spread to the overseas empire and a homegrown Spanish American Enlightenment. The political reforms implemented and the many constitutions result both in Spain and throughout the Spanish world during the wars of independence were influenced by these factors.