Spanish American wars of independence

Spanish American wars of independence
Part of the Atlantic Revolutions,[3] the Decolonization of the Americas, 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
Date 25 September 1808 – 29 September 1833 (25 years and 4 days) Location Spanish America Result Patriot victory Territorial changes Disintegration of Spanish America[Note C] List  Bolivia  Chile  Gran Colombia Venezuela  Colombia Ecuador First Mexican Empire Mexico Insurgents Army of the Three Guarantees  Federal Republic of Central America  Peru Maynas  United Provinces  Paraguay  West Florida (annexed by United States) Diplomatic recognition in 1821 (Portugal), 1822 (US) and 1825 (UK). Spain retained the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico until the Spanish–American War of 1898. Banda Oriental and Spanish Texas become part of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves and First Mexican Empire respectively.
Participants
Patriots Indigenous allies  United Kingdom (1815–1819)[Note I]  United States (1810–1819)[1] Haiti[2]	Spanish Empire Indigenous allies
Units involved
Army of the Andes[Note F] Armed forces of Chile[Note G] Armed forces of Gran Colombia Armed forces of Mexico[Note E] Armed forces of Peru Orientals forces Republican Army of the North[Note L]	Spanish Army Spanish Navy
Strength
Unknown 6,500 British Legions	30,000 Spanish soldiers deployed[4]
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Unknown Majority of 30,000 Spanish expeditionary forces dead[4]
600,000 total dead[5]

The Spanish American wars of independence (Spanish: Guerras de independencia hispanoamericanas) took place throughout Spanish America during the early 19th century, with the aim of political independence from Spanish rule.^[6] Struggles for sovereignty in both hemispheres began shortly after the outbreak of the Peninsular War as a front in the larger Napoleonic Wars, between royalists who favored a unitary monarchy, and patriots who favored either plural monarchies or republics.^[7] 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.^[8][9]

In 1808, the abduction of the Spanish royal family by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Abdications of Bayonne, gave rise two years later to an emergence of liberalism and 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 violent 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".^[10] 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,^[11] political independence was not initially the aim of most Spanish Americans, nor was it necessarily inevitable.^[12]

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.^[13] 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 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.^[14]

These conflicts were fought both as irregular warfare and conventional warfare. Some historians claim that the wars began as localized civil wars,^[15] that later spread and expanded as secessionist wars^{[16][17][18][19]} to promote general independence from Spanish rule.^[20] 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.^[20] 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.^[21] Slavery was not abolished in most new countries, but the new republics immediately left the formal system of racial classification and hierarchy, the caste system, the Inquisition, and noble titles. Criollos of Spanish descent born in the New World, and mestizos of mixed Indigenous and European heritage replaced Spanish-born appointees in most political governments. 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.^[22]

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.