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| Spanish American wars of independence | |||||||||
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| 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 | |||||||||
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| 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.
Historical context
Political independence was not necessarily the foreordained outcome of the political turmoil in Spanish America. "There was little interest in outright independence."[23] 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 change with the forces of revolution."[24] Since "by definition, there was no history of independence until it happened,"[25] when Spanish American independence did occur, explanations for why it came about have been sought. The Latin American Wars of Independence were essentially led by European diaspora against European empires.
Administrative and economic reforms
There are a number of factors that have been identified to have provoked the independent movements. First, increasing control by the Crown of its overseas empire via the Bourbon Reforms of the mid-eighteenth century introduced 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.[26] In an effort 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 office holding.[27]
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 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,[28] they could directly influence and dictate the interactions between populations of colonial Latin America, either as legal counsel or an advisor;[29] 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 matters and undermining the power of parish priests, who often acted as agents of the crown in rural parishes.[30] 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."[31]
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,[28] which the crown wanted for itself because of the economic value which could be derived from the land.[32] Moreover, by taking that land for itself, the Crown had the opportunity to cut down the physical presence of the Church to further weaken its ideological and social role within local colonial communities.[29]
In a financial crisis of 1804, the crown attempted to call 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 well 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.[33] The crown also sought to gain access to benefices elite families set aside to support a priest, often their own family members, by eliminating these endowed funds (capellanías) that the lower clergy depended on disproportionately.[34] 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, improving the local economy and the efficiency of the government.[35] In other areas, the changes 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 loss 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.[36] Many Creoles, particularly the wealthy Creoles, were negatively impacted by the Bourbon Reforms.[20] This resulted in their taking action by using their wealth and positions within society, often as leaders within their communities, to spur resistance to convey their displeasure with Spanish reforms because of the negative economic impact which they had.[37] 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.[37] Institutional change ensured stability by supporting the political institutions that allowed for the creation of a wealthy Creole class and further adapting those institutions to meet demands, rather than propose a radical shift in the complete make-up of socioeconomic life and traditions.[37] However, institutional change did not come as anticipated and further spurred on the radicalization of Spanish-American social classes towards independence.[20]
Military restructuring
Spain's international wars in the second half of the 18th century evidenced the empire's difficulties in reinforcing its colonial possessions and provide 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 development 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 organization of the defenses would ultimately undermine metropolitan authority and bolster the independence movement.[38]
Spread of Enlightment ideals
Other factors may include 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 about 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 written both in Spain and throughout the Spanish world during the wars of independence were influenced by these factors.[39]
Creation of new ruling institutions in Spain and Americas, 1808–1810
Collapse of the Bourbon dynasty
The Peninsular War was the trigger for conflicts in Spanish America in the absence of a legitimate monarch. The Peninsular War began an extended period of instability in the worldwide Spanish monarchy that lasted until 1823. Napoleon forced the Bourbon monarchs to abdicate, which precipitated a political crisis in Spain and Spanish America. Although the Spanish world almost uniformly rejected Napoleon's plan to place his brother, Joseph, on the throne, there was no clear solution to the lack of a king. Following traditional Spanish political theories on the contractual nature of the monarchy (see Philosophy of Law of Francisco Suárez), the peninsular provinces responded to the crisis by establishing juntas.[40] The move, however, led to more confusion, since there was no central authority and most juntas did not recognize the claim of some juntas to represent the monarchy as a whole. The Junta of Seville, in particular, claimed authority over the overseas empire, because of the province's historic role as the exclusive entrepôt of the empire.[41]
This impasse was resolved through negotiations between the several juntas in Spain counted with the participation of the Council of Castile, which led to the creation of a main government: the "Supreme Central and Governmental Junta of Spain and the Indies" on 25 September 1808. It was agreed that the kingdoms of the peninsula would send two representatives to this Supreme Central Junta, and that the overseas kingdoms would send one representative each. These kingdoms were defined as "the viceroyalties of New Spain (Mexico), Peru, New Granada, and Buenos Aires, and the independent captaincies general of the island of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Chile, Province of Venezuela, and the Philippines."[42] This plan was criticized for providing unequal representation to Spanish America; nevertheless, throughout the end of 1808 and early 1809, the regional capitals elected candidates, whose names were forwarded to the capitals of the viceroyalties or captaincies general. Several important and large cities were left without direct representation in the Supreme Junta. In particular Quito and Chuquisaca, which saw themselves as the capitals of kingdoms, resented being subsumed in the larger Viceroyalty of Peru and Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata respectively. This unrest led to the establishment of juntas in these cities in 1809, which were eventually quashed by the authorities within the year. An unsuccessful attempt at establishing a junta in New Spain was also stopped.
Spanish institutional revolution
The escape to Cádiz and the dissolution of the Supreme Central Junta on 29 January 1810, because of the reverses suffered after the Battle of Ocaña by the Spanish forces paid with Spanish American money,[43] set off another wave of juntas being established in the Americas. French forces had taken over southern Spain and forced the Supreme Junta to seek refuge in the island-city of Cádiz.
The Supreme Junta replaced itself with a smaller, five-man council, called the Regency, or the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies. Next, to establish a more legitimate government system, the Regency called for the convening of an "extraordinary and general Cortes of the Spanish Nation": which was convened as the Cortes of Cádiz. The plan for the election of the Cortes, based on provinces, and not kingdoms, was more equitable and provided more time to determine what would be considered an overseas province.[44] The Cortes of Cádiz was the first national assembly to claim sovereignty in Spain.[45] It represented the abolition of the old kingdoms.[46] The opening session was held on 24 September 1810, in the building now known as the Real Teatro de las Cortes under the siege of French army. It met as one body and its members represented the entire Spanish empire.[47]
Response in Spanish America
Most Spanish Americans saw no reason to recognize a rump government that was under the threat of being captured by the French at any moment, and began to work for the creation of local juntas to preserve the region's independence from the French. Junta movements were successful in New Granada (Colombia), Venezuela, Chile and Río de la Plata (Argentina). Less successful, though serious movements, also occurred in Central America. Ultimately, Central America, along with most of New Spain, Quito (Ecuador), Peru, Upper Peru (Bolivia), the Caribbean and the Philippine Islands remained under control of royalists for the next decade and participated in the Cortes of Cádiz efforts to establish a liberal government for the Spanish monarchy.[48]
History
Military campaigns
The recruitment of soldiers seemed to end up a common pool employed by opposing sides as cannon fodder. Socially, both apparently opposing positions, loyalist and pro-independence, had an uncertain significance for the different social strata of the monarchy. In Europe, the Spaniards made a forced recruitment for the expeditionary forces, leading to constant rebellions. Independent states relied on privateers, mercenaries, adventurers or filibusters, reliable fighters when pay or booty was at a glance. For the mobilization of the population in America, the vast majority or almost all of the troops of both sides, the indiscriminate recruitment of native American communities was used, in general in traditional confronted regions; social improvements were promised, by both sides, to the indigenous and the different mestizo colonial castes, such as mulattoes ("pardos"), cholos, etc., and even African slaves were recruited by both sides. All those recruited in America, and also the Spaniards, joined the enemy armies as combatants when they were captured. Likewise, the Creole potentates of European origin could give their support to the royalist or pro-independence cause, in relation to the commercial interests of each region. The Church was also divided, and except for the lower clergy, involved as combatants of insurgency, their position was in accordance with the political power.
Civil wars for disputed sovereignty, 1810–1814
The creation of juntas in Spanish America, such as the Junta Suprema de Caracas on 19 April 1810, set the stage for the fighting that would afflict the region for the next decade and a half. Political fault lines appeared, and were often the causes of military conflict. On the one hand the juntas challenged the authority of all royal officials, whether they recognized the Regency or not. On the other hand, royal officials and Spanish Americans who desired to keep the empire together were split between liberals, who supported the efforts of the Cortes, and conservatives (often called "absolutists" in the historiography), who did not want to see any innovations in government. Finally, although the juntas claimed to carry out their actions in the name of the deposed king, Ferdinand VII, their creation provided an opportunity for people who favored outright independence to promote their agenda publicly and safely. The proponents of independence called themselves patriots, a term which eventually was generally applied to them.[49]
The idea that independence was not the initial concern is evidenced by the fact that few areas declared independence in the years after 1810. The congresses of Venezuela and New Granada did so in 1811 and also Paraguay in same year (14 and 15 May 1811). Some historians explain the reluctance to declare independence as a "mask of Ferdinand VII": that is, that patriot leaders felt that they needed to claim loyalty to the deposed monarch to prepare the masses for the radical change that full independence eventually would entail.[50] Nevertheless, even areas such as Río de la Plata and Chile, which more or less maintained de facto independence from the peninsular authorities, did not declare independence until quite a few years later, in 1816 and 1818, respectively. Overall, despite achieving formal or de facto independence, many regions of Spanish America were marked by nearly continuous civil wars, which lasted well into the 1820s. In Mexico, where the junta movement had been stopped in its early stages by a coalition of peninsular merchants and government officials, efforts to establish a government independent of the Regency or the French took the form of rebellion, under the leadership of Miguel Hidalgo. Hidalgo was captured and executed in 1811, but a resistance movement continued, which declared independence from Spain in 1813. The Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition was a joint Tejanos-US volunteers expedition formed in Louisiana for Texas independence but was defeated in the Battle of Medina. In Central America, attempts at establishing juntas were also put down, but resulted in significantly less violence. The Caribbean islands, like the Philippines on the other side of the world, were relatively peaceful. Any plots to set up juntas were denounced to the authorities early enough to stop them before they gained widespread support.[51]
Major cities and regional rivalries
Major cities and regional rivalry played an important role in the wars. The disappearance of a central, imperial authority—and in some cases of even a local, viceregal authority (as in the cases of New Granada and Río de la Plata)—initiated a prolonged period of balkanization in many regions of Spanish America. It was not clear which political units should replace the empire, and there were no new national identities to replace the traditional sense of being Spaniards. The original juntas of 1810 appealed first to a sense of being Spanish, which was counterposed to the French threat; second, to a general American identity, which was counterposed to the Peninsula lost to the French; and third, to a sense of belonging to the major cities or local province, the patria in Spanish.[52] More often than not, juntas sought to maintain a province's independence from the capital of the former viceroyalty or captaincy general as much as from the Peninsula itself. Armed conflicts broke out between the provinces over the question of whether some cities or provinces were to be subordinate to others as they had been under the crown. This phenomenon was particularly evident in South America. This rivalry also led some regions to adopt the opposite political cause to that chosen by their rivals. Peru seems to have remained strongly royalist in large part because of its rivalry with Río de la Plata, to which it had lost control of Upper Peru when the latter was elevated to a viceroyalty in 1776. The creation of juntas in Río de la Plata allowed Peru to regain formal control of Upper Peru for the duration of the wars.[53]
Social and racial tensions
Underlying social and racial tensions also had a great impact on the nature of the fighting. Rural areas were pitted against urban centers, as grievances against the authorities found an outlet in the political conflict. This was the case with Hidalgo's peasant revolt, which was fueled as much by discontent over several years of bad harvests as with events in the Peninsular War. Hidalgo was originally part of a circle of liberal urbanites in Querétaro, who sought to establish a junta. After this conspiracy was discovered, Hidalgo turned to the rural people of the Mexican Bajío to build his army, and their interests soon overshadowed those of the urban intellectuals. A similar tension existed in Venezuela, where the Spanish immigrant José Tomás Boves formed a powerful, though irregular, royalist army out of the Llaneros, mixed-race slave and plains people, by attacking the white landowning class. Boves and his followers often disregarded the command of Spanish officials and were not concerned with actually re-establishing the toppled royal government, choosing instead to keep real power among themselves. Finally, in the back country of Upper Peru, the republiquetas kept the idea of independence alive by allying with disenfranchised members of rural society and native groups, but were never able to take the major population centers.
Increasingly violent confrontations developed between Spaniards and Spanish Americans, but this tension was often related to class issues or fomented by patriot leaders to create a new sense of nationalism. After being incited to rid the country of the gachupines (a disparaging term for Peninsulares), Hidalgo's forces indiscriminately massacred hundreds of Criollos and Peninsulares who had taken refuge at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato. In Venezuela during his Admirable Campaign, Simón Bolívar instituted a policy of a war to the death, in which royalist Spanish Americans would be purposely spared but even neutral Peninsulares would be killed, to drive a wedge between the two groups. This policy laid the ground for the violent royalist reaction under Boves. Often though, royalism or patriotism simply provided a banner to organize the aggrieved, and the political causes could be discarded just as quickly as they were picked up. The Venezuelan Llaneros switched to the patriot banner once the elites and the urban centers became securely royalist after 1815, and it was the royal army in Mexico that ultimately brought about that nation's independence.[54]
King's war against independence, 1814–1820
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