The Spanish American wars of independence () were a series of conflicts across the Spanish Empire in the early 19th century. They began shortly after the outbreak of the Peninsular War and formed part of the broader Napoleonic Wars.
The process unfolded in two main phases. First, the Spanish Monarchy broke up, beginning in Spain in 1808 with the invasion by the French Empire, the Spanish uprising against the Bonapartes, the vacancy of the throne, and the emergence of juntas later replicated in America. This unfolded as it did because the monarchy's basic cellular structure was the cabildo (town council, or ayuntamiento). Second, attempts at reconstruction failed and became a war in their own right: Cádiz sought a pan-Hispanic state, Ferdinand VII sought to restore the Crown returned to him by Napoleon, and in the Americas Bolívar, Iturbide and others tried to build large federations or empires. The result was the fragmentation of the Hispanic world into multiple states that largely reconstituted the old Spanish administrative boundaries under uti possidetis.
The conflicts were multilateral, involving factions grouped into two camps: Royalists, who favoured continued Spanish rule, and Patriots, who supported independent monarchies or republics separate from Spain and from one another. They led to the independence of most of Spanish America and, through Balkanization, to Hispanic America. Defined strictly by military campaigns, they ran from the 1809 Battle of Chacaltaya (Bolivia) to the 1829 Battle of Tampico (Mexico).
They were fought as both irregular warfare and conventional warfare. Some historians claim they began as localized civil wars that spread as secessionist wars for general independence. The new national boundaries followed the colonial provinces and formed the basis of contemporary Hispanic America. Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until the 1898 Spanish–American War.
The Spanish Empire dissolved in the region and new states emerged. The new republics abandoned the Inquisition and noble titles, but slavery was not immediately abolished, and total abolition came only in the 1850s in most countries. Criollos and mestizos replaced Spanish-born officials in most political offices, and Criollos stayed at the top of a social structure that kept traditional features culturally, if not legally. For almost a century, conservatives and liberals fought to reverse or deepen these changes. Spaniards were also subject to forced displacement, during the war and later through expulsion laws meant to consolidate independence.
The wars followed the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) and unfolded alongside Brazil's own path to independence. Spanish America and Brazil shared a trigger: Napoleon's invasion of Iberia, which in 1807 forced the Portuguese royal family to flee to Brazil. More broadly, they drew on the Enlightenment ideas of popular sovereignty behind the Atlantic Revolutions, including the American and French ones. The more direct cause was the crisis within Spain, which ended with new independent states 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 change 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 have been sought. The Spanish American Wars of Independence were essentially a power vacuum in the Spanish monarchy that resulting in a rupture that gave rise to new states.
Proposals for a controlled independence
A number of proposals to grant independence to parts of the Spanish Empire had been made over the centuries, the first of them going back to the conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century, with Toribio de Benavente suggesting King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to place a Spanish prince at the head of New Spain. The idea strengthened in the 18th century after Spain's participation in the American Revolutionary War, with the goal of preventing the Spanish overseas territories from developing sentiments of independence in the example of the United States. Ministers José Ábalos and the Count of Aranda presented King Charles III with ideas of turning the empire into a confederacy of monarchies under the Spanish House of Bourbon. However, while not rejecting them, Charles did not act upon them either. A similar idea was presented in the 18th century by Secretary of State Manuel Godoy to Charles IV, which was found unrealizable at the time.Morón, Guillermo & Medina, José Ramón (1995). El proceso de integración de Venezuela (1776–1793). In Obra Escogida. Volume 211. Quito: Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho. Selección y Prólogo de José Ramón Medina. Cronología y bibliografía de Roberto J. Lovera de Sola. ISBN 98-027-6313-6Navarro García, Luis (2012). "De las reformas a la Independencia: La política indiana de España en torno a 1800". Real Academia Hispano Americana de Ciencias, Artes y Letras (RAHA). No. 2. ISSN 2174-0445.
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. 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.Mark A. Burkholder and D.S. Chandler, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808. Columbia: University of Missouri Press 1977.
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 Spanish America. Because of the physical and ideological proximity that the clergy had,Mills, Kenneth; Taylor, William B.; Lauderdale Graham, Sandra (2002). Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History. Maryland: SP Books. p. 144. they could directly influence and dictate the interactions between populations of colonial Spanish America, either as legal counsel or an advisor;Mills, Kenneth; Taylor, William B. Taylor; Lauderdale Graham, Sandra (2002). Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History. Maryland: SR Books. p. 107. 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.Nancy Farriss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759–1821. London: Athlone Press 1968. 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."William B. Taylor, "Early Latin American Social History" in Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1985, p. 149.
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 Spanish America. It owned and retained jurisdiction over large amounts of land, which the crown wanted for itself because of the economic value which could be derived from the land.Mills, Kenneth; Taylor, William B.; Lauderdale Graham, Sandra (2002). Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History. Maryland: SP Books. p. 309-313. 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.
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.Margaret Chowning, "The Consolidación de Vales Reales in the Bishopric of Michoacán." Hispanic American Historical Review 69:3 (1989) 451–78. 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.Michael P. Costeloe, Church Wealth in Mexico: A Study of the "Juzgado de Capellanías" in the Archbishopric of Mexico, 1800–1856. Cambridge University Press 1967. 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.Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 17–19, 334–335. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 19–27. Kinsbruner, Independence in Spanish America, 7–12. 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.