Some selections translated by the editors. Bibliography: p. [305]-308.

This book focuses on a key period in Latin American history, the transition from colonial status, via the revolutions for independence, to national organization. The essays provide in-depth studies of eighteenth-century society, the colonial state, and the roots of independence in Spanish America. The relation of Spanish America to the age of democratic revolution and the reaction of the Church to revolutionary change are newly defined, and leadership of Simon Bolivar is subject to particular scrutiny. National organization saw the emergence of new political leaders, the caudillos , and the marginalization of many people who sought relief in popular religion and millenarian movements.

This book examines the Spanish response, military, economic and social, to the anti-imperial revolutions of Latin America in the early nineteenth century. History has for the most part concentrated on the heroic careers of the great liberators of America: but what did Spaniards themselves think of Simón Bolivar and his fellow revolutionaries? How did they view the events in America? What policies were adopted, what were their effects on Spanish trade and the merchants who conducted it, and what action did Spain take to meet American demands or to suppress them? It is with these and many related questions that this study is concerned. Analysing a broad spectrum of Spanish opinion which reflects the views of politicians, diplomats, merchants, journalists, the military and others, Professor Costeloe explains how Spaniards responded to revolution and how in retrospect, in the aftermath of defeat, they regarded the end of their nation's long role as a major imperial power.

Spanish America was engulfed for nearly two decades in revolutions for independence that were sudden, violent, and universal.

This book provides a new interpretation of Spanish American independence, emphasising political processes.

An account of the seventeen years of revolution in Spanish America, 1808-1825 from Texas to Tierra del Fuego.

During the period from 1808 to 1826, the Spanish empire was convulsed by wars throughout its dominions in Iberia and the Americas. The conflicts began in Spain, where Napoleon’s invasion triggered a war of national resistance. The collapse of the Spanish monarchy provoked challenges to the colonial regime in virtually all of Spain's American provinces, and colonial demands for autonomy and independence led to political turbulence and violent confrontation on a transcontinental scale. During the two decades after 1808, Spanish America witnessed warfare on a scale not seen since the conquests three centuries earlier. War and Independence in Spanish America provides a unified account of war in Spanish America during the period after the collapse of the Spanish government in 1808. McFarlane traces the courses and consequences of war, combining a broad narrative of the development and distribution of armed conflict with analysis of its characteristics and patterns. He maps the main arenas of war, traces the major campaigns by and crucial battles between rebels and royalists, and places the military conflicts in the context of international political change. Readers will come away with a fully realized understanding of how war and military mobilization affected Spanish American societies and shaped the emerging independent states.