Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1833
Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. When he landed in the Bahamas, he had no idea that he had just encountered a massive landmass unknown to most Europeans. As he sailed under the Spanish flag and Crown, the new territory was claimed for Spain. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spaniards conquered the native people, formed viceroyalties and colonies, and exploited natural resources. In doing so, Spain became the most powerful and largest European empire of the time and successfully spread Christianity to the New World. Things would change in the eighteenth century.
Spanish colonies covered most of South America, Central America, Mexico, and a few Caribbean islands. Just as the cultures they had conquered were diverse, so were the new Spanish colonies. Exploitation of natives, the importation of African slaves, and the control of land by the elite permitted the Spanish Crown to exploit the land’s natural resources while supplying European industries with numerous raw materials. All trade from the Spanish colonies in the New World was to be sanctioned and controlled by the Crown. Reality was different.
Contraband trading occurred between the Spanish colonies and other European powers. This trading was intensified as other revolutions broke out in British and French colonies. Spain had a difficult time managing its colonies. The cost of the upkeep in protecting them from other European empires was enormous. To circumvent this, owners demanded that their slaves increase production in the silver mines. With more silver, the Crown believed, they would be wealthier and able to afford to control almost the entire western hemisphere.
Beginning in the late-seventeenth century, a financial crisis overtook Spain. Inflation had made the silver coinage almost worthless. The Crown began to take the coins out of circulation, which in turn, made the empire strapped for cash. In the colonies, hardly any money existed. This forced local representatives of the Crown to find their own ways to manage their affairs. As early as the onset of the eighteenth century, the seeds were being sown for colonial independence.
The Spanish Revolutions in South America happened in a piece-meal fashion. After decades of relatively hands-off rule from the Crown, local colonial governments began to conform to the specific needs of each colony instead of what the Crown dictated. With a central government so far away, the colonies in Peru, New Spain, Granada, and Rio de la Plata, for example, had implemented local control with little resistance. The fight for self-government had already been won due to the Crown’s continued ineffectual authority.
Diversity in the Spanish American colonies cannot be underestimated. When conquest began, the Spanish-born were at the top of colonial hierarchy. As a new generation emerged, those of Spanish descent born in the New World were labeled criollos. As Spaniards formed unions with native people, either through sexual encounters or marriage, mestizos resulted. Mestizos were native people who had Spanish blood or culture and were below criollos in the Spanish social structure. Slaves, either native-born or imported Africans, now had standing in the Spanish social structure. They were required to labor for the criollos and mestizos, who owned most of the land, mines, and plantations. Spanish law forced colonies to adhere to strict rules prohibiting slaves and women from participation in governmental affairs. Native populations, criollos, mestizos, and even slaves continuously fought to maintain their own distinctive cultures. The fractious colonial populations reduced the Crown’s efforts to establish any distinctive colonial unity.
When revolutions began breaking out in the Atlantic World, Spanish colonists took interest. Official reports and rumors carried the same weight for those groups seeking autonomy from Spain and Spanish colonial control. Rebellious colonists would form a junta, new administrative bodies, in attempts to oust colonial leaders. Forming a junta was violent and often required military forces. Rebels would fight against colonial troops repeatedly, as was the case in La Paz in 1809.
The colonial government in Buenos Aires controlled the mining region in Upper Peru. Mestizos in La Paz wanted autonomy; they did not want to be controlled by Spain or by those in Buenos Aires. In July 1809, rebels formed a junta. Colonial military troops from Lima and Buenos Aires were sent to La Paz to squash the new junta. Fighting between rebels and colonial armies continued until October. The La Paz rebels lost and troops were sent three times to quiet any uprisings until independence was finally won in 1825.
Other areas throughout colonial Spain refused to adhere to the colonial control from the capitals of the viceroyalties. In many ways, the writing was on the wall. The diversity of each region from the onset of the Conquest combined with the inability of the Spanish Crown to effectively control its vast territory meant that it would take a small rebellious push to achieve independence. In contrast to the violence experienced in France and Saint-Domingue, the colonial fights in Spanish America seemed tame. The true violence came when the newly independent governments had to negotiate who would control the new nations.