[BLANK_AUDIO]. Hi, welcome back. Make yourself comfortable. Last time we talked about the disintegration of Spain's centuries old empire in the Americas. Now we want to talk about what's going to take its place. What kind of new states, republics, even empires will fill that void? The aftermath of the successful revolutions in Latin America though, also are very interesting to follow. Now you have these victors who've won these battles. They freed themselves from Spanish rule. So what kind of countries are they going to create? Unfortunately, [INAUDIBLE] following a bit of Bolivar�s own example, who wanted to create a republic that had a president for life, they tend to go for authoritarian rulers, in part because these are governments dominated by the Creole elite that still need to maintain a powerful coercive authority over a large part of their population. So the pattern over and over again is the degeneration of these republics into authoritarian elites that are alliances of the Creole elite, trying to maintain its power over everyone else, leaning on and aligned with military figures, often drawn from the common People, who will help them rule and indeed may themselves assume the dictatorship. So here's a map of the new states of Latin America and the Caribbean in 1831. There is actually a new empire that's been created in Brazil. The Brazilian story is kind of interesting. During the Napoleonic Wars, the whole Portuguese monarchy had migrated over to Brazil and made their headquarters there. After the wars are over, Brazil effectively sets itself up as an empire of its own. Here there's an effort to create a large state called Gran Columbia and then that subdivides into Venezuela and New Granada. Different countries think of uniting then they break up into parts. A new country called Uruguay fights itself into creation and so on. For a while, there are united provinces here in Central America. These will split up into component states. And in the early 1820s, there is a Mexican Empire ruling over all the old parts of New Spain. The sense of the political dynamic that's being created across Latin America is picked up a little bit in this very famous mural, created by the painter Diego Rivera in the 20th century. What Rivera does here is show a cycle of Mexican history. He begins at the bottom here with the conquistadors. There's an inquisition. Again, constantly the cycle of rule and repression, eventually leading to the early 20th century where he'll celebrate the revolutionary leaders who will stand for the principle Tierra y Libertad: Land and Liberty. Let's think about this situation for a moment. You're creating new nation-states. How big are they going to be? Remember, this was an issue in the North American republics after they gained their independence from Britain. How big were they going to be? And remember, they created a very large American Union held together by a pretty intricate arrangement in their constitution, with lots of different compromises in their republic of republics. All across Latin America, these arguments are being engaged again. How are they going to define their new state? And so the political battles tend to be battles between Centralists, big state, central control, and Federalists, who want to emphasize local power, smaller political units. You can really see these battles playing out, above all, in a series of wars in Mexico over the future shape of the Mexican Empire. What will Mexico become? When Mexico gets its independence in 1821, it claims all of this territory. The real population center of Mexico is mainly concentrated in this area right here, especially up to the silver mining area in this part of Mexico. There's a little outpost of population here, an even smaller outpost here, and then a couple of missions scattered on the California coast. One of the reasons this part of the Mexican Empire is so thinly populated is because actually most of this area, let's say around here, is mainly ruled by Native Americans, by Comanches. This is part of the Comanche Empire, in which of 15, 20 to 30,000 Comanches rove at will. They basically are kind of a horse empire, not that different from some of the greater horsemen that you would have found, say, in Central Asia at any point in the previous 1,000 years. They�re raiding all through this area, especially against the Mexicans and against Mexican ranches. The Mexicans have also brought in, to try to populate some of this area, some American colonists. The American colonists come in here. And from the water here. And are setting up settlements in this part of the Mexican province called Texas. In the battle between Centralists and Federalists in Mexico, there are a bunch of revolutions by parts of Mexico trying to be free from the rule from Mexico City. There are revolts in Yucatan; there are revolts here in Zacatecas; there is an especially important revolt that begins in the province of Coahuila y Tejas, based at Saltillo, in which this whole part of the Mexican Empire tries to secede. The Mexicans put down the Coahuila part of the revolt, conquer Saltillo, but can't quite subdue the Texans, the American settlers whom they fight in places like the Alamo and San Jacinto, and this area here, Texas, gains a precarious independence and sets up a Texan Republic. But again, this whole story of the Texas Revolution has to be understood as part of a series of revolutions against central authority in the Mexican Empire. Those kinds of local revolutions are happening all over Latin America. In this particular case, one of the revolutions succeeds, and it's dominated by American settlers. The American settlers, in turn, immediately ask the United States to annex them. The United States doesn't want to do it. Because the United States is afraid that if they expand any more, they're not going to be able to hold together the compromises that are holding their union together. So for nearly 10 years, the United States government turns down the request from the Texan Republic for annexation. In the election of 1844, the Americans choose president who is interested in expansion at the expense of the Mexicans. He's interested in making America more of a Pacific power. And he's interested in advancing the cause of both American expansion and the expansion of slavery. This produces a war with Mexico in which U.S. troops invade the Mexican heartland and occupy Mexico City. A treaty is signed in which these territories, which don't have much population outside of what�s in Texas or in Santa Fe, become part of the United States. And the contours of modern-day Mexico are set. My point from this discussion is so that you can see that what we in America think of as the Mexican War is actually just the last stage of a series of Mexican wars that originate in these battles between Centralists and Federalists that are part of the whole process of nation building all over Latin America. That's one of the ripples of this period of revolutionary wars. Now let's talk about another really important ripple in this period of world history, far away, in India.
