Welcome back. Make yourselves comfortable. Now we're going to see how these revolutionary wars in Europe actually impacted the whole fate of Latin America. It's a very interesting story, enormously important, but not an easy one to follow, so bear with me. Lets try to work it out by starting with setting the scene a little bit. You have, again these very large Spanish domains. You've seen this map before. Notice the area in purple governed by Spain as of 1800. By 1808, the Americans now have New Orleans and an area in here, but otherwise these large Spanish possessions. At this point in 1808, Napoleon invades and conquers Spain. He imprisons the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, and installs his own brother, Joseph, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new king of Spain, expanding the domain of the Bonaparte family dynasty that Napoleon has created. Okay. So, now imagine the dilemma for Spaniards and Spanish colonies, figuring out who is the king of Spain? To whom do they owe their allegiance? Ferdinand VII, well, he's in French prison. There is a junta of senior people who are ruling in Ferdinand's name, saying they are the rightful representatives of the king. Then, there is the new King of Spain, installed by the French, King Joseph. Who is the new king of Spain? But one bottom line, until Ferdinand VII is freed by British troops in 1814, one bottom line is this: whoever the king of Spain is, he's not exerting very much royal power in the colonies. And that's what then creates this enormous disorder, this opportunity for the colonies to figure out how to run themselves when royal rule is little more than nominal. Let's set the scene for those choices. These places are not true partners of the Spanish monarchy. They are colonies. They are under royal rule from Madrid. Colonies under royal rule. Of course, they have some of the same issues that the British colonies in North America had had in the 1760s and the 1770s. A generation later, these colonial leaders have some of the same problems. For instance, you remember that the Americans in the 1760s were restless because the British were confining their trade, saying you can only trade with Britain or through the British approved monopoly. Well, actually some of these Spanish colonies were also feeling oppressed by these trading restrictions. And they've seen the example of North America, so that precedent is very much in mind. That's a source of tension. What's a really different feature of the experience from New Spain all the way down to the southern end of South America, is a different ethnic dimension. Ethnic identities are hugely important in Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Just kind of take a moment to understand the ethnic map as people of that time all understood it. In the first category you have Peninsulares. These are Spaniards from Spain who have migrated out to these colonies to rule them. They make up, oh, less than 1 percent of the population. The next category would be Creoles. Creoles would be people of European ancestry. Pure European ancestry. [INAUDIBLE], Their father or their grandfather might have been Spanish. And they've maintained pure European blood. People used terms like that. These reoles would make up, just to pick the example of New Spain, or present day Mexico, about 20 percent of the population. Now in the British colonies of North America, all those European settlers were what Spanish colonists would call Creoles. But here in a place like New Spain, they make up only about 20% of the population. Who were the rest? If peninsulares are less than 1 percent, the creoles are 20 percent, what's the rest? The next category might be people of mixed blood: the product of inter-marriages with Europeans for centuries. Mestizos: mixed marriages with Indians. Mulattoes: mixed marriage with blacks brought over to work as slaves. This group might be as large as 40 percent of the population. Again, these numbers vary a lot from colony to colony. I'm using numbers that are broadly illustrative of the situation in New Spain, present day Mexico. The final category would be pure blood Indians or pure blood blacks. Black slaves but also sometimes significant populations of black freedmen. That might be another 40 percent of the population. Again, to reiterate, these percentages would vary from colony to colony. And based on the proportions, the ethnic tensions might be very different. But understanding this hierarchy of ethnic identities is absolutely essential to understanding the world of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. One of the reasons it was so essential was because ancestry was a key criterion for whether you could be admitted to the elite. Here's an example. A pretty typical example of a royal decree, this one from Caracas, a city in present-day Venezuela, at the northern part of South America. This is a decree that explains which people are allowed to become lawyers in Caracas. You follow, you see: we order and decree that, for any lawyer to be accepted into our Colegio, he must lead a reputable life; he must be capable of exercising his profession; he must be a legitimate son, whose parents are known, not a bastard; and the petitioner as well as his parents and paternal grandparents must have been Christians for a long time, free of all bad blood of blacks, mulattoes, or other similar persons, and without a trace of Moors, Jews, or recent converts to our Holy Catholic Faith. This emphasis on ancestry, on purity of blood, the term in Spanish is limpieza de sangre, is a key part of the social and political life of these colonies. In these colonies too, the crown had created something called the gracias al sacar in which, if you had enough money, you could actually buy a certificate that you had pure blood. If you had enough money to make the crown happy, that even if your blood wasn't pure, your money was just fine. So, back to 1808. Remember, Napoleon has overthrown the Spanish crown. The colonies are having to decide what to do. Some of them decide that they should revolt. Some of them stay loyal to the crown. So, why did some revolt, why did some not revolt? Let's take the example of a colony that stays loyal to the crown: Cuba. Cuba stays loyal because Cuba is highly stratified between the Creole elite, who are slave owners, and a large population of slaves. They need Spanish soldiers to help keep the peace because they're fearful of a slave revolt like the one that's occurred in San Domingue. So Cuba is more inclined to stay loyal. But another interesting dynamic that's going on is to see the interesting alliances that form after the revolution. In these colonies, typically, key power is held by the Creole elite. Well, there's the king, offstage, who has a lot of the formal power and sends over his officials. And then there's that vast majority of the population in some of the colonies, made up of the mestizos, Indians, and so forth. So from the point of view of the common people, they saw these upheavals in Spain as an opportunity to renew their faith in the king and fight the Creole elite that had been oppressing them, proclaiming their faith in the king and the king's devotion to them. So some of the Creole elite, both seized by revolutionary ideals, the desire to chart their own economic destiny, like the example in North America, but also fearful of the common people, decide that it's best to declare their independence and manage this problem themselves. In the first wave of revolts, the common people are sometimes rising up, sometimes proclaiming how much they love the king. A good example is Mexico. They're defeated. In fact, all this first wave of revolts occurs between about 1808 and are all pretty well put down by 1814, when the Spanish crown is restored to authority. So you would think: okay, well there it is, the story is over. Napoleon has been beaten in Europe. The Spanish crown is restored. The revolts have been put down in the New World. But the story isn't nearly over. It's just getting started. There is a second wave of revolutions that starts around 1820. Again, it starts because of things that are happening above all in Spain. The Spanish monarchy goes through another period of turbulence. In fact, the Spanish monarchy adopts a relatively liberal constitution and frightens the Holy Alliance which, led by French forces, invades Spain again now in 1821-1822. The result being another series of upheavals in the Spanish colonies. Different kinds of upheavals this time. In Mexico, the Creole elite is revolting against the liberals in Spain. So the very General that the Spaniards had been supporting to restore order in Mexico says: I'm standing up for conservative principles against those liberals back in Spain. I'm going to create now a Mexican empire. And he proclaims himself the Emperor of Mexico: Agust�n de Iturbide. So just at the point you think you understood this, is okay, I get it, there's a conservative elite in the colonies that is actually seizing independence in order to protect conservatism. Now let me make this a little more complicated again by noting the role of more liberal-minded liberators in South America who are now leading the cause. These liberators in South America will form a different kind of characteristic alliance. In South America, you have a very different dynamic. Remember: Mexican Empire, more of a conservative reaction against what�s going on in Spain, which seems liberal. But then, the French and the Holy Alliance invade Spain. They throw it back to the conservatives. That, [LAUGH], in turn, helps the portion of the Creole elite that's standing up both for liberal principles and basically is completely fed up with Spanish rule anyway. But this time, the Creole elite, fighting against the Spanish crown, reaches out to the common people and basically divides them up. The common people, that's where the soldiers come from. So the Creole elite is allying themselves with key generals. So you have an alliance here of military elites and the Creole elite that controls the business and professional community. Generals, in turn, commanding their soldiers drawn from the common people. While the crown is bringing soldiers from Spain, as well as its allies in the local population, and that creates a series of wars in South America. Led by these charismatic figures from the north and the south. In the northern part of South America, coming from modern day Venezuela, here is a painting of the famous Sim�n Bol�var. Bol�var: born to an affluent family in Caracas; member of the Creole elite; goes back to Europe for his education; returns to Caracas; part of the abortive revolutions; and then a leader of the second wave of revolutions. In the south, beginning in Buenos Aries and then marching to Chile, this is a professional soldier from the Spanish army who's now joined the revolutionary cause: this is Jos� de San Mart�n. In the north, Bolivar wins key victories here and begins working his way to liberate the rest of New Granada to liberate Peru, which is strongly loyal to the crown in part because the Peruvian elite had relied on the crown to put down a huge Indian revolt back in the 1770s. In the South, coming out of Buenos Aires, leading an army gathered there marches over the mountains, San Martin leads a force that liberates Chile, and then he too begins moving northward to join in the campaign for Peru and beyond. The Holy Alliance that has just intervened in Spain to restore the conservative monarchy is very worried about these liberal republics being created in South America. There is, actually, a critical period between about 1822 and 1824 when the European monarchs are actively considering mounting a major expeditionary force to reinforce Spain's armies and beat back these threats by people like Bolivar and San Martin. This is the period in which the British government and the American government, kind of acting independently in what it will later call the Monroe Doctrine, try to encourage the European powers not to mount such a giant intervention in the Western Hemisphere. And the idea fizzles and falls apart, and the Spanish republics are able to gain their independence. From the point of view of the United States, which issues its famous statement under President Monroe in 1823, they're really worried about the safety of republics everywhere in the world, including the eventual encirclement of their own republic, and feel a certain common cause with some of the Spanish republics. But the great danger fizzles, the republics do attain their independence. There is even for a while a Pan-American dream, harbored especially by Bolivar, in which the Latin American republics will all follow the North American example and form a republic of republics, a giant Pan-American union that will combine them all in some sort of federation. Although there's some encouragement for this dream from the United States of America as well, and a meeting about this in Panama, it also never really materializes except as a long running aspiration, a sense of hemispheric solidarity. So let�s take stock in where we are in this story by the beginning of the 1820s. Spain had established vast imperial domains in the Americas, in the Western Hemisphere. Been there for centuries. By the beginning of 1820s, it's practically all gone. Spain retains the great island of Cuba in the Caribbean, which was always its imperial bastion, almost from the start. But other than Cuba, it's all gone. There are some thoughts in the early 1820's of a major expedition the Spanish might launch to make one more effort to reconquer the empire with help from France or others in the Holy Alliance. But it doesn't come to anything. So with Spanish America gone, a new chapter is going to unfold in which all these domains will fashion themselves into new countries, defining new identities as republics or even as new kinds of empires. It's that future we'll discuss next time. See you then.
