Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco was a Venezuelan statesman and military officer who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire. He is known colloquially as El Libertador, or the Liberator of America.
The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It achieved a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, Africa, various islands in Asia and Oceania, as well as territory in other parts of Europe. It was one of the most powerful empires of the early modern period, becoming known as "the empire on which the sun never sets". At its greatest extent in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Spanish Empire covered over 13 million square kilometres, making it one of the largest empires in history.
José Antonio Páez Herrera was a Venezuelan politician and military officer who served as the president of Venezuela three times. The first as the 5th president from 1830 to 1835, the second as the 8th president from 1839 to 1843, and the third as the 15th president from 1861 to 1863. He fought against the Spanish Crown for Simón Bolívar during the Venezuelan War of Independence. Páez later led Venezuela's independence from Gran Colombia.
Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, diplomat, poet, legislator, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture. Bello is featured on the old 2,000 Venezuelan bolívar and the 20,000 Chilean peso notes.
A caudillo is a type of personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise English translation for the term, though it is often used interchangeably with "military dictator," "warlord" and "strongman". The term is historically associated with Spain and Hispanic America, after virtually all of the regions in the latter won independence in the early nineteenth century.
A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique, was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact with those places. The term is a Spanish transliteration of the Taíno word kasike.
The Bolivian War of Independence began with the establishment of government juntas in Sucre and La Paz, after the Chuquisaca Revolution and La Paz revolution. These Juntas were defeated shortly after, and the cities fell again under Spanish control. The May Revolution of 1810 ousted the viceroy in Buenos Aires, which established its own junta. Buenos Aires sent three large military expeditions to Upper Peru, headed by Juan José Castelli, Manuel Belgrano and José Rondeau, but the royalists ultimately prevailed over each one. However, the conflict grew into a guerrilla war, the War of the Republiquetas, preventing the royalists from strengthening their presence. After Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre defeated the royalists in northern South America, Sucre led a campaign that was to defeat the royalists in Charcas for good when the last royalist general, Pedro Antonio Olañeta, suffered death and defeat at the hands of his own defected forces at the Battle of Tumusla. Bolivian independence was proclaimed on 6 August 1825.
The Venezuelan War of Independence was one of the Spanish American wars of independence of the early nineteenth century, when independence movements in South America fought a civil war for secession and against unity of the Spanish Empire, emboldened by Spain's troubles in the Napoleonic Wars.
The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment came to Spain in the 18th century with the new Bourbon dynasty, following the death of the last Habsburg monarch, Charles II, in 1700. The period of reform and 'enlightened despotism' under the eighteenth-century Bourbons focused on centralizing and modernizing the Spanish government, and improvement of infrastructure, beginning with the rule of King Charles III and the work of his minister, José Moñino, count of Floridablanca. In the political and economic sphere, the crown implemented a series of changes, collectively known as the Bourbon reforms, which were aimed at making the overseas empire more prosperous to the benefit of Spain.
The decolonization of the Americas occurred over several centuries as most of the countries in the Americas gained their independence from European rule. The American Revolution was the first in the Americas, and the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) was a victory against a great power, aided by France and Spain, Britain's enemies. The French Revolution in Europe followed, and collectively these events had profound effects on the Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies in the Americas. A revolutionary wave followed, resulting in the creation of several independent countries in Latin America. The Haitian Revolution lasted from 1791 to 1804 and resulted in the independence of the French slave colony. The Peninsular War with France, which resulted from the Napoleonic occupation of Spain, caused Spanish Creoles in Spanish America to question their allegiance to Spain, stoking independence movements that culminated in various Spanish American wars of independence (1808–33), which were primarily fought between opposing groups of colonists and only secondarily against Spanish forces. At the same time, the Portuguese monarchy fled to Brazil during the French invasion of Portugal. After the royal court returned to Lisbon, the prince regent, Pedro, remained in Brazil and in 1822 successfully declared himself emperor of a newly independent Brazilian Empire.
The Peruvian War of Independence was a series of military conflicts in Peru from 1809 to 1826 that resulted in the country's independence from the Spanish Empire. Part of the broader Spanish American wars of independence, it led to the dissolution of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru.
Santiago Mariño Carige Fitzgerald, was a nineteenth-century Venezuelan revolutionary leader and hero in the Venezuelan War of Independence (1811–1823). He became an important leader of eastern Venezuela and for a short while in 1835 seized power over the new state of Venezuela.
The Republic of Entre Ríos was a short-lived republic in South America in the early nineteenth century. Comprising approximately 166,980 km2 (64,470 sq mi) of what are today the Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes, the country was founded in 1820 by the caudillo General Francisco Ramírez and lasted only one year. On September 28, 1821, Lucio Norberto Mansilla was elected Governor of the Province of Entre Rios, and the Republic was subsequently dissolved.
The royalists were the people of Hispanic America and Europeans that fought to preserve the integrity of the Spanish monarchy during the Spanish American wars of independence.
The Spanish American wars of independence took place across the Spanish Empire in the early 19th century. The struggles in both hemispheres began shortly after the outbreak of the Peninsular War, forming part of the broader context of the Napoleonic Wars. The conflict unfolded between the royalists, who were defeated and favored a unitary monarchy, and the patriots, who won and promoted either plural monarchies or republics, separated from Spain and from each other. These struggles ultimately led to the independence and secession of continental Spanish America from metropolitan rule, which, beyond this conflict, resulted in a process of Balkanization in Latin America. Thus, the strict period of military campaigns ranges from the Battle of Chacaltaya (1809) in present-day Bolivia, to the Battle of Tampico (1829) in Mexico.
United Kingdom–Venezuela relations are the bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Venezuela since 1817 when so-called "British Legions" of former British soldiers fought to defend the Third Republic of Venezuela against Spanish royalists in the Venezuelan War of Independence.
Habsburg Spain was at the height of its power and cultural influence at the beginning of the 17th century, but military, political, and economic difficulties were already being discussed within Spain. In the coming decades these difficulties grew and saw France gradually taking Spain's place as Europe's leading power through the later half of the century. Many different factors, including the decentralized political nature of Spain, inefficient taxation, a succession of weak kings, power struggles in the Spanish court and a tendency to focus on the American colonies instead of Spain's domestic economy, all contributed to the decline of the Habsburg rule of Spain.
The Protectorate of Peru, also known as the Protectorate of San Martín, was a protectorate created in 1821 in present-day Peru after its declaration of independence from the Spanish Empire. The protectorate existed for one year and 17 days under the rule of José de San Martín and Argentina.
David Anthony Brading FRHistS, FBA was a British historian and Professor Emeritus of Mexican History at the University of Cambridge, where was an Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall and an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College. His work has been recognized with multiple awards including the Bolton Prize in 1972, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, and the Medalla 1808—both of which were awarded by the Mexican government—and the Medal of Congress from the Peruvian government in 2011.
