Why did Spanish America split into many fragile republics?

The short answer

• A crisis at the imperial center. The first crisis was in Spain itself: the king was captive and the country a battlefield. Juntas claimed to be “conserving sovereignty for Ferdinand” while making decisions locally. That claim let them exercise power without yet declaring independence. Ferdinand’s absolutist restoration made it harder to accommodate those practices. A dispute over who could govern for the king became a struggle over whether his American subjects should remain under his rule.
• Creole grievances and divided aims. American-born elites had grievances against an imperial system in which peninsular Spaniards held prominent high offices. Ideas associated with 1776 and Cádiz also circulated among them. Yet many elites feared what might happen if Indigenous, mestizo and enslaved people mobilized for change of their own. Hidalgo’s rising exposed that fear; Peru’s elites had reasons to prefer royal protection to social upheaval. Independence and social revolution could therefore pull apart. Bolívar’s emancipation and Indian-tribute measures, encouraged by Haitian support, attempted to bring them together.
• Riego’s mutiny. An expedition was assembling at Cádiz to fight Buenos Aires when Colonel Riego led a mutiny in January 1820. The force did not sail. Its revolt began Spain’s liberal revolution: the American war had helped bring about a crisis in Spain, and that crisis in turn changed the course of the war across the Atlantic.
• British interests and American campaigns. British merchants saw opportunities in American markets. They supplied weapons and bought early republican bonds; British volunteers also fought, including the British Legion at Boyacá and Carabobo. British naval power discouraged European reconquest. Canning later boasted, “I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old”. The boast tells us about British policy, though it gives Britain more credit than it can claim for independence.

What it changed

Republics and regional commanders. By 1830 Gran Colombia had broken into Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador. Near the end of his life that year, Bolívar wrote, “I have ploughed the sea,”. The wars had strengthened local commanders in militarized provinces. Independence could be proclaimed, but governing those regions together required institutions that a proclamation could not immediately supply. Authority remained the subject of a long struggle.

The Monroe Doctrine and British power. Washington declared the Americas closed to new European colonization in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. British naval power also discouraged European intervention, in pursuit of Britain’s own interests. New commercial relationships followed independence: British loans, cloth and later railways brought finance and trade, while also creating possibilities for economic dependence. Freedom to seek finance left the terms of that finance to be negotiated.

Slavery ended unevenly. Emancipation followed different paths. Chile abolished slavery in 1823, Central America in 1824 and Mexico in 1829. Military service could bring freedom, and Bolívar acted imperfectly on his promise to Pétion. Brazil retained slavery, while Cuba’s sugar economy expanded under Spanish rule. Cuban planters’ fear of “another Haiti” helped keep them loyal to Spain, which ruled the island until 1898.

Losses for Spain and Portugal. Spain lost access to American resources, including silver, that had supported its power for centuries. Foreign intervention and the Carlist wars followed in Spain. Portugal, too, lost a major source of wealth with Brazil’s independence. Changes beyond Europe thus altered the position of powers whose European boundaries had been negotiated at Vienna.