7 Aug 1819 — Bolívar’s army crossed flooded plains and a freezing 4,000-meter pass before meeting New Granada’s royalist army. In two hours, he destroyed it.
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Napoleon’s removal of Spain’s royal family in 1808 raised a problem across the empire. If the legitimate king could not rule, who could govern in his name? Spanish American juntas formed in 1810 and often professed loyalty to Ferdinand VII. In practice they took authority locally, leaving open how that authority would be shared if the king returned.
Why it happened — 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…
The turn — Ayacucho, 9 December 1824. On the high Andean plateau of Ayacucho on 9 December 1824, Sucre, aged 29, commanded an army commonly estimated at 5,800 against about 9,300…
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…
Then ask the room: Same age, same Enlightenment, similar wars — why did British America produce one durable federation and Spanish America a dozen fragile republics? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
