military victories against the British in the
Mississippi River valley during the war,
Spain viewed as its own the land running
along the east side of the river up to the
Ohio and Tennessee rivers. The
American government—and particularly
American settlers—ignored these claims,
recognizing that the Spanish had little
recourse. Finally in 1810 American set-
tlers in West Florida rebelled and estab-
lished an independent republic, which
the United States annexed over Spanish
protests. During the War of 1812
(1812–1815), an offshoot of the
Napoleonic Wars in which the United
States fought Britain over violations of
what the United States regarded as its
neutral shipping rights, Spain allowed
Britain to establish a naval base in
Pensacola, and American troops under
General Andrew Jackson drove the
British out. Later, in the First Seminole
War (1817–1819), Jackson invaded
Florida again to retaliate for border raids
by the Seminole.
By this time, with most of Spanish
America in rebellion, the last thing Spain
needed was a war with the United States
over Florida. So, in the Adams-Onís
Treaty of 1819, Spain agreed to cede East
Florida to the United States in return for
American agreement to assume payment
of up to $5 million in claims by American
citizens in Florida against Spain. In addi-
tion, the United States received recogni-
tion of its control of West Florida; Spain
gave up its claims to the Oregon
Territory; and the border between the
Louisiana Territory and New Spain was
settled, with American acknowledgement
that Texas was not part of Louisiana. In
1821 the United States took formal pos-
session of Florida, cutting away yet
another piece of Spanish America. The
rest of Spain’s once-great empire was
then already crumbling away.
Independence for
Spanish AmericaAfter three centuries during which
Spanish Americans mostly submitted
peacefully to colonial rule, Napoleon’s
1808 conquest of Spain was the spark that
ignited independence movements across
Spanish America. As Mexican patriot
Carlos María Bustamante put it,
“Napoleon Bonaparte... to you Spanish
America owes the liberty and independ-
ence it now enjoys. Your sword struck the
first blow at the chain which bound two
worlds.”
Yet the roots of Spanish colonial inde-
pendence movements lay deeper than
Napoleon. For years, Spanish Americans
had been developing a sense of regional
identity, of difference from their European
parent country. That sense was often cou-
pled with distaste for the imperial govern-
ment, which restricted and taxed
commerce for the benefit of the mother
country; was rife with corruption and inef-
fectiveness; and habitually assigned the
highest offices to peninsulares, people
born in Spain, rather than to criollos, or
creoles, people of Spanish descent born in
the Americas. Even in the late 18th centu-
ry, a German visitor, explorer Alexander
von Humboldt, noticed that Creoles “are
frequently heard to declare with pride, ‘I
am not a Spaniard, I am an American,’
words which reveal the symptoms of a
long resentment.”
Such attitudes were compounded by
the influence of Enlightenment philoso-
phy and political liberalism, vividly exem-
plified by the American and French
revolutions fresh in many Spanish-
American minds. Venezuelan-born
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), the principal
leader of the South American independ-
ence movement, was so inspired by
French political philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau that in his will he bequeathed to
the University of Caracas a copy of
Rousseau’s The Social Contract that had
belonged to Napoleon.
Mass social pressures were also fuel-
ing revolutionary sentiment. Father
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–1811),
the Mexican priest credited with begin-
ning Mexico’s struggle for independence,
sought to end the oppression of Native
Americans, who followed him in the hope
of relieving their poverty. Spanish-
American Creoles, who were themselves
a social and political elite, generally did
not respond well to demands for social
justice and equality from the non-
European or mixed-race masses. For
many Creoles who joined in the struggle
for independence, patriotism was tied to
making sure that their privileged place
would be protected in whatever new
nations were established.
The various tendencies toward revo-
lution came to a head in 1808, whenINDEPENDENCE IN THE NEW WORLD 71Francisco de Miranda
(Library of Congress)CHANGES
FOR BRAZIL
Brazil was not a Spanish colony, but it
too gained independence in the early
19th century. When Napoleon occu-
pied Portugal in 1807, the royal family
was forced to flee temporarily to the
Portuguese colony of Brazil. In 1821,
King John VI returned to a liberated
Portugal, leaving his son Pedro
(1798–1834) in Brazil as prince regent.
In 1822, Pedro ignored demands that
he return to Portugal, instead declar-
ing Brazil’s independence from
Portugal—with him as emperor—
rather than allowing it to return to
colonial status. In 1825, an agreement
between Portugal and Brazil was bro-
kered with help from Great Britain,
and Brazil was allowed to continue as
an independent kingdom.
Despite winning independence for
Brazil, Emperor Pedro I lost favor with
his subjects, largely because of a
series of landowner revolts. In 1831, he
was forced to abdicate the throne.
Over the next several decades, Brazil
was continually involved in costly
regional wars that weakened the
country while strengthening the mili-
tary. In 1888 the emperor was over-
thrown in a military coup and in 1889
Brazil became a republic.