Decolonization of the Americas

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.

American intervention in 1898 became the Spanish–American War and resulted in the United States gaining Puerto Rico, Guam (which are still U.S. territories), and the Philippine Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

In the case of Spain and its colonies, in May 1808, Napoleon captured Carlos IV and King Fernando VII and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as Spanish monarch.

The local elites, the creoles, took matters into their own hands organizing themselves into juntas to take "in absence of the king, Fernando VII, their sovereignty devolved temporarily back to the community".

Similar to how the United States Constitution was ratified, the enlightenment ideas of equality and representation of the people created an impact of change against the status quo that sparked the revolution.

The enlightenment has proven to forever change the way a captive society thinks after L'Ouverture refuses to let the French send him and his people back into slavery.

"[W]hen finally the rule of law took the place of anarchy under which the unfortunate colony had too long suffered, what fatality can have led the greatest enemy of its prosperity and our happiness still to dare to threaten us with the return of slavery?"

Although initially occupying only the land east of the Mississippi between Canada and Florida, the United States would later eventually acquire various other North American territories from the British, French, Spanish, and Russians in succeeding years under the mantle of Manifest Destiny.

Unity was maintained for a short period under the First Mexican Empire, but within a decade the region fought against the United States over the borderlands (losing the bordering lands of California and Texas).

[6] In 1898, in the Greater Antilles, the United States won the Spanish–American War and occupied Cuba and Puerto Rico, ending Spanish territorial control in the Americas.

After the defeat of Spain in the Peninsular War and the abdication of King Ferdinand VII, the Spanish colonial government of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, present-day Argentina, majority of Bolivia, parts of Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, became greatly weakened.

Following half a decade of battles and skirmishes with provincial royalist forces within the former Vice-royalty along with military expeditions across the Andes to Chile, Peru and Bolivia led by General José de San Martín to finally end Spanish rule in America, a formal declaration was signed on 9 July 1816, by an assembly in San Miguel de Tucumán, declaring full independence with provisions for a national constitution.

With the innovations produced by the constitutional system, the freedom of the press and the exaltation of the parties, which were born in the popular elections, opinion in favor of independence spread.

The trustee of the Guatemala City Council, Mr. Mariano Aycinena, requested an extraordinary session to present a petition in order to proclaim independence.

In the Viceroyalty of New Spain, as elsewhere in Spanish America in 1808, people reacted to the unexpected French invasion of the Iberian peninsula and the ouster of the Bourbon king, replaced by Joseph Bonaparte.

A few from among the creole elites sought independence, including Juan Aldama, Ignacio Allende, and the secular parish priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.

Hidalgo made a proclamation in his home parish of Dolores, which was not recorded in writing at the time, but denounced the bad government and gachupines (pejorative for peninsular-born Spaniards), and declared independence.

Juan O'Donojú,the final Viceroy of New Spain, and Iturbide settled a treaty in Córdoba which recognized Mexico as independent from the Spanish Empire.

Paraguay gained its independence on the night of May 14 and the morning of May 15, 1811, after a plan organized by various pro-independence nationalists including Fulgencio Yegros and José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia.

After independence, the conflicts of interests that faced different sectors of Creole Peruvian society and the particular ambitions of the caudillos, made the organization of the country excessively difficult.

Only three civilians — Manuel Pardo, Nicolás de Piérola, and Francisco García Calderón — acceded to the presidency in the first seventy-five years of Peru's independence.

Following the events of the May Revolution, in 1811 José Gervasio Artigas led a successful revolt against the Spanish forces in the Provincia Oriental, now Uruguay, joining the independentist movement that was taking place in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata at the time.

With neither side gaining the upper hand and the economic burden of the war crippling the United Provinces economy, the Treaty of Montevideo was signed in 1828, fostered by Britain, declaring Uruguay as an independent state.

[12] According to the Encyclopedia Americana of 1865, General Francisco de Miranda, already a hero to the French, Prussians, English, and Americans had garnered a series of successes against the Spanish between 1808 and 1812.

He had effectively negated their access to all the ports in the Caribbean, thus preventing them from receiving reinforcements and supplies, and was essentially conducting mopping-up operations throughout the country.

Through what amounts to a gross dereliction of duty, Simon Bolívar neglected to enforce the customary security dispositions before departing to a social event.

During the night there was an uprising of the Spanish prisoners and they managed to subdue the Independentist garrison and gain control of the supplies, arms and ammunition, and the port.

After the capitulation of 1812, Simón Bolívar turned over Francisco de Miranda to the Spanish authorities, secured a safe passage for himself and his closest officers, and fled to New Granada.

Turning the tide against independence, these highly mobile, ferocious fighters made up a formidable military force that pushed Bolívar out of his home country once more.

King João VI was forced back to Lisbon in 1821 by the Portuguese Cortes but left his son Dom Pedro behind to run Rio.