Independence in the Americas — revolutionary wars and new states

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Early volunteer militias were repeatedly defeated by Spain's disciplined troops; professional, trained armies with European veteran officers could hold their own in sustained campaigns.

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The llanos are Venezuela's vast tropical grassland plains; Bolívar recruited its tough cavalrymen (llaneros), led by José Antonio Páez, turning a former royalist stronghold into a decisive patriot fighting force.

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San Martín led the Army of the Andes across the mountains into Chile, achieving total surprise and defeating royalist forces at the Battle of Chacabuco.

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Bolívar and San Martín met privately to decide who would complete the liberation of Peru; San Martín chose to withdraw from politics, leaving Bolívar to finish the campaign.

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It forced King Ferdinand VII to abdicate, triggering a legitimacy crisis across the empire and draining Spanish resources into the Peninsular War instead of the Americas.

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In 1816, independent Haiti gave Bolívar refuge, ships, and weapons in exchange for his promise to free enslaved people in the territories he liberated.

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Bolívar wanted a strong, sometimes lifetime president and one unified Gran Colombia, fearing federalism would cause fracture; federalists wanted power shared between regions, appealing to local elites — the clash caused prolonged instability.

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A viceroyalty was a large territory ruled on the Spanish king's behalf by a viceroy; when independence came, these old administrative lines became new international borders that rarely matched ethnic or economic reality.

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Bolívar's attempt to unite the new American republics into a league of states failed, as most delegates did not even attend — showing how weak regional unity remained even at its most hopeful moment.

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Gran Colombia dissolved into Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador by 1831 after Bolívar resigned; it shows his centralist state-building project largely failed despite his military success.

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Centuries of loyalty to the Spanish king, local towns, or social class (not a nation); and the inheritance of arbitrary colonial borders that did not match ethnic or economic reality.

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Whether Spain's own collapse (Napoleon's invasion, the Peninsular War, the 1820 constitutional crisis) explains victory more than the military skill and cooperation of patriot leaders like Bolívar and San Martín.