El fin de la dependencia hispanoamericana

Abstract

This article analyses the remote and direct causes which gave birth to the independence movement in Hispanoamérica. It describes particularly the situation in the Americas during the reign of the Habsburgs, based on tolerance and concealment scheme enshrined in the Indian Law, and the change in the policy during the eighteenth century with the advent of the House of Bourbon, when a closed unifying and centralizing absolutism, which ignores the particularities of the Americas, tried to transform the ancient kingdoms into colonies. This attempt produced a crisis that ended up with the uprising and independence of most of the colonies once Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula made it possible.