The Gender Order of Postwar Politics: Comparing Spanish South America and Spain, 1810s-1850s

The Spanish American Wars of Independence, triggered by the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, the forced abdication of the Spanish King, and the Spanish War of Independence (known in English as the Peninsular War), resulted in the fall of the Spanish Empire and a wave of violence, social upheaval and political experimentation on a vast scale. The Wars of Independence in Spanish America—affecting an area from California in the north to Patagonia in the south—lasted some 16 years, from 1810 to 1826, and were arguably the most profound consequence of the Napoleonic Wars. These liberation wars were civil wars, and although belligerence against Spain ended in the 1820s, the wars continued through to the 1830s and in some regions into the 1870s and beyond. The new Spanish American republics did not take their final shape regarding borders, systems of government and institutions until after the mid-nineteenth century. [WorldCat]