The Latin American and American independence movements were caused in part by similar economic reasons. The Briti

The Latin American Wars of Independence were caused by similar political grievances. For two hundred years under the rule of Hapsburgs (1500s-1700), the colonies were neglected by Spain. “The Hapsburg imperial state had settled into a comfortable inertia which gave the creole oligarchies in practice what was denied to them in theory: access to the North Atlantic trading system and power to shape their societies largely to their own advantage”(Williamson 197). The highest positions in the colonial government, other than that of viceroy, were open to creoles. This had given the Spanish colonists a taste of political power. However, after the succession of the Bourbon dynasty, the Crown reasserted their authority, threatening colonial political autonomy. “Most of the posts in the old Hapsburg bureaucracy had come to be occupied by creoles, but Bourbon reformers now began to replace them with Spanish-born officials; the courts of the audiencia (high court), for instance, were gradually filled by peninsular judges”(Williamson 199). The Bourbon reforms eroded the loyalty of the creole aristocracy because they threatened the creole aspiration of exercising power within their own societies. The legitimacy of royal authority was eroded by the Bourbon reforms “in the eyes of sections of the Church, the Indians and the common people”(Williamson 204). In addition to the reassertion of authority in Spanish America by the Bourbons, the formation of independent juntas in the colonies was a cause of the independence movements. In Latin America, creole leaders, “anticipating the imminent collapse of Spain”(Keen 163) in the early 1800s during Napoleon Bonaparte’s takeover of Spain, considered how to turn these events in Europe to their own advantage. The creoles formed regional juntas in the name of the “beloved Ferdinand” in an attempt to take power into their own hands. The formation of these committees gave the colonists a taste of self-government during the political turmoil in Spain. The reassertion of power by the Spanish after decades of neglect and the formation of independent juntas in the colonies were important political causes of the independence movement.

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