The decolonization of the Americas occurred over several centuries as most of the countries in the Americas gained their independence from European rule. The American Revolution was the first in the Americas, and the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) was a victory against a great power, aided by France and Spain, Britain's enemies. The French Revolution in Europe followed, and collectively these events had profound effects on the Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies in the Americas. A revolutionary wave followed, resulting in the creation of several independent countries in Latin America. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), perhaps one of the most successful slave uprisings in history, resulted in the independence of the French slave colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). The Peninsular War with France, which resulted from the Napoleonic occupation of Spain led to a power vacuum on the throne of Spain. The Spanish liberal revolution resulting from a power vacuum on the throne directly led to democratization in Spanish America, and caused Spanish Creoles to question their allegiance to Spain, stoking independence movements that culminated in various Spanish American wars of independence (1808–33), which were primarily fought between opposing groups of colonists and only secondarily against Spanish forces. At the same time, the Portuguese monarchy fled to Brazil during the French invasion of Portugal. 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 Empire of Brazil.
Spain would lose all three of its remaining Caribbean colonies by the end of the 1800s. Santo Domingo declared its first independence from Spain in 1821. The independent state was renamed Republic of Spanish Haiti. Haiti conquered the region shortly afterwards in 1822. Two decades later, in 1844, independence was proclaimed for the second time, and the Dominican Republic was established. This triggered the Dominican War of Independence (1844–56). In 1861, however, Spain regained control of the territory, and the colony was reestablished. The Dominican Restoration War (1863–65), the second war of liberation, led to the second independence from Spain, and the Dominican Republic's third and final independence. Cuba fought for independence from Spain in the Ten Years' War (1868–78) and Little War (1879–80) and finally the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98). 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. Under military occupation, Cuba became a U.S. protectorate until its independence in 1902.
Peaceful independence by the voluntary withdrawal of colonial powers then became the norm in the second half of the 20th century. However, there are still British and Dutch colonies in North America (mostly Caribbean islands). France has fully integrated most of its former colonies in the Americas (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique) as fully constituent Departments of France.
Conditions before revolution
During the 18th century, Spain recovered much of the strength it had lost in the 17th century but the country's resources were under strain because of the incessant warfare in Europe from 1793. This led to increased local participation in the financing of defense and increased participation in militias by the locally born. Such development was at odds with the ideals of the centralized absolute monarchy. The Spanish also made formal concessions to strengthen defense; In Chiloé, Spanish authorities promised freedom from the Encomienda for Indigenous locals who settled near the new stronghold of Ancud (founded in 1768) and contributed to its defense. The increased local organization of the defenses would ultimately undermine the metropolitan authority and bolster the independence movement.
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars fought between France (led by Napoleon Bonaparte) and alliances involving Britain, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Austria at different times, from 1799 to 1815.
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. This event disrupted the political stability of Spain and broke the link with some of the colonies which were loyal to the Bourbon Dynasty. 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". The juntas swore loyalty to the captive Fernando VII and each ruled different and diverse parts of the colony. Most of Fernando's subjects were loyal to him in 1808, but after he was restored to the Spanish crown in 1814, his policy of restoring absolute power alienated both the juntas and his subjects. He abrogated the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 and punished those who had supported it. The violence used by royalist forces and the prospect of being ruled by Fernando shifted the majority of the colonist population in favor of separation from Spain. The local elites reacted to absolutism in much the same way that the British colonial elites, Tory and Whig alike, had reacted to London's interference before 1775.
Spanish military presence in its colonies
The Bourbon army in Spanish America had the mission of defending the territory against hostile foreign powers. It consisted overwhelmingly of militias and, to a lesser extent, some veteran units. The militias, which included some veteran troops, were known as "disciplined militias." The few reinforcement expeditions from the Iberian Peninsula were intended to strengthen the veteran or garrison units (fortress garrisons). As a result, about 80% of the army was made up of local troops and officers, tied to the local elite. During the independence period, this colonial army split according to whether local elites supported the patriots or the royalists.
The royalist army, a supporter of Ferdinand VII of Spain, was an improvised organization and not the colonial army of the Spanish Empire; it had neither the same mission nor the same organization as that army had in the viceregal period. Nevertheless, it too was drawn from a broad cross-section of viceregal society, and Americans made up the majority of the forces on all fronts. Over the course of the conflict, the few expeditionary troops were replaced, as they suffered casualties, by American troops. In the final chapter of the war, which began with the Riego revolution of 1820, no more Spanish soldiers were sent to the wars in the Americas. In 1820 there were 3,500 expeditionary troops in New Spain, 2,000 in the Royal Army in Colombia and Venezuela, and 1,500 in Peru. Overall, Spaniards made up only 10% of all royalist armies, and only half of the soldiers in the expeditionary units were European. At the Battle of Ayacucho (1824), only 500 soldiers of the royalist army were Iberian, a number similar to the number of Europeans on the patriot side.
Other factors
The Enlightenment spurred the desire for social and economic reform to spread throughout the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula. Ideas about free trade and physiocratic economics were raised by the Enlightenment.
Independence movements in South America can be traced back to slave revolts in plantations in the northernmost part of the continent and the Caribbean. In 1791, a massive slave revolt sparked a general insurrection against the plantation system and French colonial power. These events were followed by a violent uprising led by José Leonardo Chirino and José Caridad González that sprung up in 1795 Venezuela, allegedly inspired by the revolution in Haiti.
Toussaint L'Ouverture was born a slave in Saint-Domingue where he developed labor skills that would give him higher privileges than other slaves. He intellectually and physically advanced resulting in promotion, land of his own, and owning slaves. In 1791, slaves in Haiti formed a revolution to seek independence from their French owners. L'Ouverture joined the rebellion as a top military official to abolish slavery without complete independence. However, through a series of letters written by Toussaint, it became clear that he grew open to equal human rights for all that live in Haiti. 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 letter details the great concerns he felt due to a conservative shift in France's legislature after the revolution in 1797. The greatest fear was that these conservative values could give ideas to the French Government to bring back slavery. 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?" Ultimately, slavery was abolished from French colonies in 1794 and Haiti declared Independence from France in 1804.
United States
The United States of America declared independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, thus becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas and the first European colonial entity to break from its mother country. Britain formally acknowledged American independence in 1783 after its defeat in the American Revolutionary War. The U.S. victory encouraged independence movements in other parts of the Americas.
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, through war with Mexico, and the annexation of Texas, and from the British, French, Spanish, and Russians in succeeding years under the mantle of Manifest Destiny. While ending European control over the region, these events resulted in the expansion of settler colonialism against Native nations, especially following the discovery of gold in regions such as the Dakotas and California, as well as opportunities for American settlers to claim farmland in the Great Plains. Land speculators and individual settlers both played a significant role in the expansion of America into what was then termed Indian Territory. American encroachment on Indigenous nations prompted the creation of several federations opposed to Manifest Destiny such as the Northwestern confederacy and Tecumseh's Confederacy.
Haiti and the French Antilles
The American and French Revolutions had profound effects on Spanish, Portuguese and French colonies in the Americas. Haiti, a French slave colony, was the first to follow the United States to independence, during the Haitian Revolution, which lasted from 1791 to 1804. Thwarted in his attempt to rebuild a French empire in North America, Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the United States and from then on focused on the European theater, marking the end of France's ambitions of building a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere.
Spanish America
Except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Spanish colonies in the Americas won their independence during the first quarter of the 19th century.
During the Peninsular War, Napoleon installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne and captured the King Fernando VII. The crisis of political legitimacy sparked a reaction in Spain's overseas empire. Several assemblies were established after 1810 by the Criollos (Latin Americans who are of full or near full Spanish descent) to recover sovereignty and self-government based on the Castilian law and to rule American lands in the name of Ferdinand VII of Spain.
This experience of self-government, along with the influence of Liberalism and the ideas of the French and American Revolutions, brought about a struggle for independence, led by the Libertadores. The territories freed themselves, often with help from foreign mercenaries and privateers. The United States and Europe were neutral, yet aimed to achieve political influence and trade without the Spanish monopoly.
In South America, Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín led the final phase of the independence struggle. Although Bolívar attempted to keep the Spanish-speaking parts of the continent politically unified, they rapidly became independent of one another as well, and several further wars were fought, such as the Paraguayan War and the War of the Pacific.
A related process took place in what is now Mexico, Central America, and parts of North America between 1810 and 1821 with the Mexican War of Independence. Independence was achieved in 1821 by a coalition uniting under Agustín de Iturbide and the Army of the Three Guarantees. 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). Most of the heat was during the official Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848.
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.
Argentina
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. Without a recognized king on the Spanish throne to render the office of the Viceroy legitimate, the right of Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros to govern came under fire. The local elites, tired of the Spanish trade restrictions and taxes, seized the opportunity and during the May Revolution of 1810, removed Cisneros and created the first local government, the Primera Junta.
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. The Argentine Constitution was signed in 1853, declaring the creation of the Argentine Republic.
Bolivia
Following upheaval caused by the May Revolution, along with the independence movements in Chile and Venezuela, a local struggle for independence kicked off with two failed revolutions. Over sixteen years of struggle followed before the first steps toward the establishment of a republic were taken.