Title: What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions? - eNotes.com
Headings: What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions?
Latin American History
What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions?
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Content: From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Spain was in control of one of the largest empires in world history. Naturally, all the wealth that came from its American colonies made Spain extremely wealthy and powerful. This largely came through a royal tax of one-fifth of all that was produced in the colonies. However, after Spain lost most of its American colonies to revolutions in the early nineteenth century, its status as a seemingly invincible imperial power crumbled. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Spain would become increasingly weaker as it lost more and more of its imperial holdings around the world, some through revolution and others by conquest from other imperial powers. By the century's end, Spain controlled only a small percentage of its former empire (mostly in Africa) with no land under its control in the Americas. By 1824, most of the Americas (besides Canada) was free of European rule. This firmly enshrined the notion of popular sovereignty in the hemisphere. Despite Simon Bolivar's vision of a united South America, the region quickly established itself into individual independent states, illustrating how people in the region developed identities of themselves as distinct nations and populations in a very short amount of time. Further Reading
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv105bb41
Last Updated by eNotes Editorial on February 26, 2021
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If the short-term effects of the Latin American revolutions of the nineteenth century were generally positive, the long-term consequences were somewhat less so.