This lecture outlines the plan and logic of the course and puts forth its major themes, along with an explanation of the critical difference between the concepts of revolution and wars for independence.
Important transformations have shaped the Atlantic world by the middle of the 18th century, including the Enlightenment, the revolution in commerce and trade, and the Industrial Revolution.
Professor Eakin surveys the dimensions and key characteristics of the large empires that Spain, Portugal, France, and England had established in the Americas by the middle of the 18th century.
After surveying the origins of the Thirteen Colonies, as well as their similarities and differences, Dr. Eakin traces the emergence of the colonies' unity and their movement toward independence.
Here we find a chronicle of the course of the fighting during our own U.S. revolution, from the action at Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.
Here we consider a debate that still rages after more than 200 years: Was the American Revolution really a radical break with a monarchial past, or did it represent a conservative effort by planters to seize power and control the development of an already divided society?
This is the first half of a two-part examination of the only successful slave rebellion in the Americas, including the impact of the American and French Revolutions, the two most important influences on Latin American revolutionaries after 1789.
Over more than a decade, Haiti's rebellious slaves, along with some free blacks, manage to defeat invading armies from France, England, and Spain, with implications that will continue to resonate throughout the Americas.
By 1750, the Spanish Empire in the Americas has been in place for two-and-a-half centuries and is straining to survive. This lecture begins an examination of the wars for independence faced by Spain.
Although modernization and reform have set the stage for the wars for independence, it is the Napoleonic Wars—especially Napoleon's invasion of Spain when he sparked rebellion by removing King Fernando VII from power in 1808—that trigger Spanish America's wars for independence.
This lecture introduces the most glamorous and dashing figure in the wars for independence, whose life and work foreshadow the generation of leaders who will lead those wars and who mentors the most famous of those liberators.
Professor Eakin looks closely at the life of the most famous of Latin America's revolutionary figures, comparing and contrasting him as the "George Washington" of a half-dozen South American nations.
Bolivar overcomes a disastrous early failure and exile in the Caribbean to liberate Venezuela and the rest of northern South America in a bloody struggle that will consume more than a decade.
The struggle for independence in Argentina and Uruguay revolves around the figure of José de San Martin, the southern South American counterpart of Bolivar.
The illegitimate son of the Irish-born former viceroy of Peru, who struggled to win the recognition denied him by his father, Bernardo O'Higgins emerges as the great military hero of Chilean independence.
The liberation of Peru, the great Spanish stronghold in South America, is accomplished from two directions, with Bolivar leading the attack from the north and San Martin from the south.
Professor Eakin looks at the first of two stages in the war for Mexican independence—the race and class war that begins in 1810 and which is the ultimate nightmare of the Latin American elites.
In the aftermath of social revolution and racial war, Spaniards and Creoles close ranks to preserve peace, but events in Europe spark a second war for independence.
The path to independence taken by Brazil, despite being similar in many ways, differs from that taking place in Spanish America in crucial respects.
Some American colonies, despite the successful wars for independence taking place around them, do not achieve independence in this era. This lecture looks at Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the troubled case of the Dominican Republic.
Professor Eakin looks closely at the British West Indies and Canada, two more counterpoints to the successful wars of revolution and independence swirling around them.
Perhaps the most unusual country in Latin America in the 19th century, Paraguay was led by the authoritarian José Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, who forced it to turn inward in isolation.
Professor Eakin returns to the "big picture" of the age of revolutions, examining the processes at work and comparing the revolutions of the Americas.
The course concludes with a wide-angle look at the Americas in the aftermath of the wars for independence, and reflect on the legacies left by these wars for the many peoples of the Americas.