About this time, also, the French West India Company was incorporated, the brilliant finance minister of Louis XIV., Colbert, not liking to be without a hand in the game. He began in a more legitimate fashion than his competitors, and in 1664 purchased the rights of the settlers in Martinique, Guadalupe, St Lucia, Grenada, and a few other islands for about a million livres. Spanish tyranny, however, afforded an excuse for more high-handed proceedings, and the company secured a footing on the western side of Hispaniola, Spanish interests being concentrated almost entirely on the eastern. The settlements so established became little more than a rallying-point and shelter for buccaneers, who, in consequence of their roving habits, were difficult to eject, until eventually this intermittent occupation of a portion of the island induced France to lay claim to the whole, but the cession was only formally recognized by Spain more than a century later. Thus the four predominant powers of Europe all had a stake in the Western Hemisphere.
Nearly a hundred and fifty years elapsed without witnessing any further important changes. The very vastness of the Spanish-American empire was its principal protection. Europe was growing thoroughly accustomed to immense armies, but they could only be moved on land, and there was no means for transporting them across the sea. What chance was there then of conquering a territory which extended uninterruptedly from California to Chili, and from Florida to the Rio de la Plata, even had there been much inclination? The idea, it is true, occurred more than once, and especially in 1702, when—the death of Charles II. of Spain having brought to an end the Hapsburg dynasty, and the Wars of the Spanish Succession being entered upon—an alliance was formed between England, Holland and the German Empire for the conquest of the Spanish colonies, but like others it came to nothing. Again, in 1739, Spain, alarmed at the growing contraband trade, insisted very justifiably on searching English ships in American waters, but this was resented and led to war, in which Porto Bello was captured; and that had something to do with the permission granted a few years later to trade by the longer, but safer and more convenient route round Cape Horn.
Once more, in 1762, what was known as the Family Compact involved the rest of Europe in hostilities against the Bourbon dynasties in France, Spain, and Italy, and the war was carried both to the East and West Indies. Havana and Manila were captured by the English, and might have become English possessions, had not the Treaty of Paris, concluded in 1763, brought the campaign to an end, and made it a condition that all colonial conquests were to be restored to their original owners. Minor changes were frequent and numerous, but they were generally a mere shuffling of the cards between England, Holland, and France, leaving the Spanish possessions much as they were.
The eighteenth century, as it drew to its close, found the Spanish occupation of America almost as it had been in the first half of the seventeenth. Then a mighty upheaval was witnessed both in North America and Europe, and the War of Independence in the United States, together with the French Revolution, provide the sequel for what followed in South America. Scarcely a murmur was heard in the principal Spanish colonies while these great events were changing the destinies of the civilized world, and an onlooker who had time to think must have been astonished at their apparent loyalty to the mother country, oppressed though they had been, and still were, while everywhere else the blow for freedom was being struck. Perhaps another conclusion might have been arrived at; namely, that the ancient Spanish stock had so degenerated, and had become such a mean-spirited race, that it dare not act like its neighbors further north; but subsequent events disproved this hypothesis. The Girondists and the Mountain rose and fell; Napoleon became successively director, dictator, emperor—still no sign of movement. Then the moment arrived for the arch-disturber of Europe to overthrow the ancient monarchy of Spain, and to establish a brand-new one with his brother Joseph at its head. That was the supreme crisis to make a move, or forever to remain still. Spain almost to a man resented the affront. Spanish America joined the mother country, and refused to recognize the upstart dynasty.
Still, in the midst of this death-like calm, some presages of the coming storm were discernible. In the first place, France, by the Treaty of Basle in 1795, secured the cession of the whole of Hispaniola, only, however, in a few years to lose it again by its declaration of independence, and the formation of a black republic. In the naval conflicts so frequent during that disturbed period England both lost and gained. The Dutch and Spanish were both unwilling confederates of Napoleon, but their connection with him, nevertheless, exposed their foreign possessions to the attack of his declared enemies; and England captured Demerara and Essequibo in Guiana from the former, and the island of Trinidad from the latter. All these were trivial acquisitions, compared with the vast extent of Mexico and Central America, Peru, and New Granada, and the eastern province of Buenos Ayres. Brazil had reverted to Portugal with the firm establishment of the Braganza dynasty, and was nearly all there was left of its once great colonial empire. In March, 1808, the ill fortune of the royal family drove them from their own kingdom to find refuge beyond the seas, and Brazil became an independent empire under the fugitive Portuguese sovereign, whose descendants remained in peaceable and prosperous possession until the revolution which dethroned the late ill-fated Dom Pedro.
These changes were due entirely to foreign intervention and not to domestic unrest. The first sign of this was when Francisco Miranda, a Spanish-American who had fought under Washington, conceived the idea of freeing his fellow-countrymen, and took steps toward that end by founding a “Gran Reunion Americana” in London in 1806. But so unresponsive were the inhabitants of the Spanish Main that the first active movement of the league resulted in dead failure. It attracted the sympathy and support, however, of two active and capable men, Bolivar and San Martin, who were destined to do so much for the emancipation of South America from European bondage, and whose advent brought a rapid change in the feeling of indifference with which the movement was regarded.
Still, the loyalty of the colonists might have been proof against their blandishments had the government of Ferdinand VII., established at Cadiz in opposition to that of Joseph Bonaparte, shown itself in any way conciliatory toward them. Loyal though the Spaniards at home were to the Bourbon dynasty, they were only willing to rally round it on condition of the carrying out of many important reforms in consonance with the spirit of the age; and the colonists likewise demanded that, as the price of their adhesion, they should be put upon an equality with Spain, and be accorded perfect liberty in their agricultural and manufacturing industries; that trade should be thrown open between all the countries on the American Continent and with the Philippines; and that all restrictions and monopolies should be abolished, and fixed duties substituted in their place. Reasonable though these demands now appear, they were indignantly rejected, and with one consent nearly every country in Spanish America was ablaze with revolution.
One of the earliest outbreaks was in Mexico, the near proximity of the United States having perhaps inspired in that country a more intense longing for freedom than elsewhere. A small band of patriots had for some time been watching an opportunity for asserting themselves, and with Hidalgo and Allende at their head, took the extreme step of issuing a declaration of independence on the 16th of September, 1810. Spanish influence was still strong; and in less than a year the outbreak was suppressed, and the leaders executed. Others rose to take their places, and just three years after the declaration of independence, the first Mexican Congress was summoned to meet at the town of Chilpantzongo, which was in the hands of the insurgents. Morelos, the principal actor at this stage of the drama, was captured and shot in December, 1815; but that only imposed a temporary check on the movement. In the delusive hope of regaining full control, Ferdinand, then firmly re-established on his throne, offered concessions in 1820, but it was too late, and they failed to effect a pacification. Independence was once more declared in 1821, but this time at the instigation of a dictator who aimed at founding an empire for himself, and who did for a short period sway the destinies of his country as the Emperor Iturbide I. His reign was brief, and a republic was definitely established on the 16th of December, 1823, the subsequent career of which has been so checkered until quite recent times. Having been recognized by the principal courts of Europe, Spain itself accredited an embassador in 1839, and made no further efforts to reassert its former title.
Elsewhere the struggle was less prolonged, though, while it lasted, quite as exciting. At the instigation of Bolivar, Venezuela proclaimed its independence in July, 1811, and several years later united with New Granada as the Republic of Colombia. Buenos Ayres established a junta in 1810, a Constituent Assembly was called in January, 1813, and entire independence of Spain was declared, July, 1816. The insurrection in Chili likewise began in 1810, when a National Congress was summoned to meet at Santiago; but the Spanish interest was strong on the west coast, and it was not until San Martin crossed the Andes from La Plata in 1817 that independence was made good. Material assistance was afforded by the famous Admiral Cochrane (Lord Dundonald), who, driven in disgrace from his native country, placed his services at the disposal of the revolting Chilians, and gave them that naval pre-eminence in South America which they have ever since retained.
Peru proved an even tougher job, but the combined forces of San Martin and Cochrane proved irresistible, and both Lima and Callao were taken in 1821. Lima, however, was recaptured by the Spaniards in 1823, but Bolivar, marching against it from Colombia, was appointed dictator, and gained so decisive a victory in 1824 that the Spanish army was forced to capitulate, and by 1826 the connection with the mother country was completely and finally severed. Spain had vainly striven against these successive misfortunes, and in 1815 sent out a considerable force under Marshal Morillo, who gained a few temporary successes; but his cruelties and atrocious conduct only exasperated the colonists, and instigated them to greater exertions. The various countries of Central America were quietly federated into the Republic of Guatemala in 1823, in the absence of any Spanish troops to oppose; and thus, from the northern borders of Mexico to the southern confines of Chili and La Plata, the conquerors of the New World were forever ejected. England was the first to recognize the South American republics, and entered into commercial treaties with several of them in 1825, after which date Spain can no longer be said to have been able to claim ownership of a single acre on the American Continent.