Revolution!: The End of the Colonial Order, the Wars of Independence, and a Long Period of Discord (1806–1852)

This chapter begins with a description of the context prior to independence: the experience of the British invasions in Buenos Aires, the revolutionary wave in Europe, and the crisis in Spain following Napoleon’s invasion. Next it outlines the alternatives facing the revolution in Buenos Aires and other cities, the war against the royalists, the confrontations between patriot leaders and the Federalists and the Unitarians, the Declaration of Independence, and the dramatic changes that these all brought about in the colonial order. The final part of the chapter describes the rise of Juan Manuel de Rosas as a federalist caudillo and a strong man of a country that had not yet achieved a feasible constitutional order.