Rafe Blaufarb
Arms for Revolutions: Demobilization after 1815 and Latin American Independence
Many Europeans in 1815 believed that the end of the Napoleonic Wars had ushered in an era of peace. Historians have concurred. There were, of course, wars during the decades after 1815. But these tended to be small and confined to Europe’s margins. Nothing as large as the Napoleonic Wars troubled European peace after 1815. But the situation was different across the Atlantic. Demobilization in Europe after 1815 released manpower and resources that tipped the balance of the ongoing struggle between insurgents and loyalists in Spanish America in favor of the former. By the end of 1815, Spanish loyalism had all but crushed insurgency in New Spain, Venezuela, and New Granada, and the insurgent leaders had fled. Within a year, however, they had returned and begun to win the victories that would bring down Europe’s largest and oldest overseas empire. Historians have never convincingly accounted for this reversal of fortunes. Their accounts, generally focusing on high-level politics, overlook something obvious which changed after 1815: the insurgents could procure significant amounts of weapons for the first time in their struggle. That, coupled with the influx of foreign volunteers, shifted the balance of power in Spanish American in favor of the insurgents. Demobilization in Europe after 1815 meant independence in Spanish America.
Professor Blaufarb holds the Ben Weider Eminent Scholar Chair and directs the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution at Florida State University. His research interests are Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the Latin American Independence. His book publications include: The French Army, 1750–1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (2002); Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Refugees and Exiles on the Gulf Coast, 1815–1835 (2005). His current research is on property in the French Revolution, the transatlantic slave trade, and the naval dimensions of the wars of Latin American independence.
