Period 5: Latin America Flashcards
What was Haiti?
- a French island colony in the Caribbean
- the French exported coffee, sugar, cocoa, and indigo from Haiti to Europe
- French colonists owned large plantations and slaves who grew these crops under horrible conditions
Who was Pierre Toussaint L’Ouverture?
- a former slave
- led a violent, lengthly, but successful slave revolt in 1801
What did Napoleon do in response to Pierre Toussaint L’Ouverture’s slave revolt?
Napoleon sent 20,000 troops to put down the revolt but the Haitians were capable fighters and yellow fever claimed many French lives. The French managed to capture and imprison L’Ouverture but it was too late.
Who was Jacques Dessalines?
- L’Ouverture’s lieutenant
- former slave
- proclaimed Haiti a free republic in 1804 which became the first independent nation in Latin America
- named himself governor-general for life
Who was Joseph Bonaparte?
- Napoleon’s brother
- appointed by Napoleon to the Spanish throne when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808
How did the Spanish colonists react to Bonaparte’s reign in Spain?
- decided to remain loyal to their Spanish king and not recognize the French regime under Bonaparte
- ejected Bonaparte’s governor in Venezuela and appointed their own, Simon Bolivar
Who was Simon Bolivar?
- appointed by the Spanish colonists as their leader
- tutored on the republican ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- helped establish a national congress in 1811 which declared independence from Spain
- wily and effective military leader
- won freedom for Gran Colombia (Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela)
Who were Royalists?
- supporters of the Spanish crown
- declared civil war when Simon Bolivar’s national congress declared independence from Spain
Who was Jose de San Martin?
- an American-born Spaniard (or Creole)
- served as an officer in the Spanish army
- took command of the Argentinian armies in 1814
- joined with Bernardo O’Higgins of Chile and took the revolutionary movement through Argentina, Chile, and Peru where he joined with Simon Bolivar
- rip Spanish forces by 1820s
Who was John VI?
- the Portuguese king in 1807
- fled to Brazil when Napoleon invaded Portugal and set up his royal court in exile
- returned to Portugal in 1821 when Napoleon had been defeated
- left behind his son Pedro to run the colony who declared Brazilian independence and crowned himself emperor
Who was Pedro II?
- John VI’s grandson aka Pedro’s son
- took over throne in 1831
- reformed Brazilian society and turned it into a major exporter of coffee
- abolished slavery in 1888 under the direction of his daughter Isabel which caused the landowning class to revolt against the monarchy and establish a monarchy in 1889
Who was Miguel Hidalgo?
- a Creole priest in Mexico who sympathized with those who had been abused under Spanish colonialism
- led a revolt against Spanish rule in 1810
- the Spanish armies resisted effectively and put down the revolt at Calderon Bridge where Hidalgo was executed
- actions put the revolution in motion
Who was Jose Morelos?
- led the revolutionaries to further successes against the loyalists after Hidalgo’s execution
- landowning class turned against him when he said he wanted to redistribute land to the poor (similarly to Pedro II in Brazil)
- executed
What was the Treaty of Cordoba?
- 1821
- Spain was forced to recognize that its 300-year-old domination of Latin America was coming to an end
- Mexico was granted its independence and Central America soon followed
How did Latin America compare to the United States after the independence movements?
- slavery still existed for decades in both Latin America and the U.S.
- a significant middle class of merchants and small farmers didn’t emerge in Latin America
- many of the Enlightenment ideas had only influenced the educated elite in Latin America
- this was because the Catholic Church remained powerful in Latin America and protected the status quo
- Latin America depended on trade with Europe and thus economies didn’t diversify resulting to a lack of innovation
