Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment. Revised edition.

In overturning Spain's control of the Americas, such great military leaders as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín unleashed both civil wars and revolutions between 1810 and 1824. Sixteen nations emerged from these violent and cataclysmic wars. The liberators set themselves up to govern the new states they created but quickly failed as rulers. They succumbed, in part, to changes resulting from independence itself-a new political order.

Military campaigns directed against Spain split the c...