The Wars of Independence in Spanish America. CHRISTON I. ARCHER (ed.): Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000.

Abstract

The Spanish American wars of independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century have traditionally been a staple of Latin American historiography –think only of the hagiographies of many of the leading caudillos, the political histories of the era, and the historia patria tradition more generally. In recent years, however, there has been something of a boom in the literature as Latin American, United States, and European scholars have revisited the period and its antecedents from a number of new perspectives. Among the most salutary influences have been newer forms of social and cultural history emphasizing not only structural (that is, long-term socio-economic) factors, but also the lives of common people and the interventions such groups make in large political events, as well as anthropologized studies of peasants, in particular, and the problematics of large-scale guerrilla insurgencies. Most of these approaches are represented to some degree in this new anthology edited by Christon Archer, one of the leading modern historians of Mexican independence. The essays by contemporary scholars are drawn from published books and journal articles which originally appeared between 1968 and 1996, each introduced by a brief editor's paragraph setting them within a broader context. Although the emphasis in this interesting mixture of essays and primary-source readings is firmly on the military history of Mexico and the Bolivarian republics (Central America, Chile, and Argentina are left out, but one cannot do everything and hope for any depth of treatment, after all),