The South American Republics, Part 1 of 2

Every intelligent man in Brazil had long recognised the force of the permanently working causes which were undermining the empire. Affonso Celso, in 1902 considered the ablest a...

General Mitre's administration is memorable for the beginning of that tremendous industrial development which in thirty years made Argentina, in proportion to population, the gr...

Belgrano followed up his victory at Tucuman by another invasion of the Bolivian plateau. Even to a trained general and a regular army such a campaign would have been difficult....

The Viceroyalty was a heterogeneous mass. The common subjection of its component parts to the Viceroy gave it a mere appearance of cohesion. The centring of the commercial curre...

For half a century, from 1812 to 1862, the story of Argentina is one of almost continual civil wars, of disturbances, and armed revolutions affecting every part of the Republic....

Independence was the result of a plan carefully arranged by Jose Bonifacio and his Brazilian associates. Pedro had declared himself emperor in an access of dramatic enthusiasm....

Montevideo was founded in 1726 and became the nucleus of the Spanish settlements which have grown into the modern country of Uruguay. Except Colonia, the only Portuguese settlem...

The new President was thirty-five years old, good-looking, careful of his appearance, fond of military finery, and strutted as he walked. He spoke French and Spanish fluently, b...

The greatest name in the history of Buenos Aires during the early years of the seventeenth century is that of Hernandarias Saavedra. Of distinguished ancestry and pure Spanish b...

From 1808 to 1837 the tendency had been in the direction of democracy and decentralisation. Then the tide turned and from 1837 to the Paraguayan war the central government grew...

The most fertile parts of the globe have always been fought for the most. Uruguay has been the Flanders of South America. Her admirable commercial position at the mouth of the r...

After Pedro's expulsion the country was left in a very insecure situation. In Rio the Portuguese were as numerous as the native Brazilians. A great part of the population was un...

The beginnings of the settlements in Paraguay have been sketched in the introductory chapter on the discoveries and conquest. In 1526, Cabot, searching to find a route to the go...

The overthrow of Rosas and Oribe marked the end of the effort to re-incorporate Uruguay with the Argentine Confederation. Uruguay was no longer in peril from foreign aggression,...

By the end of the sixteenth century Holland was practically independent, and the "Beggars of the Sea" were carrying her arms and trade all over the world. Numerous private compa...

Spain, as a world-power, reached her apogee in the year 1580, when Juan de Garay founded Buenos Aires. In that year Portugal was united to the Spanish Crown, and the East Indies...

We have no accounts of the Jesuit missions in Guayra, or of the tragedy of their destruction, except those that were written by the Fathers themselves. These are filled with man...

After forty years of struggle no formula had been found which would satisfy the aspirations for local self-government and at the same time secure the external union so essential...

Four years before Maurice's retirement Portugal broke loose from Spain, and that part of Brazil which had escaped conquest by the Dutch promptly threw off the Spanish yoke. In E...

With the treaty of San Ildefonso, Uruguay began her real existence. Montevideo was made the greatest fortress on the Atlantic coast, commanded by its own military governor, stro...

Cabral's discovery bequeathed to the Portuguese race one of the largest, most productive, and valuable political divisions of the globe. The area is 3,150,000 square miles--larg...

The permanent settlement of Brazil was begun by deserters and mutineers set on shore from ships on their way to India or to cut brazil-wood. In 1509 a certain Diego Alvarez, nic...

The political development of colonial Brazil may be divided into three epochs. First, there was the confusion of early colonisation, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a syst...

On the 25th of May, 1810, a revolutionary movement in Buenos Aires overthrew the Spanish Viceroy. Its leaders were young Creole liberals, natives of Buenos Aires, and a junta wa...

On the 9th of March, 1500, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman of illustrious birth, but not yet distinguished by any notable feats in war or seamanship, sailed from Lis...

After the final pacification of the country prosperity came with a rush. In the six years from 1849 to 1856 foreign commerce more than doubled. The circulating medium was brough...

The rapid decadence of Spain itself during the reigns of the last kings of the House of Austria was reflected in the colonies. With the accession of the Bourbons a forward movem...

South from where the great mass of the Bolivian Andes shoves a shoulder to the east, as if seeking to join the Brazilian mountain system, and from where a low ridge stretches ou...

Brazilian statesmen might well have been pardoned if, in 1865, they had claimed for their country the hegemony of South America. The result of the war against Rosas had been bri...

In 1820 the standard of revolt was raised in Cadiz against the Spanish Bourbons, who, with the aid of the Holy Alliance, had re-established absolutism after the fall of Napoleon...

The so-called Liberals went into power on the declaration of the Emperor's majority, and proved to be more tyrannical and centralising than the Conservatives whom they had repla...

Once the breath was out of the old man's body, his secretary attempted to seize the government. He concealed Francia's death for several hours and issued orders in the dead man'...

The early attempts to find gold and silver had not been successful. A little gold was found in Sao Paulo in the sixteenth century, but no great discoveries were made until nearl...

The motherland of Brazil is Portugal. Profound as were the changes incident to transplanting a people to a virgin continent; notwithstanding Spanish dominion and Dutch conquests...

In 1581 Philip II. of Spain succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of Portugal as the successor of the rash Sebastian, dead fighting the Moors at Alcacer-Kebir. The dec...

In 1680 the governor of Rio de Janeiro sent some ships and a force of soldiers to the Plate, with orders to occupy a point on the north bank in the name of the king of Portugal....

During Duarte's administration troubles with the Indians broke out along the whole coast. In Bahia itself the new governor had disobeyed the orders of the home government to pro...

Except for an expedition against the remnants of the once formidable Charrua Indians, the first two years of independence passed in peace. Since the expulsion of Artigas, the co...

In 1621 the northern provinces, Ceara, Maranhao, and Para, had been separated from the rest of Brazil and erected into an independent government called the State of Maranhao. In...

One of John III.'s strongest reasons for undertaking a more extensive colonisation of Brazil was the pious conviction that it was his Christian duty to promote the dissemination...

In the beginning of 1825 a group of patriots met in Buenos Aires and planned an invasion of Uruguayan territory. Word was sent to different chiefs in the country districts, and...

No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation as Paraguay during her five years' war against the Triple Alliance. Out of two hundred and fifty thousand able-bo...