The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

After Bolivar's departure for Peru, a period of relative quiet ensued. Nevertheless, ambitious local politicians constantly intrigued against Santander, who in his turn was susp...

The last years of Spanish rule were the most prosperous Chile had known. A brisk coasting trade sprang into being; a small merchant marine grew up; the removal of the prohibitio...

Venezuela's conditions during colonial times produced a people possessing in the clearest and most accentuated form the characteristics distinctive of the Spanish Creole. Not mo...

The storm soon to burst over South America was gathering when Viceroy Abascal assumed the reins of power in 1806. He made no pretensions to statesmanship, but it did not escape...

Since 1873 the low prices of Chile's chief exports, wheat and copper, had turned the balance of trade against her. The government could not make both ends meet, and in 1878 the...

During the long campaigns by which his general, Quizquiz, had conquered Peru, Atahuallpa had never left the North. He received the news of the crowning victory and the capture o...

The long struggle against Spain accustoming Chileans to military service and uprooting the system under which the country had been ruled for centuries, necessarily placed the co...

If ever country began an independent existence without any basis for a strong, ordered, and stable government, that country was the Peru of 1826. The interior inhabited by India...

After his great victory at Ayacucho, Sucré advanced rapidly to Cuzco and thence into the Titicaca basin. By February he had reached Oruro in what is now central Bolivia, and Upp...

The nitrate region extends along the narrow desert coast of the Pacific for three hundred and fifty miles. Peru owned the northern one hundred and fifty, and prior to 1866 Boliv...

The edict of Charles V. conceded to Pizarro the territory for two hundred and seventy leagues south of the river on the Ecuador coast where the conquest had begun, and to Almagr...

For many centuries before the Spanish conquest and before the rise of the Incas a succession of great empires existed in Peru. Ruined edifices of unknown date prove that at some...

The Spanish occupation of Peru was a conquest, not a colonisation. The narrow plateau from Colombia to Chile and the adjacent dry valleys on the Pacific and in north-western Arg...

The stirring events of the year 1808 in Spain and the disorganisation of the monarchy produced great excitement in the New Granadan cities. When the news of the establishment of...

In 1822 Bolivar departed bent on the conquest of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, leaving a New Granadan vice-president as ruler of the great Colombian republic, of which Venezuela w...

When Alonso de Ojeda coasted along the Venezuelan shore in the spring of 1499 he stopped short just west of the Gulf of Maracaibo, near the present boundary between Venezuela an...

The irrigated valleys of Chile lie open to the ocean or are easily accessible over the low coast range. The sea-board of Peru is likewise defenceless, and though the Andean pass...

The fratricidal war lasting seven bloody years exhausted the resources of the northern and central provinces of the Inca empire, and raised the spirit of faction to a bitter pit...

President Rocafuerte was not only animated by revolutionary principles, imbued with liberal ideas, and a student of the best political and economic writers, but he proved to be...

About a century before Pizarro landed, Tupac Yupanqui, the greatest of the Inca conquerors, crossed the rough mountains, bleak plateaux, and waterless deserts which lie between...

Between latitudes fourteen and a half and twenty-three and a half, the mighty Andean chain is massed into a plateau five hundred miles wide, over twelve thousand feet high, and...

The South American war of independence began and ended on the plateau of Upper Peru. On Bolivia's soil the first blood of the great revolt was spilt and there the last Spanish s...

On his third voyage in 1498 Columbus sighted the Venezuelan coast just south of the Windward Islands. A year later, Alonso de Ojeda saw the mainland at about the same place and...

In 1564 the president arrived in state with all the trappings appropriate to his high rank. His powers were most ample; he was practically vicegerent of the Castilian king; his...

The beginning of the nineteenth century saw Spain involved to her ruin in the tremendous struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. Her fleets were destroyed at St. Vincent and...

At the head of a victorious army of Colombians and Argentines, Sucré could naturally do as he liked with Ecuador and an assembly of the people of Quito accepted incorporation in...

During the two hundred years which followed the Spanish conquest, life on the Bolivian plateau was vegetative and changeless except for the occasional excitement caused by the d...

This history begins when Pizarro and Almagro, Valdivia and Benalcazar, led their desperadoes across the Isthmus to the conquest, massacre, and enslavement of the prosperous and...

The Araucanian wars made Chile a school of arms for all South America. The appointment to its captaincy-general was eagerly sought by ambitious soldiers, and the place, especial...