Spanish Empire

(Today part: Spain (excluding Catalonia), parts of Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Cuba, parts of the United States (Flordia)

France first occupied Portugal (1807), without whose reliable control the continental blockade of Great Britain could not function, and then the Spanish royal family (1808) was overthrown and Napoleon appointed his brother. The long-standing one (1808-14) soon breaks out. the anti-Napoleonic war, which was at the same time a civil future, as opposed to the "patriots", there were also supporters of Napoleon's reforms, called the Afrancesados. Among the "patriots", however, one must distinguish especially anti-revolutionary traditionalists (among the lower clergy, rural nobility and the people) and the liberals who adopted in Cadiz (1812) a constitution that would somewhat restrict the power of the Spanish monarch. With the strong resistance of the Conservative people, led by royalists and clergy, and the emergence of Spanish nationalism, which came into conflict with foreign French rule, Napoleon failed to occupy the entire peninsula. A pious people like the Spaniards could not accept the French revolutionary reforms and rose to defend their church and rulers with weapons from foreigners and the ungodly. Satisfied with the life God had given them, under the rulers granted them the "grace of God", they were simple, moral, peaceful and immune to the destructive effect of reason. However, after the defeat of Napoleon and the return to the throne, the king reestablishes the forbidden Inquisition and absolute monarchy, repealing the constitution of Cadiz.

At the same time as Napoleon's conquest of Spain, nationalist movements in Latin America (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc.) began to struggle to separate from central Spanish rule in Madrid. Colonialism was the main cause of nation-building in Latin America, and the administrative provinces of the Spanish and Portuguese empires formed the basis and boundaries of the new nation-states there, and therefore of their nations.