My research will focus on the independence movements in the viceroyalties of New Granada and Peru leading up to, during and following the Napoleonic Wars and the invasion of Spain in Europe. I want to mostly focus on the movements led by Simon Bolivar that resulted in the creation of Gran Colombia, and examine what caused his independence movements to be so successful, at least in their goal of separating these regions from the authority of the Spanish crown. I plan to examine the cultural background of the area that would soon become Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, explore the revolutionary sentiment that arose there, and discuss Bolivar’s role and motivation in leading those goals of independence to fruition.

Primary source:

https://archive.org/details/memoirssimonbol00holsgoog/page/n77

‘Memoirs of Simon Bolivar, President Liberator of the Republic of Colombia’ by H.L.V. Ducoudray Holstein.

Secondary sources:

LYNCH, JOHN. Simón Bolívar (Simon Bolivar): A Life. Yale University Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npnhh.

Simon, Joshua. “SIMÓN BOLÍVAR’S REPUBLICAN IMPERIALISM: ANOTHER IDEOLOGY OF AMERICAN REVOLUTION.” History of Political Thought 33, no. 2 (2012): 280-304. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26225770.

Roberts, W. Adolphe. “Great Men of the Caribbean 2. Simón Bolívar.” Caribbean Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1949): 4-8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652462.

Bushnell, David. “The Gran Colombian Experiment (1819–1830).” In The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself, 50-73. University of California Press, 1993. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt4cgf7g.6.