“War to the Death” in Venezuela and the Dissolution of Independent New Granada, 1813–15

During 1810–11, war in Venezuela and New Granada had started as “civic wars” in which contending towns mobilized armed forces to overawe rather than destroy the other. However, from 1812, wars in New Granada and Venezuela moved along new pathways. The pattern of limited “civic war” based in interurban and interregional competition persisted in New Granada, albeit with local variations. In Venezuela, by contrast, war took on more violent forms, as civic war turned into a more generalized civil war that unleashed social and racial conflict and mutated into a “war to the death.”