ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical development of Latin America from the era in which new countries emerged out of the struggles for independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century until the birth of mass politics in the early twentieth century. The institution of slavery became an important mainstay of colonial society in some parts of Latin America and also had an enduring influence on political and economic development. Slave labour was the basis of colonial economic growth and the feudal social structures constructed around the large country estates of aristocratic Hispanic families. Ideas generated by the Enlightenment, the period of European philosophical development in the eighteenth century in which the emphasis on reason displaced that on spirituality, contributed to the tensions in Iberian America that would lead to the Independence revolts. The Enlightenment informed thinking in three main areas – Church–state relations, popular sovereignty, and national identity.
