ABSTRACT
In the fifteenth century, Spain, Portugal, and France colonized the twenty countries of Latin America. Later, the United Kingdom, the United States, and China would develop trade relationships in the region that often disadvantaged Latin American countries. The conquest of the Americas by Spain and Portugal was the extension of a reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula that had taken place there in the preceding seven centuries. It is difficult to understate the impact of the slave trade on colonial economies. African slaves began arriving in present-day Latin America in the early sixteenth century. One of the main sources of independence sentiment was the growing rivalry between creoles and peninsulares. The immediate causes of Latin American independence were precipitated by events in Europe. Almost all of the independence movements in Latin America were conservative movements of separation from the mother countries rather than full-scale social or political revolutions.
