Introduction

European colonialism in the Americas from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries was based on controlling the flow of wealth across the Atlantic, but change was inevitable. By the seventeenth century, economic, social, and cultural changes brought new, diverse cultures and, by the eighteenth century, new political ideals resulting in revolution.

In North America, the British colonies, allowed to develop largely on their own, evolved toward independence in reality as well as in state of mind. The American Revolution, based on Enlightenment principles, burst forward as the world's first republican independence movement and produced what has become the world's oldest written constitution.

In Latin America the American and French Revolutions held up the ideals of reform and independence. Revolutions in Latin America, in the midst of a poorer economy led by upper class elites, established governments plagued by economic chaos and racial and ethnic tensions. As Spain withdrew from the Western Hemisphere, the United States, backed by Great Britain, moved into the power vacuum by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.