The Gender Order of Postwar Politics: Comparing Spanish South America and Spain, 1810s-1850s

This book chapter on the gender order of postwar politics compares Spanish South America and Spain in the 1810s to 1850s. The Spanish American Wars of Independence, triggered by the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, resulted in the fall of the Spanish Empire and a wave of violence, social upheaval and political experimentation on a vast scale. The Wars of Independence in Spanish America—affecting an area from California in the north to Patagonia in the south—lasted some 16 years, from 1810 to 1826, and were arguably the most profound consequence of the Napoleonic Wars. These liberation wars were civil wars and continued through to the 1830s and in some regions into the 1870s and beyond. This development had far reaching consequences for the gender order of politics in the new Spanish American republics as well as in post war Spain.