When Venezuelan-born political leader Simón Bolívar arrived in Europe to pursue his military education when he was a teenager, he arrived at a fortuitous time in world history. What made the time exceptional was Napoleon's 1804 coronation as emperor of France and the wars throughout Europe still ongoing in the wake of the French Revolution, which made the environment ripe for someone determined to achieve freedom, self-determination, and independence from European colonial overlords for the peoples of Latin America.
Hoping to emulate the revolutionary successes of other colonial societies, many of the countries administered by Spain watched the radical political changes occurring in Europe and North America with longing, even as they continued to be ruled from abroad by foreign elites. The people of Latin America saw their incipient nations exploited for the profit of Madrid, just as they had been for centuries. Summarizing modern historical scholarship, most
Some historians maintain that Bolívar is responsible for the revolutionary circumstances from which he manufactured, in the early years of the nineteenth century, the most momentous set of political changes in Latin American history. But such a narrative only obfuscates the historical trends that had already imbued most Latin American polities with a revolutionary spirit. This spirit did not originate with Bolívar; instead, he served as its focal point and primary agent in world affairs.