Enormous profits obtained from the triangular trade of African slaves for Venezuelan cocoa, which is then shipped across the Caribbean and sold in Veracruz for consumption in New Spain (Mexico), make the Venezuelan coast a regular port of call for Dutch and British merchants.

In an effort to eliminate this illegal intercolonial trade and capture these profits for itself, the Spanish crown in 1728 grants exclusive trading rights in Venezuela to a Basque corporation called the Real Compama Guipuzcoana de Caracas, or simply the Caracas Company.

The Caracas Company proves quite successful, initially at least, in achieving the crown's goal of ending the contraband trade.

Venezuela's cocoa growers, however, become increasingly dissatisfied.

The Basque monopoly not only pays them significantly lower prices but also receives favored treatment from the province's Basque governors.

This discontent is evidenced in the growing number of disputes between the company and the growers and other Venezuelans of more humble status.

In 1749 the discontent erupts into a first insurrectionary effort, a rebellion led by a poor immigrant cocoa grower from the Canary Islands named Juan Francisco de León.

The rebellion is openly joined by the Venezuelan lower classes and quietly encouraged by the elite in Caracas.

Troops from Santo Domingo and from Spain quickly crush the revolt, and its leadership is severely repressed by forces headed by Brigadier General Felipe Ricardos, who is named governor of Caracas in 1751.

The growth of the cocoa trade, the success of the Caracas Company, and the assertion of the royal will manifested by the suppression of the 1749 revolt all help to centralize the Venezuelan economy around the city of Caracas.

In recognition of this growth, Caracas is given political-military authority as the seat of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777, marking the first instance of recognition of Venezuela as a political entity.

Nine years later, its designation is changed to the Audiencia de Venezuela, thus granting Venezuela judicial-administrative authority as well.

Barely three decades later, however, Venezuela will suddenly—after almost three centuries on the periphery of the Spanish American empire—find itself at the hub of the independence movement sweeping Latin America.

A congress convoked by the junta on July 5, 1811, declares Venezuelan independence from Spain.

Miranda assumes command of the army and leadership of the junta.

A constitution, dated December 21, 1811, marks the official beginning of Venezuela's First Republic.

Known commonly by Venezuelan historians as La Patria Boba, the Silly Republic, Venezuela's first experiment at independence suffers from myriad difficulties from the outset.

The cabildos of three major cities—Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana—preferring to be governed by Joseph Bonaparte rather than by the Caracas cabildo, never accept independence from Spain.

The First Republic's leadership, furthermore, distrusts Miranda and deprives him of the powers necessary to govern effectively until it is too late.

Most damaging, however, is the initial failure of the Caracas criollo elite insurgents to recognize the need for popular support for the cause of independence.

Venezuela's popular masses, particularly the pardos, do not relish being governed by the white elite of Caracas and therefore remain loyal to the crown.

Thus, a racially defined civil war underlies the early years of the long independence struggle in Venezuela.

It seems that the very forces of nature are conspiring against La Patria Boba when a major earthquake in March 1812 devastates pro-independence strongholds while sparing virtually every locale commanded by royalist forces.

Despite the gravity of the circumstances, Miranda's July 25, 1812, surrender of his troops to the Spanish commander, General Juan Domingo de Monteverde, provokes a great deal of resentment among Bolivar and his other subordinates.

Miranda will die in a Spanish prison in 1816; Bolivar manages to escape to New Granada (present-day Colombia), where he assumes the leadership of Venezuela's independence struggle.

Simon Bolivar is forced to flee Venezuela to Jamaica, where he issues an eloquent letter that establishes his intellectual leadership of the Spanish American independence movement.

Bolivar was born in 1783 into one of Caracas's most aristocratic criollo families.

Orphaned at age nine, he was educated in Europe, where he became intrigued by the intellectual revolution called the Enlightenment and the political revolution in France.

As a young man, Bolivar had pledged himself to see a united Latin America, not simply his native Venezuela, liberated from Spanish rule.

His brilliant career as a field general begins in 1813 with the famous cry of "war to the death" against Venezuela's Spanish rulers.

The cry is followed by a lightning campaign through the Andes to capture Caracas.

Here he is proclaimed "The Liberator" and, following the establishment of the Second Republic, is given dictatorial powers.

Once again, however, Bolivar overlooks the aspirations of common, nonwhite Venezuelans.

The llaneros (plainsmen), who are excellent horsemen, fight under the leadership of the royalist caudillo, José Tomás Boves, for what they see as social equality against a revolutionary army that represents the white, criollo elite.

By September 1814, having won a series of victories, Boves's troops force Bolivar and his army out of Caracas, bringing an end to the Second Republic.

After Ferdinand VII regains the Spanish throne in late 1814, he sends reinforcements to the American colonies that crush most remaining pockets of resistance to royal control.

Venezuela has produced not only Francisco de Miranda, the best known of the precursors of the Spanish American revolution, but also the first successful revolt against Spanish rule in America and, of course, the leading hero of the entire epic of Latin America's struggle for independence, Simon Bolivar Palacios.

Miranda was born in Caracas of wealthy criollo parents in 1750.

Following a checkered career in the Spanish Army, Miranda will spend virtually the rest of his life living in nations that are at odds with Spain, seeking support for the cause of the independence of his native Spanish America.

Although he is a professed admirer of the newly independent United States, Miranda's political vision of Latin America, beyond independence, remains equivocal.

In 1806 he leads an expedition that sails from New York and lands at Coro, in western Venezuela.

Expecting a popular uprising, he encounters instead hostility and resistance.

Miranda returns to Britain, where in 1810 Bolivar persuades him to return to Venezuela at the head of a second insurrectionary effort.

Events in Europe are perhaps even more crucial to the movement for Latin American independence than Miranda's efforts.

In 1808 French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's troops invade Spain amid a family dispute in which the Spanish king Charles IV had been forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII.

The fearful Bourbon royal family had soon become Napoleon's captives, and in 1810 the conquering French emperor grants his brother, Joseph, the Spanish throne, precipitating a four-year-long guerrilla war in Spain.

These events have important repercussions in the Caracas cabildo (city council).

Composed of a criollo elite whose allegiance to the crown have already been stretched thin by the gross incompetence of Charles and his feud with his son, the cabildo refuse to recognize the French usurper.

Meeting as a cabildo abierto (town meeting) on April 19, 1810, the Caracas cabildo ousts Governor Vicente Emparan and, shortly thereafter, declares itself to be a junta governing in the name of the deposed Ferdinand VII.