Traditional historians of Spanish America dub the first years of the independence struggle the Patria Boba (Foolish Fatherland), both because of the patriots' disunity and because provincial legislatures waste so much time on well-intentioned but impractical innovations.

Elaborate declarations of citizens' rights, more on the French than the American model, are just one example, but a few of the measures are noteworthy: thus Antioquia Province begins the process of abolishing slavery with a law of free birth, and Cartagena, which has one of the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition, closes it down.

Moreover, although political disunity is unfortunate, it faithfully reflects the fact that New Granada's population clusters, isolated by rugged topography and abysmal internal transportation, have really never had much to do with each other.

An outward appearance of unity is finally achieved in November-December 1814, when Bolivar, who owes the United Provinces a debt of gratitude for helping him militarily in Venezuela but is at the time a fugitive in New Granada, assumes command of an army that takes Santa Fe and compels Cundinamarca to join the confederation.

Unfortunately, Ferdinand VII, having been returned to his throne as king of Spain in March 1814, is determined to restore the colonial status quo.

The trigger for the independence movement in Spanish America is the Napoleonic intervention in Spain in 1808 and resultant disarray of the Spanish monarchy.

The French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte force the abdication, first of Charles IV and then of his son and immediate successor, Ferdinand VII, who ends up a captive across the Pyrenees.

A Spanish resistance movement arises to fight against the French and the intrusive authorities they impose, and, with significant British help, it ultimately prevails, but for some time most of Spain is in the hands of the French and their Spanish collaborators, and when the rump government that claims to speak for what is left of free Spain—ostensibly in the name of the absent Ferdinand—claims also to exercise authority over the American colonies, the response in New Granada, as elsewhere, is mixed.

The viceroy in Santa Fe, Antonio Amar y Borbon, sidetracks a first move in 1809 by criollo notables to form a governing junta that will rule in Ferdinand's name but enjoy virtual autonomy in practice.

For their part, the leaders of Spain's struggle against Napoleon offers Spanish Americans token representation in their Central Junta and then in the Cortes, or Spanish parliament, which they are reviving after years of disuse.

However, the Spanish Americans will be a small minority despite a population greater than that of Spain, and the Spanish offer does not diminish the ultimate authority that is to be exercised from Spain over the entire Spanish Empire.

It therefore fails to satisfy the criollo lawyers and bureaucrats who aspire to greater control of their destinies (and higher positions for themselves), and with the future of the mother country itself still uncertain, new moves for local autonomy are inevitable.

The year 1810 brings a series of mostly successful efforts to set up American governing juntas: in Caracas on April 19, in Cartagena not long afterward, and finally on July 20 in Santa Fe, where the viceroy is first made a member of the junta but soon is forced out.

Caracas and the rest of Venezuela, which have been little more than nominally subject to the viceroy, will go their own way until in the end Simon Bolivar Palacios, a son of Caracas, combines the independence movements of all northern South America, but neither do the towns and cities of New Granada proper agree to act in unison.

The new authorities in Santa Fe, considering themselves natural successors to the viceroy, seek to establish under their leadership a government for the whole of the former colony.

However, Cartagena and most outlying provinces refuse to cooperate and in 1811 instead form the United Provinces of New Granada, a league even weaker than the Articles of Confederation under which the rebellious British American colonies fought the American War of Independence.

Insisting on the need for strong central authority, Santa Fe refuses to join and instead annexes several adjoining towns and provinces to form the separate state of Cundinamarca, which before long is bogged down in intermittent civil warfare with the United Provinces.

Even so, faced with Spain's refusal to offer meaningful concessions and bitter denunciation of all the Spanish Americans are doing, New Granada reaches the stage of formally declaring independence, doing it piecemeal in the absence of an effective overall government: Cartagena leads the way in 1811; Cundinamarca follows in 1813.

To complicate matters further, still other parts of New Granada—notably Santa Marta on the coast and Pasto in the extreme south—remain loyal to the authorities in Spain and do their best to harass the revolutionaries.

The restoration of Ferdinand VII had signified an important change, since most of the political and legal changes done on both sides of the Atlantic—the myriad of juntas, the Cortes in Spain and several of the congresses in the Americas, and many of the constitutions and new legal codes—had been done in his name.

Once in Spain, he had realized that he had significant support from conservatives in the general population and the hierarchy of the Spanish Catholic Church, so on May 4 he had repudiated the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and ordered the arrest of liberal leaders who had created it on May 10.

Ferdinand had justified his actions by stating that the Constitution and other changes had been made by a Cortes assembled in his absence and without his consent.

He had also declared all of the juntas and constitutions written in Spanish America invalid and restored the former law codes and political institutions.

News of the events arrived through Spanish America during the next three weeks to nine months, depending on time it took goods and people to travel from Spain.

This, in effect, constituted a definitive break with two groups that could have been allies of Ferdinand VII: the autonomous governments, which had not yet declared formal independence, and Spanish liberals who had created a representative government that would fully include the overseas possessions and was seen as an alternative to independence by many in New Spain, Central America, the Caribbean, Quito (today Ecuador), Peru, Upper Peru (today, Bolivia) and Chile.

Most Spanish Americans are moderates who have decided to wait and see what will come out of the restoration of normalcy.

Spanish Americans in royalist areas who are committed to independence have already joined guerrilla movements.

Ferdinand's actions do set areas outside of the control of the royalist armies on the path to full independence.

The governments of these regions, which have their origins in the juntas of 1810—and even moderates there who had entertained a reconciliation with the crown—now see the need to separate from Spain, if they are to protect the reforms they had enacted

A major expedition of Spanish veterans under General Pablo Morillo sets sail early in 1815 for America, landing first on the coast of Venezuela in April to mop up what remained of patriot resistance there.

Its next target is New Granada.

Correctly diagnosing the patriots' cause as hopeless because of their continuing dissensions, Bolivar decamps to the West Indies, to prepare for a better day.

During August-December, Morillo's forces besiege Cartagena, starving it into submission, then advance into the interior, where they will restore Spanish rule in Santa Fe in May 1816.

The Spanish force of the South American reconquest, leaving the port of Cádiz on February 17, 1815, initially lands at Carupano (Venezuela) in April and later invades the island of Margarita, where no resistance is encountered.

After leaving the island, Morillo's troops reinforce existing royalist forces in the Venezuelan mainland, entering Cumaná, La Guaira, Caracas, and Puerto Cabello in May.

A small part of the main corps sets off towards Panamá, while the main contingent is directed towards the Neogranadine coastal city of Santa Marta, which is still in royalist hands.

After picking up supplies and militia volunteers in Santa Marta on July 23, the Spanish expeditionary forces besiege Cartagena de Indias.

After a five-month siege the fortified city falls in December 1815.

Spain will be torn by revolution and counter-revolution throughout much of the nineteenth century, beginning with the French occupation of Spain in 1808.

Spain has attempted since 1814 to recover control of Spanish America, now partly independent,  and the problem of maintaining an inflated wartime army with a permanent economic deficit has foiled all Ferdinand's efforts to assemble a large army and a fleet to send to America.

His ministers can neither reinforce his armies in America nor persuade the British government to collaborate or connive at reconquest.

His domestic policies have effectively destroyed Spanish liberalism and all its works by 1819, leading to a series of insurrections.

Generals, chafing at control by civilian juntas had on occasion overthrown them, thus initiating the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, or military revolution.

The afrancesados, often men of liberal inclinations but tarred with the accusation of collaboration with the French, remain as an indigestible element within liberalism itself.

The creation of Simón Bolívar's Republic of Colombia is the only instance in which an entire Spanish viceroyalty remains united, even briefly, after independence.

This unity results in large measure from the particular way in which independence is achieved in northern South America—by forces moving back and forth without regard to former colonial boundaries, under the supreme leadership of a single commander, Bolivar.

It also reflects the conviction of Bolívar himself that the union brings together peoples whose sense of common destiny has been heightened in the recent struggle, plus a wealth of resources—the gold of New Granada, the agricultural economy of Venezuela, and the textile workshops of highland Ecuador—that are basically complementary.

He likewise feels that only a large nation can gain respect on the world stage.

However, he does not adequately weigh certain problems, of which perhaps most obvious is the lack of an integrated transportation and communication network: it is easier to travel from Caracas to Philadelphia or from Quito to Lima than from either one to Bogota, which, by its central location, is the inevitable capital of the new nation.

Although economies may have been complementary to some extent, interests are not necessarily compatible; the insistent demand of Ecuadorian textile makers for high protective tariffs is not what suits Venezuelan agricultural exporters.

Neither does the common experience of Spanish rule and the fight against it offset the stark social and cultural differences between, for example, the lawyers of Bogota, the Quechua-speaking natives of highland Ecuador, the pardo and mestizo vaqueros of the Orinoco basin, and the planters of Andean Venezuela.

Nevertheless, in 1821 the young republic holds a constituent assembly, known as the Congress of Cúcuta, which duly reaffirms the union and goes on to adopt a highly centralized system of government, under which the entire country is divided into provinces and departments whose heads are named from Bogotá.

There are elected provincial assemblies, but with no meaningful power in local affairs.

Gran Colombia's constitution of 1821, while eschewing federalism, in some other respects reveals the clear influence of the U.S. model and is for the most part a conventionally republican document.

It provides for strict separation of powers—too strict, in Bolívar's view, despite the fact that, like other early Latin American constitutions, it authorizes sweeping "extraordinary" prerogatives for the executive to use in cases of emergency.

Socioeconomic restrictions limit the right to vote to at most ten percent of free adult males, but this is fairly standard procedure at this time.

Citizens are guaranteed a list of basic rights that do not include freedom of worship, but neither are non-Roman Catholic faiths expressly forbidden, so that the question of religious toleration is left open to be dealt with later.

At the same time, the Congress of Cúcuta itself equips the new nation with a number of enlightened reforms: slavery is not immediately abolished, but provision is made for its gradual extinction by adopting nationwide the free-birth principle enacted earlier in Antioquia; likewise, natives are relieved of the obligation to pay tribute or perform any kind of involuntary labor.

Finally, the same Congress of Cúcuta elects Bolívar president and, because he is Venezuelan, provides regional balance by making the New Granadan Santander vice president.

The Republic of Colombia, in addition to acquiring a fine new constitution, is the first Spanish American nation to obtain diplomatic recognition from the United States, in 1822; British recognition follows three years later.

In 1824 Colombia even raises a foreign loan on the London market for the extraordinary sum of thirty million pesos (at this time equivalent to dollars).

This consists in part of mere refinancing of earlier obligations incurred during the independence struggle.

It will prove impossible to maintain debt service, but the fact that the loan is even granted, on what for the time are quite favorable terms, attests to the prestige of Bolivar's creation.

Another sign of the Republic of Colombia's international prestige is the fact that it plays host to Bolivar's Congress of Panama of 1826, which in the end accomplishes little but is the first in a long line of Pan-American gatherings.

Yet even before this meeting begins, the fragility of the republic's unity is becoming apparent.

The first serious crack comes in Venezuela, where many people have been unhappy from the start with formal subjection to authorities in Bogota, particularly when the head of government turns out to be the New Granadan, Vice President Santander, who becomes acting chief executive when Bolivar continues personally leading his armies against Spain.

Indeed, Bolivar carries the struggle into Peru and stays there even after the Battle of Ayacucho, won by Sucre in December 1824, puts an end to serious royalist resistance.

Venezuelans do have some real grievances, but equally important is the feeling that their present status is a step down from that of the colonial captaincy general, which for most purposes took orders (not necessarily obeyed) directly from Madrid.

Thus, when General José Antonio Páez, the leading military figure in Venezuela, is summoned to Bogota early in 1826 to answer charges against him in the Congress of the Republic (Congreso de la Republica), he refuses to go, and most of Venezuela joins him in defiance.

Both Páez and Santander look for support to Bolivar, still absent in Peru, but he proves less interested in the immediate dispute than in the opportunity that the crisis seems to offer to revamp Colombian institutions in a form more to his liking.

Bolivar knows that Venezuelan regionalism is not the only problem to be faced.

There is similar, if less critical, unrest in Ecuador.

The efforts of liberal-minded congressional representatives to subject the military more fully to civilian courts are seen by the latter as an affront,and much of the clergy resents legislation designed to curb church influence, such as measures closing small convents and promoting secular education.

Bolivar, as a committed freethinker, does not oppose the objectives of these first anticlerical measures, and as one who supports total abolition of slavery, he definitely opposes the campaign of slaveholders to water down the free-birth law passed by the Congress of Cucuta in 1821, but he feels that many of the reforms adopted are premature, thus needlessly promoting unrest, and he assigns part of the blame to Vice President Santander, a man who had dropped out of law study to fight for independence but as chief executive surrounds himself with ardent young lawyers as helpers and advisers.

What the country needs, in Bolivar's view, is a stronger executive, a less assertive legislature, and a partial rollback of overhasty reforms.

He also hopes to see some form of a new constitution that he has drafted for Bolivia adopted in the Republic of Colombia.

Its central feature is a president serving for life and appointing his successor.

Some other features are highly liberal, but what attracts attention is the call for a life-term president, who in the Colombian case will obviously be himself.

Bolivar journeys back from Peru to Colombia in September-November 1826.

He finds little real support for introducing his constitutional panacea, but he solves the Venezuelan rebellion by meeting with General Paéz in Venezuela in January 1827 and pardoning him, as well as by promising to call a convention to reform the existing constitution in some way.

This September Bolivar returns to Bogota and resumes the presidency of Colombia.

The ease of the Spanish "reconquest" of New Granada in 1815-16 can be attributed not only to patriot divisions but also to weariness with the hardships and disruptions of wartime.

Moreover, the pro-independence leadership, mainly drawn from criollo upper sectors of society, has generally failed to convince the popular majority that it has a real stake in the outcome.

Although one patriot faction at Cartagena has succeeded in rallying artisans and people of color to participate actively on its side, more aristocratic rivals win local control, not only in Cartagena but also in all of the more populated regions of New Granada by July 1816.

Yet restoration of the old regime is never complete.

Some patriot fighters follow Bolivar into Caribbean exile to continue plotting, and others—including the man destined to become Bolivar's closest New Granadan collaborator and ultimate rival, General Francisco de Paula Santander y Omana—retreat to the eastern plains (llanos), which become a republican sanctuary.

Moreover, the financial exactions of the Spanish authorities together with revulsion against their tactics of repression, which include systematic execution of most top figures of the Patria Boba, turn feeling increasingly against them.

Patriot guerrillas spring up in many parts of the highlands.