General Jose de San Martin, the son of a Spanish army officer stationed in Argentina, had originally served in the Spanish army but returned to his native Argentina to join the rebellion.

Once Argentine independence was achieved in 1814, San Martin had conceived of the idea of liberating Peru by way of Chile.

As commander of the fifty-five hundred-man Army of the Andes, half of which was composed of formerly enslaved blacks, San Martin, in a spectacular military operation, had crossed the Andes and liberated Chile in 1817.

Three years later, his somewhat smaller army leaves Valparaiso for Peru in a fleet commanded by a former British admiral, Thomas Alexander Cochrane (Lord Dundonald).

Although some isolated stirrings for independence had manifested themselves earlier in Peru, the landing in Pisco of San Martin's forty-five hundred-man expeditionary force in September 1820 persuades the conservative Creole intendant of Trujillo, Jose Bernardo de Tagle y Portocarrero, that Peru's liberation is at hand and that he should proclaim independence.

It is symptomatic of the conservative nature of the viceroyalty that the internal forces now declaring for independence are led by a leading Creole aristocrat, the fourth marquis of Torre Tagle, whose monarchist sympathies for any future political order coincide with those of the Argentine liberator.

The defeat of the last bastion of royal power on the continent, however, proves a slow and arduous task.

Although a number of other coastal cities quickly embrace the liberating army, San Martin is able to take Lima in July 1821 only when the viceroy decides to withdraw his considerable force to the Sierra, where he believes he could better make a stand.

Shortly thereafter, on July 28, 1821, San Martin proclaims Peru independent and is named protector by an assembly of notables.

However, a number of problems, not the least of which is a growing Peruvian resentment over the heavy-handed rule of the foreigner they dub "King Jose," stalls the campaign to defeat the royalists.

As a result, San Martin decides to seek aid from Simon Bolivar Palacios, who has liberated much of northern South America from Spanish power.

Bolívar, with significant help from San Martin's forces, now proceeds to invade Peru, where he wins the Battle of Junin in August 1824, but it remains for his trusted lieutenant, thirty-one-year-old General Antonio José de Sucre Alcala, to complete the task of Peruvian independence by defeating royalist forces at the hacienda of Ayacucho near Huamanga (a city later renamed Ayacucho) on December 9, 1824.

This battle in the remote southern highlands effectively ends the long era of Spanish colonial rule in South America.

Peru's transition from more than three centuries of colonial rule to nominal independence in 1824 under President Bolivar (1824-26) proves tortuous and politically destablizing.

Independence does little to alter the fundamental structures of inequality and underdevelopment based on colonialism and Andean neo-feudalism.

Essentially, independence represents the transfer of power from Spanish-born whites (peninsulares) to sectors of the elite Creole class, whose aim is to preserve and enhance their privileged socioeconomic status.

However, the new Creole elite is unable to create a stable, new constitutional order to replace the crown monolith of church and state.

Nor is it willing to restructure the social order in a way conducive to building a viable democratic, republican government.

Ultimately, the problem is one of replacing the legitimacy of the old order with an entirely new one, something that many post-colonial regimes have difficulty accomplishing.

A particularly virulent form of Andean caudillismo surges into the political vacuum left by the collapse of Spanish rule.

Caudillo strongmen, often officers from the liberation armies, manage to seize power through force of arms and the elaboration of extensive and intricate clientelistic alliances.

Personalistic, arbitrary rule replaces the rule of law, and a prolonged and often byzantine struggle for power is waged at all levels of society.

The upshot is internal political fragmentation and chronic political instability during the first two decades of the post-independence era.

By one count, Peru experiences at least twenty-four regime changes, averaging one per year between 1821 and 1845, and the constitution is rewritten six times.

This is not to say that larger political issues do not inform these conflicts.

A revisionist study by historian Paul E. Gootenberg shows in great detail how the politics of trade (free or protectionist) and regionalism were central to the internecine caudillo struggles of the period.

In this interpretation, nationalist elites—backing one caudillo or another—manage to outmaneuver and defeat liberal groups to maintain a largely protectionist, neomercantilistic, post- colonial regime until the advent of the guano boom at mid-century.

This view stands in opposition to the dominant interpretation of the period, according to which unrestricted liberalism and free trade led to Peru's "dependency" on the international economy and the West.

The two liberators meet in a historic meeting in Guayaquil in mid-1822 to arrange the terms of a joint effort to complete the liberation of Peru.

Bolivar refuses to agree to a shared partnership in the Peruvian campaign, however, so a frustrated San Martin chooses to resign his command and leave Peru for Chile and eventual exile in France.