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Liberators: Latin America's Struggle for Independence

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I must confess to knowing next to nothing about the history of Latin America. Oh sure, I can give you the names of the Conquistadors, and rattle off the names of the "freedom fighters" like Bolivar, O'Higgins and such, but when it comes to detail about the revolutions South of the US, I was completely ignorant! This book has changed all of that, and I am very grateful to the author. He has presented the liberation of the southern hemisphere in a quite lucid way, with excellent writing and fantastic character sketches of all the major players. This is not dry, dusty history, but history come alive with vivid prose and descriptions. In a book that's not exceptionally long, you get a rather detailed retelling of the various wars for independence in Latin America, with emphasis on the men who fought them in a leadership role. Your interest is captrued from the beginning, and is tightly held until the end of the work. I now know much more about our neighbors to the South than I did before, and I am grateful to the author for that knowledge. This ia a book that I can highly recommend!

As a Venezuelan, I was looking for a book on the independence struggle free of the tedious hero-worship that pervades Venezuelan historians' writing on Miranda, Bolívar, Sucre and the rest. This book is a good choice in that regard, full of fun annecdotes and interesting insights.

What's inexcusable are the dozens of little mistakes, place-names that are misspelled (Guiria?!? Guatiré!?!), dates that are plainly wrong, etc. etc. At one point, Harvey screws up the name of one of his main characters! After writing an entire, and very entertaining chapter about Francisco de Miranda, he finishes it off with a stylish, perceptive passage about...Fernando de Miranda! Did anyone copy-edit this thing?! Can they be summarily executed, pretty-please?

The thing about such inexplicable gaffes is that they don't do anything for your faith in the rest of the guy's narrative. If he gets simple things like that wrong, why should I believe the rest of his story? It leaves this nagging suspicion in the back of your head, you're never quite sure whether you can trust him after that.

Still, the overall narrative is gripping and fun, and it's just a puzzle to me how he could've been so careless with the easy stuff.

By almost any measure, the liberation of Latin America dwarves the American War of Independence. In terms of landmass, this struggle ranged continously from Mexico down in Chile and Argentina. During this fifteen year conflict, several hundred thousand people died. Major battles were fought in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and Peru. A once tranquil Empire was devastated and a host of new nations arose from the destruction.

The Liberation of Latin America is an epic story and the strategy that Robert Harvey uses to tell it is to focus on the lives of the key leaders of the struggle. In this book, we meet the great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, the Protector Jose de San Martin, the Scotish Sea-Wolf Lord Cochrane, the nobel Sucre, the indomitable Padre Hidalgo and finally the Emperor and Freedom Fighter Dom Pedro I. Truly a cast of larger than life characters.

Robert Harvey has written a popular history for the general public. This book is not likely to end up as a college text book nor will it be respected by serious historians. It is a good solid read about an interesting historical period. My only regret is that Harvey is not a truly great writer. This epic story desrves its own Prescott, Catton or Tuchman.

Like most North Americans, I was taught little about Latin America in school or university. Now that I live in South America, I have come to realize how unfortunate it is that a U.S. education seems to focus exclusively on European history (with a healthy dose of Afro-American culture). The history of Latin American liberation is a fascinating story that absolutely should be told, and the reader deserves a more serious and scholarly engagement than Harvey's book.
Harvey's book is well-written and exciting; its ambition is for popular history but it reads more like journalism than historical scholarlship. This makes sense, given Harvey's backround as a journalist, and by itself is not a flaw. The problem is that the book is totally devoid of footnotes, endnotes, and sources. Harvey does list a multilingual bibliography at the end of the book, but one is left putting an inordinate amount of faith in Harvey as historian. Throughout the book Harvey quotes copiously from important historical figures, such as Francisco de Miranda, Bolivar, and San Martin, as well as from Latin American scholars, and more minor personages and witnesses. In almost every case he neglects to give the source, date, or context of the quote. Was the excerpt from a diary?... a letter?... was it published?... who was intended to read it?... what language was it written in? (many figures like Miranda and Bolivar were multilingual)... who translated it for the book... Harvey?... Harvey's source?... Was it written in English?...
For an editor to allow these questions to remain unanswered is a case of complete incompetence; a work of "popular" history still must comform to a certain standard. This book would be unacceptible for a 9th grade history class.
An example: I was willing to accept these failures, however, due to the strength of the narrative, until I arrived at page 56, when Harvey writes of Miranda's return to London in 1808, and how the "radical" politician Edmund Burke "published a pamplet vigorously arguing that South America should be emancipated." Leaving aside the argument over whether Edmund Burke was "radical" or not, I then encountered a long quote on page 58 and was told that it was Edmund Burke firing off a "broadside" about a change of British policy with regard to South American independence in 1808 due to Napoleon's invasion of the Spanish Peninsula.
As somewhat of a literary scholar familiar with Burke, I was immediately stunned.
The problem is that Edmund Burke died 9 years earlier, in 1797, and so Harvey's quote and the facts of this part of the narrative are totally inaccurate and misleading, and because he provides no footnotes or sources, I could not approach the rest of the book without feeling dubious of his scholarship.
This is just one example of Harvey's inaccuracy. There are others, such as his elevation and overstatement of a "clerk" named Simon Rodriguez, and his supposed influence on the young Simon Bolivar (see John Lynch's 2006 biography of Bolivar for clarification). And I am not a history scholar; perhaps there is much more that I missed!... or perhaps not, but Harvey has left us with no way to confirm what he writes. And I don't think he does this out of any bias. It strikes me as pure laziness, on the part of he and his editor... not a good quality in an historian OR journalist!!!
This is unfortunate, and readers, even if they are "popular" readers, deserve better. If you are going to read this book, do so with perhaps some supplimentary material to confirm the facts, and if you are a high school or university student or professor, look elsewhere for accuracy. I am still waiting for a more reliable and scholarly book on the South American "Liberators."

To cover South American independence movements in the 19th. century in one book is almost impossible.This is the case with "Liberators". The research the author has done for his book is very exhaustive and well done, and the bibliography is very extensive and thorough.The author covers too much "events", and not as much the reasons many of these events took place. Tremendous emphasis is placed on General San Martin.The data is correct and thorough as to events. However, quite frequently the philosophical and historical reasons that prompted privileged people, such as a San Martin and a Bolivar to undertake such herculean tasks as liberating huge continents with very meager military resources lacks depth. Probably due to the fact that the author is British, heavy emphasis is placed on relatively minor English figures(such as Cochran and others.) While no one denies the importance of these English Navy volunteers, their contribution to the independence of Chile and Argentina pales in comparison to the contributions of national patriots.Perhaps because the author has a book on Cochran, such importance is given to that figure. However, I would rate this as an excellent primer, that should open new alleys for readers who are interested in deepening their knowledge of South American history.

Writing the histories of all seven of the liberators of South America and Latin America is a very ambitious structure. The author does an admirable job and the stories read much like academic soap operas, the more one reads the more one is drawn into the intrigue. Especially appreciated by myself were the direct quotes from primary sources to explain the moods of the populace or their liberators.

While the book is an excellent overview, whirlwind is the word for it. The book's ambitious structure makes it an increasing challenge to keep track of all the places, battles and secondary characters such as politicians, lovers, and sub-commanders. The saving graces in the book are that the timeline is reasonably maintained, and that the liberators are interconnected (especially Simon Bolivar whose political stance on everyone else's revolution keeps popping up). The result of the ambitious book structure is that one doesn't walk away feeling like they have a solid "grasp" of the history and could explain it.

That being said, one does gain a very well done comparative view of how the different countries of Latin and South America came to be and consequently a framework by which to accumulate more knowledge. This is the true value of the book, and an important advantage not to be missed. The author also briefly compares these revolutions to the earlier revolution of the USA; however, its given only a page or two of space.

This book would be excellent for travelers of South America seeking to understand the history of the countries they're traveling through, as well as official and "unofficial" students just beginning their launch into S. American history. It gives a great overview and one can select future books based on interests you may develop with this one.

This is the best book on the Liberators of Latin America. This book brings to life men like Bolivar, San Martin, and Miranda. Wonderful chapters details the rebellions from the first stirrings in 1780 to the final victories in 1850. It details the liberation of Brazil, and the rest of Spanish America. A good deal of information is provided on the English involvement, their diplomatic missions and their precipitation of war in Argentina.

The books downfalls are mostly editing mistakes and a few misspellings along with the occasion flaw in dating. In many ways one wishes the book could expand to include the early life of the new republics. It would be interesting if the author could have covered the `ten years war' between Argentina and Uruguay and the Three nation war where Uruguay, Argentine and Brazil allied to almost annihilate Paraguay. But alas these subjects are beyond the authors framework.

The book is not biased and doesn't dather into the obscurity of socialist theory and other revisionist obsessions that many people have for Latin America. What is not fully explained is why the Latin American choose to fight for independence. There is much history on the American revolution and the decision to oppose the British but there is little analysis of what drove these men to declare war on a vastly superior European power(albeit one that was in decline). A very interesting read.

"Liberators" by Robert Harvey is a solid and readable introduction to the history independence of Latin America. While using biographies of the leading figures to propel the narrative, Harvey is no hero-worshiper and he is often harsh to his subjects while lavishing praise on unlikely figures--including British Admiral Cochrane and emperors of Mexico and Brazil. Students of the subject may find the narrative a bit too sweeping and general. Whole nations are ignored and so are the islands. But for readers who do not know the subject, this is a nice place to start and shows what drove the leaders of the movement and reveals their characters, warts and all.

Harvey has clearly learned something from studying Simon Bolivar: faced with the difficulties and complexities of Latin American politics, he simply charges ahead, relying on energy and pace to see him through. As a result, like Bolivar, he is amazingly successful, despite a number of mistakes along the way. His great strength is his focus on the personalities of seven extraordinary men who deserve to be better known outside South America. The military accomplishments of Bolivar and San Martin in particular merit comparison with Hannibal and Alexander of Macedon. It was especially instructive to read this book soon after finishing the same author's work on North America's war of independence. The suffering of Venezuela alone makes one wonder what right Britain's colonists in North America had to complain about anything: compared with the South American wars, the North American war was a model of gentlemanly restraint on both sides. Yet one also comes to a better appreciation of the true greatness of George Washington. Latin America's great tragedy was that it found no real equivalent of Washington, whose unique combination of personal authority and restraint was essential to making the new republican democracy work. Bolivar had the inclination but not the character, whereas San Martin had the character but not the inclination. Many of Latin America's subsequent problems stem from the absence of a Washingtonian role model there - although Harvey makes the interesting point that the best candidates were probably two men who have been unfairly despised as pantomime emperors, Augustin of Mexico and Pedro of Brazil. This is a marvellous introduction to the history of a continent.

If ever there was a task that was which was implausible and ever more needy, it was the liberation of the Americas, not a country but a mere continent. This books explains about the Heroes that made it possible. The peeks that each reached and the low points and disapointments that fallowed. Some would it was inevitable that these disappointments would fallow the liberations because of racists pretentions but this book shows the complicated works that each libarator faced and how they dealt with them after the humongous task of liberating the continent from Spain.

This is a great books in many levels. First it tells the story of every major liberator that took part in the Wars. It explains their reason as why they fought, their upbringing, how they dealt with the success and follies and how they all died. Most died in sorrow for they knew what libration might bring and they tried hard to avoid it but they could not push back the History that was already in place and the capricious people who would look only for their own interests and not the people's interest. Their is also horror in these pages, the cruelty of not just war but the terror in which it was fought. People were tortured to send a message on both sides. Their were so many heroes and villians and all of them are discribed in this book.

Be warry though because this is not an easy read. It is long and at times dull but this book gives you an excellent idea of that happeend during this period in time. This is a very complete and detailed study of the Liberation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.