Early Life: Britannica Quiz

Early life
The son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, Bolívar was born to

wealth and position. His father died when the boy was three years old, and his
mother died six years later, after which his uncle administered his inheritance
and provided him with tutors. One of those tutors, Simón Rodríguez, was to
have a deep and lasting effect on him. Rodríguez, a disciple of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, introduced Bolívar to the world of 18th-century liberal thought.
At the age of 16, Bolívar was sent to Europe to complete his education. For three
years he lived in Spain, and in 1801 he married the daughter of a Spanish
nobleman, with whom he returned to Caracas. The young bride died of yellow
fever less than a year after their marriage. Bolívar believed that her tragic death
was the reason that he took up a political career while still a young man.
In 1804, when Napoleon I was approaching the pinnacle of his career, Bolívar

returned to Europe. In Paris, under the renewed guidance of his friend and tutor
Rodríguez, he steeped himself in the writings of European rationalist thinkers
such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de
Buffon, Jean le Rond d’Alembert, and Claude-Adrien Helvétius, as well
as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The latter two had the deepest
influence on his political life, but Voltaire coloured his philosophy of life. In
Paris he met the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who had just
returned from his voyage through Hispanic America and told Bolívar that he
believed the Spanish colonies were ripe for independence. That idea took root in
Bolívar’s imagination, and, on a trip to Rome with Rodríguez, as they stood on
the heights of Monte Sacro, he made a vow to liberate his country.
Britannica Quiz
Exploring Latin American History
One other experience enriched his intellect at that time: he watched the
extraordinary performance that culminated in Napoleon’s coronation in 1804 as
emperor of the French. Bolívar’s reaction to the coronation wavered between
admiration of the accomplishments of a single man and revulsion at Napoleon’s
betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution. The desire for glory was one of
the permanent traits in Bolívar’s character, and there can be little doubt that it
was stimulated by Napoleon. The example of Napoleon was, nevertheless, a
warning that Bolívar heeded. In his later days he always insisted that the title of
“liberator” was higher than any other and that he would not exchange it for that
of king or emperor. In 1807 he returned to Venezuela by way of the United
States, visiting the eastern cities.
Independence movement
Spanish viceroyalties and Portuguese territories

The Latin American independence movement was launched a year after
Bolívar’s return, as Napoleon’s invasion of Spain unsettled Spanish authority.
Napoleon also failed completely in his attempt to gain the support of the
Spanish colonies, which claimed the right to nominate their own officials.
Following the example of the mother country, they wished to establish juntas to
rule in the name of the deposed Spanish king. Many of the Spanish settlers,
however, saw in those events an opportunity to sever their ties with Spain.
Bolívar himself participated in various conspiratorial meetings, and on April 19,
1810, the Spanish governor was officially deprived of his powers and expelled
from Venezuela. A junta took over. To obtain help, Bolívar was sent on a mission
to London, where he arrived in July. His assignment was to explain to England
the plight of the revolutionary colony, to gain recognition for it, and to obtain
arms and support. Although he failed in his official negotiations, his
English sojourn was in other respects a fruitful one. It gave him an opportunity
to study the institutions of the United Kingdom, which remained for him
models of political wisdom and stability. More important, he fostered the cause
of the revolution by persuading the exiled Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda,
who in 1806 had attempted to liberate his country single-handedly, to return
to Caracas and assume command of the independence movement.
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Venezuela was in ferment. In March 1811 a national congress met in Caracas to
draft a constitution. Bolívar, though not a delegate, threw himself into the
debate that aroused the country. In the first public speech of his career, he
declared, “Let us lay the cornerstone of American freedom without fear. To
hesitate is to perish.” After long deliberation, the national assembly declared
Venezuela’s independence on July 5, 1811. Bolívar now entered the army of the
young republic, whose commander in chief was Miranda, and was placed in
charge of Puerto Cabello, a port on the Caribbean Sea west of Caracas that was
vital to Venezuela. In the short time since their London meeting, he and
Miranda had drifted apart. Miranda called Bolívar a “dangerous youth,” and
Bolívar had misgivings about the aging general’s abilities. Treasonable action by
one of Bolívar’s officers opened the fortress to the Spanish forces, and Miranda,
the commander in chief, entered into negotiations with the Spanish commander
in chief. An armistice was signed (July 1812) that left the entire country at the
mercy of Spain. Miranda was turned over to the Spaniards—after Bolívar and
others prevented his escape from Venezuela—and spent the rest of his life in
Spanish dungeons.
Determined to continue the struggle, Bolívar obtained a passport to leave the

country and went to Cartagena in New Granada. There he published the first of
his great political statements, El manifiesto de Cartagena (“The Cartagena
Manifesto”), in which he attributed the fall of Venezuela’s First Republic to the
lack of strong government and called for a united revolutionary effort to destroy
the power of Spain in the Americas.
With backing from the patriots of New Granada, Bolívar led an expeditionary
force to retake Venezuela. In a sweeping hard-fought campaign, he vanquished
the royalists in six pitched battles and on August 6, 1813, entered Caracas. He
was given the title of Liberator and assumed political dictatorship. The war of
independence was just beginning, however. The majority of the people of
Venezuela were hostile to the forces of independence and weary of the sacrifices
imposed. A cruel civil war broke out, and Bolívar himself resorted to extreme
measures, such as the shooting of prisoners. His severity failed in its object. In
1814 Bolívar was once more defeated by the Spanish, who
had converted the llaneros (cowboys) led by José Tomás Boves into an
undisciplined but savagely effective cavalry that Bolívar was unable to repulse.
Boves subjected Creole patriots to terrible atrocities, and his capture of Caracas
and other principal cities ended the second Venezuelan republic. Narrowly
escaping Miranda’s fate, Bolívar fled to New Granada, where he was
commissioned in Cartagena to oust a separatist faction from Bogotá (now
in Colombia) and succeeded in doing so. He then laid siege to Cartagena but
failed to unite the revolutionary forces and fled to Jamaica.
In exile, Bolívar turned his energies toward gaining support from Great Britain,
and, in an effort to convince the British people of their stake in the freedom of
the Spanish colonies, he wrote the greatest document of his career: La carta de
Jamaica (“The Letter from Jamaica”), in which he outlined a grandiose
panorama from Chile and Argentina to Mexico. “The bonds,” wrote Bolívar,
“that united us to Spain have been severed.” He was not dismayed that the
Spaniards had in certain instances won the upper hand. “A people that love
freedom will in the end be free. We are,” he said proudly, “a microcosm of
the human race. We are a world apart, confined within two oceans, young in arts
and sciences, but old as a human society. We are neither Indians nor
Europeans, yet we are a part of each.” He proposed constitutional republics
throughout Hispanic America, and for the former Viceroyalty of New Granada
he envisioned a government modeled on that of Great Britain, with a hereditary
upper house, an elected lower house, and a president chosen for life. The last
provision, to which Bolívar clung throughout his career, constituted the most
dubious feature of his political thinking.
In “The Letter from Jamaica,” Bolívar showed himself as a great

internationalist. He looked forward to the day when the representatives of
all Hispanic American nations would gather in a central location such
as Panama.
By 1815, Spain had sent to its seditious colonies the strongest expeditionary
force that had ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Its commander was Pablo
Morillo. Since neither Great Britain nor the United States would promise aid,
Bolívar turned to Haiti, which had recently freed itself from French rule. There
he was given a friendly reception as well as money and weapons.

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Early life

The son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, Bolívar was born to

In 1804, when Napoleon I was approaching the pinnacle of his career, Bolívar

Exploring Latin American History

Spanish viceroyalties and Portuguese territories

Determined to continue the struggle, Bolívar obtained a passport to leave the

In “The Letter from Jamaica,” Bolívar showed himself as a great

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