The wars of independence in Spanish America as a point of inflection

Research on Latin America has generated numerous critical-juncture wannabes, and potentially too many transitions can be viewed as major points of inflection. Analysts need to focus on a smaller subset of candidates for critical-juncture status, and a valuable place to look is shocks that, in their origin, were entirely external to the region. The worldwide depression of the 1930s, the North Atlantic industrial revolution in the late nineteenth century that first lifted the demand for Latin America’s commodities, and the Iberian conquest in the sixteenth century exemplify such exogenous shocks. These events have led to excellent work in the social sciences and the emergence of a remarkable historiography.