now practically has the United States for her nearest neighbour.

The connexion of these states with Europe dates from the first voyage of Columbus across the Atlantic and from Cabral's voyage to Brazil. The fabric of South America, as it stands today, was constructed in the main during the marvellous half-century from 1492 to 1542. During that time almost all the existing states took shape, and most of the present capitals were founded. That work is chiefly connected with five great names, Columbus, Balboa, Cortes, Magellan, Pizarro. Columbus and his companions or immediate successors founded the Spanish empire on the Antilles and the Spanish Main. Balboa sighted the South Sea, crossed the Isthmus, and claimed that ocean and all its shores for the Crown of Castile. Cortes established the empire of New Spain in North America. Pizarro, starting southwards from Panamá, discovered the empire of the Incas, shattered their power and set in its place a Spanish Viceroyalty.

The political divisions marked out at the conquest, which still subsist in the main, were determined by the course of exploration and conquest. When a separate condottiere hit upon a convenient site for a port and founded a city either upon the sea-board or in some inland situation accessible from the port, his work usually came to be recognised by the creation of a separate government. These conquistadores showed judgment and capacity in their choice of sites and in their marches inland, which naturally followed the most convenient lines of communication. In this way it came about that the political divisions in the Spanish empire were mainly determined by natural economic causes, acting through the rather haphazard experiments of practical men rather than through any deliberate theory. These natural economic conditions are permanent in character: they still persist, and they account in great part for the continuance of the chief political divisions after the achievement of independence and for the failure of ambitious schemes and aspirations after union or federation. Thus the separate "kingdoms" and "captaincies-general" of imperial Spain grew into states and are now growing into nations. An illustration may be found in the Australian colonies. In Australia, separate existence was at first an economic necessity, demanded by the early colonists, owing to the distinct paths of settlement and the distance between ports. Union, achieved later by means of federation, was the work of artificial efforts of statesmanship acting patiently through many difficulties.

The "Indies" were dependencies or possessions of Spain down to the nineteenth century. Viceroys, captains-general and governors were sent out from the Peninsula to rule in the capitals: corregidores held office in the smaller towns[1]: audiencias, at once tribunals and councils, were established in important centres. The course of trade was regulated and was directed solely to the Peninsula. But the strength and the basis of the fabric lay in the municipalities, which, although the councillors' seats were purchased from the Crown or inherited from the original purchasers, nevertheless offered some kind of public career to the inhabitants and afforded the means of local public vitality.

When Napoleon stretched out his hand upon the Spanish royal family and upon the Spanish kingdom, these municipalities everywhere became the channels of patriotic protest and resistance to French pretensions. Owing to the collapse of the monarchy, the unsympathetic and even hostile attitude of successive popular authorities in Spain, and the action of certain resolute leaders guiding the natural development of local activities, these movements in America soon shaped towards separation. In every capital the municipality formed the nucleus of a junta or convention, which first assumed autonomy and then was forced by the logic of events, and particularly by Spanish attempts at repression, to claim republican independence. The resultant struggle was shared in common by all. Buenos Aires, having worked out for herself a fairly tranquil and facile revolution, sent troops under San Martín to aid Chile and to invade the royalist strongholds of Peru. Bolívar, the Caraqueño, liberator of the Spanish Main and of Quito, sent his soldiers southwards through Peru. Finally, Venezuelans and Argentines, from opposite ends of the continent, stood side by side in that battle on the Andine heights of Ayacucho which ended the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and the Spanish dominion on the continent. The peoples of South America, through all subsequent divisions, have never quite forgotten that in those days they made common cause and united in a combined effort to lay the foundations of what might be a common destiny.

The emancipation of Mexico was a separate movement, which followed a rather different course owing to the Indian origin of most of the population. The issue was confused and hindered by early outbreaks, which were in great part Indian insurrections and class conflicts not directed to any clear aim and tainted by brigandage. An attempt was made to cut the tangle of conflicting interests by the establishment of an independent Mexican monarchy. In 1823 this was overthrown by a military revolt, which started the Mexican republic on its stormy career. The movement of separation from Spain inevitably embraced also the Captaincy-general of Guatemala, which chose separation from Mexico, and assumed the name of Central America—an artificial political term rather than a geographical description. Its five provinces eventually separated into the five republics of Central America.

Events in Brazil shaped themselves differently. Upon the French invasion of Portugal in 1807-8, the Portuguese royal family migrated to Brazil and made Rio for a time the capital of the Portuguese dominions. When King John VI returned to Lisbon in 1821, he left as Regent of Brazil his son Dom Pedro, who, a few months later, supported by Brazilian opinion, threw off allegiance to his father and declared himself an independent sovereign. Thus was established, or rather continued, that Brazilian monarchy which subsisted down to 1889 and which secured to that country tranquillity and a continuous though rather sleepy progress during the stormy period through which Spanish America passed after the achievement of independence.

For the long struggle had been mainly destructive. It had not only swept away Spanish authority, but had blurred and in some parts had erased all authority, all stability and order, had confused or obliterated whatever had existed of political experience or tradition, and had left the ignorant masses a prey to theorists and adventurers. The result was that, for at least a generation after the achievement of independence, most of the Spanish-American states were agitated by a turmoil of multitudinous constitutional experiments, confused conflict and destructive civil war, alternating with periods of rigorous and often tyrannical personal despotism. These movements have been perhaps unfairly judged in Europe. The young communities of Latin America, wanting in political experience and torn by a long and unavoidable struggle, were engaged in sweeping up the débris of their great revolution.

The Republic of Chile in great part escaped that turmoil through the establishment, after a brief period of conflict, of a fairly stable aristocratic oligarchy of landed proprietors. Her three "revolutions" have been landmarks rather than interruptions in her historical development; for they were brief, decisive and conducive to a clearer constitutional definition. Argentina, after the fall of the Dictator Rosas in 1852, began to feel her way towards union and order, and may