History
On May 13, 1810, the arrival of a British frigate in Montevideo confirmed the rumors circulating in Buenos Aires: France, led by Emperor Napoleon, had invaded Spain, capturing and overthrowing Ferdinand VII Bourbon, the Spanish King. The situation was clear: with the authority of the vice-regency gone, there was a power vacuum. Leading figures in Buenos Aires quickly arranged a meeting and after much discussion it was decided to replace the Spanish rule with a local Junta.
After the May Revolution, most of the provinces of the former Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata joined to form the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, also known as United Provinces of South America in 1810. The four provinces of Upper Peru (current-day Bolivia) were occupied by Spanish Royalist forces and the other ten provinces were under pressure from Royalist forces.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)