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- [00:01]
A
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
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B
Hello and welcome to Empire with Anita
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A
Anand and me, William Dalrymple.
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B
Now, Willi, last time you should remind people where we were because Simon Bolivar's story, it's true to say it's complicated. Now in the first episode, I think you were slightly concerned that we were, you know, sort of fangirling maybe over him.
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A
I thought you were slightly. I thought I was maintaining a very, very kind of clear historical objectivity.
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B
Well, of course, because you're perfect in every possible way. But I think what it is is that you, you do have at the beginning a very charismatic and driven young man, good looking. He is that charismatic figure. He is the guy standing on the hill looking out and making this vow. And he will be the man to effect enormous change. Now in the next two episodes, it
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A
gets darker, doesn't it? It does get darker.
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B
They get very dark very quickly. So look, that's what we're going to be doing in the next two episodes.
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A
And we ended it, I thought on a particularly interesting note, on the idea that for all the rhetoric that he was coming up with about the enlightenment and freedom and liberation, in actual fact, very much like the American founding fathers, like Washington, like all those guys, he's actually looking after number one, he is looking after the interests of the plantation owning class. He's looking after the colonial elite and the people that are being liberated are these guys from Spanish control.
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B
Okay, this is going to be very exciting.
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A
But he's not really taking much interest in slaves and indigenous.
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B
I think you're going to be quite surprised by the next part of this, this podcast series. Then last time we were with Simon Bolivar, his attempts at claiming Venezuelan independence from Spain were met with brutality and he was brutal as well. And we left him and he was failing and he was on the run. So Bolivar, first of all, we sort of told you this, flees to Jamaica and then Haiti. And many believed, you know, with him on the run, he's no longer on scene, the whole cause is lost, it has collapsed.
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A
And I think that you could certainly argue that his visits to Jamaica and Haiti do change his rhetoric. But whether it actually changes the self interested plantation owner, we'll see.
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B
Okay, look, I agree, I think one, you can have a gray area, but I think the second certainly does change him. So I'll Tell you why. Okay, so Jamaica, where he's. He's basically licking his wounds after being on the run from the Spanish forces. He writes this very famous letter, it's just called the Jamaica Letter, which lays out his views clearly, because while he's in Jamaica, he still believes that he is the man, or there are men like him who can unite all of Latin America against Spanish rule. So he spends a lot of this letter criticizing Spanish rule, condemning social divisions, arguing for a union of countries in the Americas. This pan Latin Americanism. That's the beating heart of the Jamaica letter.
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A
Yeah. And what does he say about slavery in the documents?
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B
Well, I mean, look, okay, this lends some credibility to your argument because it's about 7,000 words. I think about 15% of it is about slavery. I did a measurement. Okay, but when he does talk about slavery, William, he does sort of do it in this kind of. I'll talk about slavery. I'll talk about how awful it is.
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A
The language is right.
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B
Yeah, the language is right, but there's no commitment to how he's going to get rid of it or how or when. So, I mean, I'll give you some of the quotes just to show you that it is in his mind in this incredibly important manifesto letter. So he does write in the letter, there's no greater misfortune than slavery. There's no greater crime than to hold a man in chains. Slavery is the most complete subversion of the order of society. He writes that too. And he writes, it is time for the chains to fall from the hands of our brothers. But, but, but he doesn't say how and he doesn't say when. Details. It's very light on his main considerations. You are right, are about people like himself.
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A
Surprise, surprise. Yeah.
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B
There's a quote that you'll enjoy reading because it kind of lends to, you know, the thing that he's really bothered about.
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A
He writes, do you know what our future was? This is from the Jamaican letter. We were mere consumers, confined to the cultivation of indigo, grain, coffee, sugar, cacao and cotton, raising cattle on the empty plains, hunting wild game in the wilderness, mining in the earth to produce gold for the insatiable greed of Spain. That's all good.
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B
Well, it, it is good, but I mean, some critics have looked back on this and said, you know, ahahaha, this is evidence of the Dalrymple doctrine. Then really miffed about was that, you know, we did all the hard work. Meaning we, the Creoles, the rich white Creoles, the plantation owners who made all this stuff and it all just got taken away.
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A
So while he's thinking about the insatiable greed of Spain, he's writing this in Jamaica, which is insatiably greedy for Caribbean products too. Now, this is an interesting moment. The British have, of course, what about 25 years earlier, lost the Americas. And they did that knowing that the more profitable colony was the Caribbean and they wanted to keep their hands on the Caribbean economy. Since then, we've seen the end of the slave trade, but at this point, not the end of slavery. So no one's coming in with fresh batches of slaves from West Africa, but
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B
nobody's liberating the slaves they've got already.
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A
This is a super rich, productive slave economy owned by the British rather than the Spanish. And he's among his British counterparts who presumably have got some of the rhetoric of that they're no longer kidnapping people from Africa and bringing them in chains to America, but they are nonetheless profiting from black labour.
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B
Well, I mean, they may well share, and again, this is conjecture rather than absolute knowledge. But, you know, in the conversations that he has while he is in Jamaica and he's penning this Jamaica letter, he may be hearing an awful lot of how he's feeling, which is, hang on a minute, the mother country, which is Britain, in this case in Jamaica, has served us really poorly. What are they doing? Changing rules and laws. And so, you know, that's swimming around in Jamaica. The letter, which has these sort of grievances against Spanish rule from, from our man Bolivar, is a lot to do with that kind of disgruntlement about, you know, sort of the depredations of the mother country, if you like. But in those 7,000 words in this letter, he also talks about governance. He talks about freedom, of course, the need to throw off Spanish rule and colonialism. But also interesting, he does touch on something that will be very important later on in his life. He seems to have forgotten that he warned this, that the military can behave to excess after a revolution. Watch out for the soldiers. I mean, there is that kind of theory in that. But I want to talk about the next trip.
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A
This is very interesting.
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B
I think it's more interesting. I think it sort of maybe is a transformation that lends itself to, you know, this heroic character because he goes to Haiti now. Haiti we've covered in Empire before, I think it's fair to say, fabulous episodes on Toussaint Louverture.
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A
It was certainly one of our most interesting for me is I just didn't know anything about Toussaint Louverture.
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B
Before what do you want to remind the class who Toussaint was and why Haiti is so important.
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A
Toussaint Louverture is this extraordinary black freedom fighter who really is the whole deal. He is a genius. He is literate and poetic and well read, who then becomes a fabulous guerrilla fighter who defeats the French and then is betrayed by the French who under the flag of truce, arrest, kidnap and deport him back to prison in France. And we're now talking about Simon Bolivar arriving in this free black slave republic not long after.
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B
I mean, it's only sort of, you know, over a decade after, 15 years afterwards.
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A
This is a place which has caught the imagination of the world. Someone like William Blake sitting in South London is absolutely electrified by the news of the successful slave run republic which has not been reconquered, which is now more or less independent and which is making, you know, a sort of success of it.
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B
Well, Bolivar doesn't meet Toussaint Louvitl, but he does meet Alexandre Petion, who's the president of this newly independent Republic, Republic of Haiti. And he is electrified by him because what he sees finally, and what he hears finally is that, you know what, the black population of South America has been ignored, it has been trampled on and they deserve something a lot better than this. And more importantly, you know, he's got this charismatic character like Petion to talk to him. And Petion is warm and he welcomes him. You know, this is a man who's been on the run and is in a bad way because, you know, he's been so hammered by the Spanish, he says, I'm going to show you what Haiti is all about. And I'm going to, more crucially than anything else, I'm going to give you soldiers and I'm going to give you weapons. And Bolivar, you can see responding, like opening up like a flower, suddenly thinking Haiti, he writes, is not only a refuge for the oppressed, it is a lighthouse of freedom. So finally, you know, there is this where it was all kind of around the creole cause. It is something bigger than this.
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A
And you really sense in this letter his imagination being lit up and possibilities opening up before him. This is a very important moment.
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B
Yeah, I mean, basically Haiti is this beacon of hope for all those fighting against colonial oppression in the Americas. He writes, and race and equality definitely come into this now, you know, sort of in a letter to Petion, he starts talking about his desire, which was missing in the Jamaica letters, you know, an actual plan to eradicate racial discrimination, saying we must march forward together. Free men of all colors to build a new America. So you've got. This transition from slavery is really bad.
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A
This is a very important moment to
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B
actually, they are brothers in arm, they are equals. And that vision of unity among diverse people, that becomes a central ideology for Bolivar at this point, I would argue, because he sees it in Haiti and he hears them saying the same things, you know, freedom, justice, universal rights, no more colonialism. And he sees brothers in arms. So I think it's at this point in Haiti, actually, that abolitionism becomes part of his republican project. It may not have been before, but it is now.
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A
But we will see in the remaining episodes to come whether he actually follows this up, whether this actually means anything. And what is it?
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B
Record is he is a roller coaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So look, he sort of had a chance to regroup and rethink. Let's go to 1817, where now an educated Bolivar decides he's going to try a new strategy. So instead of attacking coastal cities where the Spanish forces are particularly strong, he's like, okay, hang on, Louverture. Guerrilla warfare, going into interiors. Okay, could learn something from this.
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A
I wonder whether he was. He'd heard about things in Haiti which inspired him.
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B
How could he not? Because it was a l' Ouverture playbook. Right.
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A
He used the mountains.
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B
Yeah, he used the mountains and the rivers. So he goes to a place called Angostura, where the Bitters come from. Exactly, yeah. In the remote Venezuelan interior. And, you know, this changes everything, William, because these interiors, as Livature found, you know, they're isolated from the main Spanish forces. So, you know, he can rebuild his army, he can get out his intelligence without interference, but what he really needs even now is soldiers.
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A
And they turn up well from a
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B
really surprising quarter because it's when the British arrive. Now, I find this also completely fascinating about this episode in South American history. Tell us about the Brits at this time, because 1815, when he's writing his Jamaica letter, pretty pivotal moment for the Brits as well.
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A
So 1815 is, of course, the year of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon. And what you find suddenly in Europe is these vast armies, these unprecedented armies that have been rolling around the continent of Europe all the way to Moscow and down to the Peninsular War in Portugal and round and round Flanders and Belgium and so on. All these guys are now, well, not all of them, but quite a number of them are laid off. And so you find unemployed soldiers looking for jobs as mercenaries around the world. And we've again come across some of this sort of story in our episodes of all people on Ranjit Singh, when we saw all the French generals and Italian generals who'd been fighting for Napoleon, looking for their fortunes, wanting to use their expertise in warfare and ending up in the Punjab facing onto the British. So you have all people like Avatarboli and Coor and all these extraordinary Napoleonic generals ending up being married to Sikh wives and Allah and living with the Sikhs. But these are the British soldiers, their counterparts, who are heading not eastwards but heading westwards, and they turn up in large numbers. Tell us about the kind of people they are, Anita, because they are a
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rum bunch, but they're fighters and they're around. I mean, it's not an inconsequential number. About 4,000 of them.
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A
That's a decent force.
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B
Yeah, well, it swells the army after they arrive. Bolivar now has 9,000 men, so it's almost doubles his forces. They're still far smaller than the Spanish forces, but these guys are battle hardened and they are hungry for a fight.
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A
And presumably the latest. Yeah, the latest weaponry fresh from the fields of Waterloo and all this sort of stuff.
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B
And they are also, you know, fueled on victory. They've just beaten Napoleon. They're looking for somebody else to beat. And the Spanish never been very friendly to the Spanish. Some of the notable soldiers to join this side include a man called James Rook, whose battalion is this hodgepodge of British and Irish veterans from the Napoleonic wars and the North American wars. I mean, you know, remember, these are troops that were sort of sent all around the British Empire to deal with problems wherever they occurred.
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A
So I see that Rook is spelt with an e, which is an Irish spelling.
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B
Nothing gets past you. Yes, he's Dublin born, so he turns up with his men and in time they're joined by Germans. And I know you'll love this. A scattering of Bengalis are these sort
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A
of rogue East India Company troops.
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B
Again, they're mercenaries. They're up for hire. So you have sort of, you know, Bengalis smattering of West Indians, smattering of Americans who are also, you know, they've just fought. They've got, you know, time on their hands, money to be made.
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A
I'm baffled by these Bengalis because even in India there aren't many Bengali troops. They're all from Bihar in the south. The Bengalis famously are not. The British say they're not a martial race and make sort of kiplingy comments about Bengali babus. But here they are.
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B
They were here. I sort of did a deep dive. I was Trying to find some names for you, but I couldn't. But they are very much recorded as well. Bengali troops and a Bengali regiment even.
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A
Love it.
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B
You have Wellington himself encouraging soldiers to join the fight, you know, because we talked about Wellesley meeting him in London, you know, Wellington's brother, and being really taken with this idea that, oh, we could sort of nip the Spanish nose and we can do it through South America. So you've got sort of volunteer units in Venezuela, collectively known as the British legions. Some 1,700 Irishmen turn up, then recruited by John Devereux, this Irish adventurer, and they the Irish Legion. So you've got Brits, you've got Irish Legions, you've got Bengalis.
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A
Brilliant.
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B
It is this coming together of everybody who wants to poke the Spanish in the eye.
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A
So this is the world of Barry Lyndon. Have you ever seen Barry Lyndon?
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B
I have not. What is Barry Lyndon?
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A
So Barry Lyndon is originally a novel by Thackeray about a ne' er do, well Irish sort of chancellor selling himself as a mercenary in Europe. But it becomes, I think, Stanley Kubrick's best film. And it is this world of Irishmen on the make in the continent in this period in tricorn hats and breeches. And it's wonderful.
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B
Okay, if anyone's got four hours to spend, you know, what you're meant to do. I want to mention one other British army veteran who will prove to be very, very important in a very difficult war for Bolivar, and that's the veteran William Miller, who is a man who rises to command Bolivar's cavalry, which is going to be so important in the Peruvian War of Independence. And, you know, he is so beloved by Peruvians afterwards, you know, an independent Peruvian government will promote military grand marshal, which is his highest ran military rank. So that will happen later. So what you've got is a situation of all these people, you know, Horatio Hornblower types who are popping up all over the place. And the Spanish are basically playing whack a mole. So they're trying to stamp out little fires now all over South America. And at this time where they're somewhat distracted and, you know, trying to just keep some kind of semblance of order, it feels like overnight everything's gone bonkers in Latin America. Bolivar decides he's going to do something that quite frankly, on paper sounds insane.
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A
I couldn't believe this when I first read this. He wants to cross the Andes.
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B
Dun dun dun. Yeah. So this is May 1819 we're talking about. And this is, you know, this will rank him in the annals of history, among, you know, the company of Hannibal and Napoleon as far as military history and bravery.
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A
Except that the Andes are kind of considerably bigger than the Alps, aren't they? Even if he hasn't got elephants, they
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B
are the most treacherous or among the most treacherous mountain systems on Earth. At 7,000 kilometers along South America's western
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A
edge, crossing with a military force is no small feat.
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B
There is terrible weather. There is rugged terrain. There are altitudes of some 6,000 meters so thin, air sickness, a sudden snowstorm can blow you off a rock face temperature still swinging wildly. It is a geologically unstable place and it is dangerous ravines around every blind corner.
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A
Explain to me the point of this though, Anita. Why is he bothering to cross the Andes?
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B
He has decided that he wants to attack Bogota, the capital of new Grenada or modern Colombia. And he wants to do it from a direction that the Spanish could never imagine he could come. It's the same idea of coming up the Orinoco. You come up in a place they will never see you. Okay, so that is what his aim is. It's all about surprise. You don't have the numbers still, even if you've got a, you know, a swollen army with all these mercenaries coming to join you. So what you need is surprise. Conditions are hellish. Okay, so by the time they reach this icy pass at some 13,000ft called Paramo de Pisba, Bolivar's men were barely alive. You know, they were scarcely clothed. They were flogging themselves just to get their circulation running.
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A
Do people really do that?
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B
Yeah, you sort of beat yourself to get the blood moving. So, you know, men on horseback are hardly better off than those on the ground because you've got hooves either sinking into the bog or they're freezing. It is awful. Horses falling into deep water, never to rise again. They lost a third of their men to frost and starvation. Most of their weapons had rusted in the rain. Every single horse pretty much had died of hypothermia. And when they made it, finally, the Spanish forces at Baraca, they see these wild eyed, barefoot revolutionaries swarming down the Andes.
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A
Can you imagine?
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B
And they panic. They panic. So this battle of Boyaca, fought on August 7, 1819, was a decisive victory. You've got the Spanish viceroy fleeing Bogota dressed as an Indian in a poncho in a dirty hat. The date is still a momentous day in the South American calendar. August 7th. You know, it is a national holiday in Colombia itself.
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A
And these guys are still in sort of fighting form, are they've come down through the snows with their sort of soggy ooze and what have you.
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B
I mean, they basically, they've done this much. They're not going back with a key ring after that kind of trip. They are there to win. And the news of the defeat spreads like wildfire. And it reaches the heart of Spain. Bolivar has liberated what has been known as New Granada. You know, this sets him up. If we can do this, if we can do this, then just think of all the territories that we can grab, all of the territories and merge them into this one new united nation.
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A
He's trying to create a liberated Gran Colombia, and that means in modern terms, Venezuela and the territory of New Granada which corresponds to modern day Colombia and Panama. So it's Venezuela, Panama and Colombia that grow top chunk of the Latin American continent. And it will grow in the next few years to include also Ecuador, which is just south of Colombia, as well as parts of Peru and Brazil. Brazil presumably trespassing on Portuguese territory now. He's now got rid of the Spanish and he's now moving in to get rid of the Portuguese. If he's going into Brazil. It's a huge chunk of land over
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B
half the size of the whole of Europe, Willy. And you can look at this map and you will see that it is, you know, the territories in the north of South America closest to the Isthmus of Panama. And that's important as well because it is the Panama Strip. There's this thin strip of land linking the two American continents. So strategically he is getting dangerously close with his ambition to even be able to cut off Western Europe from its own interests.
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A
So he's created his dream. He's created the Gran Colombia, the liberated territory. It's a great chunk of territory. It's been achieved by extraordinary effort, crossing the Andes in this remarkable way. And this seems a good moment to take a break. Welcome back. Now, what we have to find out is if everyone shares his grandparents, Brandio's vision of an independent Gran Colombia or is he going to be rubbing up against opposition? Tell me what happens, Anita.
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B
It's an appealing thought, and it's an increasingly appealing thought to those people living in South America that, you know, maybe, maybe, just maybe, we could make something that's, that's big and powerful, but the way in which it is going to run. Not everyone shares Bolivar's vision. I'm going to introduce you to another character because he has a really turbulent relationship with Bolivar and it will determine the fate of Gran Colombia. His name is Francisco de Paola Santander So Santander is again, one of, you know, all of these men are sort of portrayed as, you know, these shiny epaulets, dignified. He looks a bit like young Prince Albert to me.
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A
You know, very much mustachioed, according to this early Victorian style. Absolutely. And full of military swagger.
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B
Yeah, he is. But he's not just a military man because he is actually known as the man of Laws. And how does he get that moniker? Well, he's considered the architect of modern Colombia. He serves as vice president to Bolivar. And while Bolivar is conquering lands, Santander is trying to work out how you run a country. So he is working very hard to establish a legal constitutional foundation for this new territory that is in Bolivar's head. And he's methodical, he's detail obsessed. He's the kind of person, exactly the kind of person you want to create a system of laws for a new nation.
- [24:07]
A
And this is very different from, as we've seen, from Bolivar, who likes to be sort of, you know, crossing the Andes on a horse and swooping down and ambushing people. By this stage, he's showing less and less interest in sort of constitutions and
- [24:20]
B
law codes, which is unusual and weird because he knew it was important. When he wrote the Jamaica Letters in 1815, he knew it was important. Now, four or five years later, he's not really thinking about it at all. And Santander starts to bug him. So Santander is sort of bunkered down trying to create his constitutional federalist state. That's what he is trying to do. But Bolivar, no, he's off. He's liberating. That's what he's doing. You know, he's now built up ahead of steam. So that's the only thing he's thinking of. And this rift of, you know, Santander saying, you know, what do you think about this? And Bolivar more or less swatting him off, saying, I'm really. This is not interesting to me. It is also not important.
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A
I'm going to raid Peru now.
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B
Yeah, exactly. What we're going to do is we're going to take more territory and he's now looking southwards for his ambition.
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A
You would have thought there was room for both.
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B
In retrospect. Yes, in retrospect, there should have been. Do you know what? I'm going to talk about the wars, because we're going to go very battle heavy in a minute. Do you mind if I talk about women for a bit? A lot of these military campaigns really do owe a lot to the women who fought half of the Population was female. They worked as spies, informers. Aristocratic women sold their jewelry, emerald, silver, everything to finance this revolution. Working class women followed the camps as you know, selling supplies, cooking, caring for the wounded. And there are some really notable ones. I just want to tell you a little bit about Joanna Azurdu de Padilla and I hope I've said that right, because she's amazing. She's this mother of five who rides into battle alongside her husband in now what is Bolivia. She's wounded in combat, she sees her husband killed. After, you know, she picks herself up from his death, she carries on fighting and she forms a bodyguard of these 25 women she calls Los Amazonas, the Amazons.
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A
Fabulous. Why haven't we seen a movie of this?
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B
These women are actually honored. Half of the women in Argentina or Chile, they establish the Order of the sun to recognize prominent activists in the independence movement. So they are honoured in South America, but not so much do we hear about them elsewhere. Anyway, that's my little aside. So let's go back now to Bolivar, this success. After his trip across the Andes, he begins his campaign in Ecuador in 1820. And he's starting to learn, you know, this is a man who is adapting because local leaders and revolutionaries, you need them on your side. So stop sort of coming and lecturing people. Try and understand what they want and try and take on their needs and try and get them on side. So what he has now in Ecuador is, you know, he's got the strategy that involves, yes, military action but diplomatic efforts to get their support. And he successfully captures Quito in 1822. He starts acknowledging others. You know, the work of liberty is a work for all. So, meaning, you know, we have to. War. War, yes. But George. Oh, yes. Following the liberation of Ecuador, he turns his attention to Peru. Now, do you remember we said Peru was basically the richest place, the cash bank. And that had always been his aim. Well, Peru is one of the wealthiest colonies in South America.
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A
Isn't that interesting?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Is that because it has gold or silver?
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B
Primarily, more than gold. And agriculture. The world then and the world now. You wouldn't think of it, but Peru is this kind of money box in South America. And remember, he's got this patchwork of troops now from Venezuela. Colombia's picked up some Ecuadorians who are
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A
now practiced at climbing mountains.
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B
Exactly that. I mean, they are hardened, the survivors. They are the hardest of the hard. But if you've got this kind of ragtag army and following these are people who aren't used to working together, you know, they haven't before. So you have this spike in Bolivar stirring speeches and letters, talking about unity, you know, the whole of South America,
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A
implying they're all squabbling or.
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B
Well, it just. They don't naturally work together. They just don't. They haven't, they haven't formed sort of revolutionary forces in tandem. And he manages to do that.
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A
And this is pulling together a diverse and geographically very strung out area. Got it.
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B
He does it so well that, you know, he, he manages to maintain momentum. Remember, this man has been fighting for years now and is still going and you know, that is surprising to his enemy, to the Spanish. And the thing that he has actually in his favor is that he is a really good planner. He's meticulous at planning and he's also very good at gathering intelligence. You remember I told you the network of women spies kind of feeding back information and on enemy positions. But also he knows if you want to keep this force together, you make sure they're well supplied. So supply lines are incredibly important to him. He's learned. And again, maybe this is the Louverture thing as well. Do you remember supply lines were so problematic back in Louverture's day.
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A
So he's heading to the richest area of Latin America. Now he's getting his hands on all the gold and silver controlled via Lima. Is this going to be a good thing for. Or is he going to find that it's going to go to his head? All this power and money, it will
- [29:23]
B
turn out to be a very, very good thing for him. Now Lima's hard to get to, so the place that he hits is a place called Ayacucho. It's a city in the central highlands of Peru. So right up there is part of the Andes range. It lies about 550 kilometers, or 342 miles if you're doing English money, southeast of Lima. But it's high, you know, it's one of those high altitude places, 3,000 metres above, above sea level. And it's going to be hard going again. And so, you know, you have this battle commencing with a very motivated force, but it's hard. The terrain as we've described up there, high up, is difficult. You've got well prepared Spanish defences. And this is really extraordinary. The revolutionary forces organize into battalions. They advance under heavy fire because they are very good soldiers. They have insane discipline and determination because they are outnumbered. But what they manage to do is they manage to make little breaks in the Spanish defense. And they break it, they break through. It's like you know, sort of dotted paper where you have these weaknesses and he does it. And so you have the enemy upping sticks and running. They are, they are retreating in disarray and many simply surrender. Battle only lasts four hours, but it is decisive because Spanish power in Peru collapses and arguably the biggest prize has been won. But you know, that's not the end of any story, is it, Willy?
- [30:52]
A
No. And how does he behave once he assumes power in Peru?
- [30:56]
B
Well, winning a territory is one thing, holding it is quite another. And it gets dark really quickly because you, you start seeing him, you know, there is royalist opposition in Peru because they've done really well. They've been, you know, the rich gringotts bank of this whole situation for a long time. They don't like this guy coming in. So what happens is he convinces the Peruvian Congress to name him dictator of Peru. Now, although this is offered to him, offered to him, it outrages the Colombians who he, you know, he's, he's left behind the Colombians. And do you remember Santander?
- [31:34]
A
Half a continent way now.
- [31:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's writing out, you know, Santander's still working on how, you know, we're going to set up a civil society after winning these battles. An autocrat. That's not in the script, that's not what he had agreed to. Santander is challenging him. He doesn't like that. Peru is also challenging somewhat his vision because although they give him, you know, dictatorial powers or he assumes these dictatorial powers over Peru, he's just arrived with
- [32:02]
A
an army, so they're not going to be in a bit of a state,
- [32:04]
B
resisted it and the Spanish have pegged it and given up, so, you know, they don't have much say on the matter. But Ecuador does become a part of Gran Colombia, Peru does not. And I maybe should sort of remind people what we mean by Gran Colombia, this great vision of his, of this new united South America. Because if he'd had his way, you know, all these liberated territories would become of this federation of the Andes, this great huge territory. But you know, when some say we don't want to, what can you do? They've got the money and he wants them and he's the dictator, so it's fine by him. But the ones that are involved. Colombia is at the heart of Gran Colombia. Bogota is the capital, Venezuela, Bolivar's birthplace, crucial part of Gran Colombia. Ecuador joins Gran Colombia after its independence from Spain. Panama, initially part of Colombia, gets sort of folded into Gran Colombia until it later will get its own independence But Peru, no, not so much.
- [33:01]
A
And is this a problem? It's been separately administered. It's a different part of the continent. Is that a big issue for everyone?
- [33:08]
B
Well, Santander is working hard on it not being a problem. Bolivar is making it quite difficult, especially when he comes back up to Colombia, because what he sees is that these places, despite his vision that, you know, once conquered, they should just do it. Why aren't they doing it? But the relationship, when he comes back to Colombia, the relationship between Colombia and Venezuela is not good. You know, Santander is not happy and he's sitting in Colombia going, this is not in my name, mate. This is not what I want. And he's falling out with a Venezuelan leader.
- [33:40]
A
What's his beef? I don't understand. Is it because he's enlarged it too much, he's gone off without official sanction to conquer Peru, or is it that he's a dictator?
- [33:49]
B
What's the. It's the dictator part of it, which is a problem. And also, you know, he's not making allowances for these national characteristics. Pride in, you know, the fact that a Peruvian feels Peruvian or an Ecuadorian feels Ecuadorian or indeed right on his backyard. You know, a Colombian may not want to feel like a Venezuelan. So you've got a revolt that ensues with this leader, the Venezuelan leader, future president, in fact, Jose Antonio Paez, who, who revolts against Santander because Santander is sitting there in the capital trying to hold it all together and he's planning to secede from Gran Colombia. So Bolivar goes to Paez and instead of sort of overthrowing him and killing him for having an opinion, he says, you know, I'll leave you, but you submit to my authority. You just do it. I don't care what you think, you just do it temporarily. This resolves the issue. But there is now this problem where people are saying, yes, okay, for now. And Santander, who already is trying to fight for a vision that he thought he shared completely with Bolivar. But what Bolivar is doing with these sort of autocratic setups, particularly in Peru, particularly sort of saying, you know, I am the dictator of Peru, but Peru can stay outside. This is nothing that Santander has stayed, you know, has stayed in this. So there is a rift between these two. Santander is really opposed to Bolivar's attempts to reform something called the 1821 Constitution of Cuita. So what that was going to do was, you know, mandate a 10 year period of this imposition of a Bolivian constitution. Right. Which would feature something which he, Santander Couldn't stand a lifelong president. You know, how can you have that? That doesn't seem democratic.
- [35:39]
A
And that's the red line for Santander, is it? He thinks this guy's lost it. He's becoming completely autocratic.
- [35:45]
B
Yeah, exactly. Santander opposes Bolivar's attempts to reform the 1821 constitution before this legally mandated 10 year period that Bolivar wants of a constitution that will give you a lifelong president. Right? This Bolivian constitution that Bolivar is in favour of. And Santander says, no, why? Why would you have a lifelong president that's anti democratic? And then in 1828 you have another convention called the Ocagne Convention, and at this one Santander's supporters say, no, we're with him, we're with that guy, not with you. Your reforms are not okay. Then you've got others calling for Bolivar to assume absolute power. And that's what he does. He becomes president Liberator. He abolishes the office of vice president. Santander was his vice president. He sidelines Santander.
- [36:37]
A
It's like a coup d'. Etat.
- [36:38]
B
No, it's not violent. He just sends him off. He sends him to a diplomatic posting in Washington and says, get out, I can't be arguing with you anymore, go away. And so, you know, all of these visions of Santander go with him pretty much. He sidelines him and everyone who believed, like Santander did, that this is going to be a federation, this is going to be, you know, this is not a place of tyranny. That's not what happens. That isn't what happens. And you know, it's. It becomes. And we'll go into this in the next episode. The 1820s will read like a timeline of tyranny from this man who had vowed that no tyrant would ever rule South America. He assumes dictatorial powers over Gran Colombia. He suspends the Constitution, he centralizes authority, he governs by decree. And while he keeps saying, this is just temporary, we need to do this right now to save the Republic, it is exactly the kind of tyranny that he had once fought against. And it feels a lot like what the Spanish did before him. So people think, you know, what did we fight for? What did we spend for? What did we bleed for? And Bolivar, after Santander is gone, and it's kind of this breaking mechanism on the things that he does, it becomes increasingly intolerant of opposition. So you find that he starts chucking his political enemies in prison and press freedoms are curtailed. It is not a good look for the Liberator.
- [38:05]
A
It sounds a familiar story. Power corrupting.
- [38:09]
B
We'll leave it there and we'll pick up on how, you know, the autocrat manages in the next few years and how well this, this federation holds together until the next time we meet. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand, and
- [38:21]
A
goodbye from me, William Dalrymple.
- [38:32]
C
It is out of control in the White House right now.
- [38:36]
D
Welcome to the Rest Is Politics Us. I'm Kati Kay.
- [38:39]
C
I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Who is the worst politician in Washington right now.
- [38:44]
D
They don't know how to manage Donald Trump.
- [38:47]
C
I talked to the people that organized the abduction. I'm telling you why they did it.
- [38:51]
D
The White House is in a bind.
- [38:53]
C
Anthony, here's what I would say to
- [38:54]
D
you about the chaos is the strategy.
- [38:58]
C
It should not have happened, and it is a violation of international law.
- [39:01]
D
Is he losing control of the party?
- [39:04]
C
I survived 11 days in Trump's White House. I know the SOB.
- [39:09]
D
I've been covering politics in Washington for almost 30 years. Twice a week, we break down what's really going on in Trump's White House.
- [39:16]
C
The big issue for the United States is going to be we want were once seen as a benevolent superpower, and now we're seen as an aggressor.
- [39:25]
D
You know, he can lie about a lot of things, but he can't lie about what people are feeling about the economy.
- [39:31]
C
If you really want to understand what's going on in Trump's mind, just search the Rest is Politics Us Wherever you get your podcasts.