History UsefulNotes / SimonBolivar

* His legacy in South America is evident in the ''[[VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun Victoria]]'' series, which starts in 1836, just a few years after his death. The ''Colossus of the South'' DLC for ''3'' honors him by allowing nations with North or South Andean primary cultures to eventually form a "Federation of Andes", which can potentially unite all Spanish-speaking countries in South America; the associated journal entry is even titled ''Bolivar's Dream''.

The history after this point gets ''really'' complicated, but simply put, he then did to the lands that are now the countries of Venezuela, UsefulNotes/{{Colombia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Panama}}, {{UsefulNotes/Ecuador}}, UsefulNotes/{{Peru}}, and {{UsefulNotes/Bolivia}} (which was named in his honor in 1825) what UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington only did to one country. It was a [[WarIsHell very bloody war]] for independence, with a lot of rather nasty things done by both sides. This is best summarized in the infamous 'Decree of War to the Death', where Bolívar proclaims his intent to liberate Spanish America, and politely tells Spaniards that he'll kill them all just for being Spanish unless they side with him. Still, Bolívar was a military genius who relentlessly attacked the Spanish with conventional and guerrilla warfare, kept morale high, enjoyed huge popular support, and won many, many impressive victories until he had achieved his greatest one - driving a European Empire and all their resources ''off an entire continent.'' For that reason alone, his military legacy is admired and extensively studied by the armies of Spanish-speaking South America to this day.

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830) was a military officer from the Spanish colony of UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}}. With a reputation in South America only comparable to UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington in the United States, Bolivar is universally beloved throughout the region as the man who freed them from Spain, affectionately nicknamed ''[[FounderOfTheKingdom El Libertador]]'' ("[[TheMagnificent the Liberator]]"). His history is the stuff of legends across Spanish-speaking South America; here's a short synopsis.

The history after this point gets ''really'' complicated, but simply put, he then did to the lands that are now the countries of Venezuela, UsefulNotes/{{Colombia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Panama}}, {{UsefulNotes/Ecuador}}, UsefulNotes/{{Peru}}, and {{UsefulNotes/Bolivia}} (which was named in his honor in 1825) what UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington only did to one country. It was a [[WarIsHell very bloody war]] for independence, with a lot of rather nasty things done by both sides. This is best summarized in the infamous 'Decree of War to the Death', where Bolívar proclaims his intent to liberate Spanish America, and politely tells Spaniards that he'll kill them all just for being Spanish unless they side with him. Still, Bolívar was a military genius who relentlessly attacked the Spanish, kept morale high, enjoyed huge popular support, and won many impressive victories until he had driven a great European power off an entire continent.

The history after this point gets ''really'' complicated, but simply put, he then did to the lands that are now the countries of Venezuela, UsefulNotes/{{Colombia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Panama}}, {{UsefulNotes/Ecuador}}, UsefulNotes/{{Peru}}, and {{UsefulNotes/Bolivia}} (which was named in his honor in 1825) what UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington only did to one country. It was a [[WarIsHell very bloody war]] for independence, with a lot of rather nasty things done by both sides. This is best summarized in the infamous 'Decree of War to the Death', where Bolívar proclaims his intent to liberate Spanish America, and politely tells Spaniards that he'll kill them all just for being Spanish unless they side with him. Still, Bolívar was a military genius who relentlessly attacked the Spanish, kept morale high, enjoyed huge popular support, and won a number of impressive victories.

This pride, combined with his liberal education in the ideals of the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution American]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution French]] Revolutions, he decided to win independence for much of Spanish South America--or die trying. Bear in mind, he did this at a time that when UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte invaded Spain, most of Spain's South American colonies declared they were still loyal to the Spanish king and set up temporary governments. The idea of independence was considered lunacy--and being that Spanish America was a slaveholding society and the UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}}an Revolution had just happened, resulting in the complete abolition of slavery and the deaths of thousands of Whites, Whites, especially rich Whites, (like the wealthy ''criollos'' like Bolívar himself who dominated the social and economic landscape of the colonies), were generally a little leery at best of talk of independence unless it came with a lot of strings attached.

The history after this point gets ''really'' complicated, but simply put, he then essentially did to the lands that are now the countries of Venezuela, UsefulNotes/{{Colombia}}, {{UsefulNotes/Panama}}, {{UsefulNotes/Ecuador}}, UsefulNotes/{{Peru}}, and {{UsefulNotes/Bolivia}} (which was named in his honor in 1825) what UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington only did to one country. It was a [[WarIsHell very bloody war]] for independence, with a lot of rather nasty things done by both sides. This is best summarized in the infamous 'Decree of War to the Death', where Bolívar proclaims his intent to liberate Spanish America, and politely tells Spaniards that he'll kill them all just for being Spanish unless they side with him. Still, Bolívar was a military genius who relentlessly attacked the Spanish, kept morale high, enjoyed huge popular support, and won a number of impressive victories.

Bolívar thought that a republic like the one in the United States [[DemocracyIsBad would not end well]] in the brutal world of South America (he once even said that the people suffered from "triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice").[[note]]To be fair, the British colonies in North America were allowed to essentially rule themselves and elect their own rulers, something the Spanish colonies never experienced, and that is why he thought it was better suited up there.[[/note]] This wasn't to say he was a despot or autocrat, however; his model was the British system of King, Lords, and Commons, with the King replaced with an elected executive president for life and the Lords replaced with a hereditary Senate. (In that sense, he was strikingly similar to UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, who had similar ideas for the United States.) He was also not a fan of federalism, for the same reasons, and advocated strong powers for the central government (again like Hamilton, although more extreme[[note]]Hamilton was willing to accept federalism in the United States, if only because the country was so vast and the states were already well established as governing units by 1787. He merely advocated for the federal government to be as powerful as possible. Bolívar wanted unitary government for his Gran Colombia, even though it was almost as big as the early United States--indeed, Gran Colombia was larger than the US of Hamilton's day by about 150,000 square miles--and the divisions between Venezuela, New Granada (what is now Colombia), and the Audiencia of Quito (now Ecuador) were even older and more deeply rooted than the ones among the U.S. states.[[/note]]).

Indeed, over the course of his career he was a bit like UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell, perpetually finding himself in power, trying to create a republican civilian constitutional government he could hand things over to, handing power to that government, seeing the new order torn apart by competing factions less interested than him in maintaining the new regime, and ultimately being asked to retake power to restore stability. In the end, declaring the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea" to express his disappointment on the result of his project, he resigned several months before his death at the relatively young age of 47, from what appears to have been tuberculosis.

Indeed, over the course of his career he was a bit like UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell, perpetually finding himself in power, trying to create a civilian constitutional government he could hand things over to, handing power to that government, seeing the new order torn apart by competing factions less interested than him in maintaining the new regime, and ultimately being asked to retake power to restore stability. In the end, declaring the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea" to express his disappointment on the result of his project, he resigned several months before his death at the relatively young age of 47, from what appears to have been tuberculosis.

Bolivar was President of a union of much of these colonies known as Gran Colombia from 1819 until 1830. At one point he was declared dictator for life, but it seems he never intended to actually rule absolutely for his entire life. At most, he wanted to have a life presidency with expansive but nevertheless not limitless powers--that is, he wanted to be King George, not Emperor Napoleon. The comparison to Napoleon is significant: Bolívar ''hated'' what Napoleon had done to the First French Republic. During his pre-revolution jaunt in Europe as a bereaved young widower, Bolívar had been in Paris during Napoleon's coronation in 1804, and had pointedly locked himself in his room and stayed away from the coronation festivities. Had Bolívar wanted to become a monarch, he probably could have--but he never wanted to, and so he never did. Please note that monarchism was still very much alive in the Latin America of Bolívar's day; his contemporary UsefulNotes/JoseDeSanMartin privately admitted to Bolívar at their famous meeting at Guayaquil in 1822 that he had been a (liberal, constitutional) monarchist the whole time he had been running around liberating the Southern Cone, wanting to crown an indigenous monarch in the posthumous example of Tupac Amaru II, and UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}} adopted a monarchist constitution upon obtaining independence in 1820. Oh, and of course UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} was home to the exiled Portuguese royal court and most of the Portuguese aristocracy, and would become an independent constitutional monarchy from 1822.

Bolívar was a scion of one of the oldest, richest, and most respected families of ''criollos'' (i.e. colonial-born Whites) in colonial Venezuela. His parents died young, and he inherited the bulk of the family fortune. As a rich ''criollo'', he went to Europe for his education as a teenager, where he saw firsthand the corruption of the Spanish court. He was particularly revolted by the heir to the throne, [[UsefulNotes/FerdinandVII Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias]], whom Bolívar privately hated with a passion after a few interactions (apparently, they played tennis against each other and the prince was a tremendous dick). The experience of seeing the Spanish court in person instilled in him a dislike of the Spanish and intense pride in his heritage in the New World.

Bolívar was a scion of one of the oldest, richest, and most respected families of ''criollos'' (i.e. colonial-born Whites) in colonial Venezuela. His parents died young, and he inherited the bulk of the family fortune. As a rich ''criollo'', he went to Europe for his education as a teenager, where he saw firsthand the corruption of the Spanish court. He was particularly revolted by the heir to the throne, [[UsefulNotes/FerdinandVII Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias]], whom Bolívar privately hated with a passion. The experience of seeing the Spanish court in person instilled in him a dislike of the Spanish and intense pride in his heritage in the New World.

Bolívar was a scion of one of the oldest, richest, and most respected families of ''criollos'' (i.e. colonial-born Whites) in colonial Venezuela. His parents died young, and he inherited the bulk of the family fortune. As a rich ''criollo'', he went to Europe for his education as a teenager, where he saw firsthand the corruption of the Spanish court. This disgusted him and instilled in him a dislike of the Spanish and intense pride in his heritage in the New World.