[Footnote: Babcock,
American Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] While the
United States was thus crowding Europe back from its borders and
strengthening its leadership in the New World, Spanish America was
revolting from the mother-country. When Napoleon made himself master
of Spain in 1807, English merchants, alarmed at the prospect of
losing the lucrative trade which they had built up in the lands
which Spain had so long monopolized, supported the revolutionists
with money, while various expeditions led by English officers aided
the revolt. [Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am.
Republics, chap, iii.; Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 449, VI., 508.] At
first, failure met the efforts of the loosely compacted provinces,
made up of sharply marked social classes, separated by race
antagonisms, and untrained in self-government. Only in Buenos Ayres
(later the Argentine Confederation), where representatives of the
United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata declared their independence
in 1816, were the colonists able to hold their ground.
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