Compare And Contrast The Independence Movements In Spanish South America Mexico And Haiti

Was there a difference in the treatment of slaves in North America and South America?

Yes, there were big differences, because in South America and the West Indies they continued to import African slaves after 1808, they tended to import males to get more work done and they did not try to raise slave children. The sex ratio in North America was 50–50, but not in the West Indies or Brazil. The big slave revolts were in Brazil and Haiti, not North America. North America was healthier than further south. In North America, the slave owners tended to live on the plantations where the slaves worked. Sugar profits were greater, so the slave owners had less incentive to keep their slaves healthy and could replace dead slaves with new ones from Africa. Slaves were less common in North America and thus more highly prized. In North America, many whites were descended in part from indentured servants, which was similar to slavery. Slaves in North America more readily accepted Christianity.Amazon.com: Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison eBook: John Dewar Gleissner: Kindle Store

Is Latin America considered to be part of the Western World?

To the extent that Latin Americans mostly speak Western languages (Spanish or Portuguese overwhelmingly), follow Western religions (Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism), and live in countries with political structures and popular cultures heavily influenced by Europe and North America, yes, they're Western. Why wouldn't they be?From the perspective of Americans--I exclude Canadians because we don't really have that much of a particular focus on Latin America, the US being our buffer--the main reason why Latin Americans wouldn't be seen as Western could be that Latin Americans are relatively unpopular poor migrants. Samuel Huntington, who identified Latin America as a distinct civilization from the West, was also afraid that Latin American immigration would unmoor the United States from its WASP roots. You don't identify with people you don't like.From the Latin American perspective, I'd suggest that there could be two major factors at play. Many Latin American nations, notably Mexico, have emphasized in their nation-building process their non-Western roots, often Native American but frequently also African. Identifying as "Western" would be a renunciation of this nation-building process.Latin American identity has often been constructed as not being American. An identification by Latin Americans fearing American domination with the United States isn't going to happen.In a broader perspective, one major problem with including Latin America in the West is that Latin America doesn't belong to Western clubs. No Latin American country belongs to NATO, while Mexico and Chile are the only Latin American members of the OECD and they joined only in 1994 and 2010. More abstractly, since the mid-20th century no Latin American country has been economically developed, with once prosperous countries like Argentina and Uruguay and Venezuela being surpassed by southern Europe.Could this change? Conceivably, sure. Greater Latin American self-confidence, along with better relations between the United States and Latin America (and between Europe and Latin America) and a certain amount of economic growth, could lead to a reidentification. Might Brazil, for instance, be the next Western great power? Even if this doesn't happen, I would point out that even Huntington was unsure whether Latin America was distinct from the West in the way that China or India were. The two civilizations are clearly kindred.

What were the causes of Latin American revolutions and how did they impact the American continent?

I’m definitely going to oversimplify this, but here are the main causes:The American and French Revolutions spread the ideals of the Enlightenment all across the world, inspiring revolutionaries all over the place.Slaves in the French colony in Haiti rose up in a massive rebellion, taking advantage of the disorder of the French Revolution to take over and form their own independent country. This further inspired underclasses across the Americas.Napoleon invaded Spain and replaced its monarch with one of his own bloodline. In Spain’s colonies, elites all over the place declared themselves rulers in absence of the king, creating “juntas” which were supposedly acting in the interests of the king.These juntas provided a way for revolutionaries to gain momentum and support, and from 1810 to 1820 the juntas broke away from Spain entirely, igniting bloody wars between loyalists and revolutionaries across the Americas. By the 1850s the Spanish Empire no longer existed.And here are the effects (again, super simplified):The new countries were economically weakened for a long time because of the ravaging wars.Slavery was completely abolished by 1860 in all of the countries in the Americas except the US, Cuba and Brazil.The many competing classes and social tensions created political instability in most Latin American countries for a long time.Wanting compensation for their acts in the revolutionary wars, many military leaders grabbed up power in a lot of the Latin American countries, and most of them were highly militaristic for the next century; many became ruled by dictators, despite having constitutions and representation.One of these dictators was Santa Anna, who responded to rebels in Texas with massive force, slaughtering everyone in the Alamo and inciting a Mexican-American War that made Texas a part of the US.So, all in all, the Latin American revolutions replaced the Spanish royalty with their own elites, threw their countries into chaos for years, and placed military dictatorships in charge for many years - but in the end, came out more free than they were before.