About 200 years ago, Latin America fought for and won its independence from the European colonial powers, Spain, Portugal, and France. From the slave revolution in Haiti and the protracted wars of independence in Spanish America up until Brazil’s peaceful emancipation, this volume recounts the history of Latin America at a central turning point in its Atlantic connections. Organized chronologically, it describes the continent’s political upheavals and decisive military battles as well as its notable leaders, such as Toussaint, Miranda, and Bolivar, along with their adventurous and unusual lives. The new states, the founding of which lasted into the middle of the nineteenth century, were unified by anticolonial resistance. Nonetheless, in the marginalization of social and ethnic classes, the rise of Caudillism, and in the training of a “Guerilla“ there already were traces of the problems that still define Latin America. Against the background of the growing influence of new indigenous movements and the rediscovery of Bolivarism, this dramatic era is again gaining importance and political attention.