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SPAIN - HISTORY - NAPOLEON AND THE AMERICAN WAR

Napoleon
The war with France in 1793 polarized the country in an apparent reaction against the Gallicised elites. Spain made peace with France in 1795, and in 1796, Spain, in support of France, declared war against Britain and Portugal. The disastrous Spanish economic situation (and other factors) forced the abdication of the Spanish king in favour of Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte.

This new foreign monarch was regarded with scorn. On May 2, 1808, the people of Madrid took up a nationalist uprising against the French army, known to the Spanish as the War of Independence, and to the English as the Peninsular War.

Napoleon was forced to intervene personally, defeating the Spanish army and Anglo-Portuguese forces. However, further military action by Spanish guerrillas and Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army, combined with Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, led to the ousting of the French from Spain in 1814, and the return of King Ferdinand VII.

The French invasion proved disastrous for Spain's economy, and left a deeply divided country that was prone to political instability for more than a century. The power struggles of the early 19th century led to the loss of all of Spain's colonies in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Spanish-American War
At the end of the 19th century, Spain lost all of its remaining old colonies in the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, and Guam to the United States after the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 1899 Spain sold its remaining Pacific possessions to Germany.

"The Disaster" of 1898, as the Spanish-American War became known, gave increased impetus to Spain's cultural revival (Generation of '98) in which there was much critical self examination.

However, political stability in such a dispersed and variegated land, comprised of strongly differentiated regional identities and deeply held divisions over governmental legitimacy, would elude the country for some decades and was ultimately imposed via dictatorship in 1939.

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