I was invited to prepare an interpretative essay on this subject. That, and nothing more, is what this paper aspires to be. It is not a monograph and any resemblance it may bear to historiography or bibliography is purely coincidental.

Any essay on economic factors in the Latin American independence movement labors under a heavy heuristic handicap. The difficulty begins with the paucity of basic economic studies of the period. This deficiency was noted by Charles Griffin ten years ago in a related paper; little progress towards filling the gap has been made since.

In so far as it is possible to identify and evaluate the economic factors in the independence movement, they appear less important than the political and perhaps other factors. This is almost certainly so if the question is one of conscious motivation, and probably so whatever the terms of the question.