Anita Arnon

Just a reminder that Creole doesn't necessarily in this instance mean mixed race as it does today, but people born in the colonies like Bolivar himself, Spanish parents, but born in what is now called Venezuela.

Well, through families like Bolívar's family, you know, these Creole elites who owned the colonies, ran the colonies, the plantations, the mines.

They were the ones who kept the indigenous and enslaved populations intact.

This is really key to why things are difficult here because remember we were talking about these different vice royalties, different vice royalties as India had one in charge or overarching.

In a place as big as this, you have different control centers.

What is odd and really special about what goes on in South America under the Spanish is that communication between the colonies was punishable by death.

So they were sort of setting up, and I suppose this must be a centralized fear among the peninsulares and the Spanish, that they wanted to keep their possessions fragmented.

I'm always minded of what Mary Beard said about Roman slaves, that if they had a uniform, they could see how many of them there were, and the elites would have no hope, no chance.

That was a really striking fact.

That is very much the thinking in the Spanish mind as well, that if they see how they outnumber us,

If they start talking laterally rather than deferring upwards to the Spaniards that we put in charge right at the top of the tree, then how are we going to keep control?

And it was a good point, but it was one that people would realize.

In the 18th century, let's start from there.

You've got the new Bourbon dynasty in Spain.

They start to think, actually, we need a little more control than we've had before.

They start initiating a series of reforms on how their American territories are going to be administered.

The whole aim of this is that Spain's economic growth is central.

It is all about extraction.

What happens to Spain is all that is important.

Whatever is happening in the colonies,