European possession of most of the Americas ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. While the Spanish had occupied vast tracts of American land in a little over a half-century between 1492 and 1550, even larger regions of the Americas won their independence in the half-century between 1775 and 1825. While there had been rebellions and disobedience in the earlier periods, there was nothing like the massive and successful resistance to rule from Europe that characterized the American revolutions.

These observations may make it appear that the American revolutions were fairly straightforward; in fact, the period was one of immense complexity. In many regions, the movement toward independence was as much an inter-American civil war as the ousting of an occupying power. Moreover, in many cases, the revolutions were social movements as well as political movements, and involved a complex dance between the revolutionaries who wanted a radical change in social order and the nationalists who wanted simply to rid American colonies of their overlords in Europe. Both sorts of movement were part of a pattern of a revolutionary age that began with the American Revolution in 1775 and extended to the end of the Spanish American Revolutions in 1825. In between there was the French Revolution and a powerful slave revolt and revolution in Haiti.