Following a Leverhulme Trust research award, a research network led by Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, Reader in Hispanic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, has just launched a new website to explore the South American Wars of Independence, entitled War and Nation.
The network seeks to explore the way war became a catalyst for the creation of identity in South America. From early on war fuelled the development of identities that would eventually become national. New nations developed within the colonial administrative areas that the Spaniards had imposed. In order to understand how the new states emerged, the network takes a perspective outside the constraints of the nations we know today and studies conflict from a regional perspective.
Spanish language teachers may find some of the video podcasts on Latin American history to be a useful teaching resource.
The project also has a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. The research pages site can be found here: https://research.kent.ac.uk/warandnation/