The son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, BolĂvar was born to wealth and position. His father died when the boy was three years old, and his mother died six years later, after which his uncle administered his inheritance and provided him with tutors. One of those tutors, SimĂłn RodrĂguez, was to have a deep and lasting effect on him. RodrĂguez, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, introduced BolĂvar to the world of 18th-century liberal thought.
At the age of 16, BolĂvar was sent to Europe to complete his education. For three years he lived in Spain, and in 1801 he married the daughter of a Spanish nobleman, with whom he returned to Caracas. The young bride died of yellow fever less than a year after their marriage. BolĂvar believed that her tragic death was the reason that he took up a political career while still a young man.
In 1804, when Napoleon I was approaching the pinnacle of his career, BolĂvar returned to Europe. In Paris, under the renewed guidance of his friend and tutor RodrĂguez, he steeped himself in the writings of European rationalist thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon, Jean le Rond dâAlembert, and Claude-Adrien HelvĂŠtius, as well as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The latter two had the deepest influence on his political life, but Voltaire coloured his philosophy of life. In Paris he met the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who had just returned from his voyage through Hispanic America and told BolĂvar that he believed the Spanish colonies were ripe for independence. That idea took root in BolĂvarâs imagination, and, on a trip to Rome with RodrĂguez, as they stood on the heights of Monte Sacro, he made a vow to liberate his country.
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One other experience enriched his intellect at that time: he watched the extraordinary performance that culminated in Napoleonâs coronation in 1804 as emperor of the French. BolĂvarâs reaction to the coronation wavered between admiration of the accomplishments of a single man and revulsion at Napoleonâs betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution. The desire for glory was one of the permanent traits in BolĂvarâs character, and there can be little doubt that it was stimulated by Napoleon. The example of Napoleon was, nevertheless, a warning that BolĂvar heeded. In his later days he always insisted that the title of âliberatorâ was higher than any other and that he would not exchange it for that of king or emperor. In 1807 he returned to Venezuela by way of the United States, visiting the eastern cities.
Independence movement
The Latin American independence movement was launched a year after BolĂvarâs return, as Napoleonâs invasion of Spain unsettled Spanish authority. Napoleon also failed completely in his attempt to gain the support of the Spanish colonies, which claimed the right to nominate their own officials. Following the example of the mother country, they wished to establish juntas to rule in the name of the deposed Spanish king. Many of the Spanish settlers, however, saw in those events an opportunity to sever their ties with Spain. BolĂvar himself participated in various conspiratorial meetings, and on April 19, 1810, the Spanish governor was officially deprived of his powers and expelled from Venezuela. A junta took over. To obtain help, BolĂvar was sent on a mission to London, where he arrived in July. His assignment was to explain to England the plight of the revolutionary colony, to gain recognition for it, and to obtain arms and support. Although he failed in his official negotiations, his English sojourn was in other respects a fruitful one. It gave him an opportunity to study the institutions of the United Kingdom, which remained for him models of political wisdom and stability. More important, he fostered the cause of the revolution by persuading the exiled Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who in 1806 had attempted to liberate his country single-handedly, to return to Caracas and assume command of the independence movement.
