The End of Bolivarian Networks

Abstract

This final chapter extends from 1843 to 1854, and the trajectories of the El Santuario veterans draw the consequences of the 1829 battle to a close. On one level this decade sees selected veterans reach their maximum levels of influence and status: Daniel O’Leary became the British ambassador in Bogotá, Thomas Murray was the director of the New Granadan military school, and Rupert Hand was professor of English at the University of Central Venezuela. Anselmo Pineda and Carlos Castelli were both provincial governors. These appointments, and their implications, are studied here in detail. But despite first appearances they do not add up to an apogee of informal empire, in which New Granada and Venezuela were run according to European interests by imperial agents working on the inside. A wider perspective creates a much messier picture.