This important new study relates the origin of the decline of republican politics in South America to the existence of monarchic rule in Brazil. Millington suggests that if the European-oriented monarchy in Brazil had been overthrown at the time of independence-something that the South American republics, led by Colombian power, had within their power to accomplish-the independence movements in Spanish South America would have been able to collaborate with emergent republican forces in Brazil in the construction of a continental, American-style system. By failing to challenge the monarchy in Brazil, the South American republics lost an important opportunity to disavow European-oriented principles of elitism in the New World.