So sorry: I completely lost track of this exchange. Re my reading on LA, my chief sources were the monographs by Timothy Anna & Michael Costello (can't remember the titles, but they're in the bibliography of 'The PW').

Hope all this helps. Meanwhile, the very best of your luck with your studies. Lesh yeearreeyn share, CJE.

Cont. ... of power & thereby secure the power to defend themselves (which is not to say that other factors weren't present too). For what it's worth, what my own research has shown is that, until the end of the war, there was no chance of Spain sending any significant help to the loyalist cause.

Cont. ... just two weeks to a massive French offensive in January 1810 that elicited virtually nothing in the way of resistance. The criollos fearing that this presaged the complete collapse of Patriot Spain and possibly even a French invasion, they therefore rushed to secure the levers ... TBC.

Fastyr mie voish Ellan Vannin! Thank you for this kind enquiry. In brief, the answer is that I am no Latin-Americanist and therefore was guided by the secondary sources I had read, all of which were agreed that the Latin-American revolutions were sparked off by the loss of Andalucía ... TBC.

Running a boarding house was, I suspect, the upper end of a pretty common way poorer women got by: there must have been many widows living in tiny terraced houses who took in lodgers.

Good point! In the case of the pubs I have been looking at, the women concerned would have had to be pretty formidable (something that is certainly true of one of the women concerned, namely my great-grandmother!

Yes: I am genuinely puzzled how the set-up worked in financial terms. The women were tenants, of course, but I have no idea how they obtained their positions or how the proceeds were divided up.