May Revolution
The May Revolution was a direct reaction to Spain's Peninsular War. In 1808, King Ferdinand VII of Spain abdicated in favor of Napoleon, who granted the throne to his brother, Joseph Bonaparte. A Supreme Central Junta led resistance to Joseph's government and the French occupation of Spain, but eventually suffered a series of reversals that resulted in the Spanish loss of the northern half of the country. On February 1, 1810, French troops took Seville and gained control of most of Andalusia. The Supreme Junta retreated to Cadiz and dissolved itself, and the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies replaced it. News of these events arrived in Buenos Aires on May 18, brought by British ships.
Historiography of the May Revolution
The first people who wrote about the Revolution were most of the protagonists themselves of it, writing memories, biographies or diaries. However, their works were motivated by other purposes than historiographic ones, such as to explain the reasons for their actions, clean their public images, or manifest their support or rejection for public figures or ideas of the time. For example, Manuel Moreno wrote the biography of his brother Mariano to use it as propaganda for the Revolution in Europe, and Cornelio Saavedra wrote his autobiography at a moment when his image was highly questioned, to justify himself before his sons. Some points shared between those writings are the mentions to the British Invasions as a clear antecedent, the pride about the nonviolent nature of the Revolution at its first stages, the rejection to the later developments of the Argentine Civil War, and the description of the events as the recovery of the sovereignty delegated to the kKing.