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.
May Revolution
Another consequence, also according to Luna, was the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata into several different units. Most of the cities and provinces had distinctive populations, economies, attitudes, contexts, and interests. Until the revolution, all of these peoples were held together by the authority of the Spanish government, but with its disappearance, people from Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru began to distance themselves from Buenos Aires. The brief existence of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, which had lasted barely 38 years, impeded the consolidation of a patriotic feeling and failed to bring a sense of community to all of the population. The new country of Argentina lacked an established concept of national identity capable to unite the population under a common idea of statehood. Juan Bautista Alberdi sees the May Revolution as one of the early manifestations of the power struggles between the city of Buenos Aires and the provinces—one of the axial conflicts at play in the Argentine civil wars. Alberdi wrote in his book ""Escritos póstumos"":