Before independence, Bolivia was a Spanish colony in the governorate of La Plata. Bolivia was the first South American country to take up arms for freedom.
On May 25, 1809, in the second year of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain, the Bolivian people launched an uprising in Chusaca, and the first fight for freedom broke out in South America. On July 16th of the same year, a part of the residents of La Paz also launched an uprising, declaring to "defend the independence of the country with their own blood and property" and formed a 15-member defense committee. Unfortunately, the uprisings in these two regions were quickly defeated by Spanish government forces.
The South American people have always fought together against Spanish rule. In order to expel the Spanish army and obtain complete liberation, the leader of the independence movement in La Plata led the rebels to the north and south, liberating Argentina, Chile and Peru successively. In 1824, General Bolivar defeated the Spanish colonial army in Peru and ordered his subordinate General Sucre to lead the Colombian army into Bolivia.
At the beginning of 1825, Sucre expelled the Spanish and declared Upper Peru as an independent country on August 6, 1825, and named it Bolivia to commemorate the liberator Bolivar.