English Liberator

‘Hemming has written a saga that reads like vivid fiction.’
Colin Thubron

‘Miller’s epic story is nothing less than the riveting drama of how one gallant and popular Englishman helped unchain a continent from oppressive colonial rule.’
Nicholas Shakespeare

‘John Hemming gives us–for the first time–a complete and magnificent portrait of one of the revolutions’ greatest heroes…English Liberator is essential reading for anyone interested in pivotal alliances that shaped world history.’
Marie Arana, author of Simón Bolívar: American Liberator

The first major biography of William Miller, an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and anti-slavery general who played a key role in the wars for independence in Spanish South America.

During Admiral Thomas Cochrane’s demolition of imperial Spain’s naval presence in the Pacific during the revolutionary wars for Spanish South America, his raids were carried out by his marines under a young officer called William Miller. He came from nowhere – one of three sons of a baker in a small village in Kent, with no family influence, money, or even secondary education – but went on to have a meteoric rise in the armies that liberated the nations of Chile and Peru.

Following his service as a teenage soldier in Wellington’s Peninsular War, and inspired by some South Americans’ wish to leave Spain’s colonial empire, Miller went south to join José de San Martín in Argentina and Chile. By the time of Ayacucho in 1824, the large battle that ended Spanish rule in South America, there were seven generals in the royalist Spanish army and five on the patriot side. Eleven of these generals were Hispanic; Miller was the only foreigner. Following his time in the military he spent fourteen years as the British consul to Hawaii, responsible for preventing its colonisation by foreign powers – a task for which Miller was amply suited.

Miller was passionately anti-imperialist, anti-slavery, and unusually kind to ordinary people and peasant farmers due to his own humble origins. He was highly regarded by all the leaders of independence and popular with his men and fellow officers, and when he died decades after the battles in which he made his name he was buried in the Pantheon of founding fathers of Peru.

William (or Guillermo, as he is known in South America) Miller is well recognised and loved particularly in modern Peru, but also across the swathe of nations liberated from Spanish rule during this period.

John Hemming is the former director of the Royal Geographical Society in London. He has travelled in and written extensively about the Amazon region. His previous books include Tree of Rivers : The Story of the Amazon, The Conquest of the Incas, and more recently Naturalists in Paradise: Wallace, Bates and Spruce in the Amazon. He is a holder of Peru’s highest civilian honour, El Sol de Perú.