This document indicated that given the circumstances in Europe – the occupation of Spain by the Napoleonic army – Spanish America had recovered its sovereignty from the Crown of Castile in 1808, when Ferdinand had been deposed, and therefore, any union between the overseas colonies and the Peninsula had been dissolved. This was a legal concept that was also invoked by the other declarations of independence in Spanish America, such as Venezuela (1811) and Argentina (1816), which were responding to the same events.