E B  F P

Foreign Interaction and the Independence

of Latin America
Local Dynamics, Atlantic Processes

In Rio de Janeiro, on October , , the plenipotentiaries of the United

Provinces of Río de la Plata (present-day Argentina) and the Empire of Brazil (see
Map .), with the mediation of Great Britain, signed an armistice that recognized
the province of Montevideo as an independent country: the República Oriental del
Uruguay. The armistice concluded the two-decade-long process of political emanci-
pation in South America. Despite the protagonism of local and regional agents in
creating independent republics in Spanish South America, it is noteworthy that the
independence process of Río de la Plata, in particular, came to a close with a treaty
celebrated in the capital of the recently independent Brazilian empire, and with the
direct intervention of Great Britain as a mediator.
Thirteen years earlier, and about , miles northwest, in Kingston, Jamaica,
Simón Bolívar was struggling to convince British authorities to support his stum-
bling military effort to liberate New Granada and Venezuela from Spanish rule (see
Map .). Before reaching Jamaica, Bolívar had already taken part in the collapse of
two republican experiments in Caracas and had witnessed the beginning of the
decline of the young Republic of Cartagena. Far from seeking to end the war,
Bolívar was hoping to obtain the means to reignite an effort that until then was
marked more by crushing defeats than by astounding victories. By the end of ,
after six months of inauspicious attempts to secure British aid, Bolívar sailed to
Haiti, where President Alexandre Pétion opened his republic’s coffers and offered
Bolívar weapons, money, and men to return to the South American mainland.
The episode of the Convenção Preliminar de Paz and Bolívar’s Caribbean
adventures in search of critical aid are revealing of the significant involvement of
foreign powers in the process of independence of Ibero-America in general and in
the processes of Río de la Plata (the region of modern-day Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay, and southern Brazil) and New Granada (modern-day Colombia,

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

Lima Salvador da Bahia

V Cuzco
BRAZIL

IC
ER
OY
PACIFIC Potosi

A LT
OCEAN Rio de Janeiro

Y OF P E RU ATLANTIC
OCEAN
VICEROYALTY OF Rio Grande
RIO DE LA PLATA N
W E
Valparaiso Colonia del
Sacramento S
0 250 500 mi Santiago
Buenos Aires Montevideo

Map. . Portuguese Brazil and Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, . Map created by Yoly
Velandria.

Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama) in particular. Both episodes also reveal the key
role Great Britain played as revolutionaries sought, first, to turn the tide of war in
their favor through a military alliance with Britain and, second, to secure independ-
ence by obtaining British recognition. The central roles of Brazil (from –
as the center of the Portuguese empire, and later as an independent monarchy) and
Haiti, in addition, demonstrate that Great Britain was far from the only foreign
power whose favor both royalists (Spanish and Spanish American) and revolution-
aries actively courted. Throughout the process that resulted in the triumph of
independence and republicanism in most of Spanish America, strong networks of
trade and nascent diplomatic relations with Great Britain and its Caribbean
colonies, the Portuguese empire and later Brazil, Haiti, St. Thomas, Curaçao, and
the United States allowed revolutionaries to resist, escape, return, persist, and
ultimately prevail. At times, as was the case with the relations between the United
States and Mexico, enthusiasm for independence coexisted with, and eventually gave
way to, a growing threat of expansionism and invasion.
The independence process of South America, thus, was intrinsically connected
to broader Atlantic processes and networks of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.
Rather than seeing Jamaica, Haiti, the United States, Britain and other key sites in
the Caribbean and the Atlantic as outside the scope of the confrontations, in this
chapter, we integrate this international sphere into a broader geography of conflict.
While the battles waged in this sphere were less violent and deadly than those
fought on the Spanish American mainland, the commercial negotiations and

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N
New
Orleans

Flo
W E

rida
S

Th
ATLANTIC OCEAN

eB
GULF OF
V MEXICO

ah
IC m

a
Havana as
E
R
O
Y
A
L
T
Y Veracruz G
O St. Thomas
F r
NE e
a Les Cayes Santo
W
SP t e Kingston Domingo
A IN r
A n
C A t i l l e s
R I B B
E A N S E A
Willemstad

Cartagena
Portobelo Maracaibo Caracas
PACIFIC OCEAN
0 250 500 mi VICEROYALTY OF
NEW GRANADA

Map . The Greater Caribbean, . Map created by Yoly Velandria.
  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

diplomatic confrontations in the Caribbean, Brazil, the United States, Great

Britain, and France were no less important to determining the outcome than the
military confrontations throughout Spanish America. The Convenção and Bolívar’s
Caribbean trajectory alert us to the importance of paying attention to the open-
ended nature of the process, making us acknowledge that just as the Convenção and
independent Uruguay could have ended up not coming into being as the result of
the war between Brazil and the United Provinces, the republican experiments of
Cartagena and Caracas could have ended up enduring. Similarly, while the emer-
gence of Cuba as the “ever faithful” often positions the island as an outsider in the
process that resulted in the birth of most Spanish American republics, it is import-
ant to acknowledge that, just as the rest of Spanish America, Cuba and its inhabit-
ants actively engaged with foreign actors (mostly the United States) during this
transformative era of the early nineteenth century. That Cuba remained a colony,
does not mean that it was isolated from the revolutionary upheaval and foreign
influences around it.
Foreign interactions, pivotal as they were for the actual outcomes, could just as
well have contributed to the realization of an alternative future. Focusing on the
commercial and diplomatic relations of Spanish American rebels, their royalist
counterparts, and Brazilian monarchists, this chapter not only recalibrates geo-
graphic scales of analysis but also allows for an expansion of the wars’ temporal
framework and reconsiders conventional interpretations of what diplomacy encom-
passes, what the actors engaged in diplomatic relations do, and what the outcomes
of those engagements were.
In the past decades, a lively scholarship on the wars of independence in Spanish
America has deepened our knowledge of the revolutionary process while illuminat-
ing the roots of the process of state and nation formation in nineteenth-century
Latin America. Common to these analyses is a characterization, sometimes implicit,
sometimes explicit, of the process of Latin American independence as a civil war
within the Spanish empire that culminated with fragmentation and the emergence
of different independent polities in the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite
the importance given to Napoleon’s invasion of Spain as trigger to an unpreced-
ented legitimacy crisis in the Spanish empire, these historical interpretations largely
fall short of considering the full scope of foreign participation in the Iberian
empires’ debacle and in the revolutionary cycles that ensued. The role of foreign
states in the revolutionary process of Spanish and Portuguese America was para-
mount. Historians of diplomacy, foreign relations, and the history of ideas have
pointed out how Latin America’s independence shifted the balance of power among
Old World empires. In the early twenty-first century, a new historiography emerged
examining networks of communications, ideas, commerce, and people’s movement

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

across the Atlantic. Such fluid cultural, social, political, and economic dynamics
transcended the Iberian empires’ limits and played a crucial role in shaping local
communities in Spanish and Portuguese America and how they reacted and
participated during the crisis of the Iberian monarchies in .
Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula provoked a radical change in Great
Britain’s relationship with Spain, Spanish American territories, Portugal, and Brazil
after . Remarkably, Britain had switched from a traditional threat to a new ally
of Spain. For Portugal, Britain actively supported the transference of the Portuguese
court to Rio de Janeiro in , led the liberating efforts in Portugal, and gained
privileged access to Brazilian markets. Britain’s new status permitted the creation of
direct connections to South American communities. Such direct networks would
play a decisive role after the outbreak of independence revolutions in South
America. While the United States provided an example of political viability for
the emergence of new republics in Spanish America, Britain’s alliance with Spain
and Portugal during the peninsular war ensured that neither Britain nor other
European countries would formally recognize and support the independence of
Spanish American colonies or Brazil. If formal British support did not become a
reality during the s, the informal commercial British presence was an essential
economic variable both in the Spanish Empire’s territories and the Brazil that
hosted Portuguese king, João VI from  to .
Although Britain’s position was critical for the revolutionaries in Spanish
America, for the Brazilian monarchists, and for Spain and Portugal alike, other
regional and foreign powers in the Americas had a direct influence in the process of
independence in South America and in the Caribbean. Geography, old transimper-
ial networks of commerce and contraband, and the relocation of the Portuguese
crown to Brazil ensured that Portugal, and later Brazil, had significant interests in
the Río de la Plata’s revolutionary process. In the Caribbean Basin, Haiti and
colonies of other European powers were also linked by networks of trade and
politics with revolutionaries. To the north, the United States’ neutral status pro-
vided safe shipping for Spanish goods, while US merchants and seafarers also traded
with and served as privateers for revolutionary governments in Río de la Plata and in
the Greater Caribbean.
The present pages focus on the commercial networks and formal and informal
diplomatic relations at play during the independence period; thus, decentering the
state as the focus of analysis and paying closer attention to merchants, seafarers,
envoys, and other border-crossing denizens of the Atlantic. By focusing on the
networks of individuals and groups with which they interacted, this chapter inte-
grates the regional processes of Spanish and Portuguese America into the larger
context of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

Before the Collapse

On May , , US citizen Thomas Lloyd Halsey wrote from Buenos Aires to his
associates in the United States reporting that “most likely this country will be
established into a separate Government than that of Spain.” Halsey added a full
report on how the people in the plaza and the militias on the main city streets
forced Viceroy Cisneros’ resignation, only to remind his business associates that a
consulship for himself would advance their businesses in the region. By the time the
monarchical crisis of  arose, foreign merchants, slave traders, artisans, and
seafarers were already a regular presence in the Río de la Plata. Longstanding
Luso-Brazilian commercial and familial networks that thrived in the region since
the days of Colonia do Sacramento (–), a Portuguese port city across from
Buenos Aires, had made the Río de la Plata a hub for transimperial trade. During
the s, US, Hamburg, and Danish merchants, seafarers, and slave traders joined
the Luso-Brazilians and became important agents connecting the region to Europe,
the Caribbean, North America, Brazil, and Africa. Throughout South America’s
Atlantic seaboard, similar networks had connected Spanish colonies with foreign
territories for centuries. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the
connections had grown stronger largely due to the lifting of a number of commercial
restrictions that legalized trade that had previously been deemed contraband.
Between  and , royal ordinances liberalizing the slave trade and
authorizing commercial exchanges with neutral powers offered legal opportunities
for the growth in transimperial trade. While British merchants were the ones best
positioned to take advantage of the new commercial regulations during the early
s, in , with the eruption of Anglo-Spanish confrontations, US, Danish,
and Luso-Brazilian merchants became the key beneficiaries of the permissions to
trade with foreign neutrals. Thanks to strong connections with US, Danish, and
Luso-Brazilian traders, British capital managed to maintain a hegemonic presence in
coastal Spanish America. By the turn of the century, British manufactures, especially
clothes, were easily available along South America’s Atlantic seaboard.
With war an almost permanent feature of the Atlantic’s geopolitical landscape
from  to the s, the importance of neutral trade grew stronger toward the
end of the eighteenth century. Throughout Spanish America ships flying neutral
flags bore a great part of the burden of supplying Spanish American ports with
provisions and foodstuffs. Neutral ships, mostly Portuguese, US, and Danish, but
also from Hamburg and the Netherlands, also sustained the flow of goods, infor-
mation, and capital between Spanish America and Spain. In the South Atlantic,
Portuguese neutrality offered much-needed protection to Spain’s silver cargo from
Río de la Plata and Chile. The Luso-Brazilian neutral route, thus, not only

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

strengthened existing commercial connections between Brazil and the Río de la

Plata, but also, to a considerable extent, allowed Spain to maintain its possessions in
the South Atlantic.
Neutral United States merchant vessels were also instrumental in the mainten-
ance of trade between Spanish American territories and Spain. Shortly after the end
of the American Revolution, US vessels became a common presence in the circum-
Caribbean. During the late s and even more so during the late s, US vessels
sailing from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Charleston played a critical role in the
supply of flour to New Granada’s Caribbean ports. With their commercial incur-
sion in Caribbean waters, US merchants joined Danish and Dutch traders as a
visible commercial presence in New Granada’s ports. Additionally, with the acquisi-
tion of Louisiana in , the United States began to use New Orleans as
commercial base to trade with New Spain (Mexico). The US influence in the
circum-Caribbean, however, did not match that of the British, who, from their
commercial center of Kingston, were better positioned to supply ports in New
Granada, Venezuela, and other Spanish possessions throughout the Caribbean coast.
The succession of revolutionary upheavals of the last quarter of the eighteenth
century (American, French, and Haitian revolutions) sent shockwaves all over the
Atlantic. Throughout Spanish America, viceroys, governors, and other royal officers,
aware of the danger associated with the spread of ideas of liberty, emancipation,
equality, and republicanism, feared revolutionary contagion. In Venezuela, in par-
ticular, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, revolutionary ideas seemed
to have found fertile ground. Between  and , at least four movements drew
inspiration from the language, ideas, and actions of revolutionaries in the French
Caribbean. Rebels and conspirators in Coro (), La Guaira (), Cariaco
(), and Maracaibo () learned about revolutionary ideals and received news
of the progress of events in French Saint-Domingue from a growing number of
French-speaking refugees who smuggled and circulated political pamphlets and
broadsides. While before  the geopolitical conditions were not conducive to
turning these ideas into attainable realities, the ideas were there for anyone paying
attention to the “common wind” to grasp them. By the time Napoleon’s troops
invaded the Iberian Peninsula, the flow of goods, people and ideas was a lived reality
throughout Ibero-America.

Trade and Informal Diplomacy in Times of War: The s

The French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula changed the geography of power in
both Portuguese and Spanish America. Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal, in ,
first led to the British-backed transfer of the Portuguese crown to Brazil, making Rio

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

de Janeiro the new capital of the Portuguese Empire. The newly founded Luso-
Brazilian empire in South America at the same time allowed for direct connection
between Brazil and British traders, but also opened opportunities for Portuguese
expansionism. As Spain entered into an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy after the
French Invasion of , the Luso-Brazilian Empire would attempt to fulfill its
century-long ambition of expanding its territories into the Río de la Plata basin.
With a captive king, provinces and viceroyalties in Spanish America were forced
into action. The critical juncture created by the Napoleonic invasion opened a
number of options to Spanish Americans. They could recognize Napoleon’s brother
as their new king, declare loyalty to Fernando VII, recognize Seville’s Junta Central
(and the Council of Regency that superseded it) as the legitimate authority during
the king’s absence, establish a self-governing body to run local affairs as long as the
king remained captive, or even take the radical path of declaring independence.
Initially, the response was characterized by almost unanimous rejection of the
“usurper,” Joseph Bonaparte, and manifestations of allegiance to Fernando VII.
On how to run affairs and whether to recognize the authority of Seville’s junta and
the Council of Regency, the different juntas created throughout Spanish America
differed, their stance often depending on the choices of cities and provinces
perceived as rivals.
The political choices of the ruling elites of Buenos Aires, Caracas, and
Cartagena, as well as those of their long-time economic and political rivals
Montevideo, Córdoba, Maracaibo, Santa Fe, and Santa Marta, offer good examples
of how Spanish Americans reacted to the monarchical crisis. In all three cases, given
their proximity to foreign powers and their longstanding commercial relations with
foreign territories, international relations, whether through the actions of foreigners
in Spanish American territories or through the engagements of Spanish American
envoys in foreign lands, played a crucial role in the development and outcomes of
the military confrontations of the s. These foreign interactions took the form
of what can be characterized as an “informal diplomacy,” in which merchants,
privateers, military men, and envoys with dubious diplomatic credentials were the
key players in negotiations to obtain weapons and recruit combatants. These
informal diplomatic engagements offered a critical path for the warring parties to
attempt to secure the upper hand in the conflict.
Throughout , many Spanish American cities, from Mexico in the north to
Río de la Plata in the south, established government juntas to run political affairs in
the absence of the king. Buenos Aires, Caracas, and Cartagena were among the cities
where juntas were first created. In Buenos Aires, where Spanish authority had been
tenuous since the local population fended off British invasion in , the creole
elite ousted Viceroy Baltazar Hidalgo de Cisneros and established a governing junta

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

on May , . By expelling the viceroy, the Buenos Aires junta immediately
established itself as one of the most radical anticolonial bodies in Spanish America,
even without explicitly declaring outright independence. Its political stance caused
ripples across the different provinces of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. While
Buenos Aires soon emerged as the center of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata,
an alternative revolutionary movement emerged in the countryside of the Banda
Oriental led by the caudillo José Gervásio Artigas, the Liga Federal de Pueblos
Libres. The Liga Federal quickly gained supporters in the provinces of Santa Fe,
Corrientes, and Entre Rios, marking opposition to the revolutionary project of the
United Provinces centered in Buenos Aires. Other cities and provinces, however, did
not follow suit in breaking away from Spain. While Córdoba became a royalist
stronghold in the interior of the viceroyalty, the port city of Montevideo became the
major royalist bastion in the Spanish South Atlantic.
By the end of , Montevideo became the epicenter of the Spanish loyalism in
Río de la Plata. After the deposition of Viceroy Cisneros and Montevideo’s rejection
of Buenos Aires’s authority, the Spanish Council of Regency appointed
Montevideo’s governor, Javier de Elío, as new viceroy of the fragmenting viceroyalty.
In January , Elío declared war against Buenos Aires, and Montevideo was soon
besieged by Buenos Aires forces. The monarchist bastion gained another enemy
when Artigas also rejected Elío’s rule. Montevideo’s royalist fleet, however, was able
to impose a strong maritime blockade to Buenos Aires’s port. The loyalist elites and
administration of Montevideo, once isolated between revolutionary movements,
quickly sought the support of the Luso-Brazilian court in Rio to maintain Spanish
rule in the port city.
After the transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro, the Luso-Brazilian
port became a political hotspot in the South Atlantic, as Spanish, British, and other
diplomatic authorities flocked to the Portuguese court. The arrival of the court in
Rio in , meant the end of Brazil’s colonial status. The opening of the ports to
friendly nations, the establishment of a printing press, a bank, and privileged
commercial treaties with Great Britain allowed for the deepening of the commercial
connections between Brazil and British merchants. This process of elevating Brazil
from colony to capital of the empire, which would culminate in  with Brazil
becoming the political center of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the
Algarves, was characterized by historian Maria Odila Dias as the “interiorization of
the metropole.” Between  and the independence of Brazil in , British
merchant firms and banks entered Brazilian markets establishing direct partnerships
with local merchants, as well as financing the operation of the Portuguese crown.
Luso-Brazilian political ambitions and British interests did not always coincide.
In face of Ferdinand VII’s captivity, the Portuguese monarchy attempted expanding

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

the Luso-Brazilian dominion to the north bank of the Río de la Plata by incorpor-
ating Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The first Luso-Brazilian effort was led by
Carlota Joaquina, Ferdinand VII’s sister, who sent a formal offer of protection and
petitioned for recognition as the legitimate sovereign of the region. In , as part
of Carlota’s failed bid, the Spanish loyalists of Montevideo received a printing press
to publish counter revolutionary propaganda. While Carlota’s claim over Spanish
territories was rejected by all South American juntas, her husband, D. João VI would
effectively intervene in favor of Montevideo’s loyalists. Despite British attempts at
curtailing Portuguese ambitions in the Río de la Plata, the Luso-Brazilian empire
would directly intervene in the region’s revolutionary process – first against the
expansion of the Buenos Aires revolution (), later against Artigas and the Liga
Federal (–), and eventually by annexing Montevideo and the Banda
Oriental (–).
The junta of Caracas, established in April , was one of the first juntas
established in Spanish America in the aftermath of the Napoleonic invasion of
Spain, and the first to reject the authority of the Council of Regency that claimed to
rule all Spanish territories in the absence of the king. Still claiming allegiance to
Fernando VII, the Caracas junta invited other Venezuelan provinces to follow both
its example and leadership. While some provinces (e.g., Cumaná, Barinas,
Margarita) joined Caracas in their rejection of the Council of Regency, others
(Maracaibo, Coro, and Guayana) chose to proclaim allegiance to the Council of
Regency, thus becoming bastions of royalism. With these internal political lines
drawn, Caracas, through a combination of the ideological leadership of the recently
created Patriotic Club and the demands of the province’s large population of
African descent, moved quickly from autonomism with allegiance to the captive
king to the radical stance of declaring total independence. On July , , when its
junta declared independence from Spain, Caracas became the first republic to
emerge in Spanish America.
The processes of Mexico and New Granada evolved along similar lines. Initial
hesitance and open declarations of loyalty to the captive king, were quickly followed
by the establishment of juntas that sought to advance home rule. In both Mexico
and New Granada, the emergence of leaders capable of mobilizing the popular
sectors and radicalizing the process resulted in massive movements that sought to
overthrow viceregal government. While in Mexico, insurgent leaders Miguel
Hidalgo and José María Morelos never sought to overthrow the entire Spanish
system of government, their calls for autonomous rule represented a major challenge
to Spanish authorities holding on to Mexico City. In New Granada, the multiplicity
of juntas established throughout the viceroyalty included both staunch royalists,
such as the leaders of Pasto and Santa Marta, and radical supporters of total

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

independence, among which Cartagena’s junta took the most radical path of
establishing the independent republic of Cartagena. Both in Mexico and New
Granada, the insurrectionary process was violent and resulted in massive death
and destruction. In both places, royalist forces (sent from Spain in New
Granada’s case; organized locally in Mexico) managed to weaken the insurgency
to the point of reestablishing Spanish power by .
In all these cases, transimperial and transregional interactions were critical to the
evolution and outcome of the war during the s. Both supporters of independ-
ence and those in favor of the continuation of Spanish rule courted British
authorities and had to cope, as well as they could, with Britain’s insistence on
maintaining its neutrality in the conflict. Throughout Spanish America, the growing
presence of US merchants and the increasing number of a type of military adven-
turer a historian recently called “rogue revolutionaries” were also common elements
encountered by royalists and rebels. Specificities having to do with geographic
location, including the central role of Luso-Brazilian authorities in the South
Atlantic and the critical presence of independent Haiti in the Caribbean, marked
key distinctions in the processes of Río de la Plata, northern South America,
and Mexico.
Clearly aware of the fact that British support could turn the balance in their
favor, both royalists and revolutionaries engaged some of their best men in enlisting
British official aid. In the Caribbean, this effort took the form of a diplomatic battle
a Colombian historian called “the dispute for the favors of Jamaica.” Starting in
, the newly established juntas of Caracas and Cartagena sent envoys to the
British island, charging them with the tasks of securing official British support,
obtaining weapons and other war supplies, and recruiting men to fight on the
Spanish mainland. Even before openly adopting a pro-independence stance, the
junta of Caracas, as well as royalist authorities from Maracaibo and Coro, sent
envoys to Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Curaçao (then under British control) to
request from Admiral Rowley official support with the supply of weapons. In
 and , Caracas’ envoys experienced Jamaican authorities’ enforcement of
“the strictest neutrality.” In subsequent years Ignacio Cavero and John Robertson
(envoys from Cartagena), as well as Simón Bolívar, also suffered the frustration of
failing to secure official support from British authorities in the Caribbean.
Far from limiting their diplomatic outreach to the British Caribbean,
Venezuelan and Neogranadan leaders also sent emissaries to the United States,
France, and Great Britain. During the first half of the s, when Napoleon was
still in power, the missions of Telésforo de Orea, Manual Palacio Fajardo, Pedro
Gual, José María del Real, Enrique Rodríguez, and others carefully used European
geopolitics in their favor. In the United States, Gual focused his efforts on obtaining

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

weapons and granting letters of marque to privateers interested in trading with rebel
ports in South America. The efforts in Europe took on a more formally diplo-
matic character. After successive failures both in London and Jamaica to secure
British official aid, the agents shifted to France. In , Palacio Fajardo came close
to securing Napoleon’s support, his efforts, however, came to naught when
Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in July . With Napoleon out of the
way, British authorities, nevertheless, had more to gain from maintaining a neutral-
ity that assured British hegemony in Europe and its commercial interests in Spanish
America.
For Venezuelan and Neogranadan rebels, lack of support from British author-
ities did not mean complete inability to obtain support in Jamaica. Using old
commercial networks that had connected Jamaica and the Spanish Main for
decades, envoys from Caracas and Cartagena succeeded in contracting with private
merchants, such as the brothers Maxwell and Wellwood Hyslop, whose revolution-
ary sympathies went well beyond the business realm. The support of private
merchants, however, was neither exclusively nor preferentially granted to revolution-
aries. Selling weapons to both insurgents and royalists, in fact, turned the s into
a golden age for Kingston merchants trading with Spanish America. Vice Admiral
Stirling, the highest naval authority in the British Caribbean, explained the benefits
for Britain saying, “The trade that is done by [Jamaican] merchants with different
ports of Spanish America, whether belonging to the monarchy, or the opposite
party, seems to deserve protection, so that Britain can feed its treasury and continue
the war against the common enemy.” For Stirling, this laissez faire approach of
allowing both sides to visit the island without interfering in their private transac-
tions with Jamaica’s merchants not only resulted in economic gains for the British
treasure but also had the political effect of not alienating any of the contending
parties in the Americas.
Like Britain, the United States adhered to a policy of neutrality that, without
formally recognizing any nascent political entity, allowed its merchants to expand
their already visible presence throughout the hemisphere. Like Kingston merchants,
US traders saw the conflict in Spanish America as a unique opportunity to sell
foodstuffs, weapons, and munitions to both insurgents and royalists. While generally
speaking US merchants saw commercial engagements through the prism of eco-
nomic benefit, their actions (and presumably the trading partners they chose) were
also influenced by the “belief that the progress of rational liberty in Latin America
would have a considerable cash value for the United States.” This coincidence of
economic and political interests was certainly present in the celebratory tone of US
merchant, David Curtis De Forest, when, upon receiving the news of the ousting of
Viceroy Cisneros and his replacement on May ,  by a creole-led junta, he

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

wrote in his journal, “Hooray, hooray, hooray, for the revolution has succeeded.”
In the ensuing decade, De Forest would become one of many US merchants directly
involved in supporting revolutionary Buenos Aires.
The outbreak of the revolution provoked a change in the nature and intensity of
the commercial linkages between the United States and the Río de la Plata. Buenos
Aires, the revolutionary epicenter in Río de la Plata, benefited immensely from the
informal support of United States merchants that maintained trans-Atlantic trade
flowing under the guise of neutrality, and, crucially, supplied weapons and ammu-
nition to the rebels. Furthermore, US ports on the east coast, notably New York,
served as reexporting centers through which a “flood of weapons” of British origin
was sold to the Spanish American armies, whether royalists or revolutionaries.
Although the greatest British direct shipments of weapons went to the Luso-
Brazilian empire, which waged war against revolutionary movements in
Portuguese America (Revolution of , in Pernambuco), and in Río de la Plata
(against Artigas and the Liga Federal, and later against Buenos Aires), by ,
United States neutral ships had delivered hundreds of thousands of US and British
manufactured muskets, millions of rounds of ammunition, thousands of rifles,
pistols, and cannons to revolutionaries throughout Latin America.
The revolutionary government of the United Provinces also leveraged their
existing commercial networks with United States merchants to ensure the supply
of weapons for the Revolutionary Army when waging war against Peru on the West
Coast of South America. When San Martín led the Ejército de los Andes into Chile,
Buenos Aires merchants Lynch and Zimmermann, associates of De Forest, were able
to contract and coordinate the delivery of weapons to Chile. The US ship Mercury
sailed from Providence, RI, loaded with , muskets, , carabines, and ,
cavalry sabers. The Mercury was not an exception. Throughout the s, a
growing number of US ships left the ports of Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
and Providence loaded with weapons for Buenos Aires and Chile.
The United States’ neutral shipping was not only crucial for supplying the
revolutionary forces with weapons. United States merchant vessels kept export
and import trade flowing during the revolutionary years. US merchants were also
responsible for introducing copious quantities of timber, pitch, tar, and ropes for
military and naval use. Furthermore, in the Río de la Plata, US neutral ships
became critical for the supply of textiles, manufactured goods (often re-exports from
England), and wheat flour and salted pork meat. Because of the prolonged warfare
in the countryside and intermittent naval blockades, United States’ produce became
crucial for the supply of foodstuff for military forces and the general population.
The revolutionary decade marked the growth in the demand for wheat flour in a
region that, during the colonial period, had been an exporter of wheat.

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

Furthermore, because of the neutral status of US ships, United States merchants

were able to enter ports controlled by the different warring factions, which, in the
Río de la Plata, meant access to both Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
In northern South America, due to the intense nature of the conflict, both
royalists and insurgents required a constant influx of foodstuffs and weapons. In
Venezuela, during the s, US merchants conducted business with both sides. On
the one hand, they benefited from supplying Spain and carrying Spanish goods
under the US neutral flag; on the other hand, US merchants established profitable
commercial connections with Venezuelan revolutionaries. As yet another result of
Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, the United States’ government
secured contracts to supply wheat and provisions to Spain’s armies in Iberia and
Venezuela alike, turning Spain into an expanding market for US produce. However,
the outbreak of the revolution in Caracas created a split in the US mercantile
community engaged in the Venezuela trade. United States citizens profited from
and aided both warring factions: the revolutionary governments of South America,
by actively working with and for revolutionary agents, and Spain, by keeping
imperial trade routes afloat through neutral shipping. Their participation in the
war, while not as decisive as the battles that pitted royalists and revolutionaries on
land, certainly played a central role in the lives of many royalists and revolutionaries
and contributed to the prolonged duration of the wars of independence.
The growing group of merchants-cum-military adventurers whom Vanessa
Mongey called “rogue revolutionaries” perfectly embodies the linkages between trade
and revolution. These privateers or corsairs were central not only to the growing
connection of Spanish American insurgents to the United States but, more broadly,
to the hemispheric and maritime nature of the war during the s. In
Caribbean waters, following the establishment of the Republic of Cartagena in late
, privateers became a naval force whose presence and might Spanish authorities
could not ignore. During the first half of the s, Cartagena’s privateering navy
boasted about  ships manned by more than , sailors, most of them of African
descent. Vessels flying the flag of Cartagena shared the Caribbean, Atlantic, and
even Pacific waters, and many times worked together, with privateers working for
Mexico’s Supremo Congreso de la Nación and revolutionary governments established
in Caracas, Río de la Plata, and even Chile. In the South Atlantic, US privateers
had a significant and decisive presence. Between  and , David De Forest,
whose activities as merchant are well documented, was also the owner or a partner
in at least five privateering vessels. Just De Forest privateers’ import tax payments
to the Buenos Aires customs totaled . percent of the total customs revenue.
United States privateering, albeit briefly, also served as the naval force for the

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

 independentist uprising in the captaincy of Pernambuco, in Brazil, before the

movement was squashed by monarchical Luso-Brazilian forces.
In both the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, privateers granted a veneer of
legitimacy to emerging republics whose future was far from settled. Newly estab-
lished republics like Caracas, Cartagena, Galveston, and Amelia Island, independent
Buenos Aires, the short-lived Liga Federal, or the rebels in Mexico and Pernambuco
were not recognized by Spain, Portugal, the United States, or any other nation.
However, through their flags, their letters of marque, and the procedures they
developed to distribute prizes from captured vessels, they engaged in some of the
acts of legitimate and internationally recognized states.
Another dimension by which newly created republics sought to establish them-
selves as sovereign and legitimate governments was through consular appointments,
or better, hosting consuls from internationally recognized countries. Although
consulships had eminent commercial functions, they provided another sign of
international acceptance of the new governments. Despite falling short of officially
recognizing the new Latin American countries, the United States appointed com-
mercial agents to the main port cities and capitals of the newly established govern-
ments in order to ensure US citizen’s interests and property. These agents would
play a crucial role in establishing lucrative trade in weapons and would lay the
foundations for the US diplomatic presence in the region. While commercial
consuls did not constitute formal recognition of independence in the s, they
constituted a vital step toward much desired sovereignty and international legitim-
acy for the new republics.
Foreign intervention during the s tended to be informal and indirect, with
US and British governments turning a blind eye and generally allowing both
royalists and revolutionaries to conduct business in their territories and engage in
commercial transactions with their citizens and subjects. The actions of privateers
and merchants were the most common form of foreign intervention during the
s. Two cases, that of the Portuguese empire and the Republic of Haiti, stand
apart for the way in which these governments directly intervened in the war.
In the Río de la Plata, the intervention of the Luso-Brazilian empire decisively
shaped the political and military evolution and outcome of the wars of independ-
ence in the region. By intervening in the Banda Oriental in  in favor of
Montevideo’s monarchists and again in  against the revolutionary project of
Artigas, the Luso-Brazilian empire annexed the Banda Oriental as the Cisplatine
Province. As part of the arrangements for such a territorial expansion and interven-
tion against Artigas, the Portuguese court in  informally recognized the United
Provinces’ government and lifted the naval blockade of the port of Buenos Aires.

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

In exchange, Buenos Aires’s administration did not intervene against the Luso-
Brazilian expansion in the region.
In stark opposition to both Artigas’s Liga Federal and the Buenos Aires-based
United Provinces, Montevideo’s elites quickly positioned themselves as committed
royalists and sought the support of the Luso-Brazilian empire to maintain mon-
archism and prevent what they described as “anarchy.” In April of , to prevent
the capture of Montevideo by revolutionary forces, more than , Luso-Brazilian
troops entered the territory of the Banda Oriental from Brazil. The “Pacifying
Army” and a Luso-Brazilian fleet dispatched to strengthen the naval blockade of
Buenos Aires offered critical support to Montevideo’s royalists and effectively
turned the Río de la Plata independence process into a full-fledged regional conflict
with broader geopolitical consequences. While the Luso-Brazilian intervention was
successful in guaranteeing a lifeline to the royalists of Montevideo, the possibility of
annexation of the Banda Oriental by Rio de Janeiro alarmed British authorities,
whose commercial interests were threatened by the blockade of Buenos Aires. This
first occupation was short-lived. By the end of , under diplomatic pressure from
Great Britain, the Luso-Brazilian forces withdrew from the Banda Oriental, leaving
Montevideo’s royalist administration and commercial elites surrounded by the
revolutionary army of Buenos Aires. Without direct Luso-Brazilian support, the
royalist stronghold’s future was hanging by a thread.
It did not take long for Buenos Aires to launch an offensive. In April ,
Buenos Aires forces, after a prolonged siege, captured Montevideo. Shortly after-
wards, the tensions among revolutionary factions turned to open conflict when
Artigas’s forces besieged and wrestled the city away from Buenos Aires’s revolution-
aries. In the face of Artigas’s occupation and control over Montevideo’s port, the
mercantile elites of Montevideo sent delegates to Rio de Janeiro to negotiate the
terms of a new Luso-Brazilian intervention in the Banda Oriental. In early ,
more than , troops entered the Banda Oriental by land, and a small fleet of
Brazilian vessels entered the estuary to occupy Montevideo. While this new
Brazilian occupation signaled the beginning of the end of Artigas’s Federal
League, the cycle of Brazilian occupation followed by revolutionary capture followed
by Brazilian reoccupation also signaled Spain’s complete lack of presence in the
region and, consequently, its total inability to regain control in the Río de la
Plata estuary.
The only other instance of direct and official foreign intervention during the
s happened in the Caribbean, where the government of the Republic of Haiti,
under President Alexandre Pétion, offered Simón Bolívar and other revolutionaries
refuge, ships, men, and weapons that proved vital to the resurgence of the independ-
ence struggle in northern South America. After six months attempting to secure

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

official British aid in Jamaica, Bolívar was only able to obtain some financial support
from specific merchants on the island.
Shortly after arriving in Les Cayes, in southern Haiti, Bolívar met Pétion in
Port-au-Prince. This meeting and the epistolary exchange that followed between
Bolívar in Les Cayes and Pétion in Port-au-Prince clarified the support Haiti was
going to offer and made possible the preparation and departure, on March , ,
of Bolívar’s first expedition from Haiti to Venezuela. The dramatic defeat Bolívar
and his men suffered shortly after landing on Venezuela’s soil forced him to return
to Haiti, where, once again, Pétion welcomed him enthusiastically. As earlier in the
year, Pétion supplied Bolívar with men, weapons, and munitions that allowed him
to sail once again, this time from Jacmel on December , , to continue his
fight for independence in Venezuela.
While Bolívar eventually became the most famous insurgent to receive aid from
Haiti’s government, he was not the only one. With Pétion’s aid multiple European
and American revolutionaries used Haiti as launchpad for expeditions to different
sites of northern South America, Central America, and the Gulf of Mexico’s coast.
Francisco Xavier Mina, a Spanish liberal who became an ardent supporter of
Spanish America’s independence, used Haiti and Pétion’s aid to launch an exped-
ition to Mexico. After obtaining some financial support and recruiting some men in
London and Baltimore, Mina spent about two weeks in Haiti in October .
There, besides recruiting some men and securing aid from Pétion, he met Bolívar,
who had just returned from his unsuccessful first expedition to Venezuela. After
their meeting on October , Bolívar told his friend Luis Brion that he considered
changing his plans and joining Mina in the expedition to Mexico. This plan never
materialized and both insurgents went their separate ways. While Bolívar left Haiti
to find glory in Venezuela and South America, Mina, who sailed from Port-au-
Prince toward the island of San Luis (in Mexican territory off the coast of Texas)
with four ships and about  hundred men, did not succeed in his revolutionary
endeavor. After a number of important victories in northern Mexico during the first
half of , Mina’s early success turned to dramatic failure when Spanish troops
captured him in October. Less than a month later, on November , , he was
executed.
Pétion’s enthusiastic support of Bolívar, Mina, and other revolutionaries
responded to his aim of increasing the legitimacy of the Republic of Haiti in the
international arena. In his calculation, the more republics emerged in the Americas,
the stronger the case for republicanism and, therefore, the higher the chances of
survival for the Haitian Republic. Pétion’s support, however, was limited by Haiti’s
avowed neutrality and promise of non-aggression against “a nation [Spain] that has
not yet pronounced itself against the [Haitian] republic.” Another commitment,

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

enshrined in Haiti’s constitution, stating that Haiti would not endeavor to export
the revolution to any foreign territory, further limited the extent to which Pétion
was willing to make public his support to Bolívar. Therefore, while he asked Bolívar
to abolish slavery in Venezuela, he also requested the Venezuelan leader “not to
proclaim anything” in the name of Haiti and not “to mention my [Pétion’s] name
in any of your acts.” Thus, Haiti’s aid, while direct and decisive, was to
remain concealed.

Diplomatic Recognition and the Birth of New Republics: The s

After returning to the mainland from Haiti, Bolívar’s prospects, and those of the
independence party, began to change dramatically. The irregular record of dramatic
victories and devastating defeats that had forced him into exile and given the
royalists the upper hand in northern South America and the Andes gradually shifted
to favor insurgent forces. After revolutionary victories in Boyacá (), Carabobo
(), Pichincha (), and Maracaibo () and the revolt in Spain (January
) of an army that was ready to sail from Cádiz to Buenos Aires, any prospect of
continued Spanish rule vanished. While pockets of royalism remained in the area of
Santa Marta (on the Caribbean) and in the corridor connecting Lima, Quito, and
Popayán (the royalist block of the Pacific), the s began with insurgent forces
poised to take over all of Spanish South America. Even without the threat of
Spanish reconquest, the Banda Oriental, where the Luso-Brazilian empire continued
to exert its influence, was among the few areas where the prospect of republican
independence remained questionable. Mexico, where the conservative revolution
under Agustín the Iturbide resulted in the creation of the Mexican Empire, was
another site where independence did not entail the immediate creation of a
new republic.
This new geopolitical reality shifted negotiations in the international sphere
from trying to secure aid to fight and win a war to focusing on obtaining diplomatic
recognition to guarantee the longevity of the emerging republics. By the beginning
of the s, the prospect of persuading US, British, French, and even Haitian
authorities to consider official diplomatic recognition had become a reasonable
proposition. A mere week after the approval, on December , , of the
Fundamental Law that officially established the Republic of Colombia, Francisco
Antonio Zea received from Secretary of Foreign Relations José Rafael Revenga, the
instructions that were to guide his actions as Colombia’s plenipotentiary minister in
Europe and the United States. Zea’s goal was to ensure “that our independence be
recognized and, if possible, protected” by the United States, Great Britain, and
France. In addition, he was charged with obtaining “weapons, munitions, and

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

military uniforms” and with promoting “the migration [to Colombia] of agricul-
turalists, artisans, and some mineralogists.”
In , the US government passed a legislative act recognizing not only
Colombia but also Mexico and the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
While US recognition increased the credibility of the nascent states in the inter-
national sphere, in the Mexican case recognition was not without controversy.
Because the Mexican government James Monroe recognized was the Mexican
imperial government of Iturbide, US envoy to Mexico, Joel Poinsett (in Mexico
“on a mission of inquiry”) thought that recognition “made the United States a party
to the factional conflict in that country,” aiding, in his opinion, “the wrong faction.”
In Europe, the efforts of Zea, Revenga, and Manuel José Hurtado were rewarded in
late  and  when Great Britain recognized Colombia’s independence
through a treaty of friendship, trade, and navigation. In addition, Britain also
granted recognition to Mexico. For British Secretary of Foreign Affairs George
Canning, recognition of Colombia and Mexico was the result of a diplomatic
balancing act through which Britain avoided potential French intervention in
Spanish America. It was also an important motive for celebration that offered
Britain a unique opportunity to exert its influence in the region. Once recognition
was a done deal Canning celebrated saying, “The deed is done, the nail is
driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly,
she is English.” While envoys in France, particularly José Fernández Madrid,
made important inroads toward French recognition of Colombia, a political crisis
that resulted in the secession of Venezuela from Colombia and the establishment
of the Republic of New Granada, postponed official recognition by France
until .
In one corner of South America, the expulsion of the Spanish did not automat-
ically result in the end of independentist movements. The formal annexation of the
Banda Oriental by the Luso-Brazilian Empire in  ensured that Montevideo and
its adjacent territory became formally independent from European rule in
 when Brazil broke away from Portugal; thus, lasting independence from
Iberian powers was attained under the Brazilian monarchical project.
The Brazilian independence of  was a direct consequence of the
deepening of Luso-Brazilian merchant elites’ interests in Brazil and the direct
presence and investments of British traders in this “tropical Versailles.” The
severance of political links between Portugal and Brazil could not by any measure
be classified as revolutionary, which meant the maintenance of direct connections
to Angola and other parts of the Portuguese Empire centered around the slave
trade, and the continuity of expansionist policy in the Río de la Plata. British
formal opposition to Brazilian independence previous to  did not prevent

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

British bankers, merchant firms, arms dealers, and mercenaries from supporting
the newly established monarchy.
While Brazil had been the economic center of the Portuguese Empire since the
late eighteenth century, it was after  that British firms had the opportunity to
invest directly and exploit the vast markets of Brazil, and to participate in the trade
of gold and diamonds. When in , Don Pedro I declared the independence of
Brazil, British merchants not only provided loans for Don Pedro’s House and the
newly established government but served as brokers to raise private funds in the City
of London and with private bankers such as the Rothschilds. Crucially, Samuel
Philips Co.’s role in supporting Brazil’s state finances by ensuring loans of more
than . million sterling pounds between  and  was not only critical for
the success of the Brazilian State, but also solidified British commercial and financial
presence in independent Brazil for the next decades. Between  and , new
loans on the order of three million pounds ensured Brazilian capacity to maintain
territorial unity by acquiring hundreds of thousands of muskets, more than . tons
of cannon, paying Lord Cochrane’s forces to establish the Brazilian navy to suppress
opposition in Pernambuco and Maranhão, and to wage war in Río de la Plata.
British formal recognition of Brazil, however, would only come in , when
Britain forced D. Pedro I to sign a treaty ending the slave trade in  (ratified by
the Brazilian Congress in ).
The independence of Brazil and the United Provinces, however, was not the
final act in the independence movements in the Río de la Plata. In , a group of
caudillos from the Banda Oriental, backed by the Buenos Aires government,
rebelled against Brazilian rule and the Cisplatine project. The so-called Cruzada
Libertadora, led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja, meant the start of a war between the
Empire of Brazil and the United Provinces over Montevideo and its adjacent
territory. This prolonged conflict came to an end in  when the British
plenipotentiary mediated an armistice between the two warring South American
states and stipulated the creation of Uruguay as an independent country. Despite
the centrality of local agents and regional dynamics, the process of independence in
Río de la Plata was intrinsically entangled with the geopolitical and commercial
interests of the broader Atlantic World.
If the involvement of Luso-Brazilian, United States, British, and Haitian mer-
chants and governments was influential in the early phases of the revolutionary
process of Spanish America, the direct involvement of these foreign and regional
agents played a critical role in the ultimate establishment of the South American
republics. While the Haitian and Luso-Brazilian governments saw in direct inter-
vention the best way to advance their interests, the United States and Great Britain
initially opted for a laissez faire approach that was limited to letting their merchants

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

engage in commercial relations with all contending parties. With Spanish defeat,
however, both governments concluded that peace and the official recognition of the
emerging republics offered the best way to advance their interests in the former
Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.

Conclusions

Interactions with foreigners and the direct and indirect interventions of foreign
governments were key to the coming, development, and outcome of the wars of
independence in Latin America. During the last decades of Spanish and
Portuguese rule in the Americas, new trade regulations and intermittent warfare
led to increased interactions between Ibero-American subjects and foreign mer-
chants. As a result, interactions between Ibero-American subjects and agents of
foreign powers such as the United States, Haiti, and even Britain were not a
novelty by the time of the crisis of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies. In fact,
alongside the circulation of people and goods, revolutionary ideas also found their
way into the Americas.
After , the role of foreign agents, including merchants, privateers, and
political leaders, as well as that of Spanish American agents working abroad, became
central to the social, economic, and political processes of independence. As a result, a
thorough and deep understanding of the wars of independence requires embracing
the maritime, hemispheric, and Atlantic dimensions in which the historical agents
lived and acted upon. Foreign agents’ and countries’ informal involvement (e.g.,
weapons’ sales by US merchants to both insurgents and royalists in Río de la Plata)
and official interventions (e.g., the Luso-Brazilian interventions in Río de la Plata in
 and ) dramatically altered the course of the confrontations. Even inaction
(e.g., Jamaican authorities withholding aid to Simón Bolívar in ) had a
significant impact on royalists and insurgents’ capacity to advance their goals.
At critical moments decisive foreign intervention could have altered the course
of the conflict. Just as the refusal of British authorities in Jamaica to offer official aid
to Bolívar and to Cartagena’s envoys in  ended up playing an important role in
the demise of Cartagena, the direct intervention of the Luso-Brazilian Empire in the
Banda Oriental in  ensured the failure of Artigas’s nascent project of the Liga
Federal. While both instances of foreign intervention certainly influenced the
development of the conflict, it is worth bearing in mind that, for those living
through the wars, the outcome was far from predetermined. For Cartagena’s envoys
to Jamaica and the Brazilian, Buenos Aires, and Artigas’s forces vying over the
Banda Oriental alternative paths were not only considered possible but, most
importantly, were worth fighting for.

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

Notes

 For the wars of independence as inaugurating “republican experiments,” see Hilda Sábato, Republics
of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, ).
 For the ambiguity at the heart of the relations between early independent Mexico and the
increasingly powerful United States, see Caitlin Fitz, Our Sister Republics: The United States in and
Age of American Revolutions (New York: Liveright, ).
 While Cuba’s independence only came much later in the nineteenth century, with its independence
process usually interpreted as starting in the s, recent studies have stressed the active political
engagement of Cubans during the s and s. See for instance, Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror:
Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, ); and David
Sartorius, Ever Faithful: Race, Loyalty, and the Ends of Empire in Spanish Cuba (Durham: Duke
University Press, ). Since this chapter focuses on the first three decades of the nineteenth
century, the Cuban process falls outside the scope of our analysis. For Cuba’s independence process,
see Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, – (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, ).
 John Lynch, Latin American Revolutions, –: Old and New World Origins (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, ); Jaime Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular
Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, – (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, ); Peter Guardino, The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca
(Durham: Duke University Press, ); Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism
during the Age of Revolution. Colombia, – (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
); Marcela Echeverri, Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution: Reform, Revolution,
and Royalism in the Northern Andes, – (New York: Cambridge University Press, );
Gabriel DiMeglio, ¡Viva el bajo pueblo! La plebe urbana de Buenos Aires y la política de la revoluciόn
de mayo y el rosismo (–) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, ); Lyman Johnson,
Workshop of Revolution: Plebeian Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World (Durham: Duke University
Press, ); José Carlos Chiaramonte, Mercaderes del litoral Buenos Aires. Economía y sociedad en la
provincia de Corrientes, primera mitad del siglo XIX (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
); Roberto Schmit, Ruina y resurrección en tiempos de guerra. Sociedad, economía y poder en el
oriente entrerriano posrevolucionario, – (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, ); Rebecca
Earle, Spain and the Independence of Colombia (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, ); Antonio
Annino and Francois-Xavier Guerra, Inventando a la nación. Iberoamérica siglo XIX (Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, ; Wim Klooster Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean,
– (Leiden: Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies Press,
); and Tulio Halperin Donghi, Revolucion y Guerra. Formación de una élite dirigente en la
Argentina criolla (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, ).
 Jesse Cromwell, The Smugglers’ World: Illicit Trade and Atlantic Communities in Eighteenth-
Century Venezuela (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Ernesto Bassi, An
Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World
(Durham: Duke University Press, ); Fabrício Prado, Edge of Empire: Atlantic Networks and
Revolution in Bourbon Rio de la Plata (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Neil Safier,
Measuring the World: Enlightenment Science and South America (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, ); Cristina Soriano, Tides of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of
Colonial Rule in Venezuela (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ); and Alex

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Rio de la Plata (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, ).
 Anthony McFarlane, “El contexto internacional de las independencias hispanoamericanas,” in
Independencias hispanoamericanas: Nuevos problemas y aproximaciones, ed. Pilar González Bernaldo
de Quirós (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, ), –.
 Halperin Donghi, Revoluciόn y guerra; John Street, Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay
(Manchester: University of Manchester, ); and Matthew Brown, ed., Informal Empire in Latin
America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (Malden, MA: Blackwell, ).
 Thomas Halsey to Brown and Ives, Buenos Aires, May , . John Carter Brown Library, BFBR
Box  Folder .
 Real cédula de su magestad concediendo libertad para el comercio de negros con las islas de Cuba, Santo
Domingo, Puerto Rico, y Provincia de Caracas, a españoles y extranjeros, baxo las reglas que se expresan
(Madrid: Imprenta de la viuda de Ibarra, ); Real cédula de su magestad concediendo libertad para
el comercio de negros con los virreinatos de Santa Fe, Buenos Aires Capitanía General de Caracas, e islas
de Santo Domingo, Cuba y Puerto Rico, a españoles y extranjeros bajo las reglas que se expresan
(Madrid: Lorenzo de San Martín, ); and Barbara Stein and Stanley Stein, Edge of Crisis: War
and Trade in the Spanish Atlantic, – (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press, ).
 Between  and , more than  vessels flying the Spanish flag called in Brazilian ports to
transship merchandise into Portuguese ships or to cross the Atlantic flying the Portuguese flag under
the protection of the Portuguese fleet. In addition to silver, people and critical information (about
troops, agricultural production, commerce, tax collection, social unrest, and foreign threats) also
flowed from Río de la Plata to Spain on Portuguese vessels via Brazil. Fabrício Prado, “Transimperial
Networks in the Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy: The Rio de Janeiro-Montevideo Connection,
–,” The Americas , no.  (April ): –.
 Alfonso Múnera, El fracaso de la nación: Regiόn, clase y raza en el Caribe colombiano (–)
(Bogotá: Banco de la República / El Áncora Editores, ).
 Arthur Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, – (New York:
Russell and Russell, ), –.
 Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
(London: Verso, ).
 Maria Odila Dias, A interiorização da metrópole e outros estudos (São Paulo: Alameda, ), –.
 British diplomacy was effective in preventing Portugal from decisive intervention and expansion into
the Río de la Plata until  when the death of Lord Strangford, the British minister in Rio, and
changes in the Portuguese Cabinet ousting the pro-British faction from power. The Luso-Brazilian
invasion and annexation of the Banda Oriental in  marks a rupture between Brazilian and
British interests. Allan Manchester, British Preeminence in Brazil (New York: Octagon Books,
), –.
 Anthony McFarlane, War and Independence in Spanish America (Abingdon: Routledge, ),
–.
 For a useful summary of the processes of Mexico and New Granada, see McFarlane, War and
Independence, –.
 Vanessa Mongey, Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ).
 Daniel Gutiérrez, Un nuevo reino. Geografía política, pactismo y diplomacia durante el interregno en
Nueva Granada, – (Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia, ), –.
 D. A. G. Wadell, Gran Bretaña y la independencia de Venezuela y Colombia (Caracas: Ministerio de
Educaciόn, ), ; and Bassi, An Aqueous Territory, –.
 Gutiérrez, Un nuevo reino, –.

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  Ernesto Bassi and Fabrício Prado

 Ibid, –.
 Ibid, –; and Bassi, An Aqueous Territory, –.
 Quoted in Gutiérrez, Un nuevo reino, . See also Bassi, An Aqueous Territory, ; and Frances
Armytage, The Free Port System in the British West Indies: A Study in Commercial Policy, –
(London: Longmans, Green, ), –.
 Whitaker, The United States and the Independence, .
 David Curtis DeForest, September , . Personal Journal, vol. . Sterling Memorial Library,
Yale University.
 In September , a few months after the events of May , the leaders of the Buenos Aires junta
placed outstanding orders for importing rifles, pistols, and ammunition from the United States. US
merchants were assured at least a  percent additional premium for the introduction of ten
thousand rifles. BFBR, Box  Folder , Halsey to b&I, BsAs, September , .
 Rafe Blaufarb, “Arms for Revolutions: Military Demobilization after the Napoleonic Wars and
Latin American Independence,” in War, Demobilization and Memory: The Legacy of War in the Era
of Atlantic Revolutions, ed. Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann, and Michael Rowe (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, ), .
 Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, November , . US ship Sachgen, Cap. John Illam.
 Earl C. Tanner, “The Voyage of the Mercury,” Rhode Island History Journal , no.  (): .
 Additional weapons shipments were carried in the ships Lion, Adeline’s, Bengal, Savage, Curiacion,
Two Catherines, Columbus, Midas, and Dragon. For additional information on US weapon
shipments, see William Neumann, “United States Aid to the Chilean Wars of Independence,”
Hispanic American Historical Review , no.  (May ): –.
 Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, November ,  and December , . Ship Neptune, from New York,
consigned to Lynch and Zimmermann.
 For wheat production in the colonial period, see Jorge Gelman, Campesinos y estancieros, una región
del Río de La Plata a finales de la época colonial (Buenos Aires: Los libros del riel, ).
 Between  and , a minimum of seventy-three US vessels entered the Río de la Plata ports
under the guise of neutral trade to conduct business with both revolutionaries and monarchists.
Fabricio Prado, “Conexões Atlânticas: redes comerciais entre o Rio da Prata e os Estados Unidos
(–),” Anos  no. ,  (July ): –.
 Edward Pompeian, Sustaining Empire: Venezuela’s Trade with the United States during the Age of
Revolutions, – (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ).
 Mongey, Rogue Revolutionaries; Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley
Crews in the Age of Sail (Boston: Beacon Press, ), ; and Peter Linebaugh and Marcus
Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the
Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, ), –.
 Edgardo Pérez Morales, No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless
Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, ), –.
 Johanna von Grafenstein, “Hacer negocios en tiempos de Guerra. Comercio, corso y contrabando en
el Golfo de México y Mar Caribe durante la segunda década del siglo XIX,” in Entre lo legal, lo ilícito
y lo clandestino. Prácticas comerciales y navegación en el Gran Caribe, siglos XVII al XIX, ed. Johanna
von Grafenstein, Rafal Reichert, and Julio César Rodríguez Treviño (Mexico City: Instituto Mora,
), –.
 AGN IX .., Exp. . .
 Hugo Raul Galmarini, Los negocios del poder: reforma y crisis del estado, – (Buenos Aires:
Corregidor, ), –.
 For the US involvement in the  movement in Pernambuco, see Tyson Reeder, Smugglers,
Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

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 Foreign Interaction and the Independence of Latin America 

Press, ), –. British Almirant Lord Cochrane led the Luso-Brazilian naval forces. See
Thomas Cochrane, Memoirs of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru, and Brazil (London:
Piccadilly, ), vol. .
 Simeon Simeonov, “Consular Caribbean: Consuls As Agents of Colonialism and Decolonization,”
in Memory, Migration, and (De)Colonization in the Caribbean and Beyond, ed. Jack Webb, Rod
Westmaas, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen, and William Tantam (London: University of London Press,
), –.
 By , of the ten US foreign legations, five were in Europe and the remaining five were in Latin
America (Santiago, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Mexico, and Lima). See Whitaker, The United States and
the Independence, vii.
 Karen Racine, “A Transitional Man: Xavier Mina between Spain and America, –,”
Intellectus , no.  (): –; William Davis Robinson, Memorias de la revoluciόn mexicana.
Incluyen un relato de la expediciόn del general Xavier Mina, translated and with an introduction by
Virginia Guedea (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México, ), –; and
Harris G. Warren, “The Origin of General Mina’s Invasion,” Southwestern Historical Review ,
no.  (): .
 Pétion to Bolívar, Port-au-Prince, February , , in Paul Verna, Petiόn y Bolívar: Cuarenta años
(–) de relaciones haitiano-venezolanas y su aporte a la emancipaciόn de Hispanoamérica
(Caracas, ), .
 For royalist resistance, see Steiner Saether, Identidades e independencia en Santa Marta y Riohacha,
– (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, ); and Echeverri, Indian
and Slave Royalists.
 Revenga to Zea, “Instrucciones a que . . . habrá de arreglar su conducta el E. S. Francisco Zea en la
misión que se le ha conferido por el gobierno de Colombia para ante los del continente de Europa y
de los Estados Unidos de América,” Bogotá, December , , Archivo General de la Nación,
Colombia, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Delegaciones – Transferencia , , v.
 Whitaker, The United States and the Independence, –; William Kaufmann, British Policy and
the Independence of Latin America, – (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), ; and
Daniel Gutiérrez, El reconocimiento de Colombia. Diplomacia y propaganda en la coyuntura de las
restauraciones (–) (Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia, ), –.
 Prado, Edge of Empire.
 Kristen Shultz, Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de
Janeiro, – (New York: Routledge, ).
 Leslie Bethell, Brazil: Essays on History and Politics (London: Institute of Latin American Studies,
), –.
 Carlo Gabriel Guimarães, A presença inglesa nas finanças e no comércio do Brasil imperial
(Rio de Janeiro: Alameda, ), –.
 Ibid, .
 Blaufarb, “Arms for Revolutions,” –; Cochrane, Memoirs of Service; and Prado, Edge of
Empire, –.
 Prado, Edge of Empire, –.

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