Navies, internal order and trade in South America, 1830–1914

Summary

ABSTRACT.The South American states are linked by the sea and the great rivers, which have always been their means of access to the outside world and to each other. The trade of the nineteenth-century South American states was seaborne, and their rivalries were expressed by naval wars at sea and on the great rivers.

RÉSUMÉ.Les États d'Amérique du Sud sont reliés par la mer et les grands fleuves. Cela a toujours été leurs moyens d'accès au monde extérieur et à leurs voisins. Le commerce des États sud-américains du XIX^esiècle était maritime, et leurs rivalités s'exprimèrent par des guerres navales sur la mer et les grands fleuves.

Bordered by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, South America comprises a conicalshaped landmass stretching from the equator in the north to the icy wastes of Tierra del Fuego in the south. Topographically, it comprises three zones – the peaks of the Andes which run down the western side; the highlands of Brazil which, with their associated plateau, occupy the eastern corner; and, in the centre, two huge river systems – the Amazon, which flows east through tropical rainforests from Peru to the sea, and the Paraná, which, with its tributaries, flows south from the Brazil–Bolivia border, through Paraguay, to the temperate grasslands of the River Plate.

In the 1820s, South America was emerging after centuries of Spanish and Portuguese rule and was partially explored, imperfectly exploited and thinly populated. Its topography was reflected in three major socio-economic zones – the Peruvian highlands, which silver made the engine of the Spanish Empire; North East Brazil, the source of labour-intensive tropical crops worked by African slaves; and the lowlands of Southern Brazil and the River Plate, then thinly populated and the source of hides and beef. All these commodities were produced in large economic units owned – whether mines, plantations or ranches – by a creole elite and worked by an indigenous or imported labour force held in various degrees of subjugation.

The bulk of the population lived within two hundred miles of the sea – on coastal lowlands or the lower reaches of the rivers which penetrated the interior. The only exception was Upper Peru. he coastal settlements did not, however, comprise a continuous strip but a series of independent entities based on the ports through which their products were sent to the outside world via the open sea.