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British Policy and Spanish America, 1783–1808

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

John Lynch
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Extract

‘The liberation of South America’, wrote Castlereagh in 1807, ‘must be accomplished through the wishes and exertions of the inhabitants; but the change can only be operated…under the protection and with the support of an auxiliary British force’. The argument, familiar in political debate, was rare in official policy. Britain, it is true, had long regarded Spanish America as a source of strength for her rivals and a potential market for her manufactures. After the Peace of 1783 interest became more intense as British observers, impressed by the vulnerability of empires, claimed to see signs of rapid decline in the empire of Spain. Intelligence reports on Spanish America accumulated in government departments; plans for British attacks flowed from official and private sources; and a section of merchant opinion increased its agitation for military intervention in the area. Yet, apart from the conquest of Trinidad in 1797 and the attempted conquest of the Río de la Plata in 1806–7, British policy towards Spanish America was diffident in its approach and vague in its intent. There were, indeed, compelling reasons why Spanish America should remain on the margin of British policy. Britain's existing European and imperial interests necessarily dominated her policy and absorbed her resources. Until 1806, moreover, existing channels of trade in Europe and the rest of the world were sufficient to take the bulk of British industrial production. And military resources were usually insufficient to release troops either from Europe or the West Indies for major operations in a new theatre of war.

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1969 , pp. 1 - 30
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

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page 28 note 8 See the valuable discussion in Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique et le Blocus Continentale, I, 182–4Google Scholar, on which this paragraph is based.

page 28 note 9 In the second category 25 of the licences were issued for trade to Buenos Aires after its occupation by Popham's expedition.

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page 29 note 15 Humphreys, R. A. (ed.), British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America, 1824–1826 (London, 1940), p. 20.Google Scholar

page 29 note 16 Ibid., p. 127, n. 2.