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Soldiers and Merchants

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The British in Argentina

Part of the book series: Britain and the World ((BAW))

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Abstract

Covering the period 1800–1820, the chapter surveys the British incursions against Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807 and the infiltration of British merchants before and after the Revolution of 1810 leading to independence. British residents initially comprised deserters, a group of women who escaped transportation to Australia and a few young merchants. The community grew rapidly after 1815 with the migration of men and women, commonly from English textile districts, of whom many became shopkeepers and artisans. The chapter draws on contemporary memoirs by British merchants led by John and William Parish Robertson.

His love of freedom was ardent and grand. He once said, that if he should live a few years, he would go over to South America, and write a Poem on Liberty.

Reporting John Keats circa 1820

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Notes

  1. 1.

    J.P. and W.P Robertson. Letters on Paraguay. An account of a four years’ Residence in that Republic under the Government of the Dictator Francia. In two volumes. London: Murray, 1838. and Letters on South America, comprising travels on the banks of the Rio Parana and Rio de la Plata. In three vols. London: Murray, 1843.

  2. 2.

    For recent literature, see Aaron Graham, “Mercantile Networks in the Early Modern World,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 56, 2013, 279–295. Also Patrick K. O’Brien, “Merchants and bankers as patriots or speculators? Foreign policy and monetary policy in wartime, 1793–1815,” in John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan. The Early Atlantic Economy, 250–277. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Peter Mathias, “Risk, credit and kinship in early modern enterprise,” in McCusker and Morgan, Atlantic Economy, 15–37; Vera Blinn Reber. British Mercantile Houses in Buenos Aires, 1810–1880. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979; Stanley Chapman. Merchant Enterprise in Britain. From the Industrial Revolution to World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; D.C.M. Platt. Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972 outlines the topic in the early nineteenth century. A biography of J.P. Robertson appears in Standard (Buenos Aires) 21 Mar. 1897; see also R.A. Humphreys, “British merchants and Latin American Independence,” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 51, 1965, 151–174. On the Robertsons in Buenos Aires, see Wylie to Hancock 7 Mar. 1809, University of Glasgow. Archive of John Wylie. 28/1/1.

  3. 3.

    For the British context in 1806–1807, see O’Brien, Merchants and Bankers; François Crouzet, “America and the Crisis of the British imperial economy, 1803–1807,” 278–315, in McCusker and Morgan, Atlantic Economy. British exports to continental Europe reportedly fell from £10.3 million in 1805 to £2.2 million in 1808; and re-exports from £14.4 million in 1802 to £7.8 million in 1808. Martin Robson. Britain, Portugal and South America in the Napoleonic Wars: alliances and diplomacy in economic maritime conflict. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, 14.

  4. 4.

    Earl Fitzwilliam to Lord Grenville 3 November 1806. Quoted in John D. Grainger. The Royal Navy and the River Plate, 1806–1807. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996, 140. Grainger (p. x) attributes to Fitzwilliam the dictum associated with George Canning in the 1820s about the “new world being called in to balance the old.” For broader context, see Adrian J. Pearce. British Trade with Spanish America, 1763–1808. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007, 211–230; Carlos Marichal. Bankruptcy of Empire. Mexican Silver and the Wars between Spain, Britain, and France, 1760–1810. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. The British expeditions to Buenos Aires marked an abrupt commercial switch to the Americas, although within a long-term gradual transition over the eighteenth century. By one estimate, British trade with Continental Europe fell from 74 per cent of total trade in 1714–1717 to 33 per cent in 1803–1807. Cain and Hopkins. British Imperialism, 90.

  5. 5.

    Robertson, Paraguay, 94. The standard British history of the Napoleonic wars dismisses Popham as a treasure hunter and prize seeker. See J.W. Fortescue. A History of the British Army. Vol. V 1803–1807. London: Macmillan and Co., 1921, 367. “British troops, which should have been employed in Europe, were diverted far overseas by the avarice and self-seeking of [a] charlatan, Home Popham.”

  6. 6.

    Instructions to British commanders in late 1806 and early 1807 are reprinted in Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 159–163. For summaries of the planned campaign in the Southern Cone, see Christopher D. Hall. British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803–15. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, 146; Charles J. Esdaile. Napoleon’s Wars. An International History, 1803–1815. New York, Viking, 2007, 265.

  7. 7.

    Quoted in Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 102. British objectives were listed by the prosecutor in the court martial of Sir John Whitelocke: “new markets for our manufactures…new sources of treasure…the [current] state of Europe, and the attempt to exclude us from our accustomed intercourse [by Napoleon].” See John Whitelocke. The trial at large of Lieut. Gen. Whitelocke, late Commander in Chief of the forces in South America, by a general court martial, held at Chelsea Hospital, on Thursday, 28 January, 1808, and continued by adjournment to Tuesday, 15 March, taken by Blanchard and Ramsay, short-hand writers to the court, and published from their notes; with a correct copy of the defence, as delivered into Court, and the Right Honourable, The Judge Advocate’s reply; Also all the documents produced in defence. London, 1808, 5.

  8. 8.

    Alex Borucki, “The Slave Trade to the Rio de la Plata, 1777–1812: Trans-Imperial Networks and Atlantic Warfare,” Colonial Latin American Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2011, 81–107; Marisa Pineau ed. La ruta del esclavo en el Rio de la Plata: aportes para el diálogo intercultural. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero, 2011. Borucki (pp. 85–88) estimates the arrival of 70,000 slaves in the Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires and Montevideo combined) in 1777–1812, with numbers peaking in 1800–1806. The lower population figure of 40,000 for Buenos Aires, and a slave population of only 6772, is based on estimates by Emilio Ravignani quoted by Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 28.

  9. 9.

    Descriptions of Buenos Aires include one by watercolourist E.E. Vidal. See Picturesque Illustrations of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video Consisting of Twenty-four Views Accompanied by Descriptions of the Scenery and of the Customs, Manners etc. of the Inhabitants of those Cities and their Environs. London: R. Ackermann, 1820. Vidal frequently cites Félix de Azara. Descripción e historia del Paraguay y del Rio de la Plata. Buenos Aires: Editorial Bajel, 1943.

  10. 10.

    A detailed map of Buenos Aires of 1814 by Pedro Cerviño is reproduced as Map 16 in Fortescue, British Army, vol. 5.

  11. 11.

    McIntyre, 1818–1821 NLS Ms. 11,000. (National Library of Scotland).

  12. 12.

    Lyman L. Johnson. Workshop of Revolution. Plebeian Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World 1776–1810. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011 discusses slavery and housing along with economic conditions. Johnson opts for the figure of 60,000 against the traditional figure of 40,000 for the population of the city. According to Vidal writing around 1818, the population of Buenos Aires “used to be estimated at 40,000 [but] is now reckoned at about seventy thousand.” Vidal, Buenos Ayres, 9. Population counts in the mid-1820s reveal figures of 70,000 respectively for the city and its surrounding rural area. See Miron P. Burgin, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1946, 26, (quoting the Registro Estadístico).

  13. 13.

    The Portuguese plan “is and always has been no less than to take away your Majesty’s entire empire in South America.” Félix de Azara, “Informe sobre la petición hecha por el virrey de Buenos Aires para contrarrestar a los portugueses.” In Azara, Del Paraguay y del Rio de la Plata, 239.

  14. 14.

    Sergio Villalobos R. Comercio y contrabando en el Río de la Plata y Chile, 1700–1811. Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1965, 31–37, noting the meagre profits of the early eighteenth-century slave trade.

  15. 15.

    The episode is outlined in The Sunday Times (London) Jan. 29, 2017. Multiple web sites report impending treasure searches on the sunken wreck.

  16. 16.

    Archivo General de la Nación: Justicia. Legajo 9, Expediente 183, 1780.

  17. 17.

    British projects first appeared in the 1740s. See Carlos Roberts. Las invasiones inglesas del Rio de la Plata (1806–1807) y la influencia inglesa en la independencia y organización de las provincias del Rio de la Plata. Buenos Aires: Jácobo Peuser, 1938, 22. Invasion plans in the late 1790s are detailed in Klaus Gallo. Las invasiones inglesas, 45–48. Other sources include Bartolomé Mitre. Historia de Belgrano y de la independencia argentina. Vol. 1. New edition Buenos Aires: Losada, 1947, 160–163. A listing of invasion plans appears in Andrew Graham-Yooll. Ocupación y reconquista, 1806–1807: a 200 años de las Invasiones Inglesas. Buenos Aires: Lumière, 2006, 17–28; also Robson, Britain, Portugal, 83. For wider context, see Michael Duffy. “World-Wide War and British Expansionism, 1793–1815,” 184–207 in Oxford History of the British Empire edited by P.J. Marshall. Volume 2. The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  18. 18.

    See Rodolfo H. Terragno. Maitland y San Martín. Bernal, Province of Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1999, reproduces Maitland’s two plans in English and elucidates his sources.

  19. 19.

    For context, see C.A. Bayly, “The First Age of Global Imperialism, c 1760–1830,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1998, 32–36, linking shortages of resources in Britain to the fall of silver production in Mexico and the tribute levied by Napoleon on defeated European states. On Spanish silver subsidies to the French, see Roberts, Invasiones Inglesas, 57–59, Pearce, British Trade, 209–250. In October 1803, Spain agreed to pay an annual subsidy of £2.8 million to France. See also John Lynch, “British Policy and Spanish America, 1783–1808,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, May, 1969, 1–30; A.W. Ward and G.P. Gooch. Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy: 1783–1919. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923, 333–334. Specie payments in Britain were suspended in February 1797.

  20. 20.

    For an example, see The Times 13 Sept. 1806.

  21. 21.

    The system is described more broadly in Pearce, British Trade, 246. During Popham’s trial, Thomas Wilson reported he had traded with Buenos Aires since 1798 in neutral vessels. He wanted the British to take over Buenos Aires to allow the use of British ships. See Sir Home Popham. A Full and Correct Report of the Trial of Sir Home Popham. Second Edition. London: J. and J. Richardson, 1807, 180.

  22. 22.

    John Mawe.

  23. 23.

    Quoted in Germán O.E. Tjarks and Alicia Vidaurreta de Tjarks. El comercio inglés y el contrabando. Buenos Aires: J. Héctor Matera, 1962, 5.

  24. 24.

    Vidal, Buenos Ayres, iii.

  25. 25.

    Dundas quoted in Popham, Trial, 163.

  26. 26.

    David Geggus, “The cost of Pitt’s Caribbean Campaigns, 1793–1798,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1983, 699–706 estimates losses of more than 30,000 British troops.

  27. 27.

    “Memorandum by Sir Home Popham,” in “Miranda and the British Admiralty,” in American Historical Review, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1901, 513. Quoted in Gallo. Great Britain and Argentina, 20–32. See also John Street. Gran Bretaña y la independencia del Rio de la Plata. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1967, 20–46.

  28. 28.

    On Pitt’s opposition to British support for independence movements, see Popham, Trial, 169–171; also, Karen Racine. Francisco Miranda. A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

  29. 29.

    Islands captured and bartered by the British in the eighteenth century wars are listed in Paul M. Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing, 1982, 129–130.

  30. 30.

    Popham to Marsden 30 April, 1806, in Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 36–50.

  31. 31.

    Quoted in “Summary Account,” an anonymous publication of 1806 following news of Popham’s conquest. In Malyn Newitt ed. Revolution and Society in the Rio de la Plata, 1808–1810: Thomas Kinder’s Narrative of a Journey to Madeira, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. London: Signal Books, 2010, 13. The emphasis on a “free” colony reflected current debate before the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807. An agrarian colony won support among members of the 1807 expedition. “Were the Pampas of Buenos Ayres a few years in the hands of the British, truly might they be called the Garden of the World.” George Monkland. Account by a Junior Officer George Monkland of the Secret Expedition to the River Plate under the Command of Brigadier General Crauford and the Subsequent Withdrawal under the Command of Lieutenant General Whitelocke. Mimeo.

  32. 32.

    Charles Lyon Chandler, “United States merchant ships in the Rio de la Plata (1801–1808) as shown by early newspapers,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1919, 29.

  33. 33.

    The standard narrative in English of the invasions of 1806–1807 appears in Fortescue, British Army, I: 310–318, 368–436.

  34. 34.

    Waine is mentioned in Popham, Trial, 39–40.

  35. 35.

    Popham, Trial, 35–50. “The manufacturing forces in England have, from the posture of affairs on the Continent, an additional claim to the energies of all officers who have the means of opening any new channels for the consumption of their goods.”

  36. 36.

    On Beresford’s measures, see Roberts, Invasiones Inglesas, 111–121. He ordered a lowering of export duties by 50 per cent and duties for British and Creole shippers to 12 per cent; Americans would pay 17½ per cent. His enactments never took effect, but fell short of imposing “free trade” in the sense of uniformly low duties. See Tjarks and Tjarks, Comercio Inglés, 7. Another author reports that Beresford lowered tariffs on British imports from 34½ to 12½ per cent. Judith Blow Williams, “The Establishment of British Commerce with Argentina,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1935, 47.

  37. 37.

    Major Alexander Gillespie claimed that during Beresford’s occupation he collected a list of fifty-eight Creoles sympathetic to the British including three men appointed to office in the revolutionary junta of 1810. Alexander Gillespie, Gleanings and Remarks; Collected during Many Months of Residence at Buenos Ayres, and Within the Upper Country; With a Prefatory Account of the Expedition from England, of the Surrender of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, under the Joint Command of Sir David Baird and Sir Home Popham by Major Alexander Gillespie, Illustrated with a Map of South America, and a Chart of Rio de la Plata, with Pilotage Directions, Leeds: B. Dewhurst, 1818, 288.

  38. 38.

    Mitre, Belgrano, I:181; Street, Gran Bretaña, 20–46 and Roberts, Invasiones Inglesas, 118, 182 on orders to Beresford in August 1806 to hold Buenos Aires as a British colony and on Creole reluctance to collaborate with the British occupation.

  39. 39.

    “Our effective army which was destined to conquer a city of more than 40,000 in population…consisted of only seventy officers of all ranks, seventy-two sergeants, twenty drummers, and 1466 rank and file, making a gross total of 1635.” Gillespie, Gleanings and Remarks, 43.

  40. 40.

    Aboard the Narcissus, Popham complained about the “shoalness (sic) of the water, adverse winds and currents, continual fogs, and the great inaccuracy of the charts.” Quoting Popham to Marsden 6 July, 1806. In John Fairburn. An Authentic and Interesting Description of the City of Buenos Ayres and the Adjacent Country; Situate on the River Plate, on the East Side of South America. London: John Fairburn, 1806, 52. On navigation in the Plata, see Clifton B. Kroeber. The Growth of the Shipping Industry in the Rio de la Plata Region, 1794–1860. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957, 14–15 and frontispiece map.

  41. 41.

    Popham to Howick 9 Sept. 1806, quoted in Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 77.

  42. 42.

    On the prisoners who spent the year in the village of San Antonio de Areco, forty miles from Buenos Aires, (where they played the first known cricket match in South America), see Gillespie, Gleanings and Remarks; also, William Gavin. The Diary of William Gavin, Ensign and Quarter-Master, 71st Highland Regiment, 1806–1815. In Highland Light Infantry Chronicle, 1921. Details of the musters prior to the repatriation of the troops appear in Archivo General de la Nación. División Colonia. Sección Gobierno. Interior, Legajo 60. Records show some prisoners being sent to Salta in the far north and 172 (from the multi-ethnic St. Helena Regiment) departing for Tucumán.

  43. 43.

    Accounts of the expedition include Ian Fletcher. The Waters of Oblivion. The British Invasions of the Rio de la Plata, 1806–1807. Tunbridge Wells: Spellmount, 1991; Peter Pyne. The Invasions of Buenos Aires, 1806–1807: The Irish Dimension. Liverpool: University of Liverpool. Institute of Latin American Studies. Research Paper 20, 1996.

  44. 44.

    Crauford’s voyage is described in Anon. “Journal of the Secret Expedition which sailed from Falmouth, November 12th 1806 under the Command of Brigadier General Crauford, with a Narrative of the Army after arriving in the Rio de la Plata.” Standard 1 May, 1910.

  45. 45.

    Robertson, Paraguay, 95 passim.

  46. 46.

    Mawe, Travels, 16. British merchants who set up shops in Montevideo are listed in Juan Carlos Lizuriaga. Las invasiones inglesas en su bicentenario. Testimonios, revisiones y perspectivas. Buenos Aires: Torre de Vigia, 2007, 91.

  47. 47.

    On division in the Whig government, see Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 157–169; Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, 260–270. One group led by William Windham, the Secretary for War, continued to favour an attack on Chile while Prime Minister Lord Grenville proposed attacking Mexico.

  48. 48.

    Several authorities name the Duke of York as Whitelocke’s patron. Complaints of favouritism are picked up in the 1808 essay by James Mill. See William Burke (pseudonym of James Mill). Additional Reasons, for our Immediately Emancipating Spanish America, deduced from the Present Crisis. Reprint edition. New York: Biblio Bazaar, 2011.

  49. 49.

    See Whitelocke, Trial, for planning and tactical issues. The fullest account in English is Fortescue, British Army, 5:387–410. The plan came from second-in-command General Leveson Gower. Whitelocke accepted it against his own proposal for a siege and a bombardment.

  50. 50.

    Monkland, Account.

  51. 51.

    John Howell. Journal of a Soldier of the 71st, or Glasgow Regiment Highland Light Infantry, from 1806–1815. Edinburgh: William and Charles Tait, 1819, 40–45.

  52. 52.

    401 British troops were killed, 649 wounded and 1924 captured. See Fortescue, British Army, 5:428.

  53. 53.

    Recounted in Vidal, Buenos Ayres, 46–47.

  54. 54.

    Whitelocke, Trial, 2–4. On the lack of flintlocks, see testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Duff (p. 122).

  55. 55.

    Whitelocke, Trial, 16–17.

  56. 56.

    Whitelocke, Trial, 518.

  57. 57.

    Whitelocke, Trial, 564; Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, 332.

  58. 58.

    Whitelocke, Trial, 16–17. Pyne, Invasions, 43 estimates Beresford’s force at 1571 and Whitelocke’s at 5786 with a total of 25,000 men in 100 ships. The attack on Buenos Aires in 1807 included about 10 per cent of the total 259,000 men in Great Britain under arms. See Ward, British Foreign Policy, 359.

  59. 59.

    Gavin estimates 96 men from the first expedition stayed in the Plata when the others returned home. Assuming a similar rate of defections, possibly 400 more men deserted from Whitelocke’s force. Gavin, Diary, x.

  60. 60.

    Newitt, Kinder, 127.

  61. 61.

    Quoted in Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 57. For endorsements of Whitelocke’s views, see Real-Admiral Stirling quoted in Grainger, Royal Navy and the River Plate, Vol. 322, 332–328 for details on returnees to Britain; also AGN. División Colonia. Sección Gobierno. Interior, Legajo 60.

  62. 62.

    Of the “hundreds” of former soldiers who stayed in Buenos Aires following the departure of the British forces, few avoided sinking “to the lowest scale of misery and degradation.” Sir Woodbine Parish. Buenos Ayres, and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata; Their Present State, Trade, and Debt; with Some Account from the Original Documents of the Progress of Geographical Discovery in Those Parts of South America during the Last Sixty Years. London: J. Murray, 1839, 290.

  63. 63.

    Sir Francis Head, Bart. Rough Notes Taken during some Rapid Journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes. 4th ed. London: John Murray, 1846, 164.

  64. 64.

    Joseph Andrews. Journey from Buenos Ayres, through the Provinces of Cordova, Tucuman and Salta to Bolivia, to Potosi, thence by the Deserts of Caranja to Arica, and Subsequently, to Santiago de Chile and Coquimbo, undertaken on behalf of the Chilian and Peruvian Mining Association, in the Years 1825–1826. 2nd. Ed. New York: Ams Press, 1971. 107–108.

  65. 65.

    For the ship’s manifest containing the names of transported convicts, see HO 11/1/219, 219–222.

  66. 66.

    In 1798 British missionaries captured by the French and taken to Montevideo encountered some of the women from the Lady Shore, judging them prostitutes. “As they had lived in England, so did they here, and becoming odious some were sent into the country, and we were cautioned to keep at a distance those who remained in town.” By this account, the murderer of the captain of the Lady Shore—a man, not Mary Clarke—was executed for the crime in Montevideo. William Gregory. A Visible Display of Divine Providence. The Journal of a Captured Missionary…in the Years 1798 and 1799. Greenburg, Pennsylvania: John M. Snowden, 1804, 194–195.

  67. 67.

    Gillespie, Gleanings and Remarks, 51.

  68. 68.

    Maxine Hanon. Diccionario de británicos en Buenos Aires. (Primera época). Buenos Aires: The Author, 2005, 214–216. For Charles Darwin’s comments on Mary Clarke, see Richard Darwin Keynes ed. Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 116. On her life, see Juan M. Méndez Avellaneda. Las convictas de la Lady Shore. Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2008.

  69. 69.

    Kinder, Narrative, 156.

  70. 70.

    Tulio Halperín Donghi, “Revolutionary Militarization in Buenos Aires,” Past and Present, No. 40, July, 1968, 92.

  71. 71.

    On politics before the revolution, see Tulio Halperín Donghi. Politics, Economics and Society in Argentina in the Revolutionary Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, 126–156. Johnson, Workshop of Revolution, 243–247 dates a sharp decline in living standards of skilled workers to the expansion of the slave population in the late 1790s. He notes (p. 220) “the dramatic series of wages increases after 1806” coinciding with the expansion of the militia.

  72. 72.

    Raúl O. Fradkin. La Argentina colonial. El Rio de la Plata entre los siglos XVI y XIX. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2009, 88, 201–216 assesses the relationship between the Potosí subsidy and the outbreak of revolution in 1810.

  73. 73.

    Quoted in Street, Gran Bretaña, 121.

  74. 74.

    On carlotismo see Halperín Donghi, Argentina, 139, discussing the issue in the light of Portuguese designs on the Banda Oriental. For an account using British sources, see J. Street, “Lord Strangford and the Río de la Plata, 1808–1815,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, Nov. 1953, 477–510. A broader restatement appears in Robson, Britain, Portugal, 210; also, Anthony McFarlane. War and Independence in Spanish America. London: Routledge, 2014, 45–46.

  75. 75.

    Perceval in Paul Langford. The Eighteenth Century, 1688–1815. London: A. and C. Black, 1976, 237. On opposition in Britain to forming colonies, see Bernard Semmel. The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism. Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. In 1782, Josiah Tucker opposed “foreign dominions [preferring to trust] solely to the goodness and cheapness of our manufactures, and to the long credit we can give them, for procuring their vent.” (p. 20).

  76. 76.

    On the Castlereagh Memorandum, see Street, Independencia, 81–98; C.K. Webster. Britain and the Independence of Latin America, 1812–1830. Select Documents from the Foreign Office. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938, 9; William W. Kaufmann, British Policy and the Independence of Latin America 1804–1828. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951, 44; Roberts, Invasiones Inglesas, 371; C.J. Bartlett, “Castlereagh, 1812–1822” in T.G. Otte. The Makers of British Foreign Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, 33–70.

  77. 77.

    See Burke (Mill), Additional Reasons for our Emancipating South America. An important, under-acknowledged aspect of Mill’s argument in “Additional Reasons” asserted that ties between Europe and Latin America were based on imported European goods and therefore rested on cultural links formed by consumption. The idea is explored in Benjamin Orlove. Allure of the Foreign. Imported Goods in Post-Colonial Latin America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. See also Mario Rodríguez. “William Burke” and Francisco de Miranda. The Word and Deed in Spanish American Emancipation. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994; Mill, Jeremy Bentham and Francisco de Miranda are addressed in Joselyn M. Almeida, “Esa gran nación repartida en ambos mundos; Transnational Authorship in London and Nation Building in Latin America,” 53–80, in Almeida ed. Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary. Amsterdam and New York: Radopi, 2010.

  78. 78.

    On Castlereagh’s policy, see Robson, Britain, Portugal, 187, 197–201. Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood urged occupying “strategic points from which to establish commerce with Spanish America. In this way British influence could be established without requiring the burdens of direct rule over the whole continent” (p. 197); also John Bew. Castlereagh. A life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 22. Platt, British Trade, 28, shows the growing Latin American share of British trade, rising to 40 per cent in 1808–1810.

  79. 79.

    Humphreys, British Merchants, 157. On Spanish debates on opening up colonial markets to the British, see Michael P. Costeloe, “Spain and the Spanish American Wars of Independence: The Free Trade Controversy, 1810–1830,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 61, No. 2, May 1981, 209–234; also François Crouzet, “Toward an Export Economy: British Exports during the Industrial Revolution,” Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1981, 48–93, discussing accelerating exports of cotton goods, 1790–1820. For Mexican parallels, see Guadalupe Jiménez Codinach. La Gran Bretaña y la independencia de México. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991, 355.

  80. 80.

    Wylie to Hancock 7 Feb. 1809. UGD 28/1/1. For broader aspects of Wylie’s South American career, see Manuel Llorca-Jaña, “British Merchants in New Markets: The Case of Wylie and Hancock in Brazil and the River Plate,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2014, 215–238.

  81. 81.

    Canning quoted in Robson, Britain, Portugal, 205.

  82. 82.

    Wylie to Hancock, 7 Feb. 1809. UGD 28/1/1.

  83. 83.

    Herbert Heaton, “A Merchant Adventurer in Brazil 1808–1818,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 6, No. 1, May 1946, 1–23 (on John Luccock). An unrivalled contemporary authority on Rio, Luccock also provided data on the early trade with Buenos Aires. See John Luccock. Notes on Rio de Janeiro, and the Southern Parts of Brazil, Taken during a Residence of Ten Years in that Country, from 1808 to 1818. London: Samuel Leigh, 1820, 138–146.

  84. 84.

    Mawe, Travels, 100–13. “Gold quickly disappeared: for the monied Portugueze [sic] cautiously withheld their specie, and, by the alternatives of barter, got rid of their own produce at a very high price”; also 325–329. The return trade is discussed in Wylie to Hancock, 7 Feb. 1809 UGD 28/1/1.

  85. 85.

    Platt stressed shallow markets and constraints imposed by poverty and transportation as limiting factors on demand for British goods. See Platt, British Trade, 1–22, 36, 67.) His view is challenged by Llorca-Jaña, British Textile Trade, 271, looking primarily at the 1830s and 1840s. Covering 1807–1810, the Wylie Archive supports Platt. François Crouzet. “Angleterre-Brésil, 1697–1850: un siècle et demi d’exchanges commerciaux,” in Crouzet, International Commerce, 287–317, also endorses Platt, using data on Brazil. As stressed by Llorca-Jaña, increases in Spanish American consumption in the later nineteenth century resulted from falling prices of British goods.

  86. 86.

    In 1809, Wylie discussed the optimal number and distribution of his firm’s agents with his partners in detail, emphasising that access to one port-city alone would never create a profitable business. See, for example, Wylie to Dalglish 30 May, 1809. UGD 28/1/1.

  87. 87.

    Wylie to Hancock and to Dalglish, 7 February, 15 Aug., 27 Sept. 23, Dec. 1809. UGD 28/1/1 and 28/1/2.

  88. 88.

    Heaton, Merchant Adventurer.

  89. 89.

    Newitt, Kinder, 145, 162–163, 182–185. Kinder listed thirty-one British ships engaged in contraband between November 1808 and November 1809. Also Tjarks and Tjarks, Comercio Inglés, 13–21, 32, who quote British merchant Alexander Mackinnon on Spanish complicity in smuggling British goods; also Goebel, British Trade, 309, reporting that British vessels landed smuggled goods valued at £1 million. Numerous authors note that established Spanish merchants, members of the “Cádiz monopoly,” profiteered from contraband when colonial restrictions against imported foreign goods were maintained.

  90. 90.

    Luccock, Rio de Janeiro, 138.

  91. 91.

    Wylie to Hancock 9 Feb. 1810. UGD 28/1/2.

  92. 92.

    Wylie to correspondents 7 March, 26 April, 19 May, 15 July, 14 August, 1809. UGD 28/1/1.

  93. 93.

    Wylie to Barlow 29 Nov. 1809. UGD 28/1/1.

  94. 94.

    Wylie to Barber 22 Aug. 1809. UGD 28/1/1. Revenue figures for 1809 are listed in Annex to letter of 2 June, 1810. FO 72/157 showing military expenditure at 55 per cent of total revenue.

  95. 95.

    See Cisneros to Doyle 2 Nov. 1809. ADM 1/20.

  96. 96.

    Wylie to Correspondents 2, 27 Sept., 1 and 29 Nov. 1809. He further noted the government increased valuations of British goods up to 60 per cent. See Wylie to Correspondents 28 Feb., 3 and 9 Mar. 1810. UGD 28/1/2. Instability and uncertainty characterise the overall picture.

  97. 97.

    For one such case, see Jackson to Doyle Jan. 180. Jan. 1810. ADM 1/20.

  98. 98.

    Mackinnon to Canning 2 Nov. 1809 FO 95/7/7. Conditions for British merchants in Buenos Aires in late 1809 are detailed in Tjarks and Tjarks, Comercio inglés, 32–53.

  99. 99.

    Wylie to Correspondents 2, 28 Feb., 3 Mar. 1810. UGD 28/1/2.

  100. 100.

    Wylie to Correspondents 22 Jan., 9 Feb. 1810. UGD 28/1/2.

  101. 101.

    Wylie to Wallis 10 Feb. 1810 UGD 28/1/2.

  102. 102.

    Had they left Buenos Aires in May, merchants would have had to abandon their goods to be “sold at 40 percent beneath the prime cost.” De Courcy to Croker, 3 May 1810. In Gerald S. Graham and R.A. Humphreys. The Navy and South America, 1807–1823. Correspondence of the Commanders-in-Chief on the South American Station. London: Navy Records Society, 1962, 46. Standard accounts of the prologue to the May Revolution include R.A. Humphreys. Liberation in South America. The Career of James Paroissien. London: Athlone Press, 1952, 28–40. The book focuses on a British doctor who came to Buenos Aires as an emissary of Princess Carlota Joaquina to be caught up in the prelude to revolution.

  103. 103.

    Wylie to Dalglish 8 Dec. 1809 and Wylie to Sherriff 23 Jan. 1810. UGD 28/1/2.

  104. 104.

    Reductions in duties in 1813 mostly to a flat rate of 25 per cent were reported by Robert Staples, the unofficial consul. See Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 65–66. An overview of tariff policy appears in Report to Bowles by a British Merchant 22 Dec. 1819. Cited in Graham and Humphreys, Navy and South America, 292.

  105. 105.

    See Graham and Humphreys, Navy and South America.: De Courcy to Croker, 3 Nov. 1811, p. 69; for naval transportation of silver, pp. 58, 69–70, 93; Reports to Bowles by a Merchant 25 Dec. 1819, 288. Shipping estimates appear in Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 122–123. See also Lucio R. Picabea, “Los británicos en Buenos Aires en 1810,” in Alberto David Leiva. Los días de mayo. San Isidro: Academia de Ciencias y Artes de San Isidro, 1998, 268–285.

  106. 106.

    Bowles to Commander of “Brazils” squadron, 22 Sept. 1813, ADM 1/1557.

  107. 107.

    Mackinnon to Canning 2 Nov. 1809. FO 95/7/7.

  108. 108.

    Masonic lodges are mentioned in standard accounts of the revolutionary era. See Street, Gran Bretaña, 49; Halperín Donghi, Argentina, 216.

  109. 109.

    Robertson, South America, 2: 105, 235, 286.

  110. 110.

    Mackinnon to Wellesley 10 Jan. 1811. FO 72/126.

  111. 111.

    See Bowles to Commander of the “Brazils” squadron 22 Sept. 1813. The issue is discussed more broadly in McFarlane, War and Independence, 168–174.

  112. 112.

    The value of British exports fell from £738,000 in 1818 to £390,000 in 1819. See Llorca-Jaña, British Textile Trade, 310–312.

  113. 113.

    Details in Bowles to Commander of “Brazils” squadron, 31 July, 1818. ADM 1/23, which followed the government decree of 4 July; also Bowles to Pueyrredón 19 July, 1818. FO 72/215; also Robertson, South America, 2: 286; Graham and Humphreys, Navy and South America, 243–245.

  114. 114.

    Quoted in E. Pratt, “Anglo-American Commercial and Political Rivalry on the Plata, 1820–1830,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1931, 315.

  115. 115.

    H.M. Brackenridge. Voyage to South America Performed by Order of the American Government in the Years 1817 and 1818 in the Frigate Congress. 2 vols. London: T. and J. Allman, 1820, I: 289.

  116. 116.

    Bew, Castlereagh, 449–456, 481.

  117. 117.

    A translation of the French offer appears in Bowles to Croker 22 Dec. 1819 ADM 1/25. The episode is recounted in William Spence Robertson. France and Latin-American Independence, New York: Octagon Books, 1967, 143–144.

  118. 118.

    Robertson, Paraguay, I: 148–170. Numerous contemporaries contrasted the treatment of slaves in Rio and Buenos Aires. Woodbine Parish, British Consul in Buenos Aires from 1824, noted “the independent air of the people of Buenos Ayres, a striking contrast with the slavery and squalid misery of [Rio de Janeiro].” Parish, Buenos Ayres, 104. General William Miller objected to the slave trade in a passing visit to Rio. See John Miller. Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru. Vol. 1 London: John Murray, 1828 I: 433. John Beaumont reported the settlers he recruited in 1825 refused a halt at Rio in fear of enslavement. See J.A.B. Beaumont. Travels in Buenos Aires and its Adjacent Provinces of the Rio de la Plata: with observations intended for the use of persons who contemplate emigrating to that country, or, embarking capital in its affairs. London: James Ridgeway, 1828.

  119. 119.

    Robertson is mentioned numerous times in Wylie’s correspondence of 1809 and early 1810. The link was based on the ties between Wylie and Robertson senior formed in Montevideo in 1807. See 7 Mar., 30 June, 15 Aug., 9 and 27 Sept. 1809. UGD 28/1/1; also 10, 28 Feb., 9 Mar. 1810. On 22 May, having left Buenos Aires in late April, Wylie noted that Robertson “is to remain with us, by his father’s express orders,” for three years, with an annual salary of £100. UGD 28/1/2.

  120. 120.

    Details are noted in Llorca-Jaña, British Merchants, 228.

  121. 121.

    Robertson, Paraguay, 2:1.

  122. 122.

    On river craft on the Paraná, see Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 146, note 12 mentioning various river boats including piraguas as large as 145 tons.

  123. 123.

    On Fair, see Hanon, Diccionario, 310.

  124. 124.

    Robertson, Paraguay, 2:34.

  125. 125.

    Robertson, Paraguay, III, 82–99. On this episode, see John Street. Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959, 269–274.

  126. 126.

    On rural Corrientes, see Tulio Halperín Donghi, “La expansión ganadera en la campaña de Buenos Aires (1810–1852),” Desarrollo Económico Vol. 1, No. 1–2, Apr.–Sept. 1963, 67.

  127. 127.

    Robertson, South America, I:262. In Corrientes, the brothers paid 3½ pence per pound and sold hides in Buenos Aires at 5½ pence; in England, hides fetched 9–10 pence.

  128. 128.

    Robertson, South America, I: 176.

  129. 129.

    Robertson, South America, I:264.

  130. 130.

    Robertson, South America, I:53–54.

  131. 131.

    Robertson, Paraguay, 263.

  132. 132.

    Robertson, South America, I:30–38 and 3:192. Campbell evokes the definition of “marginal man” by sociologist Robert Park in 1928: “A cultural hybrid, a man living and sharing intimately in the cultural life and traditions of two distinct peoples; never quite willing to break even if he were permitted to do so, with the past.” Quoted in Richard Kolm. The Change of Cultural Identity. An Analysis of Factors conditioning the Cultural Integration of Immigrants. New York: Arno Press, 1980, 58.

  133. 133.

    Studies include Reber, British Merchant Houses; Hilarie J. Heath, “British Merchant Houses, 1821–1860: Conforming Business Practices and Ethics,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 2, 1993, 261–290, a work with data similar to those in the Rio de la Plata; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise. A summary appears in Rory M. Miller, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Longman, 1993, 79–86.

  134. 134.

    Robertson, South America, 2: 2–20.

  135. 135.

    Robertson, South America, 2:39, 101, 202–232. Multiple contacts are a feature common to British mercantile groups in various parts of Latin America. See George E. Carl. First Among Equals: Great Britain and Venezuela, 1810–1910. Ann Arbor, Mich. Syracuse University, 1980.

  136. 136.

    GHR 5/1/1. 30 Aug. 1817. (The Archive of James Hodgson, John Rydal Library, University of Manchester).

  137. 137.

    Hodgson to Hodgson (a cousin) 17 Feb. 1818. GHR 5/1/1.

  138. 138.

    GHR 5/1/1, letters of 6 Apr. and 28 Dec. 1818, 26 Feb. and 10 Mar. 1819, and 14 June 1820.

  139. 139.

    GHR 5/1/1. Letters of 10 Aug., 10 Sept. 1819, 11 Jan. and 10 Apr. 1820.

  140. 140.

    Figures in William Duane. The Two Americas: Great Britain and the Holy Alliance. Washington D.C.: E. De Krafft, 1824, 9, showing values increasing from US $88,000 in 1820 to $2.3 million in 1823.

  141. 141.

    R.A. Humphreys. British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America, 1824–1826. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1940, 91.

  142. 142.

    Elizabeth Mavor. The Captain’s Wife. The South American Journals of Maria Graham, 1821–1823. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993, 79,109.

  143. 143.

    Celia Wu. Generals and Diplomats. Great Britain and Peru, 1820–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 36–37, 72. Platt enumerates the British mercantile houses in Latin America around the mid-1820s at: 60 Rio, 40 Buenos Aires, 10 Montevideo, 18 Bahia, 20 Lima, 16 Arequipa, 14 Mexico City, 4 Cartagena. See Platt, British Trade, 42.

  144. 144.

    A French author of the 1830s attributed the weakness of French commerce to the absence of French merchant houses. Arsène Isabelle. Voyage à Buenos-Ayres et a Porto-Alegre par la Banda Oriental. Les Missions d’Uruguay et la Province de Rio-Grande-do-Sul de 1830 à1830–1834. Havre: Imprimerie de J. Morlent, 1835, 348.

  145. 145.

    An Englishman. A Five Years’ Residence in Buenos Ayres during 1820–1825: containing remarks on the country and inhabitants, and a visit to Colonia del Sacramento; with an appendix containing rules and police of the port of Buenos Ayres, navigation of the River Plate &c, &c. London: G. Hebert, 1825, 49–52 on the Americans and the French. The author is widely acknowledged as George Thomas Love, founder and editor of the British Packet and Argentine News.

  146. 146.

    Duane, Two Americas, 9.

  147. 147.

    A contemporary sketch of the merchant community appears in An Englishman. Five Years’ Residence, 34–41.

  148. 148.

    Bowles to Croker 13 Dec. 1819. In Graham and Humphreys, Navy and South America, 260.

  149. 149.

    Woodbine Parish, reported in Octavio C. Batolla. Los primeros ingleses en Buenos Aires, 1780–1830. Buenos Aires: Muro, 1928, 54. (My retranslation).

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    David Rock

  2. Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    David Rock

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Rock, D. (2019). Soldiers and Merchants. In: The British in Argentina. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97855-0_1

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