Lynch

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783-1808
Author(s): John Lynch

Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1969), pp. 1-30
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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1. Lat. Amer. Stud. r, I, I-30 Printed in Great Britain I
British Policy and Spanish America,

I783-I808
by JOHN LYNCH
'The liberation of South America', wrote Castlereagh in I807, '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 '.1 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 manu-
factures. 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 x797 and the attempted conquest of the Rio 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 insuffi-
cient to release troops either from Europe or the West Indies for major
operations in a new theatre of war.2 British policy towards Spanish America,
therefore, was essentially negative: it was easier for statesmen to see what
they should prevent-principally the extension of French power and ideology
in the New World-than to determine what they should promote. Should
1 Charles W. Vane, Marquess of Londonderry(ed.), Correspondence,Despatches, and Other
Papers of Viscount Castlereagh, Second Marquess of Londonderry (hereinafter cited as
CastlereaghPapers) (I2 vols., London, I848-53), vII, 385.
2 It was for this reason that considerationwas given to sending expeditions across the Pacific
from India, an operation which would involve great problems of timing, logistics and
finance.
L.A.S.-I

2 John Lynch
Britain espouse a policy of conquest, of emancipation, or a combination of
both? Whatever the option, there were a number of formidable deterrents.
The loss of the North American colonies did not in itself inhibit British
imperial activity in the years after 1783; dominion and colonization were
still at the service of commerce if circumstances required.3 But even those
observers who continued to believe in the value of empire doubted whether
it should include acquisitions from the empire of Spain. The Earl of
Selkirk, for example, whose colonizing activities in North America have
overshadowed his distinguished advocacy of a policy of emancipation in
Spanish America, argued in 1806 that 'it may be fairly doubted whether
the revenue that would arise from these Spanish American provinces would
be sufficient indemnification for the burdens which the possession would
involve'.4 And he thought that a British colonial administration would be
incapable of governing Spanish Americans. These arguments he regarded
as decisive against any policy of permanent conquest in Spanish America;
by promoting its independence, on the other hand, Britain would gain the
commercial benefits of empire without its political obligations. This is not
to say that British thinking was conditioned by a doctrinaire aversion to
dominion in Spanish America; the real criterion was whether local
conditions made it feasible.
A policy of conquest pre-supposed that the creoles would welcome a
change of imperial government. But any illusions about this were shattered
in the Rio de la Plata in 1806-7. During the British occupation of Monte-
video Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Bourke sounded creole opinion and found
that it was 'entirely turned towards Independence, and the establishment of
a Republic or Federal Government similar to that of North America. That
the submitting to an English master would be the greatest possible bar to
this project ... I have never heard a word of an English Party of which so
much was said in London about the time of our sailing; nor do I believe
that such a party ever existed.' 5 Another officer was even more pessimistic:
'You have not a friend among the inhabitants of South America. The
people here are not that soft, effeminate race they are in Old Spain, on the
contrary they are ferocious and want discipline only to make them formid-
able.' 6 In the event they had discipline enough to eject the British invaders.
3 See Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-93 (2 vols.,
London, 1952-64), and the commentariesof Richard Pares, English Historical Review, LXVIII
(I953), 282-5, and Ronald Hyam, 'British Imperial Expansion in the late Eighteenth
Century', The Historical Journal, x (I967), I13-24.
4 Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, 'Observations on the proposed expedition against
Spanish America' (7 June i806), British Museum, Add. 37884, ff. 16-17.
5 Bourke to Windham, 9 Feb. 1807, B.M., Add. 37886, ff. 38-9v.
6 Colonel Browne to General Walpole, 25 April I807, B.M., Add. 37886, ff. 253-5v.

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783-1808 3
The alternative to conquest was emancipation, but this raised further

problems. No British government would promote a revolution for indepen-
dence if it was likely to unleash a social revolution. Aversion to social
change inhibited British policy towards Spanish America throughout this
period, especially after 1789 when the spectre of the French Revolution with
its levelling doctrines, and the example of class and racial conflict in the
colony of Saint Domingue, haunted British statesmen for many years to
come. These fears were later expressed by the Duke of Wellington, who
had been prepared to execute a policy of emancipation that was an affront
to all his conservative instincts: 'I always had a horror of revolutionising
any country for a political object. I always said, if they rise of themselves,
well and good, but do not stir them up; it is a fearful responsibility.' 7 Views
of this kind conditioned British policy in the Rio de la Plata in I806-7,
when military commanders were instructed that the object of the operation
was not revolution but a change of imperial government, that they must
avoid arousing 'a spirit of insurrection and revolt', and that they must do
nothing to impair 'the rights and privileges, or even established usages, of
any class of inhabitants'.
The danger of social revolution, of course, could be used to justify a
somewhat different argument. Granted that the spirit of revolution already
existed in Spanish America, should not Britain intervene to direct and con-
trol it? This was the view of Henry Dundas, who questioned whether
Britain was in a position to prevent the spread of a 'revolutionizing system'
in Spanish America; Britain should act, with a policy of independence, in
order to avoid the danger that would arise 'if this empire is to be permitted
to revolutionize itself without guidance or control '. This was also the stand-
point of the Earl of Selkirk in i806. Recognizing that the fear of spreading
'Jacobin principles' had been a deterrent to British action in the previous
war with Spain, he argued that revolutionary upheaval was now less likely
to come from the imperialist policy of Napoleon than from the activities of
Francisco de Miranda, who was then at large in the Caribbean. The
Venezuelan revolutionary, he thought, 'may be unable to repress the dissen-
tions among the different classes and orders of the colonists-to reconcile the
contending factions of the Whites, the Indians, the Negroes, Mulattoes, etc.
... the horrors of St. Domingo may be acted over again in the Caraccas'. 0
7 Philip Henry, fifth Earl of Stanhope, Notes of Conversationswith the Duke of

Wellington
I83I-1851 (3rd ed., London, 1889), p. 69.
8 Instructionsto Whitelocke, 5 March 1807, B.M., Add. 37886, f. I48.
9 'Memorandum for the considerationof the Cabinet', 3 Oct.
1799, CastlereaghPapers, viI,
284-5.
10 Selkirk, 'Observations', B.M., Add. 37884, ff. 20-2.

4 John Lynch
The presence of a British force, he concluded, would reduce these dangers.

Finally, Lord Castlereagh himself, who was certainly prepared in 1808 to
send a liberating expedition to Spanish America, met the argument that the
new governments 'would become democratic and revolutionary' with the
simple assertion that in an emergency risks must be taken and as long as
anarchy was avoided the risks were justified.11
British analysis of the social structure in Spanish America, though rudi-
mentary, was accurate enough to make clear that support for a creole elite
would not in itself involve basic social change. But there were further com-
plications. Support for creoles was rightly seen to entail an irrevocable
commitment to independence. But Britain was unfamiliar with such a role.
She had recent experience of resisting an independence movement, but no
experience at all of promoting one. On the other hand she was highly
experienced in making colonial conquests, not necessarily with the intention
of retaining them. Her ministers were not foolish enough, even in 1806 in
the Rio de la Plata, to suppose that immense territoriescould be permanently
held by a few thousand troops. But the practice of seizing colonies with the
object of trading them at the peace table was perfectly understood and
usually successful. Moreover, in a period when Britain's greatest enemy was
France, not Spain, and when it was frequently hoped to detach Spain from
France, a policy of barter was less hostile to Spain, because less irrevocable,
than one of fomenting revolution and independence in Spain's empire.l2
Spanish Americans, however, would not risk their lives and property in
response to a British lead for independence unless Britain's commitment was
powerful enough to succeed and unambiguous enough to be permanent.
The British government failed to resolve this dilemma in the Rio de la Plata
in I806-7. General Beresford deliberately refrained from making any
promises to the creoles about their future state, in order not to compromise
Britain's freedom of action when the war ended. General Whitelocke was
instructed that 'no other assurance . . . can be given them, but that His
Majesty will not surrender but with great reluctance, possessions to which
he attaches so much value', and would never surrender them without
guarantees for the security of collaborators.l3Assurances of this kind could
only damage the British cause.
The burdens of conquest, the hazards of emancipation, these were
obstacles enough to the formation of a British policy towards Spanish
America. But they were not the only ones. Any government would hesitate
11 Memorandum, I May I807, CastlereaghPapers, vI, 320-I.

12 For this argument, in a different form, see Castlereaghto Duke of Manchester,Governor of
Jamaica, 4 June i808, ibid., vi, 366-7.
13 Instructionsto Whitelocke, 5 March I807, B.M., Add. 37886, f. 50o.

British Policy and Spanish America, I783-I808 5
to commit an expensive expeditionary force to a distant continent without

some confidence that the terrain was fruitful to its operations. This was
essentially an intelligence problem. And although the British government
managed in some degree to penetrate the secrecy in which Spain enveloped
its overseas empire, it could never act with the conviction derived from cer-
tain knowledge. British intelligence on Spanish America came in part from
Spanish Americans themselves, from a small group of emigres and revolu-
tionaries who converged on London in search of British support for emanci-
pation-Antonio Nariiio from New Granada, Pedro Jose Caro from Cuba,
Mariano Castilla from Buenos Aires, Eugenio Cortes from Chile, Joseph
Pavia from Mexico, and, the most distinguished and persistent of them all,
Francisco de Miranda from Venezuela. Some of these, such as Miranda and
Pavia, received government patronage while they were sounded for infor-
mation and held in reserve for use in possible operations. Others, like Caro,
were rejected as untrustworthy. All these sources were regarded with some
reserve because of their evident partiality.14But the British government also
disposed of its own sources of intelligence, a small group of consultants who
either volunteered information or were approachedwhen the occasion arose.
Travellers who had gained entry to South America, merchants who had
traded on its coasts, naval and official personnel in the West Indies, all these
provided the government with a working knowledge of conditions in the
subcontinent, sometimes in circumstantialdetail. In 1807, for example, infor-
mation on Mexico was supplied to Sir Arthur Wellesley by Charles Frazer,
a merchant who had traded on the coast of Mexico. In the same year Castle-
reagh consulted Mr J. D. R. Gordon who had spent six years in Mexico and
was able to report on political conditions, communications and military
establishments.15One of the most prolific sources of information was William
Jacob, F.R.S., economist and merchant, who had traded for some years to
Spanish America. Jacob volunteered to the government a number of plans
for liberating expeditions-like most of their kind highly unrealistic-and a
succession of memoranda on conditions in the Spanish colonies. Not all of
his information was first-hand, but his paper on Mexico in I806 revealed
extensive and detailed knowledge, relatively recent, of communications and
defence installations, as well as climatic and geographical conditions, while
his other writings, including those on the Rio de la Plata, indicate that he
was a serious student of the history, the laws and institutions, and the
14 See W. S. Robertson, The Life of Miranda (2 vols.,

Chapel Hill, 1929); M. Batllori, S.J.,
El Abate Viscardo, Historia y mito de la intervencion de los Jesuitasen la independencia de
Hispanoamerica(Caracas, I953).
15 Gordon to
Castlereagh, 26 Jan. I808, Castlereagh Papers, vI, 426-41.

6 John Lynch
economy of Spanish America.16In the eastern Caribbeanthe island of Trini-

dad, close to the mainland and a haven for refugees, was a perfect base for
the collection of information, a service which Colonel Thomas Picton, the
first British governor, and his successor, Colonel Thomas Hislop, performed
with enthusiasm. The navy too was a valuable instrument of intelligence.
The Orinoco was surveyed by a gunboat up to Angostura in late I80o, when
it was reported that Spain had no military post capable of resistance on the
river.7 In May 1806 Governor Hislop forwarded a paper written by Lieu-
tenant Briarly, who had made previous forays into Venezuelan territory and
who had 'lately returned from Cumana, where he went in a coaster and
being an acquaintance of the Governor there was permitted to land and
passed two days on shore at Government House '.1 Briarly's report contained
substantial economic and military intelligence on Venezuela.
The British government, therefore, was reasonably well informed on the
state of Spanish defences. Its informants, however, invariably underestimated
the potential and the loyalty of the creole militia, as it learnt to its cost in the
Rio de la Plata. This indeed was the crux of the matter. Were the creoles on
the verge of revolution and ready to take up arms against Spain? British
officials and consultants usually reported on social as well as military con-
ditions, and although their prejudices tended to warp their judgement, they
were familiar enough with the main outline of the Spanish American social
structure. They identified two prominent sources of creole discontent, exclu-
sion from higher office and the Spanish commercial monopoly.l9 William
Jacob, whose analysis was rather more sophisticated than that of other con-
sultants, also underlined a sense of local identity among Spanish Americans.
In advice to the government on the administration of Buenos Aires in I8o6
he described the creole aristocracyof Mexico, Peru and New Granada, their
property and influence', their 'feelings of attachment to the land of their
nativity, in contempt for the government of Spain by the house of Bourbon,
and in detestation of those Europeans who under the auspices of the present
state are continually sent there to execute the offices of government, to an
extent which the state of society is far from requiring'. With this he con-
trasted the Rio de la Plata which, lacking the economic attraction of Peru,
had never possessed a powerful creole aristocracy; its immigrants had been
16 Memorandum' on the attack of Mexico from the eastern side', II July I806, Castlereagh
Papers, vII, 293-302; see also Jacob to Windham, 24 Sept. I8o6, B.M., Add. 37884, ff. 159-
68.
17 Plan of J. Sullivan for attack on Spanish America, B.M., Add. 37885, f. I85v.
18 Hislop to Sullivan, 20 May I8o6, enclosing 'Remarks relative to the Spanish colonies in
South America, by Lieut. Briarly of the Royal Navy', B.M., Add. 37883, ff. 263-7.
19 See, for example, the views of various consultants in CastlereaghPapers, vII, 270, 291, 435,
436; see also Selkirk, ' Observations', B.M., Add. 37884, f. 12.

British Policy and Spanish America, I783-1808 7
'men of the lowest origin'; the profits of commerce had enriched some of
their descendants, but had 'neither given them local attachments or exten-
sive influence '.0 Jacob's pejorative views on the creoles of the Rio de la
Plata were subsequently echoed by General Auchmuty, who thought that
'from their ignorance, their want of morals, and the barbarityof their dis-
position, they are totally unfitted to govern themselves'. 1 Yet most of the
British experts assumed that the creoles were ready to revolt and only needed
a lead from Britain. As Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington,
pointed out, there was no hard evidence for the assumption. Nor could there
have been, for the mass of the creoles themselves had not yet clarified their
political objectives. On this essential point, therefore, the British government
necessarily lacked conclusive information. There was no sound alternative
but to wait and see.
While it was impossible to be certain whether the British would be accept-
able in Spanish America as liberators, it appeared more than likely that they
'would be welcomed as traders; the creole desire for a free trade with Britain,
it was urged, if properly exploited, would open an immense market for
British exports and an important source of bullion and raw materials. But
was the commercial argument for intervention in Spanish America powerful
enough to outweigh the attendant political risks? The main routes of a
limited British trade to Spanish America were already well established by
the second half of the eighteenth century. During years of peace consider-
able quantities of British manufactures went to Spanish America as re-
exportsfrom Spain, and for this reason British commercial opinion welcomed
the introduction of comercio libre between Spain and her colonies from
1765.22 And in the Americas there were two centres of an illegal trade with
the Spanish colonies, the free ports in the British West Indies and Portu-
guese Brazil in the South Atlantic. The free port system, which in effect
placed the onus of breaking Spanish laws and evading Spanish patrols on
the merchants and shippers of Spain herself, was designed precisely with the
object that Britain might enjoy 'all the advantages of the foreign colonies
without being exposed to the expense of establishing or protecting them'.23
And it was successful. Although the lucrative and closely guarded Mexican
trade largely eluded British penetration, Cuba, Venezuela, New Granada,
20
Jacob to Windham, 24 Sept. I806, B.M., Add. 37884, if. I59-68.
21
Auchmuty to Windham, 6 March 1807, The Proceedings of a General Court Martial ...
for the Trial of Gen. Whitelocke(2 vols., London, i808), n, 768.
22 Rochford to Conway, 28 Oct. I765, Public Record Office, London, S.P., Spain, 94/172.
23 Thomas Irving, Inspector General of Customs, Nov. I786, in Frances Armytage, The Free
Port System in the British West Indies. A Study in CommercialPolicy, 1766-I822 (London,
I953); see also B.M., Add. 38345, if. 208-13, for a text of Irving's report on the free port
system.

8 John Lynch
and even Peru-via the Isthmus ports-were drawn within the trading orbit
of the British West Indies, supplying raw materials such as hides, cochineal,
and precious woods, and the most valuable and valued commodity of all,
bullion, in return for linens and cottons, woollen goods and hardware.
While complete statistics of the trade are lacking, a cautious official estimate
placed the total value of British manufactures exported from the West Indies
in 1792, that is in time of peace, in the region of ?500,000.24 And during
time of war with Spain, while the British navy blockaded Cadiz, British
exports via the free ports supplied the consequent shortages in the Spanish
colonies. By i8o8 the value of such exports from Jamaica alone had probably
grown to over ? i million.25
It was, of course, impossible to attempt a similar system of trade with
southern Spanish America. But Brazil and its outpost at Colonia do Sacra-
mento served as a valuable entrepot for contraband trade with the Rio de la
Plata. British manufactures, lawfully introduced into Brazil, were taken in
Portuguese vessels to the Rio de la Plata and thence clandestinely or with
official connivance to the provinces of the interior and Upper Peru. The
Spanish occupation of Colonia and the creation of the viceroyalty of the Rio
de la Plata in 1776, followed by the extension of comercio libre to southern
South America in I776, were designed in part to close a vulnerable part of
the empire to British penetration. But it was never completely closed. Goods
continued to be landed from Brazil, a route which was widened in I795 by
the permissiongranted to the Rio de la Plata to trade with foreign colonies.26
And from 1796 wartime shortages in Spain's southernmost colonies made
them tempting markets for the foreigner, markets which the Spanish govern-
ment was forced to open periodically to neutral shipping from November
I797. British activity in the South Atlantic in the 1790s, though primarily
commercial in character, was large enough to raise a security problem in
Spanish eyes; and from 1796 the local authorities frequently reported that
English 'corsarios' in the South Atlantic and Pacific were given shelter and
succour in Portuguese Brazil.27 While the British contraband trade in the
24
Armytage, The Free Port System, pp. 69-70, 92-3; see also D. B. Goebel, 'British Trade to
the Spanish Colonies, I796-1823 ', American Historical Review, XLIII (I938), 288-320.
25
Armytage, The Free Port System, pp. 92-3. The total value of British exports to 'all
parts of the world ' rose from ?22 million to ?40 million between 1790 and i808, according
to an official estimate.
26 Real orden to Viceroy of Rio de la Plata, 4 March I795, Archivo General de Indias, Indif.
Gen., 844; Documentos para la historia argentina (Buenos Aires, 1913), VII, 89.
27 Aviles to Saavedra, 5 June I799, 31 Dec. 800o,and passim, A.G.I., Estado 80; Soler to
Aviles, I8 July 800o,Aud. de Buenos Aires 39, referring to the 'scandalous introduction
of every class of foreign merchandise'; Aviles to Governor of Montevideo, 25 June I8oo,
Aud. de Buenos Aires 37. See also Sergio Villalobos R., Comercio y contrabandoen el Rio
de la Plata y Chile 1700-I8I1 (Buenos Aires, 2965).

Rio de la Plata in the I79os and early I8oos sustained severe competition
from French, German, Portuguese and United States shipping, its rivals
probably carried a considerablequantity of British goods.28
A section of British commercial opinion, of which William Jacob was
the most eloquent spokesman, argued in favour of a 'free intercourse
with Spanish America', on the grounds that existing channels of trade
were inadequate, that the needs of Britain and Spanish America were com-
plementary, and that the latter could consume goods equal in value to
Britain's total exports to the rest of the world.29 This view assumed that
British goods could undersell those of any rival if only the Spanish monopoly
were broken, and that the Spanish American market was capable of almost
limitless expansion. The first assumption was probably correct. At any rate
Spanish Americans were impressed by the cheapness of British goods
wherever they could evade Spanish taxation. In i8o6 a report from the West
Indies claimed that free port traders learnt from a Spanish source at Porto-
bello 'that the value of a piece of Colchester Bays, which they sold for 35
pieces of eight, at the mines of Potosi amounted to 1,600 pieces of eight ...
he accounted for it by the Spaniards' excessive laziness in those countries
and consequent dearness of labour, want of every necessary for clothing, the
distance of Potosi, the vast 40 per cent duties of the Crown, exaction of
various Governors and variety of proprietors ...' 30 The second
assumption
was more questionable. British observers rarely bothered to analyse the real
potential of the Spanish American market, with its limited capacity and its
relatively small consumer population. One of the few who did was a soldier,
Sir Arthur Wellesley, who relied for his information on experts like William
Jacob. Wellesley argued that northern South America, though possessing
great economic potential, would have little immediate value as a market
because of its small population and the poverty of its communications with
the rest of the subcontinent; he inferred that the limit of its demand for
British goods had already been reached through existing channels of trade;
and he argued that British occupation, bringing with it the abolition of the
slave trade, could not be expected to improve production and consumption.31
28 See the correspondenceof Gaspar de Santa Coloma, Spanish merchant in Buenos Aires, in
Enrique de Gandia, Buenos Aires colonial (Buenos Aires, 1957), pp. 35-55.
29 William
Jacob, 'Plan for Occupying Spanish America, with observations on the character
and views of its inhabitants', 26 Oct. I804, P.R.O., Chatham Papers 30/8/345, and
' Memorial on the Advantages to be obtained by Great Britain from a Free Intercoursewith
Spanish America', I4 Feb. I806, F.O. 72/90.
30 Draft memorandum suggesting expedition to secure Isthmus of Panama, c. I806, B.M.,
Add. 37889, f. 295v; see also Selkirk, 'Observations', B.M., Add. 37884, f. 17.
31 Memorandum, 15 Feb. 1807, Arthur, second Duke of Wellington (ed.), Supplementary
Despatches, Correspondenceand Memoranda of Field Marshal, Arthur, Duke of Welling-
ton (hereinafter cited as SupplementaryDespatches) (15 vols., London, i858-72), vI, 59-60.

io John Lynch
The views of Wellesley may have been nearer the truth than those of
Jacob, though they were not perhaps valid for every part of Spanish
America. At any rate the commercial argument for British intervention in
Spanish America was rarely regarded as powerful enough to justify fighting
for new markets. Until the crisis years of 1806-7, when it appeared that the
continent of Europe was being closed to British exports, existing outlets
were regarded as adequate. At the end of the eighteenth century Britain may
have exported about 35-40 per cent of its total industrial production.3 In
8o05,on the eve of the continental blockade, the greater part of these exports
were absorbed by overseas markets, 27 per cent by the United States, 40 per
cent by 'all parts of the world ', which meant in effect the British empire
but also included South America; while the continent of Europe took 33
per cent. British exporters, therefore, had a variety of options and they were
not utterly reliant on any one market or dependent on any one part of the
world. Closure of the continent, even if it were complete, would only be
disastrous if it coincided with closure of the United States. The latter was a
possibility, of course, and against this event exporters sought for alternative
markets. But in this period disaster was never complete. This meant that the
Spanish American market, though useful in its existing proportions and
important enough to be expanded where possible, was never so vital that it
was necessary to take it by force, either for dominion or for emancipation.
The absence of compelling political and commercial motives conditioned
British policy towards Spanish America for many years after 1783. Spanish
American agitators converging on London found the post-war environment
unpropitious for eliciting British interest in their cause.33 It was not until
179o, when the Nootka Sound dispute brought Britain to the verge of war
with Spain, that the British government considered the possibility of attack-
ing Spain's colonies. It was now that Miranda first caught the eye of the
prime minister, William Pitt, through the mediation of his patron, Thomas
Pownall, a former governor in British North America and authority on
imperial affairs. The two men met-on I4 February and 6 May-but there
32 See Francois Crouzet, L'Economie Britanniqueet le Blocus Continentale(i806-1813) (2 vols.,
Paris, I958), I, 68-9. This figure is open to question. According to another estimate,
about I805 the woollen industry exported 35 per cent of its final product, the iron and steel
industry 23.6 per cent; see Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth I688-
1959 (2nd ed., Cambridge, I967), pp. I96, 225.
33 For examples of such attempts see 'Plan to deprive the House of Bourbon of its resources
in the New World', signed Ed. Bott, Dec. I783, P.R.O., F.O. 30/8/345; 'Proposal of
several Mexicans for a treaty of amity and commerce with England', Io Nov. I785, ibid.;
'Proposals made by the Creoles of Santa Fe', March 1783, F.O. 30/8/35I. See also W. S.
Robertson, 'Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America', American
Historical Association Report, 1907 (Washington, I909), I, 202-6; Manuel Briceiio, Los
Comuneros, Historia de la insurreccion de 178I (Bogotai, I880), pp. 74, 23I-7.

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783-1808 II
was no meeting of minds. Miranda was attempting to mobilize a liberating

expedition which would replace Spanish rule by a single constitutional
monarchy headed by an 'Inca' emperor. Pitt was seeking a possible theatre
of war against Spain and a means of challenging her claims to monopoly of
trade and territoryon the west coast of North America; and he saw Miranda
as no more than a useful source of information and liaison. In so far as a
plan of action emerged it was entirely British in its organization. Military
preparations were entrusted to General Sir Archibald Campbell, who had
seen service in North America, Jamaicaand India; among those from whom
advice was sought was Sir Home Riggs Popham, who was asked about the
suitability of bases on the Pacific coast. The strategy adopted was to become
familiar in British military thinking-a pincer movement on the Spanish
empire, with an attack on Mexico from the Atlantic side and an expedi-
tionary force from India penetrating from bases on the Pacific coast. Ulti-
mate objectives-conquest or emancipation-were unclear, In any case Pitt
was merely exploring a possible course of action in case of a complete break
with Spain.34 But the break never came. In view of Spain's isolation, with-
out a French ally, there was no real danger that it would. The two powers
reached agreement over Nootka Sound in October I790 when Spain aban-
doned her exclusive claims to the west coast of North America and admitted
the right of British subjects to navigate, trade and fish in the Pacific, in
return for a British undertaking to prevent illicit trade with the Spanish
colonies. This was a clear enough indication of Britain's limited aims in
Spanish America. 'I am sold', complained Miranda, 'by a treaty of
commerce with Spain.'35
During the years '793-5, although Spain was an ally of Britain in the
common struggle against revolutionary France, Spanish America was not
entirely absent from British war planning, for the government feared
Spanish defection.36 But from October 1796, when Spain joined France in
a satellite role in war against Britain, the Spanish empire openly entered
British calculations as a possible theatre of war where a diversionary blow
might be struck against French power. It was now that Henry Dundas,
secretary of war, emerged as one of the leading advocates of a Spanish
American policy. Dundas, possibly elaborating plans submitted by Governor
Robert Brooke of St Helena and Nicholas Vansittart, a prominent young
3a Secret paper on South America, Popham to Yorke, 26 Nov. I803, CastlereaghPapers, vii,
288-9; Robertson, 'Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America',
A.H.A. Report, 1907, I, 276-7; John A. Schutz, 'Thomas Pownall's Proposed Atlantic
Federation ', Hispanic American Historical Review, xxvi (1946), 263-8.
35 Robertson, Life of Miranda, I, 112.
36 Grenville to
Bute, 13 April 1795, P.R.O., F.O. Spain, 37.

12 John Lynch
barrister and member of parliament, issued orders for an expedition from
the Cape of Good Hope to the Rio de la Plata, though its destination was
subsequently changed to the south-west coast of Spanish America; provision
was also made for a supporting expedition from India and New South
Wales.37 The objectives of the expedition were almost as vague as its desti-
nation, but it was not exclusively a liberating one, for territorial acquisition
and commercial advantages were equally envisaged. But at the end of
February I797 events closer to the heart of British interests-in particular
the deteriorating situation in Europe-intervened to stop these ill-considered
plans. Pitt seems to have regretted having to abandon the project, and
William Huskisson, under-secretaryof war, declared that he had never put
pen to paper with such reluctance as when he cancelled the orders for an
operation which promised such 'fair prospects of glory and permanent
advantage '38
While the grand design of '797 came to nothing, a less spectacular but
more fruitful channel of communication with Spanish America was opened
in the same year. In February Trinidad was captured. The British govern-
ment already possessed intelligence on the island's strategic possibilities in
relation to the mainland.39Now Dundas instructed the colony's first British
governor, Colonel Thomas Picton, to exploit these to the full, to make
Trinidad an entrepot for British trade with Venezuela and a base for the
subversion of Spanish rule there, and to promise Spanish Americans British
assistance in the cause of independence.40Picton was ready to do all this and
more. His views on Spanish American independence coincided with those
of Dundas; if Britain forswore colonial conquest, he argued, she would gain
a great commercial conquest; and throughout the next five years he was a
constant advocate of British intervention on behalf of emancipation. To fore-
stall France, he urged, Britain should send an expedition from Barbados to
the Orinoco, which 'opens an easy communication with the interior and
every part of the Province of Caraccas and would probably become the
37
Proposed Expedition from Cape to the Plata', I9 Jan. I797, P.R.O., W.O. I/I78. See
also J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (Io vols., London, I899-I920), Iv,
527-8; Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire, II, 650.
38 Fortescue, History of the British Army, iv, 528. In the final analysis Dundas's priorities
lay in Europe: 'I should consider both Trinidad and Buenos Ayres as poor acquisitions if
obtained by the sacrifice of the Mediterranean', Dundas to Huskisson, I4 June 1796, in
C. R. Fay, Huskisson and His Age (London, 195I), p. 68.
39 'Communication from Mr. Duff respecting the Island of Trinidad c. 1797', B.M., Add.
38354, ff. 319-22. A copy of Duff's paper fell into the hands of the Spanish authorities
and was forwarded to Madrid; see Castlereagh Papers, VII, 280-4.
40 Robertson, 'Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America ', A.H.A.
Report, 1907, I, 313-I5.

centre of a general movement'. Meanwhile he also tried to mobilize the

interest of his colleagues in the West Indies. 'The question is not', he
argued, 'whether a revolution in that country will be advantageous or not
to Great Britain, which might easily be proved in the affirmative, but
whether the inhabitants of these rich countries shall be indebted to England
or to France for their emancipation . . . A great moral revolution, the fore-
runner of a political one, has already taken place in that country.' 42
The views of Dundas and Picton, supported though they were by other
advocates of British intervention in Venezuela, did not amount to a state-
ment of policy by the British government.43 Picton complained that he
lacked precise instructions, and for the moment he could do no more than
collect information and employ the leaders of the Venezuelan conspiracy of
1797 'in carrying on a correspondence with the continent and in readiness
for any more active employment'.4 And when, in England itself, Miranda
renewed his pleas in January 1798 he found that the government was still
non-committal. Pitt's reservationswere understandable.Whom did Miranda
represent? Who could take seriously his claim to be the agent of a revolu-
tionary junta, composed of 'deputies' from Spanish America, which was
supposed to have met in Paris in December I797? Pitt was also concerned
lest emancipation, for which there is little evidence that he entertained any
serious sympathy, would mean the introduction of 'the French system' into
Spanish America. To reassure him Miranda stated that the form of govern-
ment of a liberated Spanish America would be 'very similar to that of Great
Britain'."4 His military proposals-a joint Anglo-American expedition-
were equally unrealistic. Pitt showed no more than polite interest. His minis-
ters, who considered the matter intermittently in the course of I798 and
1799, were divided. Dundas predictably was enthusiastic; William Wind-
ham, at the War Office, was somewhat less so; while Lord Grenville, at the
Foreign Office, trusting neither Miranda nor his ideas, was positively
hostile.46And Grenville's views prevailed. The essential issue in the eyes of
the British government was the danger of French revolutionary influence.
It was no part of its policy to evoke the spirit of the French Revolution in
Spanish America at the very time it was fighting it in Europe. As long as
41 Picton to Dundas, 21 April I799, B.M., Add. 36870, ff. I7-I8.
42 Picton to General Prigge, 22 April I799, B.M., Add. 36870, if. 20-I.
43 For further advocacy see Captain Dilkes, 'Relative to project of S. America', c. 1798-99,
B.M., Add. 37878, f. 71; and the proposals of Sir Ralph Abercromby, CastlereaghPapers,
VI, 270.
44 Picton to Dundas, 21 April I799, B.M., Add. 36870, f. I7-I8; Picton to Prigge, 5 July
1799, ibid., ff. 25v-6. 45 Robertson, Life of Miranda, I, 169.
46 Memorandum for the consideration of the cabinet, 3 Oct. 1799, Castlereagh Papers, vn,
284-5.

I4 John Lynch
Spain was able to preserve a measure of independence of France and pre-

serve her empire from French penetration then Britain would not intervene
in Spanish America.47
For the moment Napoleon's Eastern expedition and the formation of the
Second Coalition were more urgent preoccupations of British policy. In the
course of I800-i, however, renewed fear of French intentions in the New
World brought the idea of British action in Spanish America out of cold
storage. Anxiety, no doubt exaggerated,was now expressed about Napoleon's
imperialist ambitions in the western hemisphere. The acquisition of Louisi-
ana was thought to place France within striking distance of Mexico, where
a French agent was known to be operating.48By this time, moreover, the
Spanish American lobby in England, if it may be so termed, a small group
of interested politicians, businessmen, and naval and military personnel, was
increasing its pressure. The focus of this lobby was Dundas who, with his
junior ally Huskisson, gave it access to the administration. In a lengthy
memorandum dated 31 March 800oDundas argued that the war with
France and the European problems it created should not cause Britain to
lose sight of her permanent interests, especially the acquisition of markets
in South America; these would be best secured not by dominion-though
Britain should acquire a few bases for commercial penetration-but by help-
ing the Spanish colonies to independence.49This was a consistent doctrine
of Dundas; he made a further attempt to apply it in I8oo-i; and his target
was apparently the Rio de la Plata. The area had already featured in his
plan of 1797 and in his subsequent thinking.50 But how serious were his
intentions in 800o-i? Significant evidence comes from Sir Home Popham,
later to emerge as the enfant terrible of the Spanish American lobby, who
makes it clear that already in I8oo he was privy to Dundas's policy. Writing
to Huskisson in February I8o0 from H.M.S. Romney at the Cape of Good
Hope, where he was preparing to join the Red Sea Expedition, Popham
remarked on the scarcity of grain at the Cape, especially in time of war
'when it cannot have recourse to Spanish America; such descriptions I have
heard of Buenos Ayres, in fact the country on each side of the river, as
47 C. R. King (ed.), The Life and Correspondenceof Rufus King (6 vols., New York, I894-
900o), iiI, 558, 561.
48 '
Paper concerning Napoleon's intentions regarding Florida and Mexico', I8 March i80o,
B.M., Add. 38357, ff. 31-2. See also John Rydjord, Foreign Interest in the Independence
of New Spain (Durham, N.C., I935).
49 Carlos Roberts, Las invasiones inglesas del Rio de la Plata (I806-1807) (Buenos Aires,
5938), p. 32.
50 Memorandum proposing attack on Cuba, National Library of Scotland, Melville MSS 1075,
fl. 110-27, unsigned, probably written in July 800o,and advocating an attack on Buenos
Aires as well as Cuba. For material from the National Library of Scotland I am indebted
to ProfessorR. A. Humphreys.

really from its plenty and capability to supply this country in the most ample
manner, offer very additional reasons for your pressing Mr. Dundas to make
his intended attack as soon as possible; the force he proposed is certainly in
every respect fully adequate to the service; we might if we have a good
passage from Bombay from whence I would sail in September go direct
without touching anywhere'.51
Yet Dundas's plan for an expedition to Buenos Aires had still not been
given cabinet sanction when Pitt's administration fell in February I80o and
was succeeded by the Addington ministry. The lobbyists tried to keep the
scheme alive in the new government, where it had a distinguished advocate
in Nicholas Vansittart, joint secretary of the treasury.52But a final decision
was again postponed, first because troops were more urgently needed in
Egypt, then because of the opening of peace negotiations with France.
These were concluded at Amiens in March I802. The long war had brought
no significant change in Britain's Spanish American policy.
The peace of Amiens was short-lived and on 18 May 1803 war was
renewed between Britain and France. In the course of this year Vansittart
introduced Popham and Miranda and the former indicated that he wished to
serve 'in whatsoever expedition may be formed to establish the indepen-
dence of South America '.3 Thus began an association which added new
vigour to the Spanish American lobby and brought it closer to its objectives.
Popham's commitment to independence, of course, was always ambiguous,
for he also seems to have had in mind the establishment of a British colony
or at least a British satellite somewhere in Spanish America. This can be
inferred from the plan which he submitted to the government in November
1803, when he pleaded for an expedition against Buenos Aires in order to
establish a military base ancillary to Miranda's main target, Venezuela.54
With the support of private enterprise-Alexander Davison, a successful
government contractor was an enthusiastic associate-preparations actually
got under way, though Addington halted them early in 1804 as there was
still no decisive rupture between Britain and Spain. This was not the end.
The lobbyists renewed their pressure when Pitt formed his second adminis-
tration in May 1804 and Dundas, now Viscount Melville, returned to office
51 Popham to Huskisson, 19 Feb. I801, B.M., Add. 38736, ff. 283-4.

52 ' Note sent in circulation', Sept. I8o0, Castlereagh Papers, vn, 287-8; Robertson, Life of
Miranda, I, 235.
53 According to Miranda, I Aug. I803, in Robertson,Life of Miranda,, , 257.
54 Popham to Yorke, 26 Nov. I803, Castlereagh Papers, vni, 288-93. Miranda subsequently
claimed that conquest in the Rio de la Plata ' may have been the plans of General Beresford
and Sir Home Popham but they certainly never were of the British Ministers I have just
mentioned [Melville, Pitt and Addington], nor of mine', Miranda to Alex. Cochrane,
4 June I807, N.L.S., CochranePapers2320, f. 114.

I6 John Lynch
as first lord of the admiralty. And conditions now seemed to favour their
cause as never before.
Britain's relations with Spain, whose subordination to France was now
almost complete, were fast deteriorating. In October 1803 Spain had agreed
to pay France a yearly subsidy of almost ?3 million, and in the course of
1804 it seemed that she was also prepared to place her naval resources at the
disposition of her neighbour. In reply Britain blockaded Ferrol, and on
5 October British frigates intercepted a large bullion shipment from the Rio
de la Plata, sank one Spanish vessel and captured three others carrying
about ?2 million. In conditions of virtual warfare with Spain, and with
tangible evidence that the wealth of the Spanish empire was indeed being
used to sustain France, the British government was again ready to look at
plans of attack on Spanish America. Blue-prints there were in plenty.55
But the most pressing advocacy again came from Popham and Miranda.
Miranda's plan was to use Trinidad as a base for a liberating expedition to
Venezuela; for this he required the support of a small British military and
naval force, and from mid-SeptemberPopham was urging Melville to hasten
its preparation.56He secured a private conference with Pitt and Melville,
' explaining all General Miranda's views', and he was instructed to consult
with the Venezuelan and submit a specific scheme. This was the origin of
Popham's memorandum of 14 October I804, an unremarkable document
and in itself evidence of nothing more than that these matters were being
ventilated by the government.57
In addition to the commercial argument for British intervention, Popham
urged the strategic importance of anticipating Napoleon in Spanish America
and of depriving France of an important source of revenue. He referred
certainly to Miranda's 'great object', the emancipation of South America,
but he also argued that while the conquest of the entire subcontinent was
out of the question 'the possibility of gaining all its prominent points,
alienating it from its present European connexions, fixing on some military
position and enjoying all its commercial advantages can be reduced to a fair
55 William Jacob, 'Plan for Occupying Spanish America', 26 Oct. I804, P.R.O., Chatham
Papers 30/8/345, a well-informed plan advocating a triple attack, from Britain on the Rio
de la Plata, from India on the Pacific coast, and from the West Indies on the Isthmus, for
emancipation, not dominion.
56
Popham to Melville, i8 Sept. I804, B.M., Add. 41080, ff. 46-9v. Popham wrote that even
should Miranda do no more than open channels of communication with Venezuela then
'Trinidad will be one of the finest possessions under the Crown and independent of its
military advantages and naval capabilities it will be the most liberal export channel for all
our manufactures that I am acquainted with ', Popham to Melville, II Oct. 1804, Add.
41080, if. 70-Iv.
57 Printed in 'Miranda and the British Admiralty, 1804-1806 ', American Historical Review,
vi (I90I), 509-I7.

calculation, if not a certain operation'. And he urged that in addition to the

major expedition to Venezuela, a subsidiary one should be sent to the Rio
de la Plata. These views masked a basic difference of objectives between
Popham and Miranda, though this did not show itself immediately. For the
plan was kept in cold storage. Throughout November Popham urged Mel-
ville to sanction the operation, but there was no definite commitment from
the government and Miranda himself was forbidden to leave the country.58
Even when Spain declared war on Britain (12 December I804) Pitt was
loath to act. His hesitancy was due in part to the belief that Spain was not
irrevocably committed to the French cause and might yet be brought into
the Third Coalition then being negotiated.59But when in the second half of
i8o5 this belief was shattered, the Third Coalition itself was broken by
Napoleon's great victories, and voices again rose urging Britain to seek com-
pensation in the New World for losses in the Old, Pitt still held back. And
his indecision can only be explained by those traditional and compelling
factors inhibiting British policy in Spanish America, fear of the political
consequences of disrupting the area, reluctance to undertake the heavy
military commitment involved, and lack of conviction in the commercial
argument.
The same considerations affected the policy of Lord Grenville who, after
the death of Pitt in January 1806, headed the Ministry of all the Talents.
Yet Grenville was under far greater pressure to act in Spanish America than
any of his predecessorshad been. During the first half of I8o6 an unprece-
dented number of plans and memoranda relating to Spanish America poured
into government departments. This renewed agitation derived its impetus
from the success of French arms on the continent of Europe and a sense of
crisis in Britain's political and economic affairs. Even if Europe were lost,
it was argued, Britain still had her overwhelming naval power, and this
could be best deployed in attacking the colonies of France's satellite, simul-
taneously depriving the enemy of vital revenue and securing alternative
export markets. These anxieties prompted a flood of projects for transatlantic
expeditions, most of them based on the assumption that the government had
the matter under serious consideration. William Jacob formulated plans for
attacks on South America and Mexico.60 Governor Hislop of Trinidad
urged an expedition to Venezuela.6l Another advocate pleaded for an
58 Miranda to
Popham, I2 Nov. I804, Popham to Melville, 23 Nov. I804 and 24 Nov. 1804,
B.M., Add. 4I080, ff. 80, 88-9v., 9o-I.
59 The evidence for this comes from Popham himself, in Minutes of a Court Martial . . . of
Capt. Sir Home Popham (London, i807), p. 80.
60 Plan for an 'attack on Mexico from the eastern side ',
July I806, CastlereaghPapers, vii,
293-302; see also referencesin n. 29.
61 See reference in n. I8.

i8 John Lynch
expedition from the Cape, to be composed of ' 15,000 Blacks from the West
Coast of Africa ', its destination the Rio de la Plata, where the creoles would
fly to its assistance.62Yet another advised the occupation of a number of key
strategic and commercial bases, 'of Buenos Ayres and of Valdivia, with a
fleet of gun boats upon the Lake of Nicaragua and the Orinoco'.63 New
reinforcements were brought to do battle with the government. These were
mobilized by Sir John Hippisley, whose interest in the subject dated from
1779 when, as British agent in Italy, he was in touch with Spanish American
Jesuit exiles and advocated their use as instruments of British policy. From
early in I806 Hippisley pressed on Windham plans for an expedition to
liberate Spanish America and establish its independence.64His most distin-
guished recruit to the cause was the Earl of Selkirk, hitherto noted for his
colonizing activities in Canada. The well-informed paper which Selkirk sub-
mitted to Windham in June i8o6 'on the proposed expedition against
Spanish America', however unrealistic in its military details, displayed a
quality of political thought uncharacteristic of most contemporary plans.65
Selkirk advocated the liberation of the Spanish colonies, the replacement of
Spanish officials by a creole elite, respect for persons and property, and the
substitution of a more equitable fiscal and commercial system for the old
monopoly. 'The immense field of commercial enterprize which would thus
be opened to Britain', he thought, would constitute 'the most material
advantage', and this could be obtained without permanent conquest and the
creation of a new monopoly. Selkirk, a believer in Spanish American inde-
pendence, also believed that British interests would best be served not by the
establishment of a monarchy-the occupant of which would presumably not
be British-but by the creation of a number of small republics.
While the Ministry of all the Talents was being inundated with Spanish
American projects, Miranda and Popham, in their separate ways, took
matters into their own hands. Despairing of obtaining a decision from the
British government, Miranda left England in September I805 and in the
following year, from the United States, led an anarchic and abortive expedi-
62 J. Erskine to Windham, i8 May i806, B.M., Add. 37883, ff. 256-6I.
63 Plan of J. Sullivan, I806, B.M., Add. 37885, ff. I70-90.
64
Hippisley to Windham, 22 Aug. I794 and 22 Oct. 1803, B.M., Add. 37849, ff. 97-I03, 267;
Selkirk to Hippisley, 22 March I806, ibid., ff. 290-3; Lord St John to Hippisley, 24 March
i806, Add. 37884, if. 294-7. Hippisley was M.P. I790-6 and 1802-19 and a notable advocate
of Catholic emancipation; for his previous interest in Spanish America see Castlereagh
Papers, vII, 260-9.
65 'Observations on the
proposed expedition against Spanish America', 7 June i8o6, B.M.,
Add. 37884, f. II-22. Selkirk subsequently submitted his memorandum to Grenville and
Canning (15 Oct. 1806), both of whom considered the time inopportunefor British action in
Spanish America; see John Perry Pritchett, ' Selkirk's views on British policy towards the
Spanish American colonies, 8o6 ', Canadian Historical Review, xxiv (I943), 38I-96.

tion to the coast of Venezuela.66 He received supply facilities and some

naval support from local British authorities in the West Indies, though not
enough to compensate for his failure to raise the creole population. As
Castlereagh later charged, 'the operation proceeded from a British port, with
just enough of co-operation on our part to mix us in the policy and failure
of the effort, but without any adequate prospect of rendering it successful '67
The British government, indeed, was caught unprepared: as Grenville
remarked, 'the thing was launched by our predecessors, as a matter of
connivance only, without any plan for acting in consequence of it'.68 Some
there were-Windham inside the government and a number of merchants in
the country-who thought that the opportunity provided by Miranda should
be exploited.69 But by the middle of July the cabinet had decided that the
opportunity was too nebulous and the military cost too high.70
The ill-prepared scheme of a Venezuelan revolutionary was one thing.
The capture of Buenos Aires, unauthorized though it was, by a British
expedition on 27 June i8o6 was another. And while the admiralty rejected
the argument of its commander, Sir Home Popham, that the operation was
sanctioned by his previous negotiations with Pitt, political and commercial
opinion in Britain reacted warmly to his resounding, if temporary, success.7
The Rio de la Plata had long been an object of British strategic and com-
mercial interest, as well as a target of British intelligence.72 At the War
Office, Windham, besieged by demands for action in Spanish America and
desperate for an outlet for the British war effort, grasped at the opportunity
to develop a new theatre of war and acquire colonial conquests. At the
Board of Trade, Lord Auckland saw the acquisition as a means of satisfying
merchant pressure for new markets.73 Popham claimed that the Buenos
Aires market alone would 'consume nearly two millions annually of our
66 See 'Miranda and the British Admiralty, 1804-1806', American Historical Review, vi,
508-30; Castlereagh Papers, vii, 419-21.
67 Memorandum, i May I807, Castlereagh Papers, vi, 315.
68 Grenville to Auckland, 5 June i806, Historical Manuscripts Commission. Manuscripts of
I. B. Fortescue preserved at Dropmore (hereinafter cited as Dropmore Papers) (io vols.,
London, 1892-1927), vIII, 179.
69 John Turnbull to Miranda, 5 and 7 June i806, N.L.S., Cochrane Papers 2320, f. 16;
Vansittart to Windham, 22 Jan. i807, B.M., Add. 37885, f. 231; Windham to Grenville,
ii Sept. i806, Dropmore Papers, viii, 321.
70 Howick to Windham, 13 July I806, B.M., Add. 37847, f. 255; Dropmore Papers, vmII, 236.
71 See R. A. Humphreys, Liberation in South America, 1806-1827. The career of James
Paroissien (London, 1952), pp. 1-14, and H. S. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the
Nineteenth Century (Oxford, I96I), pp. 47-50.
72 See Ricardo R. Caillet-Bois, 'Los ingleses y el Rio de la Plata, 1780-I806 ', Humanidades,
xxnIl (I933), I67-202; John Street, 'La influencia britanica en la independencia de las
provincias del Rio de la Plata ', Revista Historica, XIX(Montevideo, 1953), I81-257; Roberts,
Las invasiones inglesas, pp. 43-8, 53-6. 73 Dropmore Papers, vII, 209, 321; vIII, 302, 332.

20 John Lynch
manufactures', an exaggeration no doubt, but one which reflected the great

shortage of vital consumer goods which he observed in the Rio de la Plata.74
Merchant houses reacted enthusiastically. The towns of Manchester and Sal-
ford rejoiced in the conquest, regarding its commercial prospects as 'exten-
sive beyond calculations' and particularly important 'in the present state of
continental trade'. To one correspondent of Auckland it appeared 'almost
a miraculous interposition of divine Providence to frustrate the malignant
designs of the Corsican for the destruction of our trade'. And another
reported that 'the capture of Buenos Ayres has revived the drooping spirits
of our merchants and manufacturers. The loom is again very busily
employed.' 75According to William Jacob, the new colony was valuable not
only as a market but also as a potential source of naval stores, of hemp and
flax, which would 'enrich Great Britain and render her independent both
of Russia and India '.7 And when in November, having crushed Prussia,
Napoleon decreed from Berlin the exclusion of British commerce from all
ports under his control, the case for decisive action in Spanish America
seemed complete.
The government succumbed to the prevailing mania. Reinforcements were
sent to the Rio de la Plata and yet another force was despatched to extend
the conquest to Chile. Plans were drawn up for a major expedition to
Venezuela and Mexico with supporting operations across the Pacific from
India.77 Sir Arthur Wellesley was consulted and in a series of brisk memo-
randa lent his support to the idea of a Caribbean-basedexpedition, not
because he was positively interested-he regarded conquest as unrealistic and
emancipation as hazardous-but on the grounds that if Britain 'should not
take possession of these territories during the war . . . the French govern-
ment will take possession of them after the peace .78 And while in London
the experts drew up their plans, across the Atlantic scores of British mer-
chantmen converged on Buenos Aires. As is well known, government and
merchants alike anticipated as well as exaggerated their prospects.At the end
of January I807, when rumours that Buenos Aires had already been lost
were confirmed, the government's policy was suddenly reduced to salvaging
7- Popham to Melville, 12 July I8o6, enclosed in Alex. Davison (a merchant in close touch
with Popham) to Melville, 13 Sept. I8o6, N.L.S., Melville MSS o075, f. 82; Melville to
Davison, i8 Sept. I8o6, ibid., f. 86.
75 Resolution of the town of Manchester, 25 Sept. I8o6, B.M., Add. 34457, f. 40; letters to
Auckland, 2I Sept. and 9 Oct. I806, ibid., if. 38, 73.
76 Jacob to Windham, 24 Sept. I806, B.M., Add. 37884, f. I67.
77 See C. F. Mullett, 'British Schemes against Spanish America in 8o6 ', Hispanic American
Historical Review, xxvIf (947), 269-78; Dropmore Papers, vmi, 386-7, 415-20.
78 Memorandum, 15 Feb. I807, Supplementary Despatches, vI, 59-60; Dropmore Papers, Ix,
41-4. See also B.M., Stowe 307, ff. 250-3, 'Spanish America. Calculation of time for the
different parts of a combined attack'.

the British position in the Rio de la Plata. But this too was hopeless. General
Whitelocke, commanding a further expedition, failed to recapture Buenos
Aires and agreed to evacuate Montevideo. His military conduct was con-
demned in England as 'extravagantly incapable and criminal', and so it
was. But his own explanation was not without point: 'I shall evacuate a
province which the force I was authorized to calculate upon could never
maintain, and which from the very hostile disposition of its inhabitants was
in truth not worth maintaining '.7
British statesmen and experts all professed that the disaster in the Rio de
la Plata confirmed the view or taught the lesson that Britain would only
succeed in Spanish America with a policy of emancipation.80But the real
criticism of British policy in 80o6-7 is that it fell between two stools, pro-
claiming neither emancipation nor dominion. Grenville, far from promoting
an imperial policy, saw Buenos Aires as little more than a bargaining
counter at a peace table.81His plans for Mexico and Venezuela, on the other
hand, in so far as he had any, did not exclude the possibility of their inde-
pendence.82The policy of this administration, indeed, was marked by neither
imperialism nor liberalism but by utter improvisation.
It was precisely this lack of principle which outraged the serious advocates
of a Spanish American policy and prompted a re-appraisalof Britain's role
in the subcontinent. The Ministry of all the Talents resigned on I8 March
1807, and in the new administration, formed by the Duke of Portland,
Castlereagh occupied the war and colonial office. Castlereagh had already
shown an interest in Spanish America in November i806 when, moved per-
haps by the French victory at Jena, he had sought Wellesley's opinion on
the prospect of attacking Mexico. Now, in a memorandum of i May 1807,
written when it was still assumed that Whitelocke's reinforcing expedition
would recapture Buenos Aires, he sharply criticized the late administration's
vagueness of intent in the Rio de la Plata and advocated instead a policy
which would accord with the interests of the people of South America, a
79 Whitelocke to Windham, Io July
18o7, B.M., Add. 37887, ff. 67-73; Auckland to Grenville,
23 Nov. 1807, Dropmore Papers, Ix, 150-i.
80 E. Corke to Auckland, 26
Sept. 18o7, B.M., Add. 34457, f. 357; Lord Temple to Auckland,
2 Oct. 80o7, ibid., ff. 369-72; Auckland to Grenville, 23 Nov. 1807, Dropmore Papers, ix,
150-I.
81 See reference in n. 13 above; see also Grenville to Earl of Lauderdale, 22
Sept. I806, and
Grenville to Howick, 29 Sept. 80o6,Dropmore Papers, viI, 352, 367.
82 This, at any rate, was the
assumption of Wellesley, memorandumof Nov. i8o6 and I5 Feb.
I807, Supplementary Despatches, vI, 50, 59-60. The attempts of historians (for example,
Roberts, Las invasiones inglesas, 82, I86, and Street, Revista Histdrica, xix, 21I-I2) to
contrast a Tory policy of emancipation with a Whig policy of conquest are not supported by
a sufficient amount of continuous evidence; it would be difficult to say how far Melville's
policy was accepted by Tory cabinets.

22 John Lynch
policy which would relieve Britain ' from the hopeless task of conquering this
extensive country against the temper of its population', and would at once
deprive the enemy of vital resources and provide Britain with important
markets.83 By the end of December I807 the matter had acquired more
urgency. The Portuguese court had fled to Brazil. Spanish independence of
France seemed more tenuous than ever. From his new position of strength
in the Iberian peninsula Napoleon might next strike across the Atlantic, not
only subverting the Spanish colonies but also endangering Brazil. Castle-
reagh, therefore, intensified his efforts to persuade the cabinet to act. He
thought that Montevideo, recklessly abandoned, might be easily recovered.
In this case, he argued, Britain, without committing itself to independence,
should disavow conquest, by declaring that the only objective was 'to estab-
lish a commercial intercourse with the country, under the protection of the
military occupancy of an armed post'.84 The proposal was ambiguous, of
course, but Castlereagh was probably deferring to cabinet opinion, which
feared the effect of Spanish American independence on the Portuguese
position in Brazil.
Meanwhile, Castlereagh canvassed further opinion. Sir Arthur Wellesley
was again consulted and he now came out explicitly in favour of indepen-
dence. 'From what has lately passed at Buenos Ayres ', he wrote, ' and from
all that I have read of these countries, I am convinced that any attempt to
conquer them, with a view to their future subjection to the British Crown,
would certainly fail.' He saw no alternative to an independent regime,
endowed with a monarchy and a manageable legislature, with suffrage based
on age and property qualifications. The target for British action, he advised,
should be first Mexico, then Venezuela.85 Castlereagh received complemen-
tary advice from General Beresford, who had emerged from the fiasco of
Buenos Aires with his reputation intact and now advocated its recapture; it
would be an illusion, he argued, to expect creole support for a policy of
conquest; success could only be guaranteed with an offer of independence.86
Miranda too added his voice to the growing chorus, believing that now at
last, with a government favourably disposed towards emancipation, his goal
was in sight.87
By the beginning of I808, therefore, most of the major obstacles to British
intervention in Spanish America appeared to have been removed. The
83 Memorandumof I May 1807, CastlereaghPapers, vI, 3I4-24.
84 Memorandumof 21 Dec. 1807, ibid., vII, 98-9.
85 Memorandumof 8 Feb. I808, SupplementaryDespatches, vi, 62-6.
86 Beresford to
Castlereagh,23 Jan. I808, P.R.O., W.O. I/354.
87 Miranda to Melville,
I7 March I808, N.L.S., Melville MSS w.I.c.I.; see also Castlereagh
Papers, vni, 405-12.

danger from French ideology was regarded as a thing of the past. The issue
of conquest versus independence seemed to have been resolved. And as, by
the end of 1807, the whole of continental Europe with the exception of
Sweden had been forced into Napoleon's blockade, the commercial argu-
ment for intervention appeared unanswerable, not least to mercantile
pressure groups. There remained only the question whether Spain could be
reclaimed from the French cause. This too seemed to be answered in the
catastrophic events of the next few months. By May 80o8,with a French
army in Madrid and the Spanish monarchy in collapse, Spain seemed lost
beyond recall. Castlereagh now advised the government that it should take
immediate steps to prevent the Spanish colonies from suffering the same fate
as Spain herself, and at last he had an attentive audience.88It was decided
to assemble an expeditionary force at Cork, and by I June its commander,
Sir Arthur Wellesley, was making preparations for its departure. He was
instructed to join General Spencer's force near Cadiz, and if circumstances
were not propitious for intervention in the peninsula the joint force was to
proceed to attack Spanish America. The exact destination of the expedition
cannot be determined, for the claims of Mexico, Venezuela, and the Rio de
la Plata had all been canvassed and it is possible that more than one point of
attack was envisaged.89Nor can we be certain that undiluted independence
was the message its commander carried for Spanish Americans. These
uncertainties can never be resolved, for the final orders were never given.
The Spanish uprising against the French invaders transformed the situa-
tion and removed one of the major pre-conditions of British intervention in
Spanish America. On 8 June agents of the Spanish resistance movement-
representing, unlike Miranda, a resistance which had already begun-
approachedthe British government and were quickly assured of its assistance.
'As, by the insurrection in the Asturias', wrote Castlereagh, 'some prob-
ability of restoring the Spanish monarchy is revived . . . it is wished to
suspend any measure tending to divide and therefore to weaken that mon-
archy.' 90 On 4 July Britain published a formal proclamation of peace with
Spain, and in these circumstancesWellesley's expedition sailed not to secure
the independence of Spanish America but to restore the independence of
Spain.
Britain's disavowal of intervention in Spanish America in i808 was based
on powerful considerations long inherent in her policy. Equally powerful,
88
CastlereaghPapers, vI, 365-7.
89 Melville to Castlereagh, 8 June i8o8, Castlereagh Papers, vII, 442-8; Wellesley, memo-
randum of 6 June I808, SupplementaryDespatches, vI, 74, 78-9, 80-2.
90 Castlereaghto Duke of Manchester,Governor of Jamaica, 20 June 18o8, CastlereaghPapers,
VI, 375.

24 John Lynch
however, had been the demand for new commercial outlets. If, as many
assumed, Britain faced economic disaster unless she found alternative mar-
kets, how can we account for British restraint in Spanish America in the
critical years from I806 to 1808? The answer is that the economic argument
was never as strong as it appeared, even after Napoleon's Berlin Decree.
British commercial policy towards Spanish America was to a large degree
resolved without the need of direct intervention.
Already from I796 trade with the enemy in Spanish America had been
encouraged by ministers and practised by merchants. The main channel of
trade continued to be the free ports in the West Indies, especially those of
Jamaica. In the first nine months of i806 bullion imports alone into Kingston
amounted to i,527,000 dollars, and to 1,412,000 dollars in the first six
months of 1807; and the value of Jamaica's exports between July 1807 and
July i8o8 was about ?I million sterling.91The free port system, moreover,
had been augmented by the acquisition of Trinidad, a new entrepot for
exports and inroad into the resources of Venezuela and New Granada. In
1799 Governor Picton reported that trade with the mainland had 'increased
as to become an object of importance, taking off British manufactures to the
amount of ?i,ooo,ooo sterling annually'.92
Some British merchants, it is true, wanted more than an indirect trade
with Spanish America. And there was hardly any doubt that, had she so
wished, Britain could have forced direct commercial relations on the Spanish
colonies during the war owing to the latter's isolation from their metropolis.
John Turnbull, Miranda's financial associate, who before the war had been
active in the Cadiz trade, was one of those anxious to develop a commerce
in neutral vessels sailing directly to the Spanish colonies. But the British
government long opposed such a trade, for it was not anxious to provide
facilities for neutral vessels or outlets for Spanish exports, and preferred to
encourage the contraband trade through the free ports, which were supplied
from Britain in British vessels. There were further reasons why the Board
of Trade refused licences to trade between Spain and her colonies: a direct
trade in neutral vessels was thought to be an uncontrolled trade, for there
would be no means of ensuring that the conditions of the licence-that
cargoes should contain a proportion of British goods, for example, or that
the returns should be made in specie to British ports-were fulfilled.93
91
Armytage, The Free Port System, pp. 92-123, i6o.
92 Picton to Dundas, 26 Jan. I799 and 21 April 1799, B.M., Add. 36870, if. i, i6v-I7.
Governor Hislop, however, reported exports for I805 at ?200,000; Armytage, The Free
Port System, p. 92.
93 Paper by the Earl of Liverpool relative to the application for leave to trade with the
Spanish colonies made by Messrs. Bird, Savage and Bird, Nov. I799, B.M., Add. 38355,
f. III-I2.

An exception was made, however, for trade with the Rio de la Plata and
the Pacific coast of South America, areas which hardly came within the
influence of the free ports, 'in order to encourage the exportation of British
manufactures, and to receive in return dollars, hides, tallow, and other raw
materials, essentially necessary to the prosperity of the country '.9 For its
part the Spanish crown was equally ready to issue licences, often to aristo-
cratic favourites like the Duke of Osuna, to export to this area foreign goods
from foreign ports. The licences granted by the British government for trade
with these colonies up to I806, though limited in number, effected signifi-
cant breaches of the Spanish monopoly. One type of operation was that of
Antony Gibbs, an English merchant in Cadiz, who on his return to England
at the outbreak of war obtained a licence, subsequently accompanied by a
Spanish licence, authorizing him to complete a transaction which he had
begun before the renewal of hostilities, namely, the export from Cadiz to
Lima of a sizeable cargo of woollen cloth; for this he freighted a Spanish
vessel which sailed from Cadiz in December I8o6.95 Licences were also
granted for the export of goods to Spanish South America in neutral vessels
from English ports, transactions which the Spanish government itself sanc-
tioned, to the dismay of the monopolists in Buenos Aires."6The trade to the
Rio de la Plata under the licensing system, though not large, was regarded
as lucrative, and could no doubt have been expanded had exporters paid
more attention to consumer demand.97
Spanish America, therefore, along with the United States and the West
Indies, already provided an important compensating market for Britain
during the war with Napoleon. Up to i8o6 the war had damaged but had
not basically altered the British trading system. A year of prosperity in 1802
was followed by a period of depression in 803-4, but I805 saw some
improvement and by i8o6 British trade was buoyant again.98The situation
only began to worsen appreciably in late I8o6, when Napoleon's victory
over Prussia closed northern Germany to British exports. This development
would have been critical had not Britain possessed expanding outlets else-
where, principally in the New World. Exports to the United States rose
from i8.8 per cent of total exports in the period 1803-5 to 23.6 per cent in
94 'Observationson the licensedtrade with the Spanishcolonies', 1805, B.M., Stowe 307,
ff. 254-5.
95 Crouzet, L'Economie Britanniqueet le Blocus Continentale, I, I6o.
96 See the complaints of Santa Coloma about
English and Hamburg shipments and their silver
returns in his correspondenceduring I803-5, in Gandia, Buenos Aires colonial, pp. 56, 65-6,
69, 74.
97 'Actual State and Exports from Buenos Ayres and Paraguay', unsigned memorandum,
c. i8o6, B.M., Add. 37885, ff. i68-9v.
98 Crouzet, L'Economie Britanniqueet le Blocus Continentale, I, i6I, 206.

26 John Lynch
1806; and exports to all parts of the world rose from 34-8 per cent of total
exports in 1803-5 to 40.2 per cent in 1806. The expansion of trade to 'all
parts of the world' in 1806 is accounted for principally by exports to the
West Indies, which also fed the free port trade with Spanish America. It is
also explained by the opening of direct trade between Britain and the
Spanish colonies. And this in turn was due, not to the spectacularassault on
the Rfo de la Plata in 1806-7, but to the extension of the licensed trade with
Spanish America, a development which preceded Popham's unofficial
expedition and owed much to the policy of the Grenville government.
From February 1806 the new administration was forced to reconsider the
traditional opposition to a direct trade with Spanish America, partly because
of merchant pressure, partly because of the evident advantages to be ob-
tained. A number of merchants, some of whom had already received Spanish
permits, were requesting British licences, especially for trade with Vera
Cruz. Lord Auckland, President of the Board of Trade, was favourably
disposed, on the ground that 'an exchange of British manufactures for
dyeing woods, cochineal, and dollars is so peculiarly expedient in our actual
circumstances'." Grenville agreed, and on 21 February the Privy Council
decided to issue export and import licences for trade with Vera Cruz.' The
decision was explained by the desire to stimulate exports; as Auckland
remarked, 'encouragement in that respect is very important, for I hear that
some of our manufacturing towns (more especially in Lancashire) are suffer-
ing much under want of orders for export'.2 Almost immediately the
government was pressed to authorize more complex operations. A certain
J. Taylor, recommended to Auckland by Nicholas Vansittart as 'a friend of
mine in the City' and acting on behalf of a business group headed by the
house of Fermin de Tastet and Co., requested leave to trade with Spanish
America, having already procured a Spanish licence. Taylor sought the pro-
tection of a licence for the purchase of bills at Madrid drawn on the royal
treasuries in Spanish America and payable in bullion returns to Britain.3
After some hesitation Grenville and Auckland agreed, on condition that
Taylor and his associates exported to the Spanish colonies British manufac-
tures equal in value to the bills of exchange. And on 3 June Fermin de
Tastet and Co. received two licences authorizing them to buy in Madrid
99 Auckland to Grenville, i8 Feb. i806; Dropmore Papers, vmI, 36.

1 P.R.O., P.C. 4/14/51-2, 54-6; Dropmore Papers, vmII,36-7.
2 Auckland to Grenville, i6 March, 21 March and
9 April I806; Dropmore Papers, vmII,59,
63, 87.
3 Vansittart to Auckland, 19 Feb. I806, Taylor to Board of Trade, 19 March I806, B.M.,
Add. 34456, if. 387, 434.

British Policy and Spanish America, 1783-I808 27
bills drawn on Mexico and Buenos Aires to the amount of ?40,000 each,
and to transportthe bullion to Jamaicaor Britain.4
Another financial group headed by W. Gordon and J. Murphy concluded
in March i806 a contractwith the Treasury for the supply of dollars. Murphy
then secured from the Spanish government orders on the colonial treasury
for a sum of 10 million dollars, on condition that he obtained British licences
for ten neutral vessels to carry cargoes to Spanish America consisting partly
of British and partly of Spanish goods, the returns to be in either colonial
produce or precious metals and to be imported into a British port. After
serious hesitation, caused by the size of the operation and the amount of
Spanish goods involved, the British government eventually agreed (6 June
1806) to grant Gordon and Murphy the ten licences requested for trading
with Vera Cruz, and after various vicissitudes the 10 million dollars reached
British ports.5 Licences such as these were obviously issued to procure vital
bullion supplies.6 In effect they allowed Spain to transfer in time of war
funds from Spanish America to Europe, and in the case of the Gordon and
Murphy operation even authorized direct trade between Spain and her
colonies. At the same time, however, operations on this scale greatly
expanded direct trade between Britain and Spanish America, with the con-
nivance of Spain; indeed it would seem that a great part of Britain's trade
with the Spanish colonies in the period I806-8 was made under the licence
of the Spanish crown. This 'secret trade', as contemporaries called it,
affronted the British navy, especially when it was ordered to refrain from
molesting enemy vessels or even to escort them against the possibility of
French attacks.7 The admiralty strenuously objected to protecting the trade
of the enemy, but this was also the trade of Britain and exports took
precedence over prize-money.
It is difficult to estimate the total value of the licensed trade to Spanish
4 P.R.O., P.C. P.C. 4/14/61; Grenville to Auckland, i8 March I8o6, B.M.,
2/170/310-12,
Add. 34456, f. 433; Auckland to Grenville, i6 March, 21 March 1806, Dropmore Papers,
vIII, 59, 63.
5 P.R.O., P.C. 4/15/285-304; Draft contract, Gordon and
Murphy, Dec. I8o5, B.M., Add.
38766, if. i-II; Grenville to Auckland, 5 June I806, Dropmore Papers, viII, I78-9; Auck-
land to Grenville, 5 June, 28 Oct. and 29 Oct. I8o6, ibid., viII, 178-9, 405, 407-8. Gordon
and Murphy had begun their negotiations with the previous administration and the opera-
tion had been anticipated by the huge transaction authorized by Pitt, whereby the con-
sortium of Ouvrard, Hope and Baring procured dollars at Vera Cruz and transportedthem
in British warships; see memorandum of Sir Francis Baring to Pitt and Huskisson, Dec.
1805, B.M., Add. 38738, if. Io3-Io; Andre Fugier, Napoleon et I'Espagne, I799-I808
(2 vols., Paris, 1930), I, 283, ii, 8-22, 52-60.
6 See Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique et le Blocus Continentale, I, 120-I.
7 T. Grenville, Admiralty, 26 Feb. 1807, B.M., Add. 34457, ff. 231-2, objecting to having
to provide ' the protectionof a frigate to the port of Valparaiso'.

28 John Lynch
America conducted under the ruling of 28 February I806.8 In the course of

that year 16 vessels were licensed to export from Great Britain (in some
cases via a neutral port) to Spanish America; a further 50 were licensed to
export from other ports, though carrying largely British goods; and 81
vessels were authorized to import from the Spanish colonies to Great
Britain.9 The total exports under licence to Spanish America from Great
Britain in i8o6 probably exceeded ?50,oo00 in real value, and greatly
exceeded that amount in 1807. In September i8o6 Auckland reported that
the Board of Trade had granted licences in the last four months 'to ten
principal houses engaged in the secret trade to South America; to the extent
certainly of one million sterling, and perhaps more than double that
amount'.70 An exaggeration perhaps but one indicating the impression
created on officials by the size of the trade. It was a difficult trade and not
always greatly profitable to its promoters. The slowness of returns from
distant markets like Lima and Buenos Aires meant that only firms possess-
ing large capital resources could participate in it. But those who did
inaugurated a new phase in the British penetration of Spanish America, a
phase which was overlooked by contemporary advocates of conquest or
emancipation and overshadowed by the more spectacular assault on the Rio
de la Plata from June i8o6. Yet even here, in spite of the unsuitable
exports, the unscrupulous speculation, the glutting of the market and the
sharp drop in prices, the incident was not without benefit.1l Stocks piling up
in the industrial centres of Britain were liquidated and production boosted.
And this large-scale unloading of goods, especially textiles, at Montevideo,
while it made few fortunes in Britain, enabled British exports to secure a
greater share of the market in the Rio de la Plata and created a permanent
demand for them there. For in spite of the heavy penalties for anyone
handling them they managed to penetrate via local merchants and hacen-
dados to the most distant parts of the viceroyalty.l2 Moreover the temporary
British presence in the Rio de la Plata encouraged British shipping to make
a further penetration of the South American market via Peruvian ports
8 See the valuable discussion in Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique et le Blocus Continentale,

I, 182-4, on which this paragraphis based.
9 In the second category 25 of the licences were issued for trade to Buenos Aires after its
occupation by Popham's expedition.
10 Auckland to Grenville, 14 Sept. i8o6, Dropmore Papers, vm, 332.
11 In May 1807 Auchmuty estimated from customs receipts that the value of merchandise
disposed of was ?1,210,000; see Humphreys, Liberation in South America, pp. I-I4; see
also Ferns, Britain and Argentina, pp. 50-1.
12 See German 0. E.
Tjarks and Alicia Vidaurreta de Tjarks, El comercio ingles y el contra-
bando. Nuevos aspectos en el estudio de la politica econdmica en el Rio de la Plata (I807-
I8Io) (Buenos Aires, I962), p. I2.

which in 1807 were described as 'infested with English vessels'.13 But in

the final analysis it was the established licensed trade to the Rio de la Plata,
Lima and Vera Cruz, combined with the expanding trade of the free ports,
which offered the greater compensation for British losses in Europe.
And compensations were vitally needed. By the end of 1807 Napoleon's
continental system had been greatly extended and was more rigorously en-
forced. Simultaneously the worsening of relations with the United States
caused a drop in British exports to this important market. Total exports in
the second half of 1807 declined by 25 per cent on those of the first half of
the year, and Britain experienced a serious industrial depression which
worsened in i808.14 In this period of crisis the only branch of foreign trade
which experienced a great expansion and on which centred the hopes of
British rulers and businessmen was the trade with Brazil, whose ports were
thrown open by the Portuguese court in exile in January i8o8. But direct
trade with Brazil meant further trade with Spanish America, for which
Brazil was used as an entrepot. Buenos Aires, under the tolerant viceroy
Liniers, absorbed sizeable quantities of British re-exports from Brazil.l5
From March to June i8o8 merchandise valued at ?12o,ooo was exported
from Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires; and the trade was actively encouraged
by the Privy Council, which decided (i April I8o8) that the British minister
at Rio de Janeiro, after the fashion of a colonial governor in the West
Indies, be authorized to issue licences protecting it. But even apart from the
entrepot in Brazil, the Spanish American market continued to play its part
in providing a safety-valve for the British economy. During the first half of
i8o8 twelve vessels were authorized to export to the Spanish colonies from
British and five from non-British ports, while twenty-one were authorized
to import therefrom. In the winter of I807-8 eleven British vessels, with
cargoes valued at ?933,000, sailed for Chile and Peru.l6 Meanwhile, the
contraband trade from the free ports in the West Indies continued to develop
with great vigour, stimulated now by the American embargo and the British
Orders-in-Council which further isolated the Spanish colonies and forced
them to turn still more to Jamaicaand Trinidad.
In view of the existing trade between Britain and the Spanish colonies in
the years I806-8, it is possible to appreciate why the commercial argument
for British intervention in Spanish America lost some of its force. No doubt
a freer access to the market would have been welcome and remained an
13
Correspondenceof Santa Coloma, 2 June 1807, in Gandia, Buenos Aires colonial, p. Ioo.
14 Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique et le Blocus Continentale, I, 248-72, 284-313, 322-55.
15 R. A. Humphreys (ed.), British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin
America, 1824-1826 (London, I940), p. 20.
16 Ibid., p. 127, n. 2.

30 John Lynch
objective, but the situation was not so desperate that the commercial argu-
ment was likely to outweigh other factors. And when, in June 1808, the
reversal of alliances caused Britain to step back from the brink of war in
Spanish America, she was able to do so without serious economic conse-
quences. British policy had shed other prejudices in these years, notably the
quest for conquest, and dominion. As for Spanish American independence,
if there was any lesson to be learnt from the events of this period it was that
British policy should follow, not anticipate, events in Spanish America itself.
The experience acquired in the years 1783-I808, therefore, prepared Britain
in some degree for the great age of Spanish American independence.


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British Policy and Spanish America, 1783-1808

Author(s): John Lynch

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British Policy and Spanish America,

'The liberation of South America', wrote Castlereagh in I807, 'must be

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The alternative to conquest was emancipation, but this raised further

7 Philip Henry, fifth Earl of Stanhope, Notes of Conversationswith the Duke of

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The presence of a British force, he concluded, would reduce these dangers.

11 Memorandum, I May I807, CastlereaghPapers, vI, 320-I.

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to commit an expensive expeditionary force to a distant continent without

14 See W. S. Robertson, The Life of Miranda (2 vols.,

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economy of Spanish America.16In the eastern Caribbeanthe island of Trini-

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was no meeting of minds. Miranda was attempting to mobilize a liberating

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Report, 1907, I, 313-I5.

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centre of a general movement'. Meanwhile he also tried to mobilize the

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Spain was able to preserve a measure of independence of France and pre-

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51 Popham to Huskisson, 19 Feb. I801, B.M., Add. 38736, ff. 283-4.

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calculation, if not a certain operation'. And he urged that in addition to the

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tion to the coast of Venezuela.66 He received supply facilities and some

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manufactures', an exaggeration no doubt, but one which reflected the great

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99 Auckland to Grenville, i8 Feb. i806; Dropmore Papers, vmI, 36.

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America conducted under the ruling of 28 February I806.8 In the course of

8 See the valuable discussion in Crouzet, L'Economie Britannique et le Blocus Continentale,

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which in 1807 were described as 'infested with English vessels'.13 But in

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