Trans-Imperial Networks in the Crisis of the Spanish Monarchy: The Rio de Janeiro-Montevideo Connection, 1778–1805

The late eighteenth century brought deep changes to the Atlantic World. Imperial competition, warfare, revolutions and a general increase in transatlantic commerce changed the balance of power among European empires and their overseas territories. The Spanish empire in particular faced multiple challenges, especially intermittent warfare and economic crises, which many historians regard as having paved the way for the Spanish American independence movements after 1808. Warfare in Europe and in the Atlantic weakened Spain’s economy and its control over trade and administration in its American territories. Military conflicts in the 1790s and 1800s disrupted the commercial routes connecting the Peninsula and the colonies, forcing the opening of the colonial economies to foreign agents. Because of the perils faced by Spanish vessels crossing the Atlantic, the Castilian crown allowed colonial merchants to trade directly with foreign neutral nations. Apart from legal commerce, contraband trade also flourished.

Historians have regarded the breakdown of the crown’s control of trade as crucial to the collapse of the Spanish colonial system.¹ However, analysis of commercial and administrative records produced by local authorities in Río de la Plata and Rio de Janeiro reveals that direct trade between Spanish Americans and merchants of foreign countries did not mean the interruption of established trade routes with Spain. Actually, trade with foreign nations, especially between Spanish territories in Río de la Plata and Luso-Brazilians, allowed Spanish American merchants not only to maintain regional commercial activity, but also to use foreign vessels and ports to maintain the flow of goods, capital, and information between Spain and its American territories during periods of war.

After the foundation of the viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (1776), and the expulsion of the Portuguese from the region (1777), Río de la Plata merchants reorganized their previously illegal trade routes connecting the region to Brazil. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Río de la Plata merchants, especially in Montevideo, engaged in trans-imperial trade with neutral nations and used Portuguese commercial routes to ship and deliver goods, transport people, and send information from Río de la Plata to Cádiz. Spanish American merchants involved in such trade not only profited from the commercial intercourse with foreigners, but used the informal networks connecting them to Brazil to support the maintenance of Spanish dominion in the Río de la Plata. Río de la Plata merchants developed higher levels of autonomy in their interactions with foreigners, but rather than weaken the empire, these extra-imperial connections maintained the debilitated links connecting the Peninsula to the South Atlantic during times of warfare.

Commerce was the cornerstone of the eighteenth-century Atlantic empires.² Trade was not only a crucial source of fiscal revenue, commodities, and an outlet for metropolitan products, but merchant ships were essential agents for circulating administrative and commercial information throughout the Atlantic. Twentieth-century historians suggested that eighteenth-century wars in the Atlantic led to a “virtual shutdown of maritime communications” between Spain and its American colonies, and that this crisis contributed to the process that led to Latin American independences.³ According to this historiography, Spain progressively lost control over trade routes as a result of its intermittent wars with Britain and France, which made Atlantic crossing perilous for Spanish vessels. British historian John Fisher argues that from 1796 onward, or even from a few years earlier, Spanish American trade with Spain was “paralyzed” as Spanish ships waited in port to gather strong convoys that would allow them to cross the Atlantic safely.⁴

Furthermore, the incapacity of Spain to maintain communication and exchanges with its colonial territories allowed foreign penetration in previously closed commercial routes, through the dispersed trade with neutral nations and contraband trade. By the time of the crisis of authority and legitimacy triggered by the imprisonment of Fernando VII (1808), increased foreign commercial exchanges had already played a critical role in weakening the Spanish empire and influencing colonial elites in pursuing emancipationist projects and free trade.⁵ In...