The western question: The geopolitics of latin American independence

American Historical Review

Volumn 112, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 742-763

  Blaufarb, Rafe ^a  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547261104     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.112.3.742     Document Type: Review

References (142)

1. Most recently in Jaime E. Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge, 1998). His reconceptualization of Latin American independence has revalorized its constitutional aspects and inspired something of a "political turn" in the field.
2. Jeremy Adelman, "Independence in Latin America" (unpublished manuscript), 1.
3. On the Eastern Question, see M. S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774-1923: A Study in International Relations (London, 1966);
4. Barbara Jelavich,A Century of Russian Foreign Policy, 1814-1914 (Philadelphia, 1964);
5. Jelavich, Russia's Balkan Entanglements, 1806-1914 (Cambridge, 1991);
6. and John A. R. Marriott, The Eastern Question: An Historical Study in European Diplomacy (Oxford, 1956).
7. Examples of European diplomatic histories that neglect Spanish American affairs include René Albrecht-Carrié, A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna (New York, 1958);
8. Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (Boston, 1973);
9. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812-1822 (San Diego, 1974);
10. Hans G. Schenk, The Aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars: The Concert of Europe - An Experiment (London, 1947);
11. Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, 1994);
12. and Charles Kingsley Webster, The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 (London, 1937).
13. Some examples include Sarah H. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park, Pa., 1999);
14. and Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford, Calif., 2001).
15. For a contrasting historiographical assessment, which holds that scholarship on Latin American independence privileges elite agency and traditional, top-down political narrative, see Victor M. Uribe, "The Enigma of Latin American Independence: Analyses of the Last Ten Years," Latin American Research Review 32, no. 1 (1997): 236-255.
16. Although "insurgent" is a loaded term, I use it because it was the term most frequently used at the time to designate those Latin Americans seeking independence.
17. What has been called "the new diplomatic history" (but should probably be termed "transnational history") is exemplified by Matthew Connelly's brilliant work on the war of Algerian independence. See Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York, 2002).
18. Another fine example of a bottom-up approach to diplomatic history is Karen Racine, Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution (Wilmington, Del., 2003).
19. For a general discussion of the field of transnational history, see C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, "AHR Conversation: On Transnational History," American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1440-1464.
20. In his comparative work on the French and Russian revolutions, Arno Mayer emphasizes that "civil war" is "inseparable from international relations." Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, N.J., 2000), 535.
21. David A. Bell, The First Total War (New York, 2007).
22. Cited in Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America, 174.
23. Anna opens his invaluable book with this question. Timothy E, Anna, Spain and the Loss of America (Lincoln, Neb., 1983), 1.
24. Victor M. Uribe-Uran, "The Birth of a Public Sphere in Latin America during the Age of Revolution," Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 2 (2000): 425-457.
25. For a general discussion of Spanish American political culture during the Napoleonic occupation, see Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America, 36-100.
26. On the relationship between the French Revolution and Spanish political culture, see François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Madrid, 1992).
27. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York, 1976).
28. See also Christopher J. Bartlett, Great Britain and Sea Power, 1815-1853 (Oxford, 1963). In this work, Bartlett cites Simón Bolívar's telling assessment, "Only England, mistress of the seas, can protect us against the united force of European reaction" (68).
29. From 1809, Napoleon tried to precipitate a formal break between Iberian and American Spain. He dispatched secret agents to the Americas to foment rebellion, offered financial and military aid to the insurgents, and even planned to recognize Venezuelan independence (in 1812). Napoleon's sale of Louisiana (effectively a Spanish possession at the time) to the United States can be seen as one of the first instances of a Spanish American province exiting the transatlantic Spanish monarchy. On these French antecedents to Latin American independence, see Caracciolo Parra-Pérez, Bayona y la política de Napoleón en América (Caracas, 1939);
30. William Spence Robertson, France and Latin-American Independence (Baltimore, Md., 1939), 16-104;
31. and John Rydjord, Foreign Interest in the Independence of New Spain: An Introduction to the War for Independence (Durham, N.C., 1935).
32. For a view that emphasizes the elements of disunity, civil strife, and lawlessness that the anti-French struggle unleashed, see Charles Esdaille, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits, and Adventurers in Spain, 1808-1814 (New Haven, Conn., 2004).
33. One prominent figure who underwent such a conversion was Francisco Xavier Mina. Commander of the most effective guerrilla army to fight against Napoleon in Spain, Mina led an uprising in 1814 against the restoration of absolutism. When his rebellion failed, he fled to Great Britain, where, aided by British liberals and the American general Winfield Scott, he organized a military expedition to liberate New Spain. It departed in 1816, picking up reinforcements in the United States. The expedition was unsuccessful, and Mina was captured and executed in 1817. On Mina's career, see Manuel Ortuño Martínez, Xavier Mina: Fronteras de libertad (Mexico, 2003);
34. and J. M. Miquel I. Vergés, Mina: El español frente a España (Mexico, 1945).
35. For example, see the widely distributed and much-reprinted Catecismo civil, y breve compendia de las obligaciones del español, conocimiento práctico de su libertad, y explicación de su enemigo, muy útil en las actuales circunstancias, puesto en forma de diálogo (n.p., 1808). It promised that Ferdinand, once restored to his throne, would remedy the "despotism and indolence of the supreme authorities who governed" before the French invasion.
36. J. Fred Rippy, Rivalry of the United States and Great Britain over Latin America (1808-1830) (Baltimore, Md., 1929);
37. and R. A. Humphreys, "Anglo-American Rivalries and Spanish American Emancipation," in Humphreys, ed., Tradition and Revolt in Latin America and Other Essays (New York, 1969), 130-153.
38. Russell H. Bartley, Imperial Russia and the Struggle for Latin American Independence, 1808-1828 (Austin, Tex., 1978).
39. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Russian Reproductions, Petrograd, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carton 1, no. 5, "Projet d'instruction au chambellan actuel comte de Prahlen" (Washington, D.C., 1809).
40. The term is from the dispatch of June 4,1818, from the French Ambassador to the United States, Hyde de Neuville, to the French Foreign Minister, the Duke de Richelieu, Archives des Affaires Etrangères [henceforth AAE], Correspondence Politique [hereafter CP], Etats-Unis, 75.
41. The excitement generated by the publication of the Abbé de Pradt's two-volume Des colonies et de la révolution actuelle de l'Amérique (Paris, 1817) offers one of the clearest illustrations of French interest in the struggles of Spanish America.
42. On the rightward drift of French politics during this period, see Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration, trans. Lynn M. Case (Philadelphia, 1966), 141-197;
43. and André Jardin and André-Jean Tudesq, Restoration and Reaction, 1815-1848, trans. Elborg Forster (London, 1983), 32-62.
44. On eighteenth-century French Anglophobia and the origins of French nationalism, see David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
45. A good example is provided by the experience of the Marquis de Bouthillier. A major general in the counterrevolutionary émigré army of the Prince de Condé, Bouthillier decided to return to France in 1801. He explained at length his decision to lay down his arms. Although he rejected the Revolution, he recognized that Napoleon was a "great man" who had restored French fortunes at home and abroad. In particular, Bouthillier admired the way Napoleon had revived French military spirit and reintroduced honor and order into the ranks of the army. Archives Départementales, Cher et l'Indre, J 2192, "Mémoires particuliers de M. de Bouthillier," 504-533.
46. Pozzo di Borgo to Nesselrode (Paris, July 15,1816), in Carlo Andrea, comte de Pozzo di Borgo, Correspondance diplomatique du comte Pozzo di Borgo, ambassadeur de Russie en France, et du comte de Nesselrode depuis la Restauration des Bourbons jusqu'au Congrès d'Aix-la-Chappelle, 1814-1818, 2 vols. (Paris, 1890), 1: 390.
47. A parallel can be seen in the American tendency to view decolonization in the 1950s not only through the lens of the Cold War, but also as part of an older demographic struggle between "the West" and "the rest" - the Yellow Peril. See Matthew Connelly, "Taking Off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence," American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (June 2000): 739-769.
48. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1874-1877), 4: entry for December 25, 1818.
49. AAE, CP, Etats-Unis, 74, Hyde de Neuville to Duke de Richelieu (Washington, D.C., May 14, 1817).
50. Cited in William Spence Robertson, "Russia and the Emancipation of Spanish America, 1816-1826," Hispanic American Historical Review 21, no. 2 (1941): 202.
51. Monroe Papers, reel 6, Richard Rush to James Monroe (Washington, D.C., April 24, 1817).
52. Robertson, France and Latin-American Independence, 337.
53. Mario Belgrano, La Francia y la monarquta en el Plata (Buenos Aires, 1933);
54. Dardo Pérez Guilhou, Las ideas monárquicas en el Congreso de Tucumán (Buenos Aires, 1966);
55. Joaquín Pérez, Artigas, San Martín y los proyectos monárquicos en el Río de la Plata y Chile (1818-1820) (Montevideo, 1960);
56. and Carlos A. Villanueva, La monarquía en América: San Martín y Bolívar (Paris, 1911).
57. The idea of granting independence under European princes to the Spanish provinces of America was seriously considered by all the great powers. The British minister Castlereagh seems to have been the first to broach the idea, when in 1807 he contemplated installing the Duke d'Orléans on the throne of Buenos Aires. The European powers remained attracted to the idea because it promised them access and offered an alternative to both republicanism and the reimposition of integral absolutism. Even Spanish American insurgents, notably San Martín, advocated monarchy for the independent polities they were fighting to create. By 1822, monarchical schemes for Latin America were so abundant and varied that John Quincy Adams commented that "a hankering after monarchy has infected the politics of all successive governing authorities of Buenos Ayres." Lord Castlereagh, "Memorandum for the Cabinet, Relative to South America" (1807), in Charles William Vane, ed., Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, Second Marquess of Londonderry, 12 vols. (London, 1848-1853), 7: 320;
58. C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1815-1822 (London, 1934), 563;
59. and John Quincy Adams, The Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Ford, 7 vols. (New York, 1913-1917), 7: 424-441.1 thank Emilio Ocampo for providing me with these references.
60. Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, Lettres du duc de Richelieu au marquis d'Osmond, 1816-1818, ed. Sébastien Charlety (Paris, 1939), 232-233.
61. For a detailed but somewhat tendentious treatment of this affair, see Miguel Cané, La diplomacia de la revolución: El director Pueyrredón y el emisario Le Moyne (Buenos Aires, 1960).
62. See also Belgrano, La Francia y la monarquía.
63. Robertson, France and Latin-American Independence, 166-169. Was this discourse of cultural affinity (a standard trope of insurgents seeking French aid) on the religious and cultural affinities of Spanish America with France at the root of the concept of "Latin America"? The term itself was not employed until several decades later. As they constructed their own national identities in the mid-nineteenth century, some Latin American nationalists gravitated toward Frenchness as a welcome alternative to Spanish colonial oppression, cold-hearted British commercialism, and the rising imperialism of the United States. For their part, the French clung to this same notion of a special affinity between "Latins," first in the vain hope that it could help offset the preponderance of British commerce, and then in the equally vain ambition of securing a Gallic foothold in Mexico in the 1860s.
64. Robertson, France and Latin-American Independence, 519-520.
65. Like the Latin American insurgents, the "Texians" sought to play on France's geopolitical ambitions to secure military and financial assistance in their struggle against Mexico. And like the insurgents, they tried (however improbably) to stress the affinities between France and Texas. Consider, for example, the monarchical profession of faith offered by Texas president Sam Houston to the French ambassador Dubois do Saligny: "You are very fortunate in France to have a monarchy. May we one day be able to enjoy the same advantage in this country . . . It is impossible that the whole world not be disabused by the example of what goes on in all the republics of America, beginning with that of the United States; and between us, Monsieur de Saligny, as I've often said, I'm confident that, for the good of humanity, there will no longer remain a single republican government on the face of the globe within fifty years." AAE, CP, Texas, 4, Dispatch (Galveston, May 16, 1842). Saligny later became one of the principal architects of the French intervention in Mexico.
66. Piero Gleijeses, "The Limits of Sympathy: The United States and the Independence of Spanish America," Journal of Latin American Studies 24, no. 3 (1992): 481-505.
67. Madison Papers, reel 18, William H. Crawford to James Madison (Washington, D.C., September 27, 1816).
68. James G. Cusick, The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida (Gainesville, Fla., 2003);
69. and Frank L. Owsley, Jr., The Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815 (Gainesville, Fla., 1981).
70. James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998).
71. James Monroe to John Quincy Adams (Washington, D.C., December 10, 1815), in Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin-American Nations, ed. William R. Manning, 3 vols. (New York, 1925), 1: 17.
72. For a comprehensive history of the United States' attempts to obtain Florida, see Hubert Bruce Fuller, The Purchase of Florida: Its History and Diplomacy (Gainesville, Fla., 1964).
73. In 1818, General Andrew Jackson actually invaded Florida. But since he had done so without official authorization, the Monroe administration ordered him to withdraw. Negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida and the settlement of the boundary question then resumed, perhaps accelerated by both the ease of Jackson's conquest and the goodwill that the United States government had shown in disavowing it.
74. For a comprehensive treatment of these negotiations, see Philip Coolidge Brooks, Diplomacy and the Borderlands: The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 (Berkeley, Calif., 1939).
75. Unless otherwise indicated, the following account of the Amelia Island affair is based on T. Frederick Davis, "MacGregor's Invasion of Florida, 1817," Florida Historical Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1928): 2-71;
76. and David Bushnell, ed., La República de las Floridas: Texts and Documents (Bogotá, 1986).
77. For an overview of MacGregor's adventurous life, see Tulio Arends, Sir Gregor Mac Gregor: Un escocés tras la aventura de America (Caracas, 1988).
78. Adams Papers, reel 33, diary entries for February 13 and 23, 1818; Adams, Memoirs, 4: 53, entry for February 7, 1818.
79. Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], Foreign Office [hereafter FO], 115/30, Charles Bagot to Lord Castlereagh (Washington, D.C., April 25, 1817). In this meeting, MacGregor also informed Bagot that he had held talks with Regnault Saint-Jean d'Angély, a close advisor to the exiled Joseph Bonaparte, and then with Joseph himself. He claimed that the Bonapartists were trying to enlist him in a grand scheme to crown Joseph king of New Spain and rescue Napoleon from Saint Helena.
80. The French ambassador, Hyde de Neuville, suspected as much when he noted in his dispatches that MacGregor was letting it be known that he was "supported and protected" by both Britain and the United States. AAE, CP, Etats-Unis, 74, Hyde de Neuville to Duke de Richelieu (New Brunswick, May 14 and July 7, 1817).
81. On Aury, see Stanley Faye, "Commodore Aury" (unpublished manuscript), Aury Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas; and Carlos A. Ferro, Vida de Luis Aury, corsario de Buenos Aires en las luchas por la independencia de Venezuela, Colombia y Centroamérica (Buenos Aires, 1976).
82. Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., and Gene A. Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1997), 139. Aury's principal lieutenant was Joseph Savary, a mulatto refugee from the Haitian revolution who had settled in Louisiana and commanded one of the free colored militia companies that took part in Andrew Jackson's 1815 defense of New Orleans.
83. John Quincy Adams to Caesar A. Rodney, John Graham, and Theodorick Bland, Special Commissioners of the United States to South America (Washington, D.C., November 21, 1817), in Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1: 47-49. Despite this setback, the careers of MacGregor and Aury were not finished. In 1819, they joined forces again in an attack on the Isthmus of Panama that temporarily succeeded in taking the Spanish fort of Portobello, but failed to link up with Lord Thomas Cochrane's fleet in the Pacific and cut Spanish America in two. While Aury died of disease soon after Portobello, MacGregor continued his adventurous activities both under Bolívar and on his own. In 1820, he founded a short-lived "Kingdom of the Poyais" in present-day Honduras.
84. Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists; Harris Gaylord Warren, The Sword Was Their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, La., 1943).
85. By 1818, the principal privateering port, Baltimore, had earned the dubious reputation among the European diplomatic corps as "the new Algiers." José Corrêa da Serra, José Corrêa da Serra: Ambassadeur du Royaume-Uni de Portugal et Brésil à Washington, 1816-1820, ed. Léon Bourdon (Paris, 1975), 106.
86. The best studies of the overlooked naval aspects of Latin American independence are José L. Franco, Político continental americana de España en Cuba, vol. 1: La batalla por el dominio del Caribe y el Golfo de México (Havana, 1964);
87. Laurio H. Destéfani, "El corso en la emancipación Hispanoamericana," Cuarto Congreso Internacional de Historia de América 4 (1966): 371-384;
88. Destéfani, "La Real Armada española y la guerra naval de la emancipación Hispanoamericana," Cuarto Congreso Internacional de Historia de América 4 (1966): 385-404;
89. and Jaime Duarte French, Los tres Luises del Caribe: ¿Corsarios o libertadores? (Bogotá, 1988).
90. Almost 3,000 cases of "piratical aggression against merchant ships" were reported between 1815 and 1823. Arthur Preston Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, 1800-1830 (Baltimore, Md., 1941), 305.
91. [José Corrêa da Serra], An Appeal to the Government and Congress of the United States, against the Depredations Committed by American Privateers on the Commerce of Nations at Peace with Us. By an American Citizen (Philadelphia, 1819), 83-84. The end of the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic wars in Europe had freed thousands of experienced naval personnel for this kind of activity.
92. Although it is beyond the scope of this essay, the phenomenon of insurgent privateering raises questions about the relationship between slavery, shifts in Atlantic trade patterns (particularly the growing importance of direct trade between Iberian America and Africa), and the independence movement, Many of the insurgent privateers doubled as slavers or slave smugglers, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, where the demand of southern planters coupled with the official prohibition of slave importation made this business profitable. The link between insurgent privateering and illegal slave trading was significant. It highlights the accommodating plasticity of racial solidarities, even in the banned slave trade. For example, take the Colombian-flagged privateer/slaver/ smuggler Fortuna. Its captain was a Connecticut Yankee, its second-in-command was Danish, and its crew counted numerous hands classified as "pardos," "morenos," and "chinos" by the Spanish authorities who captured them in 1816, as well as Haitians, "negros," and "blancos" from the United States, Spanish deserters, a stray Irishman, and a lone Frenchman, Franco, Política continental, 142.
93. On the trade generally, see Joseph C. Dorsey, Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859 (Gainesville, Fla., 2003).
94. 5S AAE, CP, Etats-Unis, 74, Hyde de Neuville to Duke de Richelieu (Washington, D.C., May 14, 1817).
95. PRO, FO, 5/120, Lord Castlereagh to Charles Bagot (London, November 11, 1817).
96. The 4,000-6,000 British volunteers who served in Bolfvar's army played a key role, particularly at the battles of Boyacá (August 7,1819) and Carabobo (June 24,1821). More research is needed on the British and other foreign volunteers, as the only book on the subject is dated, Anglocentric, and purely anecdotal. Alfred Hasbrouck, Foreign Legionaries in the Liberation of Spanish South America (New York, 1928).
97. Foreign volunteers also fought for Spain. In 1817, the Spanish legation in London began negotiations with an English soldier (the unfortunately named Colonel Fucker), who proposed to form a "Real Legión Anglo-Hispana" of demobilized British soldiers to fight against the insurgency. Edmundo A. Heredia, Planes españoles para reconquistar Hispanoamérica (1810-1818) (Buenos Aires, 1974), 358-359.
98. Adams, Memoirs, 3: 290-291.
99. Adams Papers, reel 143, John Quincy Adams to William Eustis (Ealing, March 19, 1816).
100. William W. Kaufmann, British Policy and the Independence of Latin America, 1804-1828 (New Haven, Conn., 1951), 105, 113.
101. Anna, Spain and the Loss of America;
102. Michael P. Costeloe, Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American Revolutions, 1810-1840 (Cambridge, 1986);
103. and María del Carmen Pintos Vieites, La politico de Fernando VII entre 1814 y 1820 (Pamplona, 1958).
104. For an earlier examination of Spanish policy, see A. F. Zimmerman, "Spain and Its Colonies, 1808-1820," Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (1931): 439-463.
105. Useful works on the military aspects of Spanish policy are Heredia, Planes espanoles;
106. and José M. Mariluz Urquijo, Losproyectos espanoles para reconquistar el Rio de la Plata (1820-1833) (Buenos Aires, 1958).
107. On the Bonapartist "colony" in Texas, the so-called Champ d'Asile, see my Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2005). Other Bonapartist officers, under San Martín's sometime rival General Michel-Sylvestre Brayer, served in the campaigns of South America.
108. Emilio Ocampo, "Brayer: Un general de Napoleón que desafió a San Martín," Todo es Historia, no. 455 (2005): 60-77.
109. To put further pressure on Onis, the group's leader, General Charles Lallemand, held a series of ostentatious meetings with the U.S. secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. He also spread rumors that the expedition to Texas was supported by France, which (he claimed) intended to turn that province into a New Louisiana. These maneuvers are strongly reminiscent of MacGregor's intriguing. The resemblance was not lost on members of the European diplomatic corps, who wondered whether the Bonapartists were not "replaying at Galveston the same comedy Aury had performed at Amelia." AAE, CP, Etats-Unis, 75, Hyde de Neuville to Duke de Richelieu (Washington, D.C., July 2, 1818).
110. Adams Papers, reel 146, John Quincy Adams to Pierre-Paul-François Degrand (Washington, D.C., January 21, 1818).
111. Archive Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Estado, Legajo 5642, dispatch 175 (Philadelphia, October 9, 1817).
112. AAE, CP, Espagne, 701, Fernán Núñez to Duke de Richelieu (Paris, March 2, 1818).
113. The fear that Napoleon might escape from St. Helena and place himself at the head of a world revolution was taken very seriously by European statesmen in the late 1810s. At least one rescue attempt was actually made in 1817, launched from the short-lived Republic of Pernambuco. There is no comprehensive work on the attempts, real or rumored, to free Napoleon from his island prison.
114. José García de Leon y Pizarro, Memorias, ed. Alvaro Alonso-Castrillo, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1964), 1: 280-285.
115. Over the years, the Louisiana Historical Quarterly has published many articles (too numerous to cite here) on the Lafittes.
116. The most helpful are those by Stanley Faye, especially his survey "Privateersmen of the Gulf and their Prizes," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1939): 1012-1094.
117. Harris Gaylord Warren, "Documents Relating to Pierre Lafitte's Entrance into the Service of Spain," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 1 (1940): 76-87.
118. Stanley Faye, "The Great Stroke of Pierre Lafitte," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1940): 733-826.
119. My attempt to distinguish between adventurers and insurgents is somewhat arbitrary, as it is based on my subjective assessment of the relative degree to which the desire for personal gain or the desire for independence motivated their actions. But it is very likely that both motivations - for profit and for liberty - coexisted in the minds and hearts of many of the principal actors in the drama of Latin American independence.
120. The following is based on John Street, Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay (Cambridge, 1959).
121. As a result, Pueyrredón was denounced by his factional rivals as a "tool of the Portuguese." Henry Marie Brackenridge, South America: A Letter on the Present State of That Country (London, 1818), 55.
122. This strategy is described in great detail in Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, 141-188. Unless otherwise noted, this paragraph is based on Whitaker's account.
123. Manuel Torres, An Exposition of the Commerce of Spanish America with Some Observations upon Its Importance to the United States (Philadelphia, 1816), 14.
124. Manuel Torres to John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia, November 30, 1821), in Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 2:1212-1216;
125. and John Quincy Adams to Richard C. Anderson (Washington, D.C., May 27, 1823), ibid., 1: 192-208.
126. Cited in Niles' Weekly Register 9, no. 10 (November 4, 1815): 170.
127. AAE, CP, Angleterre, 610, Marquis d'Osmond to Duke de Richelieu (London, April 14, May 12, and May 16, 1818);
128. and Richelieu, Lettres du duc de Richelieu, 196-198. To complicate matters further, Renovales also had contact with the Bonapartists in the United States (including Lallemand), who, it was rumored, were planning to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena. AAE, Mémoires et Documents, Amérique, 34, Duke de Richelieu to Duke de Lavai (Paris, February 7, 1818).
129. For an overview of Renovales's career, see Franco, Política continental, 261-298.
130. On the other hand, every country (the United States, Portuguese Brazil, and Haiti) that shared a land border with Spanish America took advantage of the crisis to invade and annex contiguous Spanish territories. This suggests that geography goes a long way toward explaining why the Western Question was relatively peaceful and short-lived in contrast to the Eastern Question.
131. In his magisterial survey of European diplomatic history between 1763 and 1848, he devotes only nine pages to the subject. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 628-636.
132. Friederich de Gentz to Karl Robert de Nesselrode (Vienna, December 20, 1817, and January 27, 1818), in Lettres et papiers du chancelier comte de Nesselrode, 1760-1850, ed. comte A. de Nesselrode, 11 vols. (Paris, 1904-1912). 5: 287. 294-295.
133. Although relieved that they did not have to make a choice, Russian government officials nonetheless remained deeply interested in the Latin American independence struggles. In instructions drafted in 1817 for his ambassador to Washington, Tsar Alexander I elevated the task of following "the extraordinary events which are shaking the American continent" to the same level of importance as pursuing "our relations . . . with the United States." Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Russian Reproductions, Petrograd, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carton 7, no. 24, "Mémoire destiné à servir d'instruction au général-major baron Tuyll" (Washington, D.C., 1817).
134. An important article that brings both European and American aspects of Latin American independence into a single frame of analysis is Adrian J. Pearce, "Reseates and Anglo-Spanish Trade in the Caribbean during the French Revolutionary Wars, ca. 1797-1804," Journal of Latin American Studies 38, no. 3 (2006): 607-624.
135. Shortly thereafter, France effectively recognized Haitian independence, perhaps spurred on by the obvious difficulties of reestablishing French authority there in the context of an independent, republican Western Hemisphere.
136. In Chateaubriand's view, "at the moment of their emancipation, the former colonies of Spain effectively became English colonies." Chateaubriand, "Voyage en Amérique," in Chateaubriand, Oeuvres completes (Paris, 1859-1862), 217.
137. On the rise of British hegemony in Latin America, see Tulio Halperin Donghi, The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America (New York, 1973), 44-81.
138. Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford, Calif., 1999);
139. and Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade, and Imperialism, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1970).
140. These and other examples are discussed in Iwan Morgan, "French Policy in Spanish America, 1830-1848," Journal of Latin American Studies 10, no. 2 (1978): 309-328.
141. The phrase was Napoleon's, uttered in the context of discussions about the sale of Louisiana. François Barbé-Marbois, The History of Louisiana: Particularly of the Cession of That Colony to the United States of America (1830; repr., Baton Rouge, La., 1977), 312.
142. For an overview of these efforts, see David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia, Mo., 1974).