THE RĺO DE LA PLATA INDEPENDENTISTS AND THE VIENNA CONGRESS A diplomatic way towards autonomy (1813-1816) By Deborah Besseghini (Università di Trieste)
As news of Napoleon’s defeat and the Vienna Congress reached Río de la Plata, the absolutist and legitimist character of the new order became clear. By the end of 1815, the independent United Provinces of the River Plate were the only South American province that remained free from royal reconquest. In November 1813, Argentine diplomatic agents had begun travelling to Europe and Brazil hoping that the support of Britain, or another major power, could help them reach a compromise with Spain in order to protect Argentine autonomy – at least civil liberties and the freedom of commerce. In this context, the independentists were willing to accept monarchical governments. Various plans were put forward, everything from Manuel de Sarratea’s negocio de Italia, aimed at crowning another, younger son of Charles IV, to Manuel García’s project for a South American monarchy under the protection of the Braganza. The British wanted Buenos Aires to achieve its autonomy and supported the idea of a monarchy in Río de la Plata, but London remained officially neutral and did not mediate with Spain on behalf of the Argentine emissaries. However, in the course of my research I have uncovered evidence that some British agents did help the Argentine emissaries. The aim of this paper is to briefly examine both the formal and the informal role of Britain in independentist plans to achieve autonomy, in the context of the Vienna Congress. The most important external cause of the fall of the Spanish Empire was the crisis triggered by Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808. For some years after that, England vouched for the integrity of the Spanish Empire against France in the name of the deposed king, Ferdinand, even protecting the South American colonies that had freed themselves from Cadiz from external attacks1. The British, moreover, may have had some role in the revolution of 25 May 1810, which freed Buenos Aires from its ties to the Spanish government of Cadiz2. By 1814, the scenario
1 After the unfortunate British invasions of Río de la Plata in 1806-7 and the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal and Spain in 1808, commercial networks between Britain and Latin America changed, expanding southward and spreading particularly into the region between Rio de Janeiro and Río de la Plata. Because of the Napoleonic trade block of continental Europe, Britain needed new markets for its manufactured products and tried to use the Iberian crisis to establish legal direct trade with Latin America. 2 British warships stationed at the port refrained from intervening on behalf of Spanish authorities as they could have done in the light of the 1809 treaty of alliance between Britain and the loyalist government in Spain. Moreover, as testified by Antonio de Dorna in 1812, “los ingleses” had furnished at least part of the munitions used for the revolution (Ernesto Fitte, Los comerciantes ingleses en visperas de la revolución de Mayo, Buenos Aires, 1967, pp.62-71). The opinion that London was the primary beneficiary of the Latin American revolutions was widespread in the European courts. We should consider the independentist revolutions planned in the early 19th century by exponents of the Pitt government along with the Venezuelan independentist Francisco de Miranda, as well as the British expedition commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) that was ready to set sail for South America in 1808 in support of the independentists and then deviated towards Spain upon receiving notice of the anti-French insurrection. decidedly changed in the light of Napoleon’s defeat in Spain and the new European equilibrium under construction at the Vienna Congress, and to prevent other powers from forming a coalition around the Spanish cause in America, England needed to maintain good relations with Spain. At the same time, England was also interested in protecting its own trade with South America – which Spain had no intention of liberalizing but the independentists had opened – and keeping a presence in the southern Atlantic to contain the emerging power of the United States, among other things. Thus, circumstances forced Great Britain to carry out a policy of neutrality that could have been seen as a sort of double-crossing in relations between Spain and its rebel colonies. As news of the British success in the Peninsular War and the imminent restoration of Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne reached Río de la Plata in 1813, it was clear that Buenos Aires needed to mediate with Spain to avoid war. Carlos de Alvear – the leader of the 1812 military golpe along with the libertador San Martín, a member of the ultra-independentist Lautaro Lodge, and a future Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the River Plate – decided to send the aforementioned Manuel de Sarratea to England. The Sarratea mission was organized to obtain Spanish recognition for the autonomy of Buenos Aires through British mediation and to buy weapons. At this point, Commodore William Bowles – the head of the British naval station on the River Plate – wrote to the Admiralty, presenting Alvear as a moderate who, for tactical reasons, had earned credit in Buenos Aires as a radical, democratic independentist3. And the informal British consul in Buenos Aires, Robert Staples, after a meeting with Sarratea in November 1813 (just before the latter left for Europe), wrote to inform the British Foreign Office of the principal objective of Sarratea’s mission. He wrote:
Mr. Sarratea... has been very explicit with me. They admitted the full force of the treaty of alliance entered into by England and are willing to treat on the ground that these colonies continuing an integral part of Spain. With respect to Mr. Sarratea, he has the character of being an ambitious man... and is generally looked upon as a man of superior talent...
Staples had just arrived from an 1812-13 trip to London to obtain verbal instructions from Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh4. In 1812, after Cadiz had refused to recognize Staples’s role as a consul in Buenos Aires, Castlereagh had accepted his plan to return to Buenos Aires as an agent for the Treasury and a confidential agent for the Foreign Office. However, once there, Staples was considered the British consul even if this was not formally the case. Staples wrote a letter of introduction for Sarratea to Undersecretary William Hamilton, in which he clarified that Sarratea
3 Ricardo Piccirilli, San Martìn y la política de los pueblos, Buenos Aires, Gure, 1957, p.193.
4 Staples was the half-brother of Lady Clancarty, the wife of the British representative at the Vienna Congress and the cousin of Lady Castlereagh, the wife of Lord Castlereagh. would explain the nature of his commission for his government to Hamilton in person. This passage may refer to the plan to buy weapons – about which Staples was fully informed – since the objective of mediation had already been clearly explained in his aforementioned letter to the Foreign Office. Sarratea presented himself to Hamilton on 22 March 1814 and we know that he stayed in touch with the Foreign Office, since at the end of that year Commodore Bowles sent some dispatches from the Argentine government to Sarratea care of Hamilton. During the administrations of Gervasio Antonio de Posadas (Alvear’s uncle) and of Alvear himself, Staples had access to Sarratea’s correspondence with the Buenos Aires government from Brazil and Europe. In 1816, after Sarratea’s return, Staples even sent a copy of Sarratea’s correspondence with the Buenos Aires government to the British Foreign Office. Furthermore, between 1813 and 1816 “Consul” Staples and his business partners, John McNeile and George Dickson (the future Argentine consul in London), financed Sarratea’s mission on behalf of the Argentine government through the firm Hullet Brothers in London. The gastos segretos of the mission were financed through bills of exchange from Staples’s firm “porque no se trasluzca que es cosa de gobierno”, as Sarratea wrote. During a stop in Rio de Janeiro on his way to London in 1813, Sarratea met the British ambassador at the Portuguese court in Brazil, Lord Strangford, who suggested that the Buenos Aires government send emissaries to Spain to congratulate the restored King Ferdinand. Strangford wrote to the Argentine Director suggesting the same, and then to London, presenting Sarratea in very flattering terms. Actual autonomy for Buenos Aires within the Spanish imperial system was Britain’s preferred solution for ending the dispute between Spain and its rebel colonies5. Sarratea himself was a partisan of this solution, but his instructions included also the option of obtaining protection from another power. Indeed, if Britain were unwilling to mediate with Spain, Sarratea was authorized to threaten the British government that he would ask Napoleon to recognize Argentine independence. At the same time, the purchase of weapons in England would have helped reinforce the independentists’ position in America and thus help convince Spain to mediate with its rebel colonies. In a letter to Director Posadas, Sarratea summarized the political path he had chosen to take in London with the Latin motto “si vis pacem para bellum”. In 1814, Dickson, McNeile & Co., the firm of John McNeile, friend and business partner of “Consul” Staples, imported to Buenos Aires a significant portion of the weapons Sarratea had bought in England6.
5 As early as 1812, Britain had unsuccessfully tried to mediate with Cadiz on behalf of the Río de la Plata independentists. 6 On some of Dickson-McNeile weapons imports, see also: Rafael Demaria, Historia de las armas de fuego en la Argentina, 1530-1852, Buenos Aires, Cabargon, 1972, pp.239-248.
Once in London, Sarratea made his government aware of Napoleon’s defeat and exile and of the Vienna Congress7. Although British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool received Sarratea informally, Lord Castlereagh, who was visiting the continent for the congress, did not. It is nevertheless significant that a British prime minister was willing to receive, even if informally, the emissary of a rebel province of an allied country. Sarratea soon became aware of the crucial importance the Spanish alliance held for British European policy in 1814-15. King Ferdinand was unwilling to compromise with his rebel colonies, even if formally they uprose in his name against the authority of the Cadiz government8. Thus, no British policy declaring the intention to intervene actively in favour of the independentists could have been explicit, on pain of breaking with Spain and altering the new European equilibrium9. The 1814 treaty of friendship and alliance between Spain and England (signed on the 5th of July) contains an explicit if secret clause prohibiting England from selling arms and supplies to aid rebel colonies. However, England had refused to help Spain reconquer its American colonies in exchange for special commercial privileges. Sarratea tried to buy time while purchasing weapons for his government. He also tried to divert from Buenos Aires the naval expedition that the Cadiz government had starting organizing in 1814, and that Ferdinand was ready to send against the rebel colonies. For this purpose, he publicized the news that Argentine emissaries were on their way to Europe to mediate a pacific agreement with the Spanish king and congratulate him on his restoration to the throne. Sarratea’s plan was to make Buenos Aires appear moderate and even loyal to the king, while also discrediting Ferdinand in the eyes of the British public, even by paying – with the aforementioned secret funds – journalists like William Walton to promote the independentist cause10. One reason Sarratea tried to influence British and European public opinion was that he knew that Spain would try to make its cause in America the cause of all the European monarchs at the Vienna Congress. Sarratea worked to reinforce the anti-Spanish parties in the main European courts and to promote the idea that the American separation from the mother country, which would open new commercial avenues for all nations, was inevitable11. Sarratea wanted to make it clear with his propaganda that it was
7 Sarratea suggested the Argentine emissaries leave for Madrid via London as soon as possible, initially with the goal to direct in Argentine favour the dispute between the king and the constitutional Cortes of Cadiz. 8 Sarratea also hoped that the presence of the Argentine emissaries would have induced Ferdinand to forge a political alliance with the Argentines against the Constitutional Cortes of Cadiz. 9 After Castlereagh’s return from Vienna in August, it became clear that Britain would not officially start a mediation with Spain on behalf of the South American independentists. 10 In 1818, Walton asked the Buenos Aires government to write him care of McNeile & Co in London, the firm of “Consul” Staples’s business partner. 11 Louis XVIII’s France, for example, sought not only to defend monarchism and absolutism, but also to improve its own commerce and not displease the French trade community. On 5 January 1815, Sarratea wrote to his government that in Paris there were rumours that “el Congreso de Vienna ha aconsejado al rey Fernando a que varie de condocta, observandole que la actual lo expone a perderse”, with reference to Latin America. The Congress, however, took no such official position. impossible for the British ministry to help Spain reconquer its colonies, even if Spain had explicitly requested Britain to do so, because British public opinion was hostile. By this point, Sarratea had abandoned his plan of gaining autonomy for Buenos Aires as part of the Spanish Empire. In 1814 the conquest of the loyalist city of Montevideo by the Argentine forces in America and the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the waters of the River Plate – with the indirect help of British agents and merchants – gave Buenos Aires greater bargaining power. However, divisions soon emerged in the ranks of the independentists and political stability in Río de la Plata was threatened by the dispute between the government of Buenos Aires and Gervasio Artigas, the head of the Federal party. Thus, Sarratea changed his plans. He was informed of the intention of former Spanish king Charles IV to apply to the Vienna Congress for arbitration in the dispute with his son Ferdinand over the throne. Sarratea decided to introduce the American question to the tempestuous Spanish royal family through his negocio de Italia – a plan to crown Francisco da Paula, the third son of Charles IV, as the king of an independent American kingdom that included both the former viceroyalty of Río de la Plata and Chile. To make the proposal, Sarratea sent the afrancesado Earl of Cabarrus to Rome – where Charles IV lived. The old king initially agreed to the plan, but after the Battle of Waterloo and the consequent reinforcement of Ferdinand’s position on the throne, Charles changed his mind. In the meantime, the two Argentine emissaries to the Spanish court, General Manuel Belgrano and the former secretary of the Second Triumvirate Bernardino Rivadavia, left for Madrid via Rio de Janeiro and London, assigned with the task of obtaining, according to their instructions, either the independence of the American “continent” under a Bourbon king, or consistent autonomy for Americans in every branch of the administration under the king of Spain, or consistent help from a major power (Britain, Russia, France, Germany or the United States) to achieve independence, even against Spanish will (and possibly crown a British prince). However, Sarratea believed that the best strategy was once again to buy time and wait for good news on the military campaigns in America. After learning that the naval expedition from Cadiz of 1815 had been directed against Venezuela and not Buenos Aires, he did what he could to muddy the waters, including using the argument that trust in the king had been broken as soon as he had attacked his American subjects in Venezuela. To add to the confusion, Sarratea took the steps to, among other things, disavow Rivadavia’s authority as an Argentine representative for the Spanish government and present himself as the right interlocutor12. Through this behaviour, Sarratea almost paralyzed the Spanish initiative until 1816. That same year, on 9 July, the United Provinces of the River Pate declared their independence in Tucumán. Both Belgrano and General
12 As an agent of Sarratea, Cabarrus even tried to persuade the Spanish government that it was in the best interest of Spain to have an allied but independent monarchy in Río de la Plata to limit Portuguese expansion in America, since the “Portuguese party” in Buenos Aires was strong. San Martín strongly influenced the decision to take this step13. And by the end of 1816 San Martín had started his successful Andes Campaign against the Spanish. British merchants and political agents in “Consul” Staples’s circle contributed to San Martín’s campaigns in Chile and Peru by furnishing the Argentine and Chilean governments and armies with weapons, warships and credit14. By this point, Alvear had already been exiled to Brazil. Appointed Supreme Director after Posadas to ease his policy of rapprochement with Spain, knowing of Ferdinand’s unwillingness to negotiate, and under threat of the Spanish naval expedition, on 25 January 1815 Alvear wrote Lord Castlereagh a letter in which he asked for a British protectorate in Argentina. That very same day, Staples received a copy of this letter. He sent it informally to the Foreign Office in March. Staples was aware that Alvear’s leadership was at risk, chiefly because of his policy towards Spain, and he feared anarchy in Río de la Plata as a result of Alvear’s fall. It is likely that Staples himself – who at the beginnings of 1815 was still unaware of the new Anglo-Spanish treaty of alliance– helped Alvear formulate his strategy regarding Britain. In fact, it is difficult to imagine that in deciding to ask for a British protectorate Alvear did not consult the British “consul” in Buenos Aires15. Alvear sent Manuel García (a friend of “Consul” Staples and Sarratea) to Brazil to deliver to Lord Strangford his letter addressed to Castlereagh and to learn the destination of the Cadiz expedition. However, rumours about the Anglo-Spanish talks regarding the aforementioned treaty reached Rio de Janeiro and García decided not to forward officially the letter to Strangford and Castlereagh, thus abandoning the idea of a British protectorate in Argentina. Instead, he tried unsuccessfully to enter into a peace agreement with the Spanish representatives in Rio de Janeiro. He even proposed that the Portuguese prince regent either mediate with the Spanish king to obtain a truce (and recall the naval expedition) and secure negotiations with the rebel colonies or ask all the major powers in Vienna to convince Spain to change its repressive policy towards Latin America (thereby preventing Jacobin and Republican ideas from spreading in America in response to the repression)16. Although Portugal could not enter into such an explicit agreement, when the Spanish representative at the Vienna Congress asked the Portuguese representative to join an alliance to defend their European and American possessions, the Portuguese did not accept. García finally considered asking for a Portuguese protectorate in Río de la Plata, as recounted by the United States
13 See the forthcoming article of Carolina Crisorio, El proceso de emancipación rioplatense frente al congreso de Viena en “Actas del XI Congreso Internacional de ADHILAC”. 14 At the Foreign Office they knew much of that. I have demonstrated that in a forthcoming article entitled The Space of imperialism? An informal consul in Río de la Plata. 15 Furthermore, both Staples’s former business partner Juan Larrea and Staples’s friend Nicolas Herrera were part of the small group of Argentine politicians that decided to request a protectorate. 16 As we have seen, according to Sarratea, the Vienna Congress had already issued a similar recommendation. representative at the Portuguese court, but neither the British nor the North Americans supported this idea17. Alvear’s fall on 15 April 1815 put an end to a phase of Argentine politics that had been characterized by the attempt to obtain actual autonomy for Buenos Aires, albeit under Spanish or British protection and as part of one of these two empires. The subsequent phase would mainly be marked by an armed struggle for independence. And once it was understood that Spain was not disposed to a mediation that would grant concrete autonomy to the rebel colonies, especially regarding trade, even England was forced to provide its indirect support for Argentine independence in an informal way. I contend that the area in which British agents acted informally constitutes a place where we can identify an implicitly admissible British will to reinforce the positions of independentists in America. It is possible to answer that to concretely help the Río de la Plata government carry out its strategy to achieve autonomy and then independence from Spain in 1813- 16 was arguably not the objective of the British government but rather that of a small group of merchants and officials. Yet the Foreign Office was also aware of much of what was going on. When Staples helped finance Saratea’s mission, he had just returned from London where he would have had various meetings and epistolary exchanges with Castlereagh about the policy to be implemented in Buenos Aires to stem French and US influence. He was therefore well acquainted with both the official viewpoint and that which Castlereagh could have verbally confided to him. Though neither Cadiz nor Buenos Aires had officially recognized his assignment as consul, at the time Staples was convinced this would happen. It is therefore difficult to imagine that Staples would have set out to informally support something like the Sarratea mission without having reason to believe that his decision to do so would be tacitly approved by Castlereagh. The same could be said of his role in the Alvear matter. Furthermore, he informed Castlereagh and Hamilton about his steps and opinions, sometimes indirectly, but always showing clearly what strategy he was supporting. The present study provides evidence implying that, during the delicate negotiations that took place in Vienna and led to the construction of the new European equilibrium – and once the Anglo- Spanish alliance was secured –, British political agents did informally support the attempts of Argentine emissaries to mediate and temporize as well as to become stronger, militarily and otherwise, with respect to Spain to prevent the new Argentine regime from imploding thus leaving room for either a brutal Spanish reconquest (that would have closed the doors to trade) or endemic anarchy in a strategic area of the southern Atlantic. We could perhaps say that there was a broad intermediate area between what British agents could do and what the Foreign Office would
17 Carlos Goñi-Demarchi, José Scala, La diplomacia argentina y la restauración de Fernando VII, Buenos Aires, 1968, p. 160. disavow, and that possibly within this area we can locate a British political strategy to informally support the Río de la Plata independentists during the period of the Vienna Congress. Sarratea, on the other hand, concretely used his freedom of movement to buy time in a changing scenario, thus avoiding a severing of relations with the Spanish government until the situation improved. García, on the other hand, acted within a different kind of “intermediate area” because his initiatives were not disavowed by his government even if he did not implement his government’s plans (Alvear’s request for the protectorate), thus preventing Buenos Aires from being subjected to an official refusal from Britain that would reinforce Spain’s position during the final phase of the Vienna Congress.
Primary Sources:
AGN (Archivo General de la Nación argentina) X 1-1-5; X 1-1-6; X 1-3-5; X 2-1-1; Solicitudes civiles y militares (1815-1816); Libros mayores y manuales de aduana (1813-1819). TNA (The National Archives) FO 72/157; FO 72/171; FO 72/178.