U N I T E D S T A T E S - B R I T I S H R I V A L R Y IN L A T I N
AMERICA, 1815-1830: A REASSESSMENT*
By J o h n J . J o h n s o n
The Treaty of Ghent formally ended the War of 1812, but left
unresolved several issues that had contributed to the outbreak of
hostilities initially. From Washington's perspective, the most serious
omission was the treaty's failure to deal with impressment and
search as practiced on the high seas by Great Britain. From London's
vantage point, the treaty had done nothing to check the advance of
the United States, already the major challenger to Great Britain's
commercial supremacy in the Atlantic community and, after the
downfall of Napoleon, the remaining source of Jacobin infection.
Differences over fishing rights on the Newfoundland banks, fortifications on the Great Lakes, relations with the Indian tribes of the Old
Northwest, and the parceling of the Pacific Northwest wilderness,
all unattended by the treaty, remained as potential sources of tension. Later, the British West Indian trade opened up yet another area
of possible discord. Finally, an adversary relationship existing between Secretary of State, and later President, John Quincy Adams
and Foreign Secretary, and later Prime Minister, George Canning,
crucial decision-makers during much of the period under review,
negatively influenced relations between the two governments.
In the spirit of the age, contemporaries were inclined to accept that
international issues must ultimately be decided in combat and, thus,
that the Treaty of Ghent would at best postpone the day of another
military confrontation between the two powers. The effusions of
publicists and editors and a loud and effective vox populi of that
persuasion on both sides of the Atlantic drowned out the appeals of
peace advocates1; but, somehow, common sense prevailed, and war
was averted.
It is not the purpose of this article to enter the debate over how
near the United States and Great Britain came to armed combat or
why war was avoided during the decade and a half after the Treaty
*) Research on this project was partially supported by a grant from the American
Council of Learned Societies during the summer of 1982 and by the Latin American
Institute of Stanford University.
] ) Merle E. Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860,
Durham 1929.
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of Ghent. Rather, its objective is to establish that if in fact disagreements with strong potential for conflict actually existed, neither
country chose to exacerbate them, as they sought to weld alliances,
and create centers of influence in those New World nations evolving
out of the struggles for independence against the Iberian powers.
Realistically the immediate future of large areas within the collapsing Spanish empire - Cuba, the Floridas, Texas, Panama, the Banda
Oriental (Uruguay), the island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile rested primarily in the hands of foreign powers, most notably Great
Britain and the United States. Spain had become politically ineffective by 1819. Portugal was firmly tied to Great Britain. France had
eliminated itself from serious contention for influence in the emerging nations by first having fallen victim to Napoleon's ambitions,
then by involving itself on the peninsula in support of King Ferdinand, the arch-enemy of Spain's former colonies, and finally by
the Quai d'Orsai failing to recognize the independence of the insurgent colonies for several years after the State Department and the
British Foreign Office had done so2. Any aspirations that Russia may
have had for sharing in the future of the area ceased as early as
October-November 1818, when, at Aix-la-Chapelle, Lord Carstlereagh insisted "that allied intervention in the colonial question be
restricted to offers of good offices that precluded the notion of
collective force"3. Quite aware that British policy was backed by the
most powerful navy in the world, the tsar, aware too, of the decrepit
condition of his own fleet, abandoned the force of arms as a viable
instrument of Russian New World objectives and thereby, in effect,
left the field to other powers. The new states themselves, torn by
dissension and with undisciplined armies and non-existent fleets,
were in no position to withstand determined attacks upon their
territorial flanks by major powers.
Given their unchallenged status and interests in Latin America,
London and Washington might well have escalated tensions over
several issues had that been an objective. Trade and commerce with
Latin America, for instance, were at the economic forefront as each
2 ) H. W . V. Temperley, "The Later American Policy of George Canning", American
Historical Review, 11 Quly, 1906): 791; London Times, Sept. 2, 1829, p. 2.
3 ) Russell H. Bartley, Imperial Russia and the Struggle for Latin American
Independence,
1808-1828, Austin 1978, p. 129.
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nation sought to steal the march on the other. As before the War of
1812, the United States considered commercial questions from the
standpoint of a neutral; England from that of a great seapower
whose security and prosperity rested heavily upon its domination of
the Atlantic.
Then, too, for a decade after the first colonies openly declared for
separation from Spain, the United States and Great Britain stood on
opposed sides on the matter of independence. From the first,
Washington favored full emancipation. For its part, London, entangled in European diplomacy and still at war with Napoleon when
widespread insurgency began in Latin America, made a number of
attempts to mediate between Spain and its colonies. The British
Foreign Office, meanwhile, insisted on the abolition of the slave
trade as a prerequisite to recognition of the Latin American patriots4.
In the Unites States any mention of slavery raised awkward sectional
issues left unresolved by the Missouri Compromise. Furthermore,
the principle, strongly advocated throughout the era by the United
States and equally strongly rejected by Great Britain, that the Old
World and the New represented separate areas of international
action and that the less political contact there was between them the
better was a matter of potential controversy5. Finally, the United
States favored republicanism; Great Britain, monarchism.
4 ) Lionel Hervey, named to head the British commission to Mexico to report on the
conditions of the country with a view to recognition, was explicitly instructed to
determine if Mexico had abjured and abolished the slave trade. See George Canning's
instructions to Hervey, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Foreign Office (hereinafter
PRO FO), 50/3, Oct. 10, 1823. Herbert A. Smith, Great Britain and the Law of Nations,
2 vols., London 1932, 1: 127-131, incorrectly dates the instructions as Oct. 10, 1822.
C. K. Webster, Britain and the Independence of Latin America, 1812-1830, 2 vols., London
1938, 1: 433-436, correctly gives the year as 1823. Similar instructions, with some
verbal differences, were given to a commission named to Colombia and led by Col.
J. P. Hamilton, and to Woodbine Parish, C. R. Nugent, and Thomas Rowcroft, named
as consuls to Argentina, Chile, and Peru respectively. See Webster, Britain and
Independence, 1: 433-436, notes.
5 ) For contemporary views on the "American Family" concept, see John Quincy
Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols., Philadelphia 1875, 4 : 4 3 8 ; 5 : 1 7 6 ; and the remarks of Senator Robert Hayne (South Carolina) in
U.S., Congress, Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st sess., 1825/26, 2:
166-167. Joseph B. Lockey, Pan-Americanism: Its Beginnings, New York 1920,
pp. 420 ff., contains an extended discourse of the concept. Other discussion may be
found in Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1826-1867, Baltimore 1933, and Arthur
P. Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline, Ithaca 1954.
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To be sure, the above issues on occasion invited verbal sallies, but
nothing remotely suggesting that the two countries might be on a
collision course. Nagging disagreements over the rights of neutrals
became moot when Great Britain quietly discontinued the practice of
impressment6, a decision hailed by the British commercial community7. Differences over the degree of autonomy of the Spanish
colonies had receded into the background by 1820. Repeatedly
rebuffed by Spanish authorities, the British Foreign Office in 1818
finally had abandoned its efforts to bring about a reconciliation of
metropolis and colonies. It then temporarily pursued an equally
unsuccessful policy meant to influence Spain to accept its losses.
Despite Great Britain's continued efforts to reconcile differences
between Spain and the States formerly under its administration,
Whitehall, for all intents, had by 1820 embraced the United States'
position that the breakaway colonies must ultimately gain full independence for, among other reasons, the purpose of regularizing
international trade and giving the new states a legal and responsible
position in the world8.
As late as the mid-1820s, the United States feared that Great
Britain would, at any moment, exploit the slavery issue. Washington's concern became particularly acute on the occasion of the
) H. G. Nichols, The United States and Britain, Chicago 1975, p. 20.
0 London Times, July 2 8 , 1 8 2 6 , p. 2, for example, noted that the "right" of search had
outlived its usefulness and had in fact become a detriment to British trade because the
liberated people of Latin America had adopted the practice in the form of privateers.
For a discussion of privateering in the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Pacific, see infra.
8 ) See Canning to Richard Rush, Foreign Office, Aug. 20, 1823, in William Ray
Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the
Latin American Nations (hereinafter Manning, Dip. Cor.), 3 vols. (New York 1925), 3:
1478-1479; and idem to idem, Liverpool, Aug. 23, 1823, Manning, Dip. Cor., 3: 1428.
For two versions of Secretary Adam's reaction to Canning's proposal, see Adams to
Rush, Washington, Nov. 29, 1823, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 210-212, and H. U.
Addington to George Canning, Washington, Dec. 1, 1823, in Webster, Britain and
Independence, 2: 501-508. As early as 1818, President Monroe had entertained the idea
of joint action with Great Britain leading to recognition of the insurgents, but official
Washington was not ready to move toward recognition at that time. See Perkins, The
Monroe Doctrine, p. 49. For a quite full and frank coverage of the arguments in favor of
recognition by Great Britain, see Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), new
ser., 10 (1823): 970-1009; and new ser., 11 (1823): 1344-1405, 1475-1478. Also see Sir
James Mackintosh, Substance of a Speech of Sir James Mackintosh in the House of Commons,
June 15, 1824, on Presenting a Petition from the Merchants of London for the Recognition of
the Independent States in the Countries of America formerly subject to Spain (London 1824).
6
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Panama Congress of 1826. Whitehall, however, invariably drew back
before pushing the new republics to the point of their insisting that
treaties with them be contingent upon Washington following London's lead9. As it turned out, the racial fulminations of John Randolph of Roanoke during the debates over United States representation at the Panama Congress probably did more to muddy the
United States' image in Latin America than any action taken by
London to exploit Anglo-American ethnocentric attitudes and practices10.
The United States' idea, commonly referred to as the "American
Family" concept, meanwhile, failed to produce diplomatic tensions
for the simple reason that the newly established countries early and
firmly rejected it. The creation under the sponsorship of Great
Britain of the Brazilian Empire, headed by Pedro I of Portugal's royal
family, the Braganzas, was the clearest stand the nations took
against the American family concept. It did now, however, take
profound perception by the leaders of republican bent to be aware,
first, that the United States steadfastly refused to deny any ambition
it might have to acquire Spanish American territory, or second, that
Washington had no intention of protecting them from inroads by
European powers unless it be in the direct interest of the United
States to do so. Monroe, Adams, and others after them made clear
that alliances calling for military cooperation were out of the question, and, furthermore, that the United States would not allow its
hands to be tied by Latin Americans when dealing with either
problems or opportunities in the Caribbean. During the debates on
the Panama Congress, the United States made explicit its determination to act independently". Furthermore, as early as 1822, with the
') For British concern over slavery, see Smith, Great Britain and the Law of Nations, 1:
185-187.
10) For Randolph's slurs, see U.S., Congress, Register of Debates in Congress,
19th
Cong., 1st sess., 1825/26, 2, pp. 114-132; American Commercial Advertiser (Baltimore),
Mar. 3, 1826, p. 2; United States Telegraph (Washington, D.C.), Mar. 6, 1826, p. 3,
Mar. 7, 1826, p. 3, Mar. 8, 1826, p. 2, Mar. 9, 1826, p. 2, and Apr. 5, 1826, p. 2.
n ) See, for example, Senator Levi Woodbury (New Hampshire), in U.S., Congress,
Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 2d sess., 1826/27, 2, pp. 187-194, and
Senator John M. Berrien (Georgia) in U.S., Congress, Register of Debates in Congress,
19th Cong., 2d sess., 1826/27, 2, p. 641.
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Floridas, filibusters, and official oratory in mind, next-door neighbor
Mexico had identified the United States as its sworn enemy12.
The creation of federal republics and the proscription of monarchy
on the ruins of the Old World empires permeated Washington's
Latin American policy during the 1818-30 period. In one way or
another, instructions to special envoys and ministers posted to the
republics carried that message in certain terms. At times, Washington alerted agents to the benefits of republicanism. "You will be
sensible that the United States cannot fail to take a deep interest in
the establishment of a Republican Government in those Provinces
[Venezuela and Colombia] from a belief that the people will be
happier under it, and the greater confidence which must exist, in
consequence of it, between us"13. A decade later Secretary of State
John Quincy Adams informed Richard E. Anderson, appointed
minister to Colombia, that "the Republic . . . has a constitution . . .
almost identical with our own . . . With such a constitution, in such
a country, the modifications which experience may prove to be
necessary . . . will make their own way by peaceable and gradual
conquests of public opinion." Adams continued, "the emancipation
of the South American continent opens to the whole race of man
prospects for futurity, in which this Union will be called, in the
discharge of its duties to itself and to unnumbered ages of posterity,
to take a conspicuous and leading part. It involves all that is precious
in hope, all that is desirable in existence, to the countless millions of
our fellow creatures which, in the progressive revolution of time,
this hemisphere is destined to rear and to maintain"14. The instructions that Joel R. Poinsett received on the occasion of his being
named United States minister to Mexico admonished him to show an
unobtrusive readiness to explain the workings of the federal republi-
u ) Charles Griffin, The United States and the Disruption
of the Spanish Empire,
1810-1822,
New York 1968, pp. 106-110; J. Fred Rippy, Joel R. Poinsett: Versatile
American, Durham 1935, p. 106.
13) Secretary of State James Monroe to Alexander Scott, United States Agent to
Caracas, Washington, May 14, 1821, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 14-16.
" ) Adams to Richard C. Anderson, Washington, May 27, 1823, in Manning, Dip.
Cor., 1: 192-208, esp. pp. 199, 208.
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can system15. Secretary of State Henry Clay sounded much the same
theme in his instructions to William Miller, appointed United States
Chargé d'Affaires to the United Provinces of Central America. "You
will answer, in the most frank and full manner, all enquiries from
that government having for their object information as to the practical operation of our own, or any of our Institutions"16.
Official correspondence, meanwhile, left little doubt in respect to
the incompatibility of monarchy with the objectives of the New
World, as Washington conceived those objectives.
"A hankering after Monarchy has infected the politics . . . of
Buenos Ayres, and being equally contrary to the true policy of the
Country . . . has produced its natural harvest of unappeasable dissentions, sanguinary civil Wars, and loathsome executions . . . The
Independence of an American nation can never be completely secured
from European sway, while it tampers for authority with the families
of European Sovereigns. It is impossible that a n y great American
interest should be served by importing a petty prince from
Europe . . . The special right that we have to object to them, is, that
they are always connected with systems of subsurviency to E u r o p e a n interest: to projects of political and commercial p r e f e r e n c e s
to that European nation from whose stock of Royalty the precious
scion is to be engrafted"17.
The British government wished no less that the former Spanish
colonies would opt for monarchical systems as providing the surest
link between the Old and New Worlds. For a decade after
insurgency swept over the empire, Whitehall, as noted above,
would have had the colonies remain under Spain, but with increased
self-government and freedom of trade18. Although attempts to hold
15) Secretary of State Henry Clay to Joel R. Poinsett, Washington, Mar. 26, 1825, in
Department of State "Instructions", 10: 236, as cited in Theodore E. Burton, "Henry Clay,
Secretary of State, Mar. 7, 1825, to Mar. 13, 1829", in Samuel Flagg Bemis, ed., The
American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, 10 vols., New York 1928, 4:115-158.
Also see Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 229-33.
" ) Clay to Miller, Washington, Apr. 22, 1925, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 239-241.
John Quincy Adams to Caesar A. Rodney, appointed United States Minister to
Buenos Aires, Washington, May 17, 1823, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 196-192.
18) See Michael P. Costeloe, "Spain and the Latin American Wars of Independence:
The Free Trade Controversy, 1810-1820", Hispanic American Historical Review (hereinafter HAHR), 61 (May 1981): 209-234; Timothy E. Anna, "Spain and the Breakdown of
the Imperial Ethos", HAHR, 62 (May 1982): 254-272.
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the empire intact failed, Canning did not despair of seeing the
colonies embrace the monarchical system. As the moment for recognition of them as sovereign states approached, he, in a secret
communication to Lionel Hervey that spoke specifically of Mexico
but in terms equally applicable to all the former empire, identified
four conditions that in his view worked in favor of monarchism.
They were (a) the constitution of Mexican society, (b) the great
number of large proprietors, (c) the wealth and influence of the
clergy, and (d) the long experience of viceregal administration
invested with monarchical forms19. Woodbine Parish, Great Britain's
consul general in the Plata region, added to Canning's list the
profound ignorance of the native populations, which disqualified
them from coping successfully with representative government20.
Canning's enthusiasm for monarchy was shared by many of the
agents he posted to Latin America. Lord Ponsonby, for example,
wrote from Buenos Aires, "I do feel a peculiar desire to see the
throne of the Emperor [Pedro I of Brazil] secure, to see the House of
Braganza, ancient ally of our king flourish in prosperity and honor,
and to see the Monarchical Principle take root, and pierce deep into
the soil of America"21. Colonel Patrick Campbell, a British commissioner in Bogotá, clung to the belief that Colombia would be ripe
for monarchy for at least as long as Bolivar survived22.
As a general rule, United States and British agents near the Latin
American governments reported those conditions that favored the
objectives of their home offices. There were, however, important
exceptions, only a few of which need to be recalled here. For reasons
less than complimentary to Portuguese royalty, Henry M. Brackenridge wrote: "Looking at the Brazils, therefore, as a rival, and in the
nature of things she must be such, it may be well that she is placed
under a race of kings not likely to inspire the formidable energy of
our republic, but rather to dissipate the force of the body politic, in
19) Canning to Hervey, Secret, Oct. 10, 1823, in Webster, Britain and Independence, 1:
436-438. Also see Canning to Sir William à Court, Oct. 18, 1822, in Webster, Britain
and Independence, 1: 390-93, and Frederick Lamb to Canning, Aranjuez, June 20, 1825,
in Webster, Britain and Independence, 1: 442-447.
^ PRO FO 6/4, Parish to Canning, Buenos Aires, June 25, 1824.
21) PRO FO 6/16, Lord Ponsonby to Robert Gordon, Buenos Aires, Jan. 4, 1827.
PRO FO 18/66, P. Campbell to Lord Aberdeen, Bogotá, Sept. 13, 1829.
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childish projects, and royal extravagance"23. Six years later, Heman
Allen, reporting from Santiago, was convinced that the Chileans
were unprepared for the kind of federal republic Washington would
have them adopt. For him, if monarchy must be considered out of
the question, the country at least should have a strong central
government if the endless problems confronting it were to be overcome24.
Once Whitehall began recognizing the rising nations, some British
agents no longer felt compelled to defend monarchy and their
reports not unusually indicated either that republicanism was actually favored by the popular elements or, given the state of political
development in the area, was to be preferred over monarchy. Even
before London recognized Buenos Aires, Consul Woodbine Parish
wrote off monarchy in the Plata region as incompatible with the
sense of equality that existed in the population; if imposed, he said,
it could be maintained only with an army of foreigners25. The same
Lord Ponsonby who wished monarchy in Brazil well, saw no chance
of it succeeding in the Plata region26.
Admiral C. Fleming of the Royal Navy, assigned to the north coast
of South America, was among the most outspoken British representatives against monarchy, and by extension in favor of republicanism, and he enumerated six reasons why he believed as he did. First,
support for monarchy would come from godos [Spaniards] and twothirds of the clergy, not in the interest of their country, but because
the new republics would not listen to the pope as Spain had. Second,
immense distances would make ruling from a single location
extremely difficult. Third, regional divisions would add to the problems of any monarch. Fourth, there was an absence of a nobility with
extensive possessions and influence. Fifth, the military forces that a
monarch would expect to have would take all available funds, and
Henry M. Brackenridge, Voyage to South America Performed by Order of the American
Government in the Years 1817-1818, 2 vols., Baltimore 1819, 1: 156-157.
24 ) Allen to Adams, Santiago, Apr. 29, 1824, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 2: 1091-1095.
s ) PRO FO 6/4, Woodbine Parish to Canning, Buenos Aires, June 25, 1824. This
document may also be found in R. A. Humphreys, ed., British Consular Reports on the
Trade and Politics of Latin America 1824-1826, London 1940, pp. 1-25.
26 ) PRO FO 6/17, Ponsonby to Canning, Buenos Aires, Mar. 19, 1827.
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British bondholders would be left without a penny. Sixth, those who
had gained by the revolution would protect their interests27.
Even ardent monarchist Campbell, stationed in Bogotá, ultimately
felt compelled to ask the pertinent question. Would Latin America
accept a Protestant monarch? This was pertinent because the only
royal family of Catholic faith that Great Britain would accept for
kingships in Latin America was the Spanish branch of the Bourbons.
And, as was generally known, moreover, the head of the House,
Ferdinand VII, steadfastly refused to permit any one of the princes of
that line to accept kingdoms in the New World28.
As it turned out, neither the United States nor Great Britain let
political preferences stand in their way when pragmatic decisions
dictated otherwise; and thereby avoided another potential diplomatic donnybrook. The United States, in the interest of trade and
commerce, recognized Mexico when it was under the rule of
Emperor Augustin Iturbide, thereby giving that self-made monarch
at least temporary advantage over his republican opposition29. Two
years later, the Monroe administration recognized the Empire of
Brazil, thus becoming the first non - Latin American country to do
so. As in the case with Iturbide, United States recognition helped
Pedro I to consolidate his position in Brazil and his country's standing in the community of nations.
Great Britain dealt with republican governments as readily as the
United States did with monarchical Mexico and Brazil. To have done
otherwise would have been to sharpen the cleavage between liberal
United States and absolutist Europe, to the advantage of the
former30. Gran Colombia and Buenos Aires, both of which embraced
republicanism from the first, and Mexico, with Iturbide dethroned
and a federal republic installed, were the first three Latin American
nations with which Great Britain made treaties of amity, commerce,
^
PRO FO 18/73, C. Fleming to P. Campbell, Caracas, Oct. 20, 1829.
PRO FO 18/66, Campbell to Aberdeen, Bogotá, Dec. 6, 1829. The document
provides a good on-the-scene review of thoughts on monarchy and recognition of
whom the British government would consider acceptable as candidates for N e w
World kingships.
For a favorable United States appraisal of Iturbide, see Richmond Enquirer, Mar. 8,
1822, p. 1.
M ) Smith, Great Britain and the Law of Nations, 1: 120.
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and navigation, tantamount to recognition31. Not speaking for His
Majesty's Government but certainly for the commercial and industrial communities, the London Times in April 1826 favored republican
Argentina over imperial Brazil in their armed conflict over the Banda
Oriental. Reporting to Washington on that conflict, United States
Chargé d'affaires at Rio de Janeiro, Condy Raguet, wrote:
" T h e r e is not I believe, a single British subject scarcely, in this part of
South America, whether h e be a publick agent, naval C o m m a n d e r , or
Merchant, w h o is not desirous to see Brazil dispossessed of M o n t e
Video" 3 2 .
I have dwelled upon republicanism and monarchism for several
reasons. First, no other issue arising out of early United States British preoccupation with Latin America so clearly demonstrates
that preferences for political systems had little effect in the scale of
international relations, once "national interest" was at stake. Second, no other issue better establishes that the United States and
Great Britain could avoid disputes over abstract considerations, a
point made several decades later by Charles Evan Hughes, who,
speaking as secretary of state, noted that "foreign policies are not
built on abstractions. They are the result of practical conceptions of
national interest arising from some immediate exigency or stand out
vividly in historical perspective"33. During the 1810s and 1820s the
"national interest" was snugly linked to international commerce.
Newly independent Latin America, many believed, would rejuvenate the commercial spirit by immensely expanding the economic
opportunities of the western trading nations34. Third, no other issue
31) Smith, Great Britain and the Law of Nations, 1: 151-152, gives the following dates
for signing of the treaties: Buenos Aires, Feb. 2, 1825; Colombia, Apr. 18, 1825; and
Mexico, Dec. 26, 1826. The signing of the Mexican treaty was delayed because it
contained an article that was objectionable to the Foreign Office. Failure to ratify,
however, did not prevent the exchange of diplomatic agents from taking place. For
Canning's brilliant defense for recognizing governments created out of the former
Spanish empire before recognizing Brazil, see Canning to Henry Chamberlain, Consul
General at Rio de Janeiro, Jan. 12, 1825, in ibid., 1: 189-196.
32 ) Condy Raquet to Clay, Rio de Janeiro, June 27, 1826, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 2:
855-857.
33 ) Charles E. Hughes, "The Centenary of the Monroe Doctrine", in Annals of the
American Academy of Political Science, 111 (1924), supplement, p. 7.
The disappointments resulting from the failure of the republics to fulfill early
expectations of them are discussed below.
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so vividly underlines the self-interest with which Washington and
London went about carving out shares of the Latin American market. Although the United States was less than half a century old in
1820, the fulcrum of its diplomacy already had been firmly embedded in pragmatism35. Great Britain, meanwhile, was a nation of
established traders and shopkeepers for whom commerce was far
more important than constitutions36. The political influence of the
mercantile estate had grown steadily to the point where they and
their principal spokesman, Foreign Secretary Canning were able to
coerce His Majesty's Government to take measures designed to
protect their competitive position once the United States began
recognizing the former colonies as sovereign nations.
Well before Washington and London avowed, if not in print, at
least by their action, that their interests in Latin America were
overwhelmingly econoinic in nature, each had evolved independent
sets of policies for dealing with Anglo-America and Latin America.
Those policies were so distinct one from the other that there was
little chance for significant overlaps. I do not know, for example, of a
single instance in which either Washington or London so much as
proposed officially to make concessions in one of the regions in
exchange for concessions in the other. In other words, there were no
trade-offs. Latin America was not a pawn in United States-British
relations. Neither, however, was Latin America notably successful in
playing off the United States and Great Britain to its own advantage,
in considerable part because, during the late 1810s and throughout
the 1820s, the State Department and Foreign Office identified a wide
spectrum of issue areas where their goals coincided at critical points
and others where to act in concert was mutually advantageous. I
turn now to those Latin American issues that tended to produce
positively correlated policies and perhaps indirectly helped reduce
tensions arising from those Anglo-American matters left unresolved
by the Treaty of Ghent.
To find a discussion of trade and commerce in a section devoted to
issues on which the United States and Great Britain were in fundaœ ) For a contemporary discussion of pragmatism in United States foreign policies,
see the North American Review 10 (1820): 335.
* ) Algernon Cecil, British Foreign Secretaries, 1807-1916, London 1927, p. 69.
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mental accord may come as a surprise, because historians have often
cast trade and commerce as the agents provocateurs in the southern
hemisphere. Those who have held to that view I will call the rivalisi
or the rivalry school. The rivalists have essentially said that success
for one nation automatically meant failure for the other. They have
drawn support for their argument from reports of agents near the
governments of Latin America, the declarations of key individuals,
particularly Adams and Canning (while largely ignoring the Monroes and Jacksons and Castlereaghs), and the bombast of editors of
newspapers and journals on both sides of the ocean. Surely sources,
official and otherwise, abound with evidence that can be interpreted
to indicate that each country sought to do the other out of Latin
America. The practical interest of trade rendered such language
unavoidable, but it need not, and did not, in our case, add to
consequential international differences. Far from it. In fact, verbiage
aside, the evidence from the period argues for something quite
different.
By 1823, Washington and London had come to accept three
realities, the importance of which more than countered all diplomatic verbal acrobatics. First, the stages of industrial and commercial
development and complementary activities in the two countries
afford, perhaps, the best argument for their keeping economic
matters from leading to confrontation. Great Britain was a manufacturing nation and was soon to become heavily dependent on
imported foodstuffs. The United States, despite its remarkable
economic growth, still lived off its farms, forests, and fisheries. Its
principal stake in the Latein American market was wheat flour. With
interests so varied and evident, each country could respect the
other's trade without jeopardy to its own. Even John Quincy Adams,
encumbered as he was by his dislike and suspicions of His British
Majesty's Government, confided to his diary as early as June 1822:
"Do what we can, the commerce with South America will be more
important and useful to Great Britain than to us, and Great Britain
will be a power vastly more important to them than we, for the
simple reason that she has the power of supplying their wants by her
manufactures. We have few such supplies to furnish them . . ."37.
37
) Adams, Memoirs, 6: 26. The new nations were the ultimate losers. The British
maritime fleet and the services associated with international trade were so vastly
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Second, the one-sided advantage the British enjoyed in their
ability to supply overseas customers with dress goods was equalled
or exceeded by their ability to provide the venture capital so avidly
sought by the leadership of the emerging nations. Following the
Napoleonic Wars, the pace of economic expansion in England
slowed, interest rates plummeted, and British investors were driven,
or thought they were, to place their capital overseas where, theoretically, returns would be greater. London overnight became the
money capital of the Western world. Optimism generated by
expanding capitalism quickly seduced the little man tempted by the
prospect of sudden prosperity. A kind of peoples' capitalism, and
with it a tide of speculation, engulfed the nation. British investors,
large and small, by the thousands, were to pay dearly for snapping
up inadequately secured bonds of the infant Latin American nations
and mining equities marketed on the basis of figures meant to be
more impressive than precise38.
Third, no less important in defusing issues arising from trade and
commerce was the fact that, at least by 1826, policy-makers in
Washington and London had accepted that post-colonial Latin
America was not, as initially imagined, prodigal with promises, and,
in fact, gave numerous indications of lapsing into reduced activity, if
not economic depression. Given such low-keyed expectations, it
simply was not worth the risk of permitting issues arising from
economic competition to escalate beyond the regional level. Thus,
when occasionally tensions seemed to be developing, they were
resolved locally or simply forgotten after an initial flurry of excite-
superior to anything the new republics could muster that they not only could not
compete initiatlly but were restrained throughout the nineteenth century from
developing maritime-related activités. For an early statement of this by now well
accepted proposition, see USNA, J. M. MacPherson to Van Buren, Cartagena,
Dec. 14, 1829, Despatches from United Consuls in Cartagena, 1822-1906, roll I. See,
for example, Charles M. Ricketts to Canning, Lima, Dec. 27, 1826, in Humphreys,
ed., British Consular Reports, pp. 137-140.
M ) The negative experience of British bondholders and speculators in mining
ventures are discussed in numerous studies. See, for example, Harriet Martineau, A
History of the Thirty Years' War, 4 vols., London 1877-78, esp. vol. 2, chap. 2; J. Fred
Rippy, Rivalry of the United States and Great Britain over Latin America
(1808-1830),
Baltimore 1929, esp. chap. 1; Leland H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875,
London 1963; and John J. Johnson, "Foreign Factors in Dictatorship in Latin America",
Pacific Historical Review 20 (May 1951): 127-141.
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ment, generated, one often suspects, by the embroidered reports of
foreign agents concerned to justify their continued existence in
office39.
Rivalry thus becomes a tenable interpretation of what occurred in
the economic arena only if it can be established that the two foreign
offices had in mind the future potential of the republics as trading
partners. Convincing evidence that either Washington or London
before 1830 had a sustained, coherent economic policy stressing the
future rather than the present is lacking, and with good reason.
Widespread instability in Latin America and collapsing assumptions
as to its economic future, the opening of the Far East and the
Mediterranean region to commercial penetration, the ultimate alignment of those western European nations that had or were about to
cast off divine-right monarchy, and the uncertainties at home and
abroad over the prospects of the United States resolving regional
differences born of slavery and, if successful, in what direction it
would direct its natural and human resources (the British were
already firmly committed to industrialization and foreign trade), all
made long-range planning at the international level largely meaningless.
Neutrality, in the legal sense of a country refraining from taking
sides between two or more belligerents (today the less precise
nonalignment) in the military conflict between Spain and its insurgent colonies was in chronological terms the first issue on which the
United States and Great Britain were in accord. Without initially
resorting to legal enactments, both foreign offices by 1812 had made
known their determination not to commit military forces in support
of either side. The instructions of Joel R. Poinsett, appointed "Special
Agent of the United States to South America" and dated June 28,
1810, certified to Washington's decision to stay clear of the approaching storm while cherishing "the sincerest good will towards the
people of Spanish America . . ,"40. The British established their position during the negotiations that grew out of Whitehall's offer in
1811 to mediate between Spain and its colonies (a role that the
) For a more extended discussion of internal conditions in Latin America see infra.
" ) Robert Smith, Secretary of State to Joel Robert Poinsett, Washington, June 28,
1810, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 6-7.
s
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United States declined even to consider). Specifically, when Spain
made acceptance of mediation contingent upon Great Britain using
force against the colonies in case negotiations failed, the British
Foreign Office rejected outright Spain's terms41.
The better to comply with its responsibilities as a neutral, the
United States passed the Act of March 3, 1817. Sections 2 and 3 of
that act went to considerable lengths to prevent the outfitting in
United States ports of vessels to be used against nations with whom
the United States was at peace42. Still further to fulfill its commitment
to neutrality the United States on April 2,1818, passed an additional
act, section 2 of which made illegal the enlistment of United States
citizens as soldiers or seamen to serve on vessels of war, letters of
marque, or privateers and made offenders guilty of high misdemeanor43.
Popular sympathy for the insurgents or greed or official corruption, however, made United States neutrality a farce before and after
the enactment of legislation. Agents of patriot leaders had little
difficulty identifying private individuals willing to embark on illegal
enterprises favorable to the colonials and government officials to
wink at violations of federal laws. From New Orleans and Atlantic
ports, ships were sold and outfitted, military stores augmented, and
sailors recruited in plain sight of officials44. John Quincy Adams
singled out Baltimore as filled with private citizens, judges, and
government officers fanatical in the South American cause and
enthusiastic to circumvent neutrality legislation45. President Monroe
was close to the mark when in a lengthy justification for not
acknowledging the independence of the colonies he noted that they
41 ) John Rydjord, "British Mediation between Spain and Her Colonies: 1811-1813",
HAHR 21 (1941): 34-40; Castlereagh to Wellesley, Apr. 1, 1812, in Webster, Britain and
Independence, 2: 309-316; Instructions to the Commissioners of Mediation to Spanish
America, Apr. 2, 1812, in Webster, Britain and Independence, 2: 317-321.
Francis Deák and Philip C. Jessup, A Collection of Neutrality Laws, Regulations, and
Treaties of Various Countries, 2 vols., Washington, D.C. 1939, 2: 1084.
Deák and Jessup, A Collection of Neutrality Laws, 2: 1085-1086.
") Niles Weekly Register (Baltimore), Jan. 31, 1818, p. 371; Lockey, Pan-americanism,
pp. 172-175.
Adams, Memoirs, 4: 318; 5: 159; Ernest May, The Making of the Monroe Doctrine,
Cambridge, Mass. 1975, p. 63. For alleged violations of United States neutrality laws
by agents of the Buenos Aires government, see John Quincy Adams to John M.
Forbes, July 5, 1820, in U.S., Congress, American State Papers: Legislative and Executive,
4, Foreign Relations, p. 820.
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were already receiving all the advantages the United States could
grant them as sovereign nations46.
When it came to the struggle between Spain and its colonies, the
British were no more respecters of neutrality laws than were citizens
of the United States. Even as His Majesty's Government posed as an
ally of Spain, as British mediators shuttled back and forth between
London and the peninsula, and Whitehall, until 1819, refused to
grant the beleaguered colonies belligerent status, the British public
openly flouted their nation's neutrality47. Also, practically from day
one, British naval officers and sailors were prominent in the insurgent navies. Then, with the Napoleonic Wars at an end and England's economy sagging, young British and Irish males turned to
Latin America in search of employment in a profession for which
they had been bred or simply for adventure. In 1818 alone, six British
expeditionary forces were illegally dispatched to South America's
north coast. There they were formed into the "British Legion". Its
ranks filled with seasoned and disciplined men, commanded by
experienced officers, the Legion served brilliantly under Bolivar. The
passage of the Foreign Enlistment Act in 1819 did not curb the
enthusiasm for the insurgents. Agents for the patriots recruited
openly in Ireland. British and Irish troops other than those in the
Legion ultimately fought in every region of South America where
war raged. British war matériel, meanwhile, arrived by the shipload.
In a cynical way some British merchants were more respectful of
their nation's neutrality than were soldiers and sailors. In Peru, for
example, when the struggles were reaching a climax, British merchants reportedly supplied "with an impartial neutrality both parties
with all the means of war they have: General Rodil, General Bolivar,
& Admiral Guise and even trust b o t h parties still"48. British support
James Monroe, "Sketch of Instructions for Agent for South America - Notes for
Department of State", in The Writings of James Monroe, Including a Collection of his Public
and Private Papers . . ., ed. J. M. Hamilton, 7 vols., New York 1898-1903, 6: 92-102.
47) Edward H. Tatum, Jr., The United States and Europe, 1815-1823:
A Study in the
Background of the Monroe Doctrine, Berkeley 1936, pp. 151-153. Tatum's summary is
based upon official United States documents and accounts in the leading journals of
the day.
" ) PRO FO 61/2, Enclosure, Rowcroft to Canning, Lima, July 15, 1824. For added
evidence of British violations of neutrality see Richard Rush, United States Minister to
Great Britain, to John Quincy Adams, London, August 24, 1819, and idem to idem,
London, October 5, 1819, in Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 1456-7, 1458-9.
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of the colonies, particularly in the form of fighting personnel, was for
everyone to see and their presence had the effect of convincing the
insurgents that England, not the United States, was their true
friend49. Bolivar, meanwhile, accused the United States of having
become increasingly preoccupied with the "conduct of business
arithmetic"50.
Once the ultimate defeat of Spain became apparent, neutrality
ceased to be an immediate issue. The United States officially
revealed its unneutral position first by recognizing the new nations
and then by the terms laid down in President Monroe's annual
message of 1823. England, with the reliable Royal Navy at its back,
was disposed to move more slpwly and subtly than Washington, but
no less determinedly. It removed all pretenses of neutrality or
posture of an ally of Spain when it informed France and the Holy
Alliance that their interference in the New World in support of
Madrid would be intolerable51.
Neutrality again became an issue when in 1825 war erupted
between Brazil and Argentina over control of the Banda Oriental. In
that crisis Washington and London played roles earlier rehearsed
during the independence struggles. The United States declared its
neutrality but it clearly favored Argentina. Great Britain, meanwhile,
resumed the role of mediator - this time with considerably greater
success than earlier - while also favoring the Argentines, but less
openly than did the United States.
From agreement on neutrality there followed, almost naturally,
concurrence on issues growing out of resort to privateers by Spain
and the insurgent colonies. The use of private vessels (privateers) to
harass enemy shipping had peaked in the North Atlantic during the
49
) H. W. V. Temperley, "The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1820-1827", in A. W.
Ward and C. P. Gooch, eds., The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783-1919,
N e w York 1923, p. 76; Charles O'Handy, Purser of the United States ship "John
Adams", to John Quincy Adams, Washington, Sept. 29, 1819, in Manning, Dip. Cor.,
2: 1178-1182, made a considerable point of Great Britain's popularity because of the
visibility of British officers and men.
x
) Vicente Lecuna, ed., Cartas del Libertador, 12 vols., Caracas 1929-59, 2: 157.
51
) PRO FO 146/56, Memorandum of a Conference between the Prince Polignac and
Mr. Canning, in Webster, Britain and Independence, 2: 115-120; also see William W.
Kaufmann, British Policy and the Independence of Latin America, N e w Haven 1951,
pp. 167-171.
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decades before the War of 1812 when the practice was sanctioned by
western seafaring nations, including the United States and Great
Britain. When Spain and its insurgent colonies found themselves
without meaningful navies, privateering was ready-made for them
and they quickly adopted it. Simply by issuing letters of marque and
reprisal that licensed the recipient to engage in privateering they
were in business.
As employed by the United States and Great Britain, privateers
adhered rather closely to accepted codes of conduct but there were,
nonetheless, infrequent excesses. What had been occasional excesses under established rules of trading nations became commonplace
during the independence wars and subsequently between warring
neighbors. Blank commissions were meted out indiscriminately and
as might be expected many fell into the hands of non-nationals and
not unusually into possession of individuals who had never set foot
in the country under whose flag they operated. Under such circumstances the promotion of liberty and independence gave way to
uncontrolled plundering and privateering and, in the view of
Washington and London, became indistinguishable from outright
pirating52.
In principle the United States and Great Britain were in full
agreement in their opposition to unregulated privateering. Because
they were at once sympathetic to and seeking the favor of the
revolutionaries, both foreign offices, however, initially assumed a
wait-and-see attitude. President Monroe could have been speaking
for both the State Department and Foreign Office when he acknowledged the concerns of shippers and traders while he was actually
pursuing a policy that (a) implicitly recognized that for peoples
without merchant marines, diplomatic wrangling over privateering
was a small price to pay in return for the benefits derived and (b)
avoided actions that might unduly embarrass the new states, and
52
) For complaints about irresponsible actions by privateers, see John Quincy
Adams to Caesar Rodney, John Graham, and Theodorick Bland, Special Commissioners of the United States to South America, Washington, Nov. 21, 1817, in Manning,
Dip. Cor., 1: 47-49; Adams to John B. Prévost, Special Agent of the United States to
Buenos Aires, Chile, and Peru, Washington, July 10, 1820, in ibid., 1: 134-137; Lewis
Winkler Bealer, The Privateers of Buenos Aires, 1815-1821, Berkeley 1935.
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invite retaliation in the future53. National self-interest also figured in
Monroe's stance. In particular, he feared that unrestrained privateering might lead to European intervention in the hemisphere54.
Indignance over the depredations of privateers (a licensed system
akin to piracy as some would have it) could not be indulged indefinitely. The trading communities simply carried too great a political
clout for that to happen. And while Monroe hesitated, others, who
considered any crew that committed acts unknown to "civilized
warfare" as prima facie pirates, fueled the controversy. Less generous in his views of Latin America than was Monroe, Secretary of
State Adams belonged to that group. In his instructions to the
Rodney, Bland, Graham commission, named in 1817, Adams called
attention to ". . . irregular, injurious, and . . . unwarranted use of
their [the insurgents'] flags and of commissions real or pretended
derived from them"55.
H ) Monroe, Writings, 6: 92-102; James F. Vivian, "The Paloma Claim in United
States and Venezuelan-Colombian Relations, 1818-1826", Caribbean Studies 14, no. 4:
72; James D. Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 2 vols., Washington, D.C. 1897, 1: 186.
Bealer, The Privateers, chap. VIII.
55) Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 47-49; Watt Stewart, "The South American Commission,
1817-1818", HAHR 9 (1929): 31-59. For Adams's objections to Spain's use of privateers, see Adams to Hugh Nelson, United States Minister to Spain, Washington,
Apr. 28, 1823, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 166-185. For Adams's objections to the
practices of Colombia, see Adams to Confidential Agent Charles S. Todd, Washington, June 5, 1820, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:126-130. Adams's reasoning in respect to
privateering may be found in his instructions to John M. Forbes, Special Agent to
Chile or Buenos Aires, Washington, July 5,1820, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:130-133. In
his instructions to John B. Prévost, Special Agent to Buenos Aires, Chile, and Peru,
Washington, July 10,1820, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:133-137, Adams charged Prévost
with making "a very earnest Representation . . . to the Government" and to insist
upon the adoption of measures that would hold the captains and owners of privateers
under responsibility to the prize code. Joel R. Poinsett on an official mission in 1822,
stopped off in Puerto Rico to "remonstrate with the Spanish government there against
the depredations of privateers", and noted that "under the absurd pretext of blockading the whole coast of the Spanish Main, a few privateers cruise in the Mona and
Sombrero passages". Joel R. Poinsett, Notes on Mexico Made in the Autumn of 1822 . . .,
London 1825, pp. 5-6. For similar remonstrances against Argentina, see Forbes to
Adams, Buenos Aires, Mar. 10, 1821, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 569-572; Forbes to
Adams, Buenos Aires, Sept. 2, 1821, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 579-582; and Forbes to
Bernardo Rivadavia, Minister of Government and Foreign Relations of the United
Provinces of South America, Buenos Aires, Sept. 14, 1821, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:
583-584; and Griffin, The United States and the Disruption, pp. 103 ff.
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By 1819 the United States Congress had become impatient to the
point that it passed the Piracy Act. This act empowered the president
to order all commanders of United States publicly owned ships to
take any armed vessel "which shall have attempted or committed
any piratical aggression, search, restraint, depredation, or seizure
upon any vessel of the United States, or of the citizens thereof, o r
u p o n any other vessel: and also, to retake any vessel of the United
States, or its citizens, which may have been u n l a w f u l l y captured
upon the high seas"56. Privateers and pirates, nonetheless, continued
to operate and during the year following enactment of the Piracy
Act, two Baltimore citizens were convicted of piracy and executed
and others followed them to the galleys57.
Washington made clear as early as 1817 its exasperation with the
inability or unwillingness of the new governments to control their
illegal privateers. In that year United States gunboats participated in
the capture of Amelia Island, a Caribbean paradise for privateers and
smugglers and "a receptacle for fugitive negroes"58. The same year
the Li.S.S. Ontario was dispatched to the Pacific to protect United
States interests, especially the whaling fleet, endangered by Spanish
privateers59. And in 1819 the li.S.S. Firebrand was assigned to the
Caribbean to watch for privateers. The most notorious United States
response to privateering and piracy in the Caribbean is associated
with Commodore David Porter. In 1823 Porter took command of the
"Caribbean squadron". He was known to be an impetuous individual who firmly believed that "illegal privateers" and pirates
should not be given quarter. When one of his lieutenants landed at
Forardo, Puerto Rico, in pursuit of "pirates" and was "abused" by
Spanish officials, Porter concluded quickly that his lieutenant had
been prevented from doing his duty and that the United States flag
had been willfully insulted. With a landing party of seamen and
See Charles G. Fenwick, The Neutrality Laws of the United States, Washington,
D.C. 1913, pp. 35-41.
57
) Vivian, "The Paloma Claim", pp. 67-68; Griffin, The United States and the Disruption, p. 346; also see Adams to Hugh Nelson, Washington, Apr. 28,1823, in Manning,
Dip. Cor., 1: 166-185; and Adams to Forbes, Washington, July 11, 1820, in Manning,
Dip. Cor., 1: 138-139.
Adams to Caesar A. Rodney, John Graham, and Theodorick Bland, Special
commissioners of the United States to South America, Washington, Nov. 21, 1817, in
Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 47-49; Griffin, The United States and the Disruption, p. 103.
Griffin, The United States and the Disruption, p. 99.
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marines he marched into the town and informed the alcalde that he
was there to demand satisfaction for outrages heaped upon a United
States officer and for aggravated insult to the national flag. The
alcalde was allowed one hour for deliberation. Porter was given a
public apology by the officials and promises that they would thereafter respect United States officers. Thereupon Porter returned to his
boat and embarked. He had intimidated Spanish officials but not his
superiors. He was recalled to Washington and courtmartialed for
having taken hostile actions against a friendly power60.
Great Britain was decidedly more reluctant than was the United
States to confront privateers with force or the threat of force. Without criticizing the aggressive stance of the United States, the Foreign
Office, for several reasons, chose not to pursue a similar course.
First, when privateers began to range New World waters in large
numbers, London was theoretically allied with Spain and was offering its good offices as a mediator between the Iberian powers and
their colonies. Second, far stronger than the United States and
accordingly deferred to by all groups involved in the breakdown of
the empires, Great Britain, by cajoling, threat, or the dangled loan,
ordinarily could ultimately obtain satisfaction through diplomatic
channels. Third, policy-makers contended that to wage war on
privateers commissioned by the emerging nations could lead to
quarrels that might result in their being laid open to conquest by
their old masters. Fourth, and the overriding concern of British
officialdom, was that the right of visitation and search was invaluable to England, and to preserve it inviolate the royal navy dared not
systematically deny that "right" to others.
British merchants, consequently, throughout much of the 1815-30
period were left largely to their own devices. They, however,
received occasional help from an unexpected source, specifically, the
United States strike forces in the Caribbean. In the course of protecting those ships flying the stars and stripes the United States squadron captured British vessels that had previously been taken by
pirates and privateers and restored them to their rightful owners.
For that service representatives of the British trading community
M ) Archibald D. Trunbull, Commodore David Porter, 1780-1843,
chap. 13.
New York 1929,
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praised the United States in Parliament and newspapers while
accusing the Admiralty of supineness61.
One might have expected that privateering would have ceased to
be a major problem once the liberated populations were recognized
by Washington and London severed its alliance with Spain, but such
was not the case. President Monroe, who would have preferred to be
conciliatory, in his famous message to Congress on December 2,
1823, felt compelled actually to devote considerably more space to
the question of piracy and methods to combat it than to the nowfamous doctrine itself. The number of prizes taken by privateers
appears to have dropped temporarily following Monroe's declaration, thanks in part to measures taken against them by Argentina62,
but rose sharply when Spanish naval forces and privateers operating
out of Cuban and Puerto Rican bases stepped up the pressure on
Mexico and Colombia, and Mexico City and Bogotá responded by
commissioning privateers. Also, when, as noted above, Argentina
and Brazil renewed their struggle for control of the Banda Oriental,
privateers quickly increased in Caribbean waters and the coast of
Brazil swarmed with them to the detriment of international commerce63. That the United States once again responded more aggressively than did Great Britain is suggested by a London Times comment
on an incident involving the seizure by a Mexican privateer of a
United States brig. The Times exalted "now that they have commenced plundering American vessels, there may be some chance of
a stop being put to those shameful piracies"64.
As a nuisance to foreign shippers privateering was after 1825 often
supplanted by "paper blockades", involving at one time or another
vast stretches of the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Pacific coastlines.
During the Napoleonic Wars the United States and Great Britain had
been in opposed camps regarding the legality of naval blockades of
neutral carriers. By the late 1820s, however, His Majesty's Government had moved forcefully in favor of its commercial elements and
61
) Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), new ser., 7 (1822): 1725-1729,
1858-1866; Manchester Guardian, Nov. 9, p. 2, Dec. 7, 1822, p. 2.
62
) For Argentine moves against privateers, see "Minutes of a Conference", Buenos
Aires, Sept. 17,1821, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1: 585-587; and for the text of the decree
issued by the Buenos Aires government, ibid., 1: 590-591.
«) London Times, Sept. 10, 1828, p. 3; May 27, 1828, p. 3; Aug. 14, 1828.
M
) London Times, Aug. 14, 1828, p. 2.
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fully agreed with the United States that blockades as conducted by
Spain and by countries hitherto subject to it and Portugal were
invalid and in violation of established practices of international
trade. The reasoning of the State Department and the Foreign Office
ranged the spectrum from realistic appraisal to total disdain for the
qualities of the governments and individuals charged with carrying
out the blockades. Realistically neither Spain nor the emerging
nations possessed the naval resources systematically to patrol the
huge shorelines they decreed out of bounds to neutrals. Secretary
Adams made the United States' position clear in regard to Spain.
"The renewal of war in Venezuela has been signalized on the part of
Spanish commanders by proclamations of blockade unwarranted by
the laws of nations, and by decree regardless of those of humanity.
With no other naval force than a single frigate, a brig, and a schooner
. . . they have presumed to declare a blockade of more than twelve
hundred miles of coast . . Ζ'65. United States Chargé d'affaires in
Buenos Aires, John M. Forbes, reaffirmed Washington's stance in a
communication to Vice Admiral Rodrigo José Ferreira Lobo in command of the Brazilian blockading fleet in Argentine waters. Forbes
insisted that a blockade of an extensive coast,
" n o t supported by the active presence of a naval p o w e r c o m p e t e n t to
enforce its simultaneous, constant, a n d effective operation on every
point of s u c h coast, is illegal t h r o u g h o u t its whole extent, e v e n for
ports which m a y b e in actual blockade . . . " .
Since Brazil had declared 20 degrees latitude of the Argentine
coast in blockade and had assigned a single corvette to enforce the
decree, "if . . . there can exist anything like an imaginary blockade,
this is, most unequivocally, one of that description and consequently
wholly inadmissible on the part of the Government of the United
States"66.
The sheer lack of sufficient naval forces to effect blockades drew
most of Washington's fire but by no means all of it. During the 1820s
ω ) Adams to Nelson, Washington, Apr. 28,1823, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:166-185.
For an equally unequivocal position on blockade but worded somewhat more tactfully, see "Documents Relating to the Panama Mission", in U.S., Congress, Register of
Debates in Congress, 20th Cong., 2d sess., 1828/29, 2, Appendix, pp. 42-43.
" ) The Communication, dated Feb. 13, 1826, significantly was quoted in full in the
London Times, June 7, 1826, p. 2.
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almost every conceivable complaint was registered against the blockading powers. After Bolivar declared the coast of Peru in a state of
blockade it was reported to the State Department that his naval
officers would allow ships to violate the decree in return for a fee,
thereby making the purpose of the blockade to pillage neutrals
rather than to distress the enemy67. During a debate in the United
States Congress over Brazil's "paper blockade" or "alleged blockade"
of the Argentine coast, with consequent "embarrassment" of United
States commerce, a series of indictments were levelled against the
Court in Rio de Janeiro. It was charged with cupidity and rapacity,
using the blockade as a justification for violating neutral rights,
requiring ships sailing southward to be bonded against entering
Argentine ports (an unnecessary burden on shipowners and striking
evidence that the blockade was ineffective), sanctioning the practice
of blockading ships not to distinguish between vessels that may have
been attempting to elude the blockade and those in distress and
seeking a hospitable port, and holding United States citizens illegally. Such harrassments of neutrals and the Brazilian government's
unacceptable responses to official complaints against them had led
United States consul at Rio de Janeiro, Condy Raguet, to affront the
Brazilian government by demanding his passports without prior
approval of the State Department, an act that under somewhat
different circumstances might have led to war68.
Great Britain, entangled in European diplomacy and later in
Brazilian/Argentine affairs, did not at any time before 1830 pursue a
policy of systematically using its vast naval power against blockaders. As in the case of privateers, however, neither did it officially
criticize or seek to exploit the position taken by Washington. The
British commercial community, furthermore, clearly favored the
aggressiveness of Washington over the passivity of the Foreign
Office and Admiralty. Although extenuating circumstances pre67 ) William Tudor, United States Consul at Lima, to Adams, Callao, May 3, 1824, in
Manning, Dip. Cor., 3: 1749-1752.
a ) U.S., Congress, Register of Debatís iti Congress, 20th Cong., 1st sess., 1827/28, 4,
pp. 2509-2514. For the effects of blockades upon the interests of the United States, see
USNA, Joshua Bond to Secretary Clay, Montevideo, June 20, Oct. 28, Oct. 29, in
Despatches from United States Consuls in Montevideo, roll 1: "Most of the vessels bound
for Buenos Aires have either been ordered in here by the blockading squadron or
entered after being warned off, and have been compelled to sacrifice their cargoes in a
market overstocked with American products."
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vented Whitehall from pursuing a consistently stern policy against
blockaders, it was no less outraged than Washington with the
vexations British ships experienced in New World waters. And the
language used in official reports suggested a bitterness and contempt fully equal to that of the State Department's. Under the date of
February 27, 1829, the Foreign Office informed Consul Woodbine
Parish in Buenos Aires "with reference to the Decree of blockade by
the Peruvian government of the coast of Columbia [sic] on the
pacifick [sic] . . . I am directed to acquaint you that H. M. Government have been informed that the naval force of Peru is quite
inadequate towards carrying the blockade into effect. Under these
circumstances the blockade . . . will not be recognized by this country"69. Official British contempt for the blockading forces of the new
nations may well have peaked a year earlier when Lord Ponsonby,
who on behalf of the Foreign Office was seeking to mediate the
Brazilian/Argentine controversy, reported from Buenos Aires that
"the Brazilians are too weak to maintain the blockade - it seems
indeed almost ridiculous to us who are on the spot to imagine they
will do anything that requires activity, skill, or courage"70.
When unable to obtain satisfaction through diplomatic channels
and local courts, Washington and London sporadically turned to
their navies and marines to redress grievances. Their resort to force,
whether for purposes of retaliation, coercion, the protection of
property, losses sustained or the well-being of their subjects,
followed from the conclusion first reached by the State Department
and soon thereafter by the Foreign Office that the insurgents and
Spain were more influenced by physical force than by the force of
reason. From another perspective the early showing of flags and the
landing of marines, especially by Great Britain, provided a foretaste
of gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean and the Far East threequarters of a century later.
At least as early as 1819 a United States warship ran a blockade
imposed by Chile on the Peruvian coast. Two years later, largely in
response to Chile's "paper blockade" the United States established
the Pacific Squadron with responsibilities extending from Chile all
m
) PRO FO 6/29, Foreign Office to Woodbine Parish, Buenos Aires, Feb. 27, 1829.
) PRO FO 6/19, Ponsonby to Viscount Dudley, Buenos Aires, Sept. 9, 1827.
m
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the way to Mexico and California71. In 1823 Secretary Adams justified
breaking a Chilean blockade, on the grounds that "the principle is
too important to be surrendered to any belligerent power, however
favorably disposed one may be to his course; for we cannot concede
it to him without yielding it alike to his enemy"72. The creation of the
Pacific station proved to be the first in a series of decisions that
ultimately led to girdling the Latin American zone with warships. In
1822 a West India Squadron was established73. In 1826 the Navy
Department created a South Atlantic Squadron, to patrol the east
coast of South America74. At that point three of the four existing
United States squadrons were in the Latin American zone, the fourth
being in the Mediterranean75.
The measures taken by Washington to counter blockades seldom
satisfied United States merchants or State Department agents in the
capitals and ports of Latin America, and consequently each protective measure was followed by a round of requests that the stars and
stripes be shown ever more often. Michael Hogan, Commercial
Agent of the United States at Valparaiso, pretty well summarized the
convictions of his diplomatic colleagues and the merchant element
when he wrote "were there no Naval forces in this port I strongly
suspect I would very soon be ordered to depart and leave our ships
and property in eminent dangers"76.
The Foreign Office put off acting against "paper blockades", but it
moved with fervor once it began and was as inclined as was the State
Department to forego diplomatic niceties and to resort to force when
not restrained by larger concerns. The British admiral on the Brazil
station, for instance, was reported to have issued orders to ships
71) Charles
Oscar Paullin, Diplomatic Negotiations of American Naval Officers,
1778-1883, Baltimore 1912, p. 332; Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of
American Naval Power, 1776-1918, Princeton 1944.
n ) Arthur P. Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America,
1800-1830, New York 1964, pp. 287-288.
n ) Sprout and Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, p. 95.
74) Ibid.
75 ) Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, p. 299.
76) May 6,1822, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 2:1062-1063. for other examples of appeals
for "help", see John B. Prévost, Special Agent of the United States to Chile, Peru, and
Buenos Aires, to Adams, Valparaiso, Apr. 9,1818, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 2: 920-921;
William Tudor, United States Consul at Lima to Adams, Callao, May 3,1824; idem to
idem, Callao, July 11, 1824; idem to idem, Lima, Oct. 17, 1824, all in Manning, Dip.
Cor., 3: 1749-1752, 1755-1757, 1768-1771.
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under his command to detain all vessels cruising under the flag of
Buenos Aires, of which the captain and three-fourths of the crew
were not Argentine natives77. Much as did their United States counterparts, British agents repeatedly appealed for protection for themselves, their families, and private British citizens78 and their requests
were often heeded. In 1824 one hundred British marines from
H.M.S. Cambridge were landed to protect the British consulate and
the property of "respectable" citizens in Lima. On that occasion the
marines remained for six weeks and were "a beneficial influence"79.
On the east coast in July 1827 H.M.S. Forte reported off Buenos Aires
in response to a request from Ponsonby for possible protection80, and
in early 1829 a party of British marines was landed in Buenos Aires
for the safety of consul Parish and his family81.
During 1829-30 a series of incidents involving force left little doubt
that Great Britain had adopted a distinctly stern position vis-à-vis the
new nations. British naval forces recaptured the Nestor that had been
taken by Brazilian blockaders. Defending the decision to retake the
Nestor, Ponsonby informed London that,
"I w a s convinced that nothing but an act of force d o n e by British
marines would ever bring the Brazilian g o v e r n m e n t to h a v e the
smallest regard e v e n to decency of a p p e a r a n c e s in their system of
plundering the British c o m m e r c e , m u c h less justice" 8 2 .
A couple of months later Ponsonby threatened Brazil with reprisal
if he did not receive acceptable terms in regard to ships seized as a
result of the Brazilian blockade of the Plata83. At about the same time,
London Times, May 27, 1828, p. 2.
See PRO FO 6/17, Ponsonby to Lord Dudley, Buenos Aires, Mar. 9, 1827; PRO
FO 118/20, Parish to Dudley, Buenos Aires, May 10, 1828; PRO FO 118/16, Ponsonby
to Canning, Buenos Aires, July 15, 1827; PRO FO 18/58, Foreign Office, Bidwell to
Consul Edward Watts, July 3, 1828; PRO FO 16/10, John White to Captain Coghlan,
Valparaiso, Oct. 8, 1829; PRO FO 16/10, John white to Earl of Aberdeen, Valparaiso,
Dec. 19, 1829.
" ) PRO FO 61/2, Thomas Rowcroft to a gentleman of Birmingham, Lima, undated,
leaf 374; PRO FO 61/3, Rowcroft to Joseph La Planta, Lima, Sept. 5, 1824, Sept. 29,
1824, and Oct. 15, 1824; PRO FO 61/3, Rowcorft to Canning, Lima, Oct. 4, 1824; also
see Tudor to Adams, Lima, Sept. 7, 1824, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 3: 1767; and Scot's
Magazine (Edinburgh), 94 (Jan. 1824), 114.
i") PRO FO 118/16, Ponsonby to Canning, Buenos Aires, July 15, 1827.
81 ) PRO FO 118/20, Parish to Aberdeen, June 9, 1829.
«) PRO FO 13/50, Ponsonby to Aberdeen, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 10, 1828.
ω ) PRO FO 13/60, Ponsonby to Aberdeen, Rio de Janeiro, Feb. 24, 1829.
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but on the Pacific Coast, a shooting incident in a theater in Valparaiso involving several Englishmen resulted in British marines
being landed in clear violation of Chilean territory and law84.
Several months after the Valparaiso incident one of the more novel
incidents of the period occurred.in waters off Peru. According to
British accounts, the Peruvian government forcefully took from the
Mexican vessel Hidalgo a reported $ 30,000 of bullion and coins
belonging to British citizens. When the Peruvian government
refused to give satisfaction and in fact began circulating the coins
and melting down the bullion before any sentence had been pronounced, Proconsul Thomas Willimott, after consulting with Captain Dundas of H.M.S. Sapphire, informed the Peruvian minister of
state, "we have considered it to be our d u t y . . . to detain and hold in
deposit an equal amount of Peruvian government property, wherever it be met with . . ,"85. Captain Dundas almost immediately took a
Peruvian vessel belonging to the national government and removed
$ 12,000. Before seizing the vessel Captain Dundas had written,
"I . . . now intend to detain a Peruvian vessel whether of war or
otherwise that might have government property on board. It is a
disagreeable business but it must be done"86.
Much as objectives of a temporal nature prompted Washington
and London to pursue basically similar policies in Latin America so
too did their shared anti-Catholicism and their near unanimous
contempt for the Spanish Inquisition invite a high degree of agreement in the spiritual realm. To achieve the level of accord they did
meant that on-going debates over the merits of the separation of
church and state, as favored by the United States and opposed by
London Times, Feb. 29, 1829, p. 2.
PRO FO 61/17, Proconsul Thomas Willimott to J. M. Pando, Minister of Foreign
Relations, Lima, May 13, 1830. For justification of the decision after the fact, see PRO
FO 61/17, Thomas Willimott and P. W. Kelly to Lord Aberdeen, Valparaiso, June 21,
1830.
* ) PRO FO 61/17, "Copies of Private Notes from Captain Dundas", enclosure in
Thomas Willimott and P. W. Kelly to Lord Aberdeen, Valparaiso, June 2 1 , 1 8 3 0 . For a
detailed statement of the incident, including the amounts involved, as reported to
Washington, see USNA, Samuel Learned to Secretary of State Martin Van Buren,
Lima, May 29, 1830, in Despatches of United States Ministers to Peru, microfilm reel 1.
United States Consul W . H. C. D. Wright in Rio de Janeiro considered the British
action of such a nature that Willimott would be held to strict account by the Foreign
Office. USNA, Wright to Van Buren, Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 13, 1830, Despatches of
United States Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, microfilm roll 4.
M)
œ)
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John J. Johnson
Great Britain, or over the most effective way to salvation, were better
left to stay-at-home theologians and publicists. Even the endless
philosophizing about doctrines of the Roman Catholic church,
including auricular confession and its holding itself apart from or
over the political community, was not an intellectual exercise officially encouraged overseas. Although private travelers might
indulge their anti-Catholic biases - usually done so after returning
home - there simply was no time or place for the advocacy of
Protestant doctrine by those seeking advantage in the wrecked
Iberian empires. Individuals directly involved in official relations in
that vast region, where Catholicism was the only recognized creed,
were not first of all concerned with religious doctrine but with the
day-to-day operations of the church. What they wanted to know and
what they reported on was the priesthood and how churchmen and
powerful lay Catholics influenced the political and economic views
of the new leadership and street people. Understandably, as official
spokesmen for Protestant nations, they had also to defend as best
they could the claims of United States and British citizens to practice
unmolested their religious beliefs while domiciled in Latin America.
The disdain in which secular priests were held by United States
and British agents with firsthand knowledge of the Latin American
version of Roman Catholicism is proverbial and need not be repeated
in extenso here. What is important is that whether an observer be
North American or British or the account Chilean, Central American,
or Mexican, the list of charges against the clergy was unvarying.
Secular priests were held to be from the dregs of society, ignorant,
depraved, immoral, fanatic, intolerant, idolatrous, superstitious,
and corrupt. And though themselves scorned, their sway over
society was seldom publicly challenged by a servile population
intimidated by threats of retribution or by political elites fearful of
the possible consequences of the rapid demise of the Church as a
stabilizing institution87.
" ) For a sampling of the hundreds of declamations against the priesthood by United
States observers, see John M. Forbes to Adams, Buenos Aires, Apr. 1, 1821, in
Manning, Dip. Cor., I; 572-576; John B. Prévost to Adams, Truxillo, Mar. 12, 1824, in
ibid., III: 1747-1749; Heman Allen to Clay, Valparaiso, Sept. 1, 1825, in ibid., II:
1103-1104; Poinsett to Van Buren, Mexico City, Mar. 10, 1829, in ibid., III: 1673-1685,
esp. p. 1674; and Charles S. Todd to Adams, Bogotá, May 8, 1823, in Despatches from
United States Ministers to Colombia, microfilm roll 2; Stephen F. Austin, "The 'Prison
Journal' of Stephen F. Austin", Texas Historical Association Quarterly 2 (Jan. 1899):
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The regular clergy and nuns, seen everywhere as crowding
monasteries and convents, fared no better. They were ceaselessly
portrayed as dissolute and/or idle, and idleness was a sin in societies
that idealized work and in which Christianity meant activism, not
withdrawal88. The life of a monk or nun, furthermore, was no calling
for those who believed in the Puritan ethic because prayer must be
the daily exercise of every man or woman, not a way for practical
individuals to make a living89. The universities and colleges of the
various orders, whether male or female, were nurseries of bigotry90.
Not all reports indiscriminately censured priests, monks, and
nuns. On a one-to-one relationship Catholic clergymen could come
off rather well, their hospitality, friendliness, intellectual curiosity,
and even their talents acknowledged91. The achievements of the
183-210. For examples of British comments, see PRO FO 16/12, Ricketts to Dudley,
London, Dec. 15,1827; PRO FO 18/68, Henderson to Aberdeen, Bogota, Feb. 21,1829;
Robert Southey, History of Brazil, 3 vols., London 1819, II: 681; III: 875. For the church
as a stabilizing institution, see USNA, Charles Todd to Adams, Bogotá, May 8,1823,
Despatches from United States Ministers to Colombia, microfilm roll 2; John ]. Johnson,
Simón Bolívar and Spanish American Independence, 1783-1830, New York 1968, pp. 98-99,
and the Bolivian Constitution of 1826, Chap. 2, Art. 6. This creation of Bolivar, in
guaranteeing the Catholic Church every conceivable protection, speaks eloquently to
his conception of the Church as a key stabilizing institution. For a recent evaluation of
Bolivar's attitude toward the Catholic Church, see David Bushneil, "The Last Dictatorship: Betrayal or Consummation?", HAHR 63 (Feb. 1983): 85-89.
") Howard Jones, O Strange New World: American Culture; The Formative Years, New
York 1965, p. 200; Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience, 3 vols.,
New York 1965, II: 12.
") Edmund S. Morgan, "The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution", William
and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 24 (Jan. 1967): 4.
w ) PRO FO 6/8, Parish to Canning, Buenos Aires, Apr. 8, 1825.
") PRO FO 18/59, Robert Sutherland to Bidwell, Maracaibo, Jan. 2, 1828; Prévost to
Adams, Buenos Aires, Dec. 12, 1819, in Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 537-540; Forbes to
Adams, Buenos Aires, July 18, 1822, in Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 606-608; John Williams
to Clay, Guatemala, Aug. 23,1826, USNA, Despatches, United States Ministers to Central
America, 1824-1906, roll 1. H. C. Dale, ed., The Ashley-Smith Exploration of the Discovery
of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822-1829, Cleveland 1941, pp. 195, 208, 210, 216, 220;
Adrian R. Terry, Travels in the Equatorial Regions of South America in 1832, Hartford 1834,
pp. 77-79; Missionary Herald, 20 (1824), p. 332. See especially, Robert Walsh, Notices of
Brazil in 1828 and 1829, 2 vols., Boston 1831,1: 205-206. Walsh, who was Chaplain to
the British Legation in Rio de Janeiro, had unstinting praise for the character and
learning of José Caetano de Silva-Coutinho, Bishop of FÜo de Janeiro. For a contemporary explanation of why priests may have been cordial toward individual Protestants but incited their own parishioners against Protestant congregations, see Francis
Hall, Colombia: Its Present State in Respect of Climate, Soil, Production, and Inducements to
Emigration, Philadelphia 1825, pp. 95-96.
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John J. Johnson
Jesuits, who were often the targets of Protestant polemists, among
the Indian tribes of Paraguay were commonly acknowledged92.
These favorable appraisals suggest that those reporting may have
been conditioned more against the Church as an institution than
against members of its clergy93.
Still, raised on a diet of the Black Legend, the "horrors" of the
inquisition, and "papism", the Protestant mind was receptive to just
about any unfavorable commentary on Catholicism. It was no less
well conditioned to look approvingly on Protestant behavior of the
kind that it condemned when associated with Catholicism. It largely
ignored the fact that the United States had a long history of bigotry94;
that many became ministers in the new and fast-growing denominations, including the Methodist and Baptist, as a result of being
"called" rather than any claim they might have to intellectual training, theological or otherwise; that sects in both the United States and
Great Britain sponsored their own schools for the same reason that
the Catholic Church did, namely, the better to preserve a kind of
sectarianism that tended to strengthen absolutist ways of thinking95;
that Protestant sects were subsidized by local, state, and federal
authorities, most notably in the form of exemption from civil taxes96;
that in the United States the constitutions of every state, except
Rhode Island, contained articles discriminating against Catholics97.
At least until 1829 important segments of the British press and H. M.
«) North American Review 4 (1817): 305; American Quarterly Review 8 (Dec. 1830): 252,
and 10 (Sept. 1831): 3; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3d British ed., 1st American ed. (1798),
s.v. "Jesuits"; Report of Theodorick Bland to Adams, in Manning, Dip. Cor., I:
382-438, esp. p. 418; Southey, History of Brazil, II, chaps. 22-24, and III, chap. 35.
Woodbine Parish wrote "The Indians [of Paraguay] were much attached to the Jesuits,
and looked to them as fathers; and great and sincere were their lamentations when
they were taken from them, and replaced by the Franciscan friars . . .", Buenos Ayres
and the Province of the Rio de la Plata, 2d ed., London 1862, p. 257.
93 ) For an example of early indoctrination of school children against the Catholic
Church, see Paul Ford, ed., New England Primer: A Reprint of the Earliest Known Edition,
and an Historical Introduction, New York 1899.
" ) Gustavus Myers, History of Bigotry in the United States, New York 1943, p. 140.
95) Merle E. Curti, The Growth of American Thought, 3d ed., New York 1964, p. 11.
% ) William G. Mc Loughlin, "The Role of Religion in the Revolution: Liberty of
Conscience and Cultural Cohesion in the New Nation", in Stephen G. Kurtz and
James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution, Williamsburg 1973.
" ) John R. Rodo, The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812-1848, Princeton 1954,
p. 63; Russell Nye, The Cultural Life of the New Nation, New York 1960, pp. 200, 203;
John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Church, 4 vols., New York 1886-92, I: 155.
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Government, it would seem, were even less prepared than publicists
and public officials across the Atlantic to let the Catholic issue die or
to grant Catholics full legal equality98.
Republicanism and the principle of separation of church and state
on the one hand and monarchy and a state church on the other
produced different views in Washington and London regarding the
political and economic roles of the church in Latin America. The
differences, however, did not add up to diplomatic discord". United
States protestants viewed the Catholic church as an enemy of republicanism, sometimes on the grounds that it was an agent of foreign
governments, notably Bavaria, and at other times because of what
was considered its opposition to liberty of conscience and a free
press100. It was inferred from such convictions that in Latin America
the church would espouse sacerdotal despotism and/or monarchy101.
The objections of official Washington to the church's direct participation in the governments of the new states rested squarely on those
two beliefs102.
The direct involvement of the Catholic church in Latin America in
such economic activities as large-scale property ownership and lending were incompatible with Anglo-American and British precepts. In
both societies religious institutions, it was assumed, would rely on
grants, largely public in Great Britain, and private in the United
States. In Latin America, however, the church had become a huge
real estate proprietor, which rarely and ordinarily only under
severely adverse circumstances put its properties on the market. It
had also become the preeminent lender, which ordinarily loaned to
new industrial and commercial enterprises only if such borrowers
" ) For United States reaction to British concerns with Catholicism, see Niles Weekly
Register, Apr. 16, 1825, pp. 107-108, May 28, 1825, p. 200, and June 4, 1825, p. 215.
For treatment of the Catholic issue when it was at or near its height in Great Britain,
see Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), new ser., 8 (1823): 436-443.
*®) I have not found a single United States or British official document of the 1820s
that suggested differences of view on religious matters as they pertained to Latin
America.
10°) Rodo, The Protestant Clergy,
pp. 70-71; Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment,
Minneapolis 1940, pp. 365-366; New York Observer, Jan. 16, 1830.
101) For a typical view from the field regarding the Church's opposition to republicanism, see Heman Allen to Adams, Santiago, May 26, 1824, in Manning, Dip. Cor.,
II: 1095-1097.
102) London's concern for monarchy in Latin America and the Church as a possible
agent in support of that view is noted infra.
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could secure loans with improved real estate. More to the point,
perhaps, for North Americans and Englishmen, whose theologies
made a virtue of individual profit making even to the point of
accepting a considerable sacrifice of probity and honor in pursuit of
the dollar and pound, the Catholic church's economic conservatism
was frustratingly antediluvian. It ran counter to the surge of industrial capitalism and served as a brake on international commerce, the
paramount interest of trading nations. At a different level, the
church's economic conservatism tended to confirm the Protestant
belief that progress, which by the early nineteenth century increasingly conveyed the idea of social dynamism, was associated only
with Protestant culture.
As late as 1825 both the United States and Great Britain shared the
hope, however glimmering, that the new nations would finally
embrace Protestantism or at the very least discard control from
Rome. They were, however, disabused as the constitutions of the
new nations were promulgated and Roman Catholicism was protected from every quarter. With the Catholic church secure,
Washington and London could do no better than seek to win
commitments from local leaders that Protestants would not be mistreated because of their religious convictions. Freedom of worship,
funerals, suitable burial ground, and the rights of Protestants resident in the republics to exchange marriage vows were all at issue. As
events unfolded, it became clear that London was more determined
than was Washington in its insistence on religious privileges for its
subjects103. British persistence paid off when commercial treaties with
the new states were ratified. In each case the religious rights and
privileges of British subjects were broader and more sharply delineated than were those granted United States citizens in similar
treaties104.
Why the British government was more successful in winning
religious privilege for its citizens than was the United States is
1<0) Compare, for example, Adam's instructions to Richard Anderson, appointed
United States Minister to Colombia, Washington, May 27, 1823, in Manning, Dip.
Cor., I: 192-208, and the instructions to Thomas Rowcroft, British Consul in Lima,
PRO FO 61/2, Draft, Canning to Rowcroft, Foreign Office, Apr., n.d., 1828.
l w ) Wilkins B. Winn has compared the commercial treaty between the United States
and Colombia (proclaimed by President Adams on Mar. 31, 1825, and used by
Washington in eleven other commercial treaties with Latin American nations during
the nineteenth century) and the commercial treaty between Great Britain and Colom-
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unclear at this time. Several possibilities suggest themselves, however. In a treaty signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1810 the British wrung
liberal religious concessions from Portugal and Brazil and thus had
some notion of the limits of diplomatic negotiations on religious
matters. Also, throughout the 1820s Great Britain repeatedly displayed a deeper distrust of Catholicism than did the United States
and thus, perhaps, felt the need to protect its citizens from a
potentially antagonistic Catholic hierarchy.
During these same years the federal government in Washington
became increasingly secular and involved itself in religious matters
only marginally, leaving to the separate states the regulation of
religious issues. The declining influence of religion in the United
States was reflected in the function of criminal law. Before the
Revolutionary War, the primary function of criminal law was to
enforce the morals and religion of the people. Already by the
outbreak of the War of 1812, in contrast, the primary purpose of
criminal law had become the protection of property and physical
security. A criminal was no longer seen as a sinner against God, but
rather one who preyed upon his fellow citizen105. Furthermore,
religion in the United States was held to be an individual rather than
a state matter. That being the case officialdom could reasonably
disclaim responsibility for representing religious sects abroad as long
as individual members were not physically maltreated. Finally, the
United States, as has been established above, was relatively weak
economically and militarily and, consequently, diplomatically. It
thus could not push its claims as forcefully as the British, without
whose support the political independence of the former Iberian
colonies would surely have remained in jeopardy.
Although the nascent states had received a high diplomatic priority they, in many ways, proved a deepening disappointment to
bia some six months later. Winn concluded that Colombia agreed to considerably
more liberal religious concessions in its treaty with Great Britain than it did in that
with the United States. Wilkins B. Winn, "The Issue of Religious Liberty in the United
States Commercial Treaty with Colombia, 1824", The Americas 26, no. 3 (Jan. 1970):
291-301.
I05
) William E. Nelson, "Emerging Notions of Modern Criminal Law in the
Revolutionary Era: A Historical Perspective", New York University Law Review 42
(1967), 450-452. Nelson's findings are based on data from the Court of Records of "a
typical Massachusetts county" (Middlesex).
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Washington and London. The two capitals accordingly took stock of
their gains and losses and concluded that the latter outweighted the
former or, at the very least, that their energies and resources would
pay greater dividends elsewhere. Commerce with the republics
continued, but figuratively speaking, Washington and London by
1830 had put Latin America in cold storage and left it there for
approximately a quarter century. Mexico was an exception. It was,
meanwhile, important to Great Britain both because of its mineral
wealth, in which English capital was heavily invested, and the role
that Mexico City must play were the territorial ambitions of the
United States to be contained.
The pronounced withdrawal symptoms suffered by the United
States and Great Britain stemmed largely from their shared concern
over matters of an internal nature that seemed to be driving the new
states to self-destruction. Their political systems were in disrepair.
With the King gone, not a single architect appeared capable of
designing a model to replace the one that had been destroyed.
Institutional upheavals followed on the heels of one another. Men
were everything, institutions nothing. The privileged elements had
permanent standards but were dispersive and anarchic. Inequality
was as dear to their hearts as liberty itself. They commonly refused
to accept their political responsibilities. There were, however, many
quite willing to assume greater responsibility than their fitness
warranted. British consul, Henry G. Ward, in Mexico City referred to
those politicans who called themselves supereminent patriots as
supereminent beggars106. Some months later the London Times labelled yet another political clique as a mixture of bankruptcy and
political imbecility107. Minister William Turner from Bogotá considered those with whom he was expected to work as untalented and
incompetent108. Law and order lost their force, obedience had
become a matter of caprice. Jealousy and aversion stalked the land.
Liberators and their lieutenants had ridden onto the political stage
and marshals had become statesmen. Force employed quickly
106)
PRO FO 204/Box 7, Ward to Canning, Private, Mexico, Oct. 26, 1826.
London Times, July 6, 1829, p. 2.
108) PRO FO 18/75, Turner to Aberdeen, Bogotá, May 14, 1830. Also see PRO FO 18/
52, Patrick Campbell to Dudley, Bogotá, June 12, 1828, and PRO FO 15/7, John
O'Reilly to Bidwell, Guatemala, Sept. 12, 1828.
107)
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became rapine. Officers affronted civilians and constitutions with
impunity. Civil wars, without perceived national interests, raged in
Mexico, Central America, Argentina, and Chile. Undying quarrels,
forerunners of intestine conflicts, scourged most of the region. Peru
and Colombia were locked in desultory international combat. Venezuela and Ecuador were in the final stages of their separation from
Colombia. Simón Bolívar, liberator of five nations, was under a cloud
at home and abroad. As it seemed at the time and as future events
were to confirm, a spark could produce an explosion of anarchy
anywhere and at any moment109. The Indian masses were wretchedly
poor and untutored. Mestizos and Black freedmen were turbulent,
exaggerated their individualism, and made a mania of the heroic.
As a source of precious metals and agricultural products and as
market for overseas goods the infant states proved an even greater
disappointment than did their political gyrations mastermined by
culpable officials. Largely excluded from the area by commercial
policies of the former mother countries, outsiders had fantasized
about riches of El Dorado dimensions that would accrue to them
once ports were thrown open by enlightened leaders embracing the
principles of economic liberalism110. Expectations were soon blighted. With hard evidence at hand it became abundantly clear that Latin
America was not nearly as richly endowed as had been imagined111.
The devastation suffered during the Wars of Independence had been
inaccurately calculated on the optimistic side. In fact, much of the
area's wealth had been destroyed. Mines had been inundated.
Machinery had been left in disrepair. Forced loans, fines, the requisition of livestock, the destruction of buildings, and the levies of men
had burdened the rich and poor alike. Deserts, mountains, uplands,
1W) USNA, Samuel Learned to Van Buren, Lima, Apr. 11, 1831, in Despatches of
United States Ministers to Peru, microfilm roll 1; USNA, Henry Penine to Secretary of
State, N e w york, Dec. 2, 1831, in Consular Despatches, Campeche, 1820-1880, microfilm
roll I; USNA, George Slacum to Secretary of State Edward Livingston, Buenos Aires,
Oct. 21, 1831, in Despatches from United States Consuls in Buenos Aires, microfilm roll 4.
Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), new ser., 10 (1824): 988; Scot's
Magazine, 93 (Jan. 1824), 9-11.
i n ) USNA, J. G. A. Williamson to Sec. of State, La Guaira, Despatches from United
States Consuls in La Guaira, Venezuela, 1810-1936, roll 2; USNA, William Taylor to Clay,
Vera Cruz, Jan. 10, 1827, in Despatches from United States Consuls in Vera Cruz,
1822-1906, roll I; USNA, Michael Hogan to Van Buren, Valparaísa, June 27, 1829, in
Special Agents, roll 2; PRO FO 61/8, Ricketts to Canning, Lima, Dec. 27, 1825. This
document appears in Humphreys, ed., British Consular Reports, pp. 107-206.
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and jungles hindered relations and exchange112. Samuel Learned
summarized the situation for Peru.
"Its resources had been overestimated. It depended on its mines;
the Government for its revenues, individuals for their means of
support. Its exports, independent of precious metals, were insufficient even to pay for the bread its people consumed. Profits from the
mines, however, were uncertain and when mines ceased to yield the
economy lapsed into a rhythm of reduced activity. There was no way
for United States merchants and shippers to retaliate against capricious duties imposed on their products because not a single Peruvian
vessel visited the ports of the United States. They, therefore, had the
alternative of abandoning trade with Peru or carrying on under the
government's terms"113.
The power and influence of the landed aristocracy and the church
hierarchy assured an investment mentality that discouraged
balanced, high-voltage development. A sizeable majority of the
population vegetated outside sluggish monetary economies. Few
individuals in the cities proved to have liquid capital, solid entrepreneurial skills, and, in the case of international trade, strong
commercial contacts abroad. Foreigners, mainly British, filled the
entrepreneurial void and generally benefited from official protection.
They, however, became the targets of frustrated nationals blocked
from economic competition and thus deprived of a manipulative role
in shaping their environment. The questionable ethics of a hemorrhage of adventurers, "with a thirst after gold and silver", nurtured
antiforeignism1".
In the final analysis, ethnic considerations may have been the
dominant ingredient in the decisions of the United States and Great
Britain to curtail their activities in Latin America115. Once independ) Humphreys, ed., British Consular Reports, pp. 107-206.
) USNA, Samuel Learned to Van Buren, Lima, Mar. 5, 8, 1830, in Despatches from
United States Ministers to Peru, microfilm roll 1.
114) Forbes to Adams, Buenos Aires, Mar. 2, 1823, in Manning, Dip. Cor., 1:616-617;
PRO FO 61/11, Ricketts to Canning, Aboard His Majesty's Transport, "Eggington",
May 11,1827; PRO FO 61/11, Willimott to Dudley, Lima, Dec. 20,1827; PRO FO 18/84,
William Turner to Palmerston, Bogotá, Sept. 14, 1831 Turner to Palmerston, Oct. 7,
1831; W. Bullock, Six Months' Residence and Travels in Mexico . . ., London 1824,
pp. 500-502.
, l s ) This is not the place to treat in detail this extremely complex, interdisciplinary
topic. I plan to give it fuller treatment in a forthcoming study of United States and
m
113
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enee was accomplished it turned out that there was indeed precious
little that enthnocentric Anglo-Saxons found in Latin Americans to
inspire respect and trust. Those sent to deal with them were
suffused with, at the time, an intellectually respectable sense of
superiority and self-righteousness that varied hardly at all on opposite sides of the Atlantic and that seemed affirmed by the industrial
and commercial revolution in Great Britain and extraordinary spatial
and social mobility in the United States. Thus, they did not take
stock of their intellectual apparatus, they accepted it. When those
representatives of the United States and Great Britain combined their
culturally conditioned assumptions and their present needs, intentions, and desires in judging Latin America they were, in a real
sense, at once preparing for and justifying their relations with their
hosts. Latin Americans, according to their critics, all had in varying
degrees culturally acquired - as distinct from genetically inherited qualities negatively affecting their value systems. As a consequence,
when opportunities for foreigners dwindled there was always one or
more accountable for each unfavorable turn of events, be it political,
economic, or ideological.
The three primary racial stocks - Iberian, Native American, and
African - represented in the demographic composition of Latin
America all ranked at the lower end of the Anglo-Saxon scale of
human achievers. Although most elite Spaniards had fled or been
driven from the mainland, Spaniards as a group did not escape
intense condemnation, if for no other reason than for the legacy they
left behind116. England and its New World colonies had, for centuries, castigated Spain for its "struggle against the laws of God",
and the unitary and unchanging character of its people117. They were
Latin America in the 1820s. What follows in this section is meant only to suggest the
more obvious manifestations of Anglo-Saxon ethnocentricity.
"') See, for example, Ricketts to Canning, Lima, Dec. 27,1826, in Humphreys, ed.,
British Consular Reports, p. 115; and USNA, Henry Perinne, United States Consul, to
Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, Campeche, Mar. 19,1830, in Consular Despatches,
Campeche, 1820-1880, microfilm roll I.
n7) London Times, Apr. 9, 1825, p. 2. For a quite useful summary of Black Legend
literature and its influences on Angle-Saxon attitudes, see Charles Gibson, The Black
Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New, New York 1971, and
Benjamin Keen, "The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities", HAHR 49
(Nov. 1969), 703-719.
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backward, haughty, indolent. Their acceptance of interracial mixing
called into question their moral fiber. Portuguese traits and values
were, if anything, less commendable than their neighbor's118. The
point here is, of course, not that Spaniards and Portuguese had
"bad" traits, but a belief that there was such a thing as national
character that made "badness" an ingrained feature of Spanish and
Portuguese cultures.
The creóles who immediately succeeded the Spanish and Portuguese in the seats of power and influence were discovered to possess
many of the negative traits and values associated with their Iberian
forebears. Centuries of demoralizing domination had left them
ideologically unsophisticated and ill prepared to assume the
privileges and duties of civil liberty. The leaven of Spanish despotism had infected them as it ever had their former masters119. Like
colonial officials had, they considered public office a palladium of
their rights120. Bureaucrats had inherited the pride, prejudices,
cupidity, and lack of candor of their former rulers. They were
experienced neither in preserving nor gaining friendship121. They
were not inclined to defer immediate pleasures of the moment in
favor of greater good of the morrow, a sad commentary on their
economic future. Their mindless emancipation of slaves during the
independence era spoke to their social and political naïveté122.
As early as 1818, Poinsett found a "want of responsibility and of
good faith" in the Argentine governments123, and a few years later
Ponsonby reported to London that the vanity of the Argentines was
so excessive and their ignorance so great that they were as likely as
l l s ) USNA, Henry Hill to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, May 1821, in Despatches from United
States Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1907, microfilm roll V, USNA, William Tudor to
Clay, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 8, 1828, in Despatches from United States Ministers to Brazil,
vol. 6, microfilm roll 8.
119) See, for example, Robert K. Lowry to Adams, La Guayra, Sept. 22, 1822, in
Manning, Dip. Cor., II: 1223.
,2 °) PRO FO
15/5, John O'Reilly, British Consul in Guatemala, to Canning,
Guatemala, May 31, 1826; PRO FO 18/53, Patrick Campbell to Dudley, Bogotá,
June 12, 1828.
m ) PRO FO 61/2, Rowcroft to Foreign Office, Lima, Aug. 15, 1824.
122) For a convenient rundown of what the British agents viewed as faults of new
societies, see Woodbine Parish to Canning, Buenos Aires, June 2 5 , 1 8 2 4 , and Ricketts
to Canning, Lima, Dec. 27, 1824, both in Humphreys, ed., British Consular Reports,
pp. 1-54, 107-195.
m ) Poinsett to Adams, Columbia, S.C., Nov. 4 , 1 8 1 8 , in Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 441.
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not to mistake kindness for fear124. Michael Hogan considered the
Chilean patriots to be of "low character"125. Poinsett, who concluded
his diplomatic career in Mexico, considered Mexicans "spoilt and
wayward", the effects of pride, ignorance, and prejudice126. From
Bogotá, Agent Turner reported that adherence to principles was not
a Colombian virtue127. The issues over which those in public life in
Peru quarreled and sacrificed their honor could "only . . . be
rendered attractive by investing them with a fictitious character of
importance"128. Brazilians were ignorant, arrogant, insolent, and
high handed129. Everywhere the venality of the courts was notorious.
Justice was bought and sold. Lawyers depended for success on
influence and bribery130. "A poor man had no more chance in court
than a cat in hell without claws"131.
By the 1820s, a smattering of stay-at-home English and American
reflective types allowed themselves the luxury of a romantic or
nostalgic interest in the American Indians. Romantics were uncertain whether to admire Indians because they were so civilized or
because they were so savage132, or simply because they were eligible
for sentimental treatment commonly accorded vanishing races, as
they were assumed to be. With a vast majority of publicists and the
popular elements, however, the basically and overwhelmingly nega-
) PRO FO 118/17, Ponsonby to Dudley, Buenos Aires, Aug. 27, 1827.
) USNA, Hogan to Adams, Valparaiso, Aug. 28, 1823, in Special Agents, microfilm
roll 2.
126) Rippy, Joel R. Poinsett, p. 125.
127 ) PRO FO 18/76, Turner to Aberdeen, Bogotá, July 14, 1830.
12S) PRO FO 61/14, Willimott to Dudley, Lima, Mar. 20, 1828. Also see PRO FO 18/
76, Turner to Aberdeen, Bogotá, June 12,1830, in which Turner speaks in unflattering
terms of public officials and the insignificant issues in which they engaged.
129) USNA, Raquet to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, June 4, 1823, in Despatches from United
States Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1906, microfilm roll 2; USNA, Tudor to Clay, Rio
de Janeiro, Aug. 5, 1828, and Dec. 8 , 1 8 2 8 , in Despatches from United States Ministers to
Brazil, vol. 6, microfilm roll 8.
13°) PRO FO 18/54, Campbell to Aberdeen, Bogotá, Nov. 12, 1828; PRO FO 61/11,
Ricketts to Canning, Aboard His Majesty's Transport "Eggington", May 11, 1827;
USNA, Tudor to Clay, Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 5, 1828, and Dec. 8, 1828, in Despatches
from United States Ministers to Brazil, vol. 6, microfilm roll 8; Allen to Clay, Valparaiso,
Apr. 4, 1826, in Manning, Dip. Cor., II: 1112; Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 5, 1828, p. 3.
131) USNA, Henry Hill to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 21, 1818, in Despatches from
United States Consulate in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1906, microfilm roll I.
, 3 2 ) Hoxie N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism, New York
1928, p. 68.
124
125
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tive images of the Indians persisted as they had for at least a century
without substantial modification or variation. In England, where the
Indian traditionally had been held accountable for hostilities in the
colonies, the negative perceptions of Button, DePauw, and Raynal
met, on the whole, with a favorable reception. In both AngloAmerica and Great Britain the prevailing liberal mind perceived of
the Indian as living in the past, superstitious, violent, improvident,
anarchic, irresponsible, lacking in social order, and devoted to war.
In brief, the Native Americans were the antithesis of Anglo-Saxons133.
Those Englishmen and Anglo-Americans who sought their fortunes in Latin America adhered to the majority view of the Indian,
who at independence constituted approximately 40 percent of the
total population of the area134. They viewed the Indians in generic
terms and found them indisposed to regular work, ravaged by
alcohol, inept in dealing with abstractions, and moved by passion
rather than reason. In short, they were assumed to lack the very
qualities required to compete in the kind of economic societies that
the first rush of foreigners foresaw for Latin America. After three
hundred years most tribesmen continued to live in isolation from the
mainstream of society and the deculturated ones were dependent
outcasts. It was acknowledged that the Indians had been the backbone of the colonial economies in which a large share of the work
force was devoted to agriculture, but they were not seen as playing
so positive a role in the future because they were not expected to
adapt easily to the increasingly industrialized and urbanized
economies that were anticipated. Thus, politically as economically,
they were and would remain a strictly negative element. If they
returned to their imagined passivity of the colonial era they would
become the tools of irresponsible political aspirants. If, alternatively,
133
) Ibid.; Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought, New Brunswick 1971,
pp. 271 ff., Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian, N e w York 1978, pp. 74 ff.;
Alden T. Vaughan, "From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian", American Historical Review, 87 (Oct. 1982): 917-953;
Michael Paul Rogin, "Liberal Society and the Indian Question", Politics and Society 1
(May 1971): 269-270.
134
) Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels in Equatorial Regions of the
New Continent During the Years 1799-1804, trans. Helen Maria Williams, 7 vols, in 4,
Amsterdam 1971, 4: 127.
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they were to build on their increased awareness of their rights the
lessons in organization and discipline learned in emancipation
armies, they would become a politically turbulent element with
narrow parochial views. Not surprisingly, it was generally agreed
that the future of the new states with large Indian populations was
dismal135.
In view of the British effort after 1800 to terminate African slavery
as an institution it might have been expected that the English view of
Blacks in Latin America would differ substantially from that of
Anglo-Americans reared in a society that accepted the enforced
servitude of Blacks. That was not the case. As observers of the Latin
American scene, North Americans and Englishmen came to nearly
identical conclusions regarding Latin American Blacks. There was
high praise from both sides for the initial accomplishments of Blacks
in Haiti136. It was agreed, too, that Blacks, when in a state of
servitude, were better laborers than Indians and were in fact the
indispensable component of the labor force in those sections of the
agricultural economy devoted to export commodities. In the words
of British Consul Rowcroft, Brazil would be "nothing" without them
and he found much the same situation in Peru from where he
reported that Blacks were the life of the country137.
Blacks under arms in those areas with dense Black populations
135) For representative views of the societal role of the Indians, see PRO FO 51/13,
Thomas S. Willimott to Dudley, Lima, Dec. 20, 1827; PRO FO 61/2, Rowcroft to
Canning, Lima, Aug. 15, 1824; USNA, Henry Hill, United States Consul in Rio de
Janeiro, to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 21, 1818, in Despatches from United States
Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1906, microfilm roll 1.
136) Quarterly Review (London), 21 (Jan.-Apr. 1819): 430-433; Niles' Weekly Register,
Nov. 11, 1820: p. 169; Sept. 22, 1821, p. 64; Sept. 27, 1823, pp. 50-52; July 3, 1824,
pp. 282-284; Oct. 23, 1824, p. 114.
137) PRO FO 61/2, Rowcorft to Foreign Office, Lima, Mar. 9, 1824, July 15, 1824,
Aug. 9, 1824. Also see William Stevenson, A Historical and Descriptive Narrative of
Twenty Years' Residence in South America, 3 vols., London 1825, I: 306-307. For favorable views by United States agents, see, for example, USNA, Thomas Sumter, Jr.,
United States Minister to the Portuguese Court in Brazil to their Excellencies the
American Ministers appointed to treat with Great Britain or to any American Minister
in Europe, Rio de Janeiro, June 30, 1814, in Despatches from United States Ministers to
Brazil, microfilm roll 3 (selections from this communication appear in Manning, Dip.
Cor., II: 684-686, and USNA, Henry Hill to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 21, 1818, in
Despatches from United States Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1906, roll 1).
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were another matter. They could become monsters138. The elites of
Lima reportedly were reluctant originally to rise against Spain
because of their fear of the large number of Blacks and mulattoes in
their midst139. And as it turned out, San Martin felt obliged to protect
the elites and the entire city of Lima from pillaging Blacks on the rolls
of his own Argentine expeditionary forces140. Several years later
Pernambuco was not so fortunate. There "blacks and Persons of
Colour" revolted, seized the city, and sacked it141. Abolition had
taken place so rapidly in Colombia that it could not fail to excite
serious reflections142. In the longer view the countries would suffer
because Blacks freed from the trammels of slavery would not resume
those former habits of industry so productive to the economies143.
The observations in a series of reports from Lord Ponsonby may be
taken as summing up the general impression of the Black community of Latin America as held by representatives of both the United
States and Great Britain. According to Ponsonby the Brazilian infantry was composed in great degree of Blacks and mulattoes and as a
consequence was more numerous than serviceable. The Wars of
Independence in Spanish America had operated to place arms in the
138) USNA, Baptis Irvine, United States Agent to Venezuela, to Adams, Angostura,
Aug. 31, 1818, July 20, 1818, July 30, 1818, Aug. 25, 1818, Sept. 11, 1818, and Baptis
Irvine to Adams, Baltimore, Nov. 18, 1819, in special Agents, vol. 18; PRO FO 14/48,
Fraser to Robert Gordon, Buenos Aires, Apr. 13,1828. Also see "Notes on a Voyage to
Caraccas" [sic], in Atlantic Magazine (New York), I, No. 1 (May 1824), 52 ff.
139) USNA, Joel Poinsett to Secretary of State James Monroe, Santiago, Feb. 20,1813,
in special Agents, vol. 3, microfilm roll 3.
14°) USNA, Jeremy Robinson to Adams, Lima, Aug. 12, 1818 and Jan. 7, 1820, in
Special Agents, vol. 5, microfilm roll 5; idem to idem, Valparaiso, Aug. 21, 1821, in
Special Agents, vol. 5, microfilm roll 5; PRO FO 6/3, Parish to Canning, Buenos Aires,
Apr. 25, 1824.
141) USNA, John Mansfield to Secretary of State, Pernambuco, Oct. 21, 1831, in
Special Agents, vol. 2, microfilm roll 2.
142) Edward Watts to Canning, Cartagena, May 9, 1824, in Humphreys, ed., British
Consular Reports, pp. 252-272; PRO FO 18/24, Turner to Foreign Secretary, Lord
Palmerston, Bogotá, Oct. 7, 1831; William Henry Harrison to Van Buren, Bogotá,
May 27, 1829, in Manning, Dip. Cor., II: 1333-1336.
1 0 ) PRO FO 61/2, Rowcroft to Foreign Office, Lima, Aug. 15, 1824; PRO FO 18/34,
Henry Wood to Canning, Guayaquil, Feb. 28, 1826, in Humphreys, ed., British
Consular Reports, pp. 226-251; PRO FO 15/4, Major General Todd, His Majesty's
Superintendent, to José Tensillo, Belize, Honduras, Feb. 1825. In this single communication of General Todd may be found nearly all the stereotypes of Blacks current in
Great Britain and the United States at the time.
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hands of "the dregs of society"144. The Argentine armed forces
consisted almost wholly of the refuse of the people, Negroes,
mulattoes, and "God knows what"145. And, given arms, Blacks could
become rebellious with the "long debt of vengeance for slavery to
pay their masters"146.
"Whites" in both the British Isles and the United States shared
essentially the same views toward racial miscegenation and the
ultimate outcome thereof. This despite the fact that the attitudes of
the still racially homogenous English towards mixed races in their
West Indian possessions were obviously more enlightened than
were those held by many within the dominant "white" elements in
the United States, in which resided two sizable minorities. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica summarized well the traditional thinking on
miscegenation in both countries. Those who intermarried at once
surrendered "to . . . their hearts and their freedom . . . their virtues
and their religion" and "when a pure society mixes with a profane,
the better principles of the one become soon tainted by the evil
practices of the other; which verifies the old adage, e v i l c o m m u n i c a t i o n c o r r u p t s g o o d manners" 1 4 7 . To further capsulize, mixed races were "mongrels" who exhibited the vices of both
stocks in the opinion of white observers148.
With reference to Latin America, where historically there has been
a conspicuous absence of clear racial boundaries, the term "mixed
races" is an imprecise diagnostic term, as it is often quite impossible
to determine whether a reporter had in mind mestizos or mulattoes
or yet other degrees of mixing between two or more racial stocks. I
will not, therefore, in this brief statement attempt to make distinctions because of the above, but also because for practical purposes,
the consequences of the prejudices of white observers against both
groups were similar. The middle eighteenth-century conclusions of
either the Frenchman Charles Marie de La Condamine or the young
Spanish officers Jorge Juan y Santacilia and Antonio de Ulloa on the
w
) PRO FO 6/17, Ponsonby to Canning, Buenos Aires, Mar. 9, 1827; PRO FO 118/
14, Ponsonby to Rear Admiral Otway, Buenos Aires, Mar. 10, 1827.
145
) PRO FO 6/13, Ponsonby to Canning, Buenos Aires, Nov. 9, 1826.
146
) PRO FO 6/16, Ponsonby to Robert Gordon, Buenos Aires, Jan. 4, 1827.
147
) Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3d British ed., 1st American ed., 18 vols., Philadelphia
1798, s.v. "antediluvians", p. 66. For further information see p. 67.
148
) C. M. Beam, "Millennialism and American Nationalism, 1740-1800", Journal of
Presbyterian History, (Philadelphia, Spring 1976), p. 106.
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mixed races of Latin America might well have served as models for
the late arriving North Americans and Englishmen. La Condamine,
who led a scientific expedition in the Pacific, and especially Ecuador
and Peru, in the 1730s, summarized his attitude towards crossbreeds. He is "a type of man having only the vices of the nations of
which he is a mixture"149.
The young Spanish naval officers don Jorge Juan y Santacilia and
don Antonio de Ulloa, who accompanied La Condamine and were
on the west coast for more than a decade (1736-46), in a report
available in Spanish as early as 1748 and in an abbreviated English
version by 1806, held mestizos in utter contempt.
"If, for refusing to work and having a propensity toward laziness
and sloth, one should be condemned to the mita, no group deserves it
more than the mestizos. They are useless, particularly when they
have no official duties to perform. How much better it would be if
they could do forced labor and make some contribution, since they are
not burdened with tribute payments. For the mestizos, however, it is
dishonorable to cultivate the land or do lesser tasks. Thus, cities and
villages are full of mestizos, living off what they steal or doing other
unspeakably obscene things"150.
Reports from the field reflecting views not unlike those of La
Condamine, Jorge Juan, and Antonio de Ulloa gave officials in
Washington little reason to expect much from the mixed elements
anywhere in Latin America. Theodorick Bland, special commissioner
to South America, wrote that the gauchos of Argentina, who composed a sizable proportion of the population and who were mostly of
mixed origins, had "little society", were totally illiterate, led indolent
lives, and dwelt "on an immense waste" in continual solitude151, and
he found the huasos (the peasantry of Chile) universally illiterate and
indolent but also kind and brave152. Henry Hill, among the first of
"') Quoted in Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic,
trans. Jeremy Moyle, Pittsburgh 1937, p. 106.
15°) Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms
of Peru, ed. and with intro. by John J. TePaske, trans. John J. TePaske and Besse A.
Clement, Norman 1978, p. 145. For the author's unfavorable view on mulattoes, see
p. 146.
151) Bland to Adams, Baltimore, Nov. 2, 1818, in Manning, Dip. Cor., I: 416.
152) Idem to idem, Baltimore, Nov. 2, 1818, in Manning, Dip. Cor., II: 991.
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official agents to report from Brazil, concluded that Brazilians had
added the vices of the Portuguese, whom he despised, to those of
Indians and Blacks153. Bland and Hill were not as hardline as widely
respected intellectual Fisher Ames had been before them. Immediately following the Louisiana Purchase, which he opposed, in a letter
to Congressman Dwight Foster, he wrote "as to principles the other
[the mixed elements] would as soon obey and give them effect as the
Gallo-Hispano-Indian Omnium gathering of savages and adventurers [of the Louisiana territory] whose pure morals are expected to
sustain and glorify our republic"154.
The British were equally unimpressed with "cross-breeds". In
Colombia the "creóles, Negroes and Indians [with the exception of
the independent tribes]" had intermixed with each other to "form an
amalgamated mass of population, without any marked national
characteristic, but with the moral and physical properties of each
race, tainted, rather than improved, by admixture". The lack of
initiative left "a wide field" to Europeans who should choose to
migrate there155. To the south and only a few months later, Lord
Ponsonby was dismayed that the population of the Banda Oriental
[Uruguay] was wild and savage, "but not more so than here [Buenos
Aires] and [I believe] everywhere else on this continent . . ."156.
Riding the waves of the Pacific, Charles Ricketts, who, as has been
noted, did his tour in Peru, wrote that the proud chivalrous feelings
of the Spaniard had "degenerated in this cross breed into meaness,
littleness and stubbornness, and if comparison be allowable it is that
the mule has taken the place of the horse"157.
Certain British private citizens with considerable experience in the
region recorded views that supported those of public servants.
According to John Luccock there were "well-principled and honour153) USNA, Hill to Adams, Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 21, 1818, in Despatches from United
States Consuls in Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1906, microfilm roll 1.
154) Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight, Dedham, Oct. 3 1 , 1 8 0 3 , in Fisher Ames, Works
of Fisher Ames with a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence, Seth Ames, ed.,
2 vols., Boston 1854, I: 329.
155) Edward Watts to Canning, Cartagena, May 9, 1824, in Humphreys, ed., British
Consular Reports, p. 267.
156) Ponsonby to Canning, Buenos Aires, Oct. 20, 1826, in Webster, Britain and
Independence, I: 159.
I5Ó PRO FO 61/11, Ricketts to Canning, Aboard His Majesty's Transport "Eggington", May 11, 1827; also see Rowcroft's long discourse on the various elements of the
Peruvian population in PRO FO 61/2, Rowcroft to Canning, Lima, Aug. 15, 1824.
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able" men among the inhabitants of Rio . . . But in many of those
mixed characters there was a universal preponderance of the evil;
and a much larger proportion than common seemed to be altogether
depraved"158. For Luccock's contemporary, Alexander Caldcleugh,
mulattoes in Brazil showed a considerable degree of aptitude, "but it
is well known that an increase of honesty and sobriety does not
generally accompany this . . . talent"159.
Disenchanted though they were with the mixed races of Latin
America, foreigners had good reason to be alert to them. They were
numerous. They were ambitious. They were disgruntled. They were
restless. They could be ruthless. They were more antiforeign than
were creóles. Some found outlets for their aggressions in villages
where they trampled upon the debased Indians and created estates
and local power bases and became what the Spanish referred to as
"gutter aristocrats" from which rank they sometimes elevated themselves onto regional and even national stages. More immediately
because of their limited financial resources they were largely
excluded from commerce and industry and they turned to the
military as the shortest path to power and influence. The payoffs
came early and fast. Andrés Santa Cruz, who was of mixed racial
origins and served under both San Martin and Bolivar, was briefly
president of Peru (1826-27) and in 1829 seized the presidency of
Bolivia from which post he created the shortlived Bolivian-Peruvian
Confederation in 1836. To the north another mixed-blood, José Páez,
after serving brilliantly under Bolivar, took the lead in separating
Venezuela from Gran Colombia, became the new nation's president
in 1830, and remained the dominant political figure from then until
1863. And still farther north in Mexico two mixed-bloods with long
careers in rebel armies during the independence era succeeded the
creole Emperor Augustin Iturbide. The first was Guadalupe Victoria
(1824-29); the second, the luckless Vicente Guerrero (March-December, 1829) who had "a strong mixture of African blood in his
veins"160. Peering backward, mulattoes such as Alexandre Pétion and
Pierre Boyer, two decades earlier, had battled Blacks for control of
15S) John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Part of Brazil: Taken during a
Residence of Ten Years in that Country, from 1808 to 1818, London 1820, p. 135.
159) Alexander Caldcleugh, Travels in South America during the years
1819-20-21,
2 vols., London 1825, I: 831.
1W) H. G. Ward, Mexico in 1827, 2 vols., London 1828, I: 35.
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Haiti, and in 1822 Boyer had led his forces into Santo Domingo and
demanded the surrender of hapless creóles. For two decades Santo
Domingo remained under Haitian domination. By 1830, then, there
could not have been a shadow of a doubt but that the voices of mixed
races were being heard or that those voices would echo down the
corridors of time throughout much of the New World south of the
Rio Grande.
Each of the issues we have identified was of such importance that
under different circumstances they might have led to radically conflicting policies out of Washington and London; but they did not. It
might be well to stop this discourse with them. There were, however, other relationships, often of a personal nature, that, while
perhaps not of singular importance, nonetheless speak eloquently to
mutual understanding and cooperation rather than rivalry between
the United States and Great Britain. For example, 27,489 or 25
percent of all European immigrants to the United States during the
eleven-year stretch 1820-30 were from Great Britain, and another
54,338 or 51.1 percent were from Ireland. In other words, 76.9
percent of all immigrants from Europe to the United States were
from British controlled territories in the Old World161. And only in
the year 1830 when those entering from Germany exceeded those
from Great Britain did the British Isles proper fail to rank either first
or second as a source of immigrants into the United States. Another
example, the London Times invariably lauded the annual messages of
United States presidents as more praiseworthy and perspicuous
than His Majesty's messages at the opening of Parliament162.
In the New World, meanwhile, there were any number of instances of cooperation and friendship, only a few of which need to be
noted here. For want of United States ships of war in the Pacific,
ships of the Royal Navy obliged United States merchants and public
officials by transmitting intelligence and specie163. On the fourth of
161) United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of
the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Washington, D.C. 1975, p. 106.
162) See, for example, the London Times, Jan. 8, 1825, p. 2; Jan. 5, 1826, p. 2; and
Jan. 2, 1828, p. 2.
163) Tudor to Adams, Callao Roads, July 11, 1824, in Manning, Dip. cor.,
Ill:
1755-1757. That the British shared Tudor's view, see PRO FO 61/3, Rowcroft to La
Planta, Lima, Sept. 29, 1824.
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July, 1824, the few North Americans in Lima dined by invitation on
board the frigate United States as did all the English commanders and
some of their lieutenants; "the awning under which we dined, was
composed of the American and English flags, the first time I presume that they were ever blended on that day"164. Several months
later, the Aurora and Franklin Gazette of Philadelphia, commenting on
United States - British cooperation in the Pacific theater, reaffirmed
what United States agent Tudor and British agent Rowcroft had
reported. "Indeed, the promptness with which the British squadron
renders services to our merchantmen, when the United States'
squadron is not in port, is such as evidences the best feeling, and
calls forth the thanks of all Americans"165.
Although official records in both Washington and London certify
to sharp differences between H. G. Ward, British chargé, and Joel
Poinsett, United States minister in Mexico during the 1820s, lower
level United States and British agents were going out of their way to
be friendly and helpful. For instance, on March 11, 1825, the United
States consul at Tampico wrote the British consul general in Mexico
City informing him that a United States schooner fourteen days out
of Cartagena had reached Tampico with information "I believe can
be relied upon", that the British government had recognized the
independence of Mexico, Colombia, and Buenos Aires. "Concluding
this will be the first information you will receive [of that development], I have the honor to be your obedient servant"166. If further
proof, though hardly needed, that cooperation between United
States and British agents was commonplace and sincere, the following should help to provide it.
Sir,
Your very polite letter of the 22nd instant has been received, and
thank you kindly for the sentiments contained in it.
It will at times, Sir, afford me much pleasure to attend to any
command you may have in this place, and I beg that you will have no
hesitation in commanding my services.
1M) Tudor to Adams, Callao Roads, July 11, 1824, in Manning, Dip. Cor., Ill:
1755-1757.
1<s) The Aurora and Franklin Gazette, (Phüadelphia), Sept. 5, 1825, p. 2.
166) PRO FO 203, Box 10, leaf 13, George Robertson to Charles O'Gorman, Tampico,
Mar. 11, 1825, a copy; for other friendly exchanges between Robertson and O'Gorman, see PRO FO 203, Box 10, leaves 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.
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You can rely that every attention that lays in my power, shall be
rendered to British Subjects that may require my assistance, knowing
well that under similar circumstances it would be reciprocated by any
of H.R.M.'s Consuls.
I have the honor to be, etc.167
From this remove it indeed seems impossible that any individual
living in the 1820s and objectively viewing the Latin American
policies in the United States and Great Britain could have foreseen
anything but minor waves in a sea of friendship and cooperation.
,67 ) PRO FO 203, Box 4, leaf 113 plus verso, a copy, George Robertson to Charles
O'Gorman, Tampico, Dec. 31, 1824.
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