Abstract
Covering the period 1830–1870, the section mostly addresses the effects of competition between British merchants based in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The latter group attempted to form a territory dominated by the British in the large region between modern Uruguay and Paraguay. Conflict became most intense during the Anglo-French intervention of 1845–1846. The main events of this episode included another blockade of Buenos Aires directed against Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas, this time unsuccessful, and the naval expedition north along the Paraná River in which diplomat William Ouseley sought to organise a pro-British alliance to take over the country. Side issues include the British takeover of the Falkland Islands in 1833 and how the British community in Buenos Aires survived with little protection from the British government and Admiralty. The story concludes with the accommodation between the British and the Argentines leading to the area’s development as an economic satellite preserving full sovereignty.
We are not Algeria or India.
Juan Manuel de Rosas, Governor of Buenos Aires 1847
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05 February 2019
The incorrect text on page 89 has been replaced with the following:
“As US policy took this direction, new Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston took action. He requested the Admiralty to direct a British warship to seize the islands.”
Notes
- 1.
For views of Montevideo as a strategic military centre, see Gillespie, Gleanings and Remarks, 46; and for the shippers’ viewpoint, Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 36–42. A contemporary map of the fortified core of Montevideo appears in Fortescue, British Army, vol. 5.
- 2.
Miller, Memoirs, I: 58.
- 3.
The extent of British interest is shown in a lengthy historical memorandum among the Ponsonby papers. See “Montevideo 1811–1824.” Memorandum of February 1826. GRE/E/607/157.
- 4.
On links between cities and rural areas see David Rock and Fernando López-Alves. “State Building and Political Systems in Nineteenth-Century Argentina and Uruguay.” Past and Present, No. 167, May, 2000, 176–202.
- 5.
Street, Independencia, 184. The recent study is McFarlane, War and Independence, 181–218.
- 6.
As described by Street, Artigas, 214–216.
- 7.
Vidal, Buenos Ayres, 3.
- 8.
Bowles to Croker 31 Aug. 1819. In Graham and Humphreys, Navy in South America, 277.
- 9.
Canning to Ponsonby 28 Feb., 13 Mar. and 27 Nov. 1826. GRE/E/607/12.
- 10.
Ponsonby to Dudley 18 Jan. 1828. GRE/E/607. For synopses of Ponsonby’s activities, see Mariana Blengio Valdés. Lord Ponsonby y la independencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay. Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria, 1987; Coronel Luis Eduardo Maldonado. Lord Ponsonby y la independencia del Uruguay. Montevideo: Proyección, 1987. Numerous proposals to make Uruguay into a British protectorate from the wars of emancipation are listed in Peter Winn. Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea. Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1997, 16.
- 11.
Discussion of these issues includes Canning to Ponsonby 18 Mar. 1826. GRE/E/607; Ponsonby to Canning 2 Oct. 1826. GRE/E/607/339; Ponsonby to Dudley 28 Dec. 1827 and 18 Jan. 1828. GRE/E/607.
- 12.
Ponsonby to Dudley, 18 Jan. 1828 in Herrera, Misión Ponsomby (sic), 2:188–191.
- 13.
Ponsonby to Canning 2 and 20 Oct. 1826 FO 6/13.
- 14.
Ponsonby to Dudley, 28 Dec. 1827. GRE/E/607; also Herrera, Misión Ponsomby (sic), 2:71–77.
- 15.
On navigating the Bermejo, see Pedro de Angelis, ed. Diario del viage al Rio Bermejo, por Fray Francisco Morillo, del Orden de San Francisco. Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1837. Morillo traversed the river from the west in 1780–1781. Using his and other accounts, De Angelis compared distances along the old colonial land route and by river, attempting to calculate the respective costs of transportation. As routes to Buenos Aires, both were more than a thousand miles in length but many stretches of the Rio Bermejo were less than two feet deep.
- 16.
For the Ponsonby–Aberdeen correspondence, see FO 13/49 and FO 13/50.
- 17.
Peter Campbell Scarlett. South America and the Pacific: comprising a Journey across the Pampas and the Andes, from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, Lima and Panama, with Remarks upon the Isthmus, to which are annexed plans and statements for establishing steam navigation on the Pacific. London: Henry Colborn, 1838, 56, 61. According to Scarlett, the Uruguayans, “object to enter into a binding contract, from a petty dislike to fulfil its conditions, however advantageous to themselves, with a country that has the power to enforce the execution of them.” (p. 134).
- 18.
See J.A. Murray. Travels in Uruguay, South America: An Account of the Present State of Sheep Farming and Emigration to that Country. London: Longmans, 1871, 82–84.
- 19.
The Times 8 Jan. 1845.
- 20.
On the disputes of the 1770s, see Barry Gough. The Falkland Islands/Malvinas. The Contest for Empire in the South Atlantic. London: Athlone Press, 1992, 11–26.
- 21.
Beckington to Peel 11 July 1829. FO 6/499.
- 22.
Parish to Aberdeen 15 Mar. 1829. FO 6/499.
- 23.
“Description of East Falkland Island,” 1831. FO 6/449.
- 24.
Aberdeen to Parish 8 Aug. 1829 FO 354/4.
- 25.
Parish to Guido 19 Nov. 1829. FO 354/4.
- 26.
Fox to Palmerston 15 Oct. 1832. FO 6/449.
- 27.
Palmerston to Admiralty 30 Aug. 1832.
- 28.
British Packet 19 Jan. 1833 citing hostile reactions to the British takeover of the islands in the Buenos Aires press.
- 29.
“Speech of the governor links Falkland Islands with British creditors.” 27 June 1833. Index and Register FO 605.
- 30.
Richards, Britannia’s Children, 193.
- 31.
Argentine appeals in 1888 are collected in CO 78/78. See also Quirno Costa to Jenner 13 Apr. 1888 in FO 118/209.
- 32.
Darwin Keynes, Darwin’s Beagle Diary, 205.
- 33.
John Lynch. Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.
- 34.
Parish to FO 20 Apr. 1831. FO 6/32. From its beginnings, the chapel was also known as the British Episcopal Chapel of St. John. See British Packet 12 Mar. 1831.
- 35.
“A Country House and Grounds for Sale” announced a typical advertisement. British Packet 27 Aug. and 5 Nov. 1831.
- 36.
Griffiths to Bidwell 25 Mar. 1839. FO 6/71. Griffiths took charge of Lindsey’s estate because he died intestate with no known heirs. Article XIII of the 1825 treaty determined that in such cases the consul would sell the estate with the proceeds going to the British Crown. Griffiths mentioned the sum of £2000 he expected might be raised from the auction.
- 37.
Bernard Jonas to Aberdeen 20 Dec. 1842. FO 6/85. On the takeover of the bank, see Burgin, Argentine Federalism, 182. As noted by Burgin and other authors, this bank did little but issue paper money for the government.
- 38.
Griffiths to FO 13 Nov. 1833. FO 6/38.
- 39.
Hanon’s data show 1867 arrivals in the 1820s, 430 in the 1830s and 977 in the 1840s. She provides no data on departures. The names of migrants from Gibraltar appear in the register of British residents held at the British consulate in Buenos Aires.
- 40.
For one such case, see William Hardy to FO 16 Nov. 1844. FO 6–97. Hardy wrote to the Foreign Office from the debtors’ prison in Buenos Aires with a story of being hoodwinked by “the glowing representations of a swindling shipbroker.” According to his story, 129 travellers endured a gruelling voyage from Newcastle-upon-Tyne but their sponsors declared bankruptcy as they landed. The immigrants were made responsible for the promoters’ debts and arrested. Perhaps coached by Consul Griffiths, Hardy dwelt on the lack of the safeguards of English Common Law in Buenos Aires.
- 41.
British Packet 19 Dec. 1835.
- 42.
GHR 5/2/2, 28 June 1830.
- 43.
Local wholesale merchants mentioned in Hodgson’s correspondence included Pedro Gacha, Simón Pereira, Lázaro Elortondo and Jaime Llavallol.
- 44.
Hodgson and Robinson Archive GHR/5/2/1 (Incoming Correspondence) 7 July 1829. Bills of exchange became less acceptable amidst the failures of mercantile firms in the early 1830s. See letter to Thomas Ellis and Co of Sheffield 2 Aug. 1831, (“Confidence in bills is greatly shaken in consequence of the recent failures here”). GHR5/2/1 Letters 1831—1846, Vol. 5, 2 Aug. 1831. The following year “threatened indeed [to] be a ruinous one for us [because] of claims being made against us by parties in England [for] indemnities for the loss in exchange.” Letter to Joseph Green GHR/5/2/1 Letters 1831–1846, Vol. 5, 20 Jan. (also 27 Mar.) 1832.
- 45.
Figures for British textile exports in 1820 show a total value of £630,000 falling to £340,000 in 1830; recovery in the later 1830s brought exports to within a range of £600–£800,000, although the figure for 1840 (during the French blockade) totalled only £614,000. Llorca-Jaña’s claim (p. 272) of a threefold increase in British exports to the Plata by value is valid only by comparing the low point with the high point (1816 at £312,000 and 1841 at £919,000). He also illustrates a doubling in the yardage of cotton exports in the 1830s compared with the 1820s. See Llorca-Jaña, British Textile Trade, 32, 215 on prices and quantities, and tables on 24, 272–273, 310–312 for values. The author calls these figures “staggering” and “spectacular” (p. 273). He restated conclusions in Albert H. Imlah. Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica. Studies in British Foreign Policy in the Nineteenth Century. Second edition. New York: Russell and Russell, 1969, 103–105, noting a fall of 83 per cent in textile prices in 1814–1843.
- 46.
GHR Letters 1831–1846 Vol. 5, 28 Jan. 1834.
- 47.
The listing appears in yearly “Detailed Accounts.” OWN 3/1/3 covering the 1830s. (See Owen Owens Archive, John Ryland Library, University of Manchester). Other categories included white counterpanes, muslins, valencias, shawls, striped cotton, cashmere shawls, flat linings, Cambaise, white flannel, and so on. The fullest list of products compiled by Wilfrid Latham in 1844 appears in OWN 3/2/4/10.
- 48.
Such products included ponchillos, gergas, sayaletas, balandranas, picotes and cordellates. See Fradkin, Argentina Colonial, 68–76. Picotes are described as “ponchos or blankets using cochineal or grain as dye.” Argentina. Superintendente del Censo. Primer censo de la República Argentina verificado en los días 15, 16 y 17 de septiembre de 1869. Buenos Aires: Oficina del Censo, 1872, 267. In Belén, Catamarca in the 1870s, “women weave handsome ponchos of vicuña wool, besides producing dyes in large quantities, and a certain homemade cloth called ‘cordillate de Belén.’” M.G. and E.T. Mulhall. Handbook of the River Plate. Comprising Buenos Ayres, The Upper Provinces, Banda Oriental, and Paraguay. Buenos Ayres: Standard Printing Office, 1869, 233.
- 49.
E.J.M. Clemens. La Plata Countries of South America. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1886, 267.
- 50.
Llorca-Jaña illustrates the impact of depreciation in the late Twenties as earnings from British exports to the Plata fell from £850,000 in 1825, to £371,000 in 1826 and to only £155,000 in 1827; likewise, in the Forties, exports plummeted from £785,000 in 1844 to only £187,000 in 1846, in this case largely due to the effects of the Anglo-French blockade. See British Textile Trade, 310–311.
- 51.
Hodgson to Robinson 22 June 1829. GHR 5/2/1. Comments attributed to D.C.M. Platt that “expensive European luxury goods hardly put cheap domestic cloth off the market” simplifies market dualism. Wide substitutions occurred as the volume of imports increased and prices fell. See Brown, Argentina, 245, note 18 citing Platt.
- 52.
A standard discussion is Juan Carlos Nicolau. Industria argentina y aduana, 1835–1854. Buenos Aires: Devenir, 1975. As calculated by Llorca-Jaña, tariff rates on printed cottons fell from a rate of 2.4 pence per yard in 1815, to 0.9 pence in 1835 and to only 0.3 pence in 1853. British Textile Trade, 238–241, 270, 279.
- 53.
Jürgen Schneider. “Le commerce français avec Amérique Latine pendant l’âge de l’independance.” Revista de Historia de América, no. 84, 1977, 63–87.
- 54.
Parish to FO 29 April 1829 FO 6–24.
- 55.
On the militia, see Ricardo Donato Salvatore. Wandering Paysanos. State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
- 56.
Hodgson to Correspondents 21 April 1838. GHR/5/1/7, reporting additional duties of 8–12 per cent.
- 57.
Hodgson to Owen Owens 26 Oct. 1840. OWN 3/2/4/4.
- 58.
Hodgson’s reactions during the French blockade appear in GHR/5/1/7.
- 59.
Episcopal Church leaders to FO 14 Dec. 1841. FO 6/80.
- 60.
Hodgson to Owen Owens 24 Oct. 1840. OWN 3/2/4/4, 25 Jan. 1841 3/2/4/5.
- 61.
Hodgson to Owen Owens 2 Dec. 1841. OWN 3/2/4/6.
- 62.
Hodgson to Owen Owens 25 Feb. 1842. OWN 3/2/4/6. Partners of the London merchant house, G.F. Dickson and Co., issued similar lamentations. “Such a time as the present I do not remember in Buenos Ayres.” See, G.F. Dickson and Company, 1 Mar. 1844. London Metropolitan Archives.
- 63.
Hodgson to Owen Owens, 21 May 1842. OWN 3/12/4/6.
- 64.
Jackson to Owen Owens 10 Oct. 1840. OWN 3/2/4/1. Hodgson to Owen Owens 14 June 1842. OWN 3/12/4/6.
- 65.
Hodgson reported his share of the order as follows: “We yesterday agreed with Don Simon Pereira for the 11 bales of Saved List Cloths and Baize which appertain to his order of 20,000 yards…at $12.4 per yd. to be paid for at 60 days from the delivery of the goods, he guaranteeing the exchange on them at 2 and seven eighths [British pence per paper peso].” Hodgson to Owen Owens 1 Jan. 1842. OWN 3/12/4/6.
- 66.
Hodgson to Owen Owens, 7 Jan. 1843. OWN 3/12/4/7.
- 67.
Hodgson to Owen Owens 28 Oct. 1843. OWN 3/12/4/7.
- 68.
Pereira made part payment to Hodgson for ₤500, with another portion of his payment in cattle hides. See Hodgson to Owen Owens 1 Jan. and 28 Mar. 1842. OWN 3/2/4/6. For later stages of the dispute, see Hodgson to Owen Owens 13 Jan. and 7 Mar. 1844. OWN 3/2/4/8. Dickson reported that Pereira owed half a million pesos, some £5200, to the Carlisle brothers. See Dickson Archive 1 Mar. 1844. Pereira was reported bankrupt but survived with government help.
- 69.
See Dickson and Co, 1 Mar. 1844.
- 70.
Latham to Owen Owens 1846. OWN 3/2/4/6. Like the Bermejo, the Pilcomayo running south-east into the Rio Paraguay south of Asunción (and from the Rio Paraguay into the Rio Paraná) proved impassable. The river remained unexplored until the 1880s. For descriptive data, see Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 12.
- 71.
Dickson 27 July 1844.
- 72.
Dickson 28 Jan. 1843.
- 73.
Index and Register 3 May 1842. FO/605. “Montevideo forces a way into the Paraná by taking over Martín García.”
- 74.
On Lafone, see Peter Sims. “Networks and the British Merchant Community of Uruguay, 1830–1875: Outline and Case Studies.” http://www2.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/seminars/sims.pdf
- 75.
Conflicts between Lafone and Thomas Armstrong over unpaid bills are reported in British Packet 16 Feb. 1831; also Diario de la Tarde 20 June 1831.
- 76.
Lafone married Maria Quevedo y Alsina three times in one year, first in the unauthorised service denounced by the Catholics clerics, secondly in the Catholic service forced on him, and lastly in the consular church. The story is retold in David George. Historia de la Iglesia Anglicana en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Epifanía, 2010, 11–12.
- 77.
The contract between Lafone and the Crown representatives is preserved in TS 25/215. Its failure may be followed in C 15/195/F29.
- 78.
Lafone became part-purchaser of Gorriti Island, off Punta del Este. In 1879, a proposal was made to cede the island to Britain as a naval base but was never completed. See Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, I: 219.
- 79.
On the origins of the Montevideo chapel, see Edward Every. The Anglican Church in South America. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1915, 42.
- 80.
On Lafone, see Hanon. Diccionario, 492–494; Arnoldo Canclini. “Samuel F. Lafone: apuntes para su biografía.” Investigaciones y Ensayos, No. 49, 1999, 123–162, containing details of his British background, his marriage and religious outlook. Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, I:66–71 describes the early British population of Uruguay.
- 81.
Montevideo merchants to Ouseley 30 May 1846. FO 6–123.
- 82.
William MacCann. Two Thousand Miles’ Ride through the Argentine Provinces: being an account of the natural products of the country, and habits of the people, with a historical retrospect of the Rio de la Plata, Monte Video and Corrientes. Vol. 2. London: Elder, 1853, 292.
- 83.
On the SCDA, see Peter Sims. “Crisis and Speculation: British Merchants and the Uruguayan Civil War, 1839–1851.” Paper presented at the European Historical Economics Conference, Dublin 2011. A more comprehensive account is Sims. Social Networks and Entrepreneurship. The British Merchant Community of Uruguay, 1830–1875. Ph.D. diss. London School of Economics, 2014, 163–175.
- 84.
The Ellauri-Mandeville treaty with Uruguay was only “a transcript of that concluded long before with the Argentine Republic.” British Packet 20 Aug. 1842. Pressure on the British government from Uruguay through the ANSAM and other associations is detailed in Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, I:62, notes 22, 23 and 24. See “Memorial of the Merchants and other British subjects residing in the Territory of the Uruguayan Republic,” 15 April 1842.
- 85.
Underlining the difference, see Hodgson to Owen Owens 16 Nov. 1840. OWN 3/2/4/4. Effecting remittances in hides required additional expense on insurance.
- 86.
Uruguayan monetary practices are noted in David Joslin. A Century of Banking in Latin America, to Commemorate the Centenary in 1962 of the London and South America Bank Limited. London: Oxford University Press, 1963, 53–58. The economic power of landowners in Buenos Aires is widely referenced in Burgin, Argentine Federalism and Ferns, Britain and Argentina. Discussing the 1880s, A.G. Ford contrasted the loose money practices of Buenos Aires with the monetary orthodoxy of Australian and New Zealand banks, where “finance” commanded similar dominance as in Uruguay. See A.G. Ford. The Gold Standard, 1880–1914: Britain and Argentina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, 94, 133. Discussion of differences in monetary policies between the two countries appears in Rock and López-Alves, Argentina and Uruguay.
- 87.
Hodgson to Slatter 21 May 1864. GHR 5/1/10.
- 88.
The Times 17 Feb. 1845 reproduced the Unitario propaganda known as the Tablas de Sangre (“Tablets of Blood”). The newspaper claimed Rosas’s disruption of trade cost ₤5 million in British exports, a sum amounting to at least 7 years of British exports to the Rio de la Plata. The true scale of repression under Rosas, also commonly exaggerated, is examined in Gabriel Di Meglio. ¡Mueran los salvajes unitarios! La Mazorca y la política en tiempos de Rosas. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007.
- 89.
Quoted in David McLean. Diplomacy and Informal Empire. Britain and the Republics of the La Plata, 1836–1853. London: Academic Press, 1995, 190, 201. Prime Minister Peel supported Aberdeen’s position. See Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, 1:63.
- 90.
Instructions to Mr. Ouseley for his Guidance in the Anglo-French Intervention in the River Plate. From the Archivo Americano. Montevideo: South American Print Office, 1845, 2, 8.
- 91.
A recent summary is Rebecca Berens Matzke. Deterrence through Strength. British Naval Power and Foreign Policy under the Pax Britannica. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2011, 30.
- 92.
Ouseley to FO 4 Aug. 1845. FO 6–104.
- 93.
Kent Archives Office. (My thanks to Charles Jones for this citation.)
- 94.
Dickson 28 Jan. 1845.
- 95.
Dickson 26 June 1845.
- 96.
Petition from Merchants and Landowners to the Foreign Office, 31 July 1845. FO 6/108.
- 97.
The pro-Porteño position is set out in Anon. British Diplomacy in the River Plate. London: Whitaker, 1847. The pro-Montevideo faction continued to agitate in Britain led by John O’Brien, a former Irish mercenary tied to the SCDA.
- 98.
US Consul Graham to State Department. Quoted in Clifton B. Kroeber. “Naval Warfare in the Rio de la Plata Region, 1800–1861.” Madison: Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 1956, 104.
- 99.
Anon, British Diplomacy, 26. “The result of the present blockade has been to annihilate our valuable direct trade with Buenos Ayres.”
- 100.
Tulio Halperín Donghi. Guerra y finanzas en los orígenes del estado argentino (1791–1850). Buenos Aires: Belgrano, 1982, 238. Llorca-Jaña reports the same figures on British trade as Halperín: 1844 £785,000; 1845 £582,000; 1846 £187,000. See British Textile Trade, 310–311.
- 101.
Ouseley to Aberdeen 29 Mar. 1846 FO 6/116; Aberdeen to Ouseley 5 May 1846. FO 6/114.
- 102.
Aberdeen’s exchanges with Ouseley from late 1845 are contained FO 6/114 to 118.
- 103.
McLean, Diplomacy and Informal Empire, 80.
- 104.
On Varela’s journey to Europe, see Juan E. Pivel Devoto and Alcira Ranieri de Pivel Devoto. Historia de la República Oriental del Uruguay. 3rd. edition. Montevideo: Medina, 1966, 52. Support for the project appears in El Comercio del Plata 4 Oct. 1845, 5 Mar. 1846.
- 105.
Thomas Baines. Observations on the Present State of the Affairs of the River Plate. Liverpool: Liverpool Times Office, 1845, 9–10. On Merseyside steam ship building, see Kenneth Warren. Steel, Ships and Men: Cammell Laird, 1824–1993. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1998, 30–31. In the 1840s the Laird company, an early developer of steamships at Birkenhead, was “ahead of the market, especially in building in iron” and actively seeking foreign markets.
- 106.
Lauchlan Bellingham Mackinnon. Steam Warfare on the Parana: A Narrative of Operations, by the Combined Squadrons of England and France, in Forcing a Passage up that River. London: Charles Ollier, 1848, vol. 1, 1, 183. Early military use of steam boats is explored in Daniel R. Headrick. The Tools of Empire. Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, noting the importance of the Yangtze expedition of 1842 in early fluvial steam navigation. Gunboats, usually powered by paddles in this period, were defined as “iron men of war of light draught but of sufficient strength to enable guns of very heavy calibre” (pp. 31–32).
- 107.
Latham to Owens OWN 3/2/4/6. [1846]
- 108.
MacCann, Argentine Provinces, II: 292.
- 109.
Ouseley to Aberdeen 12 Oct. 1845. FO 6/105.
- 110.
Report by Captain Reginald Levinge in The Westmeath Guardian and Longford News-Letter 26 March 1846.
- 111.
A lengthy account of the fighting, principally a cannonade directed at Rosas’s defensive positions, appears in Ouseley to Aberdeen 20 Dec. 1845. FO 6/107. A French military historian inflated the encounter as “un fait d’armes, le plus glorieux de l’histoire de la Marine sous la règne de Louis-Philippe.” Jean-David Avanel. L’Affaire du Rio de la Plata, (1838–1852). Paris: Economia, 1998. 73. From the opposite viewpoint, a recent Argentine Revisionist view portrays the battle in similarly hyperbolic terms as “a great epic.” See Pacho O’Donnell. La gran epopeya. El combate de la Vuelta de Obligado. Buenos Aires: Editorial Norma, 2010.
- 112.
Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 146, n. 14.
- 113.
Osvaldo Barsky and Julio Djenderedjian. La historia del capitalismo agrario pampeano. Vol. 1. La expansion ganadera hasta 1895. Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno, 2003, 78.
- 114.
British Packet 16 July 1842
- 115.
Merchants to Ouseley 27 Jan. 1846. FO 6–117. Other reports of conditions in the upper Paraná appear in British Packet 6 Feb. 1847. For a contrary opinion on the river trade arguing it expanded rapidly from 1846, see David McLean. “Trade, Politics and the Navy in Latin America: The British in the Paraná, 1845–1846.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Vol. 35, No. 3, Sept. 2007, 351–370. His argument is correct for the lower Paraná particularly on Rosario, but overstated concerning the upper Paraná beyond Santa Fe. On steamers in the coastal trade, see Kroeber, Shipping Industry, 43–108; Reber, British Mercantile Houses, 123; Brown, Argentina, 98–104.
- 116.
Ouseley to Aberdeen 26 Aug., 12 and 29 Oct. 1845. FO 6/105.
- 117.
In July a naval commander advised Ouseley against landing troops on the mainland because the British had sufficient military resources to take the island of Martín García only. See Inglefield to Ouseley 2 July 1845 FO 6/108. On proposals for British military occupation of the Banda Oriental, see Ouseley to Aberdeen 25 Oct. 1845 FO 6/105.
- 118.
Ouseley to Aberdeen 18 Oct. 1845. FO 6/105.
- 119.
Ouseley to Aberdeen 27 Feb. 1846. FO 6/116. Ouseley is not difficult to ridicule. Ferns called him “a silly and hysterical man…a social climber and a man in whom personal spite and vanity had the upper hand.” Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 270
- 120.
See Aberdeen to Ouseley 14 Feb. 1846. FO 6/114.
- 121.
Aberdeen to Ouseley 4 March, 5 May, 2 July 1846. FO 6/114.
- 122.
On legal issues relating to the blockade, see Palmerston to Ouseley 4 Dec. 1846. FO 6/114, in which Palmerston conceded the blockading powers had no right to halt American ships sailing directly to Buenos Aires.
- 123.
Quoted in McLean, Diplomacy and Informal Empire, 190.
- 124.
British Packet 7 April, 1849.
- 125.
MacCann, Argentine Provinces, II: 27.
- 126.
Anglo-Porteño to Lord Howden. British Packet 3 July, 1847.
- 127.
Discussion of the treaty of 1853 appears in Anon. Memorandum del gobierno de la provincia de Buenos Aires sobre los tratados celebrados por los ministros de Francia, Inglaterra y los Estados Unidos con el general Don Justo José de Urquiza sobre la libre navegación de los rios Paraná y Uruguay. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Tribuna, 1853.
- 128.
Standard works include Ezequiel Gallo, La Pampa Gringa: la colonización agrícola en Santa Fe, (1870–1895). Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1983; and Julio Derenderdjian. Gringos en la pampa: inmigrantes y colonos en el campo argentino, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2008. On the Rio Uruguay, see Roberto Schmit. Ruina y resurrección en tiempos de guerra. Sociedad, economía y poder en la oriente enterriano posrevolucionario, 1810–1852, Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2004, 141–143.
- 129.
Robert Cunninghame Graham, “Los Pingos.” In The South American Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham, edited by John Walker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978, 158.
- 130.
On “national organisation,” see Tulio Halperín Donghi. Proyecto y construcción de una nación (Argentina, 1846–1880). Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia, 1995; Nicolas Shumway. The Invention of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; William H. Katra. The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Alberdi, Sarmiento, Mitre. Madison, Wis.: Associated University Presses, 1996.
- 131.
For details, see David Rock. State Building and Political Movements in Argentina, 1860–1916. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, 11–53.
- 132.
Rear-Admiral W.J. Hope Johnstone to FO, 23 March 1857. FO 6/202.
- 133.
Tables showing the distribution of British naval ships worldwide appear in John F. Beeler. British Naval Policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli Era, 1866–1880. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 28–51.
- 134.
On Vélez Sársfield, see Abelardo Levaggi. Dalmacio Vélez Sársfield. Jurisconsulto. Córdoba: Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Córdoba, 2005.
- 135.
Hinchliff, South American Sketches 161, 176
- 136.
French policy is discussed in Iwan Morgan, “Orleanist Diplomacy and the French Colony in Uruguay.” The International Historical Review, no. 2, May 1983; also Avanel, Rio de la Plata. Also, David Rock. “The European Revolutions in the Rio de La Plata, 125–141.” In The European Revolutions of 1848 in the Americas, edited by Guy Thomson. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998.
- 137.
Commentary on Montevideo appears in South American Journal 22 Jan. 1910. See also Robertson to Stanfordham 17 Apr. 1913. In RBTN: Catalogue of the Papers of Sir Malcolm Robertson, Box. Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
- 138.
Henry Charles Ross-Johnson. A Long Vacation in the Argentine Alps, or, where to Settle in the River Plate States. London: R. Bentley, 1868, 119–130.
- 139.
“Sam Lafone died too…probably Yellow Feaver [sic] in Buenos Aires), leaving three girls.” Memoir by Maria Helena Williamson (née Krabbé) edited by John A.F. Lough, mimeo. (My thanks to Tim Lough for a copy of the unpublished memoir.)
- 140.
F. Parish to FO 30 Sept. 1852. FO 118/75.
- 141.
Charles Darbyshire. My Life in the Argentine Republic. London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1918, 20. Numbers are a contentious issue. Reber, British Mercantile Houses, 56, shows forty-five British merchant houses in 1852 but her data do not indicate how numbers altered during depressions. On recession-led “shakeouts,” see Miller, Britain and Latin America, 80–84.
- 142.
On Armstrong, see Eduardo Zalduendo. Las inversiones británicas para la promoción y desarrollo de ferrocarriles el siglo X IX: el caso de Argentina, Brasil, Canadá e India. Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1968, 397, note 88.
- 143.
Zalduendo includes a map of landholdings near Rosario in the early 1860s showing that Armstrong, Samuel Lafone and Mariano Fragueiro all had estates close to the projected railway. See Inversiones Británicas, 291.
- 144.
An outline of Edward Lumb’s career appeared in a report of the hundredth birthday of his son Carlos Lumb. Lumb senior was named one of the first wool exporters from Buenos Aires in the 1820s. See Standard 25 Oct. 1928.
- 145.
Mario Jorge López and Jorge Waddell, eds. Nueva historia del ferrocarril en la Argentina. 150 años de política ferroviaria. Buenos Aires: Fundación del Museo Ferroviario, 2007, 24.
- 146.
On ties between Irigoyen and British merchants, see José Bianco. Don Bernardo de Irigoyen. Estadista y pionero, (1822–1906). Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1927, 151. Many of Armstrong’s business activities are detailed in his will. See Tribunales. Sucesiones 3680 and 3681. Archivo General de la Nación (Tomás Armstrong). Armstrong’s estate was valued at £235,000, as noted by Reber, Merchant Houses, 113. His obituary appeared in the Standard 9 June, 1875.
- 147.
Testamentaria de los cónyuges Sr. Don Eduardo Lumb y Sra. Doña Ysabel Yates de Lumb. Cuenta de Liquidación, División y Adjudicación. Legajo 6584. Archivo General de la Nación. The widow bequeathed 32.2 million pesos (moneda corriente). The sterling equivalent, at more than £200,000, is derived from tables in Álvarez, Historia Económica, 112–113. Álvarez shows 31.95 pesos moneda corriente per peso fuerte, and an exchange rate between the peso fuerte and the pound sterling of 4.88.
- 148.
He reported poignantly on the disaster. “In some cases the patients had been abandoned for several days and were dying from the neglect, in others the panic was so great that no one would approach the infected houses or remove the dead, instances even occurred of children sharing the bed infected by their sick and sometimes dying parents.” See “Separate” 19 June 1871. FO 6/302. Dodds, Scottish Settlers, 360–376 lists British victims of the epidemic.
- 149.
Macdonell. Reminiscences.
- 150.
Platt, Foreign Finance, 32–33
- 151.
Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 320,
- 152.
Fair to Robertson 29 Sept. 1862. Barings Archive HC 4/1/19.
- 153.
El Nacional 22 April 1863.
- 154.
Riestra to Barings 28 Mar. 1866, 26 Aug. 1867, HC 4/1/45. For Riestra’s career, see his obituary in Standard 4 July 1879; also, Fernando Arturo Bordabehere. Norberto de la Riestra: su obra en bien de la patria. Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1980. British merchants awarded Riestra a silver statuette of Canning for his contributions to settling the Baring debt conflict.
- 155.
Robertson to Barings 1 Nov. 1872 HC 4–1-29.
- 156.
Quoted in Manuel Horacio Solari. Historia de la educación argentina, Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1949, 153; Juan B. Alberdi. Bases y puntos de partida para la organización de la República Argentina. 5th edition. Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1960.
- 157.
Standard, 27 February 1862. (Opening of the San Fernando Railway.)
- 158.
During purges of Rosas’s supporters in 1852, the consul registered a complaint by a British settler for dispossession of land he had occupied since 1824. Consul to FO 19 Oct. 1852. FO 6/172. Another lengthy case involving an Irish sheep farmer is discussed in Parish to FO 25 June 1860 FO 118–96.
- 159.
See Clarendon to Parish 9 Feb. 1855 FO 118/83; also Parish to FO 3 Aug. 1857 FO 118:83; Parish to FO 30 Sept. 1857. FO 6/202. Payment for military substitutes is mentioned in Parish to FO 9 Sept. 1855. FO 118/83, when the going rate was ₤60. In a judgement in 1842, British law determined that dual nationality did not entitle British subjects born abroad to British protection. During the American Civil War, thousands of Irish subjects of the United Kingdom were refused exemption from military service. See Daniel Feldman and M. Page Baldwin. “Emigration and the British State, ca 1815–1925,” in Citizenship and Those Who Leave. The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation. Edited by Nancy L. Green and François Weil. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007, 144. On legal aspects of citizenship, see Gershon Safir. The Citizenship Debates: A Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, 16–17.
- 160.
Ford to Stanley 15 Jan. 1868. FO 118/129.
- 161.
Several times in the mid-sixties, Honorary Consul Mackie Gordon in Córdoba cited the 1825 treaty to demand possession of the goods of British men who died intestate, having lived with Argentine women in remote rural areas. See Gordon to FO 29 Mar. 1865. FO 118/117.
- 162.
Gordon to FO, 29 Mar. 1865 FO 118/117.
- 163.
Argentine Republic: Buenos Ayres. Report Relative to British Consular Establishments: 1858 and 1871. Part V Presented to the House of Commons by Command of Her Majesty. London: Harrison, 1872. (Enclosure in FO 6:376). On lower level social groups, see Deborah Lynn Jakubs. A Community of Interests. A Social History of the British in Buenos Aires, 1860–1914. Ph.D. Diss., Stanford University, 1985, 118, 131.
- 164.
See Jorge F. Lima González Bonarino. La ciudad de Buenos Aires y sus habitantes 1860–1870. A través del cadastro de Beare y el Censo Poblacional. Buenos Aires: Instituto Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2005, 32. The study identifies families and their addresses. It shows a preponderance of British and Irish on the north side, with a few additional clusters in the south. As an example (p. 275) calle Parque 88–90 contains the largest group of British residents: a doctor, merchant, engineer, bookkeeper and ship captain with dependants and servants. Names and locations of British and Irish shops and businesses in Buenos Aires are listed in http://www.arg.brit.org.uk. British settlers in Argentina by Jeremy Howat Data are based on M.G. and E.T. Mulhall “Handbook for 1863 presented in order of addresses.”
- 165.
John P. Bailey. “Inmigración y relaciones étnicas. Los ingleses en la Argentina.” Desarrollo Económico, 18, no. 72, Jan.-–Mar. 1979, 539–558. Bailey estimated return rates among Britons at 50–80 per cent.
- 166.
Mulhall, Handbook, Preface. No one wanted British migrants from overstocked liberal professions: “briefless barristers, swarms of engineers, architects, printers, surveyors,” as listed in Semmel, Free Trade Imperialism, 87.
- 167.
Macdonell to FO Enclosure in Despatch 32, 16 May 1872. FO 118–136.
- 168.
United Kingdom. “Correspondence Reporting the Treatment of British Subjects in the Argentine Republic, 1870–1872,” Parliamentary Papers, 1872, vol. 70, 87–120. A rejoinder from Buenos Aires listed the large number of British estancieros living in Argentina and cited positive reports about the country in Mulhall’s Handbook of the River Plate. See enclosure in FO 6/318 (1873).
- 169.
Mr. Constantine Phipps, “Report on the Condition of the Working Classes and Immigrants in the Argentine Republic,” enclosed in no. 79, 15 July 1871, FO 118/148. For discussion of Phipps, see Rock, State Building, 74–76. He and his “pretty wife” are mentioned in Lumb Macdonell, Reminiscences, 81.
- 170.
L. Dillon. A Twelve Months’ Tour in Brazil and the River Plate with notes on Sheep Farming. Manchester: Alex Ireland and Co. 1867, 54.
- 171.
Arthur E. Shaw. Forty Years in the Argentine Republic. London: Ethan Matthews, 1907, 192.
- 172.
Emigration Board to FO 28 Aug. 1870 FO 6/300.
- 173.
Charles A Jones. British Financial Institutions in Argentina, 1860–1914. Ph.D. Diss. University of Cambridge, 1973, 63–64. Winn observes a similar transition in Uruguay, noting the decline of British merchant houses on the death of the founders of firms and changes in the organisation of international trade. See Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, I:174–175. The transition in mercantile organisation is widely noted. See S.D. Chapman. “British based investment groups before 1914.” Economic History Review. 38, No. 2, 1985, 231, Miller, Britain and Latin America, 98, 115; Reber, British Mercantile Houses, 4–6. It appears overstated in light of later references to British importers, as in Kelly’s Directory of Merchants, Manufacturers and Shippers of the World, 1903. The so-called multi-agency system based on the early nineteenth century mercantile model continued into the 1920s. See Roswell C. McCrea, Thurman W. Van Metre, George Jackson Eder. International Competition in the Trade of Argentina. Worcester, Mass., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1931, 435.
- 174.
Robert E Forrester. British Mail Steamers to South America, 1851–1865. A History of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and Royal Mail Lines. Farnham, Surrey: Ashfield, 2014.
- 175.
Standard 2 Aug. 1879.
- 176.
The elder Fair’s career is outlined in Hanon, Diccionario, 310.
- 177.
See obituary of John Fair, Standard 24 Dec. 1899; also S. Damus. Who was Who in Argentine Railways. 1860–1960. Ottawa: DIA Agency, 2008, 131–132, referring to Fair’s account of negotiations to set up the Great Southern Railway in 1862. His career in Uruguay is noted in Winn, Inglaterra y la Tierra Purpúrea, 178.
- 178.
Standard 13 March, 2 Aug. 1879.
- 179.
Register of British Subjects, vol. 4. From 20th June 1870 to 30th June 1885, shows a decline of “ovejeros” (shepherds) and the rise of “clerks.” The first stationmaster appeared on the list in 1873. (Data in the British consular register, Buenos Aires.)
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Rock, D. (2019). Empire Builders and Their Adversaries. In: The British in Argentina. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97855-0_3
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