In the second half of the eighteenth century, warfare, imperial reforms and the emergence of new polities changed the geography of power and commerce in the Atlantic. During the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, warfare in Europe, in the Americas and in the Atlantic provoked changes in the patterns of trade and allowed for an increase in the flow of people, capital, goods and information across imperial limits.Footnote 1 In this context, port cities became crucial spaces as sites where exchanges between different regions and continents took place, connecting agents and geographies from different empires, kingdoms and republics. Port cities functioned as hubs for commerce, information, taxation and defence; they provided the logistics for further occupation and development of interior regions.Footnote 2 Their coastal location, moreover, allowed port cities to emerge as pivotal points of trans-imperial interactions, facilitated by the numerous commercial agents from across the globe who operated in these urban spaces. During the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, as old mercantilist regulations were undermined by social, political and military events, port cities in the Atlantic became increasingly interconnected with circuits of trade spanning the Pacific and Indian Oceans. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Atlantic port cities had acquired global reach.Footnote 3
In 1778, as part of the reforms to promote commercial activity, the Spanish crown authorized 24 new American ports to engage in trade with other regions of the Spanish empire. These liberalizing commercial policies aimed at taxing the trade already existing in those ports as contraband routes. In the Circum-Caribbean region, the opening of new ports to Atlantic trade bestowed a semi-legal status to previously existing smuggling routes and stimulated trans-imperial connections in the region.Footnote 4 In Rio de la Plata, the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo were authorized to engage in Atlantic trade. The creation of the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776) with its capital in Buenos Aires further empowered the city's political and commercial elites. It was Montevideo, however, with its superior harbour and commercial community with strong trans-imperial trading connections (especially with Brazil) that emerged as the region's main Atlantic port. Between 1778 and 1810, thousands of Spanish, Portuguese, British, North-American and other foreign ships entered the port of Montevideo (see Figure 1). While Buenos Aires remained the political and economic centre, between 1778 and 1810, Montevideo functioned as the Atlantic port of the Rio de la Plata estuary. During this period, Montevideo's merchants and authorities leveraged its new position as a port city with global reach, newly created institutions, and trans-imperial networks to advance its commercial and political role within the Spanish empire.
Atlantic Ocean (selected ports)
Source: Map elaborated by Jeffrey Erbig Jr for the author.
This article examines the emergence of Montevideo as a port city connected to Atlantic and global trade circuits and the political and economic consequences of such development in regional politics. It explores the strategies Montevidean elites deployed in order to develop and control trans-imperial and global trade, even if it meant pushing and bending mercantilist regulations. I contend that Montevidean elites sought to capitalize on the Spanish commercial reforms that made Montevideo the primary port in the region and simultaneously integrated the city into global trade routes. In this process, Montevideo's merchants and officials deployed a series of informal arrangements with foreign commercial partners that transcended prescriptive mercantilist policies dictated by the Spanish metropole. Through their dealings with foreign merchants, especially Luso-Brazilians and Americans, Montevidean commercial elites developed their own terms for trading, and achieved increasingly higher levels of commercial and political autonomy within the Spanish empire.
Trans-imperial trade in eighteenth-century Rio de la Plata
According to the Spanish empire's mercantilist regulations, the city of Buenos Aires was to be supplied with goods via the city of Lima. Nevertheless, direct trade with merchants from other Atlantic empires proved more profitable and soon became characteristic of the region's commerce. The second foundation of Buenos Aires, in 1580, coincided with the beginning of the Union of the Iberian Crowns (1580–1640). In the following decades, Portuguese merchants became prominent players in the Buenos Aires commercial community, attesting to the significance of trade between Brazil and Rio de la Plata. Starting in 1595, Portuguese traders acquired the monopolistic contracts for the introduction of enslaved Africans into Spanish dominions (the Portuguese Asiento). The Luso-Brazilian commercial dominance in Rio de la Plata, however, suffered a serious setback with the end of the Union of the Iberian Crowns in 1640. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, Dutch, British and French joined Portuguese traders regularly arriving in the Rio de la Plata for conducting trans-imperial trade. Despite Spanish regulations preventing foreign ships in colonial ports, foreign vessels used the well-known expedient of calling in on distress and requesting permission for an emergency landing in order to be admitted in port.
Aiming at regaining privileged access to the silver, hides and markets of the Rio de la Plata and Upper Peru, the Portuguese founded a colony to support contraband trade in Rio de la Plata. From 1680 to 1777, Portuguese Colonia do Sacramento (a Portuguese town across the Rio de la Plata estuary from Buenos Aires) offered an enduring entrepôt for trans-imperial commerce, which Spanish authorities considered contraband trade. During the eighteenth century, Colonia became a major hub for connecting the region to global trade routes. English ships were a common presence in Colonia do Sacramento, as well as Portuguese ships from Europe, Brazil, Africa and even from Macao. The foundation of Montevideo by the Spaniards on the north bank of the Rio de la Plata, in 1726, intended to prevent further Portuguese expansion but failed to stop contraband trade in the region. The regular presence of foreign merchant ships in Colonia do Sacramento contrasted with the scarcity of Spanish merchant vessels arriving in the Rio de la Plata during the eighteenth century, fewer than one official Spanish ship every five years. In Buenos Aires, a thriving contraband trade with Colonia nurtured the growth of a strong mercantile community that profited extensively from commerce of cheap Atlantic goods as well as enslaved Africans. By the middle of the 1750s, Buenos Aires merchants had built commercial networks that spanned the interior of the region to Alto Peru by helping to supply that vast market with foreign goods. In exchange, Buenos Aires merchants gained access to the silver reserves from Alto Peru (current day Bolivia) and the Spanish provinces in the interior. The silver circulating among Buenos Aires traders attracted further foreign trade to the region. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the ports of Rio de la Plata functioned as the Atlantic hub for the trade and the supplying of Upper Peru and the Spanish interior provinces, effectively bypassing the Spanish official commercial route via Lima.
The creation of the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776) and the Spanish conquest of Colonia do Sacramento (1777) changed the role of ports and the dynamics of trade within the estuary. After the expulsion of the Portuguese from Colonia (1777), Spain's proclamation of intra-imperial free trade in 1778 established Montevideo and Buenos Aires as authorized Atlantic ports. Nevertheless, Buenos Aires never counted with a suitable port for large transatlantic vessels. As a result, endowed with an excellent natural harbour at the entrance of the River Plate, Montevideo became the region's Spanish naval base. It also became the mandatory port of call for all Atlantic trading vessels entering or leaving the estuary, and it became the administrative seat of the Resguardo, the office in charge of repressing contraband trade. Montevideo became officially the deep-water port for Buenos Aires Atlantic trade and the seat of Spanish authorities in charge of naval movement, customs and port logistics in the Rio de la Plata estuary. Despite the conquest of Portuguese Colonia, and the suppressing of this Portuguese port, Buenos Aires emerged still dependent on an Atlantic port for transatlantic shipping, now being Montevideo. In the following decades, Montevideo replaced Colonia do Sacramento as the hub for Luso-Brazilian, Anglo-American and other foreign trade in Rio de la Plata. During the last decades of the eighteenth century, the heretofore regional port of Montevideo became a globally connected harbour, and local authorities recorded the arrival of ships coming from and going to ports in the Pacific Coast of the Americas, Canton, India, northern Europe, the Caribbean, West and East Africa, Australia and even the Baltic Sea. Despite the subaltern political and economic position in relation to Buenos Aires, Montevideo enjoyed extensive benefits from its privileged deep-water port and derived from its newfound role as the prime Atlantic harbour for Buenos Aires's trade.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, Montevideo had grown into a vibrant hub for Atlantic and global trade networks in the region. Loading and outfitting ships generated demand for foodstuffs, warehouse space, labourers, as well as the service of translators, divers and paralegals, among other resources. Preparing a vessel for an Atlantic trade voyage could mean several months stay in Montevideo, and over 7,000 pesos of costs, including port fees. All this activity created a lively service sector in Montevideo, and local merchants, artisans, urban plebeians and peasants found new opportunities in supplying the direct and indirect needs of a port city with global reach.Footnote 5
From 1778 to 1810, I have found records for a minimum of 761 ships involved in trans-imperial trade in the port of Montevideo alone.Footnote 6 Of this total, I found 286 Portuguese ships (37.5 per cent), 271 Spanish vessels navigating to foreign ports (35.6 per cent), 107 Anglo-American (14.1 per cent), 92 British ships (12.1 per cent), 3 French (0.4 per cent) and 2 Danish ships. From Montevideo, Spanish ships frequently cleared for Cádiz or other ports in Spain as their final destination, but these vessels often docked in Rio de Janeiro, or in ports in North America. Other commonly declared destinations included Spanish ports in the Americas such as Havana and Callao, or foreign ports such as Islas Mauricio, Cayenne, Providence, Boston, Philadelphia, Hamburg, the coast of Africa, or simply foreign colonies. In times of war, a significant number of Spanish ships sailed officially from Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro, in order to trans-ship cargoes into Portuguese vessels to proceed to Europe in Portuguese convoys.
The opening of the Rio de la Plata estuary for Atlantic trade transformed the port city of Montevideo from a regional port into a port city inserted into global trade routes. Such a development empowered the city's commercial elites to develop their political status within the region. The first phase of this process involved the reconnection of Rio de la Plata and Luso-Brazilian markets, after the fall of Colonia do Sacramento. Montevideo's commercial growth continued in the 1790s. Benefiting from policies that opened up the slave trade and neutral commerce to foreigners, Montevideo became a global port. Such evolution, however, changed the balance of political power within the Rio de la Plata, fostering tension between the Montevideo and Buenos Aires elites.
Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro: trans-imperial connections in the South Atlantic
The rise of Montevideo as a global port city must be understood in light of the liberalizing commercial reforms carried out by the Spanish crown. In addition to the 1778 increase in the number of Spanish American ports opened to Atlantic commerce, in 1779, due to the Anglo-Spanish War (1779–83), the Spanish crown granted general and individual licences for Spanish-American subjects to trade with neutrals and to introduce slaves from neutral foreign powers (mostly from Brazil and from Portuguese possessions in Africa).Footnote 7 Furthermore, these regulations allowed Spanish-American merchants to send vessels to neutral ports and to charter vessels from neutral powers to transport Spanish goods safely to Spanish ports in the Americas, in Europe or to other neutral ports. In the South Atlantic, trade with neutrals enabled Rio de la Plata and Luso-Brazilian merchants to re-establish the profitable routes linking Spanish and Portuguese America in the South Atlantic.
The commercial route connecting Rio de la Plata to Rio de Janeiro was restored in the decade after the fall of the Portuguese Colonia (1777). Montevideo's elites were able to take full advantage of the new liberalizing commercial regulations enacted by the Spanish crown. The city also benefited from the transfer of merchants and trade networks from Colonia. After 1777, Portuguese traders who resettled in Spanish possessions brought their families, capital and Brazilian connections. Such was the case of Manuel Cipriano de Melo. A Lisbon-born Portuguese, previously established in Colonia do Sacramento, in 1778 Melo was appointed one of the Comandantes del Resguardo, the newly created office to repress contraband trade. Relying on his many connections within the local community as well as in Brazil, he was able to convert his and his wife's family's property from Colonia into credit in Montevideo.Footnote 8 Cipriano de Melo swore loyalty to the king of Spain and, as a naturalized Spaniard, rapidly became one of the wealthiest merchants of Montevideo.Footnote 9 Cipriano de Melo's trajectory is one of many examples that illustrates the political and economic benefits Montevideo derived from the relocation of wealthy and well-connected commercial agents after the expulsion of the Portuguese from Colonia. Men like him played strategic roles in reconnecting the profitable trade routes linking Portuguese Brazil and Spanish Rio de la Plata.
In 1778, the Spanish ship Nossa Senhora – Begonha stopped in Rio de Janeiro on its way from Montevideo to Cádiz. The ship docked in the colonial Brazilian port, despite imperial policies against it, under the pretext of arribada forzoza (emergency landing).Footnote 10 This was the reopening of a route that became commonly used in the following decades. The large number of Spanish and Portuguese vessels of all sizes that travelled along the South Atlantic coast, between the Rio de la Plata and Rio de Janeiro, attested to the vitality of this trans-imperial trade route. It also promoted Rio de Janeiro as a port of call for Spanish ships and point of trans-shipment of goods bounded to Spain. In times of war, when ships sailing under the Spanish flag were regularly targeted by enemy vessels, those carrying goods under the Portuguese flag made their way across the Atlantic. The restored route connecting Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro helped to preserve the Spanish empire's Atlantic commerce and would shape Montevideo's commerce and politics throughout the rest of the colonial period.
In January of 1780, the Montevideo ship San Juan e San José docked in Rio de Janeiro under the pretext of an arribada. Brazilian Viceroy Vasconcelos reported to the Overseas Council in Lisbon that the officers of this vessel came with silver to acquire tobacco, iron, sugar and also slaves from Brazil. The viceroy also stated that he saw these episodes as exceptional opportunities to retain as much silver as possible in Rio.Footnote 11 Thus, the viceroy encouraged Rio de Janeiro merchants to supply the Spanish crew with all the goods and the slaves they were able to provide. The total value of the operation exceeded 22:000$000 réis (28,947 pesos) and could have been even greater had more tobacco been available.Footnote 12 The Spaniards also loaded wood, artisan tools, wine, sweets, textiles, iron and 93 enslaved people.Footnote 13
Viceroy Vasconcelos later pondered that, despite his initial discomfort in going against Royal Orders of 1751, his authorization of the sale of slaves to foreign merchants was justified because ‘from Colonia and other locations of this Government, slaves always had been exported to Spanish dominions without any action against such trade by the Authorities’. The viceroy further attributed his disdain for the official regulations to the fact that these laws had been enacted ‘only to satisfy Foreigners that complained about slave contraband trade’.Footnote 14 In this letter, the Brazilian viceroy revealed the methods deployed by Spanish captains and officers to acquire goods and avoid charges of smuggling. The letter also evinces that the smuggling strategies were not a new creation of Montevideo's merchants. Rather, they were an adaptation of previously tested methods and techniques that merchants in the estuary had deployed over decades.Footnote 15
When the subject was brought to the attention of the Conselho Ultramarino in Lisbon in 1781, the viceroy reported in greater detail about the growth of the trade with the Rio de la Plata. In this report, Vasconcelos revealed that Spaniards were willing to allow Portuguese vessels into Montevideo's port.Footnote 16 Specifically, Rio de la Plata authorities wanted to make clear to the merchants in Rio de Janeiro that Portuguese vessels would be welcomed in Montevideo. Montevidean authorities ‘would welcome Portuguese ships that would ask for docking presenting a pretext of arribada, but in fact wanted to trade’.Footnote 17 Furthermore, according to Vasconcelos, the Spanish-Americans had brought more than 100,000 pesos as a sign of their seriousness about the trade. Several merchants and ship owners were thus convinced to send vessels that were officially destined for Santa Catarina, Rio Grande, or other southern Brazilian ports, to Montevideo under pretext of arribada. Footnote 18 In addition, the Spanish envoy confirmed that such ships would return ‘loaded with hides and silver, since the Spaniards would facilitate that with abundance’. The viceroy further noted that some merchants from Rio de Janeiro had already sent a ship to Montevideo a couple of months earlier and had been welcomed by the port authorities.
The use of emergency landings (arribadas) as pretexts for enabling trade with foreigners was a well-known and predictable commercial tactic. In the Rio de la Plata, such a method had been commonplace from the early seventeenth century and Dutch, French, British and Portuguese captains had employed it to enter the port of Buenos Aires.Footnote 19 The use of maritime distress became less prevalent in the eighteenth century when Portuguese Colonia provided a secure port for Portuguese and British vessels. However, after 1777, foreign vessels (Portuguese, British, French and Danish) started appearing off the port of Montevideo and requesting the right of arribada.Footnote 20
The unofficial but long-standing connection between Rio de la Plata and Rio de Janeiro was based on other forms of informal co-operation among subjects of both Iberian crowns. A by-product of wartime conflict was increased piracy during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Portuguese ships were often targeted by French privateers in the South Atlantic, and to save their property and cargos, Portuguese merchants occasionally turned to Montevideo's authorities and legal agents for support. In 1799, French corsairs arrived in Montevideo with three Portuguese ships and their cargoes as prizes. Merchants in Rio de Janeiro, with interest in the seized property, appealed to their ‘Spanish friend Francisco de Medina’ for help. Medina not only provided lodging and loans for the Portuguese officers of the three captured Portuguese ships, but also helped with legal procedures for liberating the confiscated vessels. Medina used his influence and local connections to push forward the Portuguese claims of illegal apprehension of the ships.Footnote 21
Trans-imperial co-operation between Luso-Brazilian and Spanish-American networks also promoted exchange of information on prices, markets, political developments and naval movement. The prolonged presence of the French privateers in Montevideo's harbour proved potentially disruptive of the trade arrangements common in the estuary. The presence of the French privateers constituted a threat for the accepted but not-official presence of Portuguese ships in the estuary. Without losing time, Rio de la Plata's authorities and merchants sent fast-sailing boats to Santa Catarina and Rio de Janeiro to warn Luso-Brazilian authorities and merchants about the French presence in the region.
The acting viceroy of Rio de la Plata, a former governor of Montevideo, Antonio Olaguer Feliu (1797–99), was explicit in saying that he had no idea about the plans and strategies of the French ships, and that consequently he was sending this warning message in a fast ship with an experienced crew to spread the news. The Spanish viceroy also asked the Luso-Brazilians to be careful in sending ships to Rio de la Plata, since ‘not having received any orders from my Corte that would allow me to authorize the docking of [merchant] ships, and because it goes against the law and Royal ordinances that I am supposed to enforce, I cannot avoid asking Your Excellence to be sensitive of the repercussions of such news’.Footnote 22 The Spanish governor, nevertheless, explained that the presence of French warships in the estuary was unforeseen, and that in the future he would ‘be delighted in helping the Vassals of Her Majesty Fidelissima’.Footnote 23
The Spanish viceroy wanted to be clear that he and the Rio de la Plata merchants were unable to protect Portuguese merchant ships in the estuary. The presence of French privateers required additional measures to protect the flow of trans-imperial trade operations (especially Portuguese trade) in Montevideo's port. This episode demonstrates how imperial officials deployed informal strategies contrary to mercantilist regulations: despite imperial rivalries and the prohibition of trans-imperial trade, colonial subjects developed networks of co-operation across Luso-Spanish ports. These powerful networks of trade and information involving merchants, imperial authorities, port workers and seafarers that crossed imperial boundaries were instrumental in enabling trans-imperial commercial circuits.
Reforms, global trade and political conflict
Warfare in the Atlantic contributed to the erosion of old mercantilist restrictions. In order to ensure the safe crossing of Spanish cargo from the Americas to Europe, in the 1780s, Rio de la Plata merchants started to deploy neutral Portuguese vessels and ports to trans-ship their merchandise to Europe. Often, Spanish ships would even sail under the Portuguese flag in ‘Portuguese simulation’ (simulación Portuguesa). The impact of these specific Royal Ordinances and commercial practices went beyond times of warfare. These ad hoc licences granted in the early 1780s authorizing trade with foreigners paved the way for the extensive trade Rio de la Plata merchants established with neutral foreign powers in the following decade.
Starting in 1789, the Spanish crown further enacted a series of liberalizing regulations that standardized trade with neutrals (whether slave trade voyages or trade in goods) in the South Atlantic. After the ‘free trade in slaves’ act for Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Caracas Province in 1789, the Royal Ordinance of 1791 allowed free trade in slaves from neutral foreign powers in all of the Spanish Americas. Further royal ordinances liberalizing commercial exchanges with neutral nations in the Americas and in Europe were enacted in 1793, 1795, 1797 and 1805. Due to the changing geo-political scenario in Europe during the 1790s, and the break out of the revolution in Haiti, trade with neutral nations became the new normal in the Spanish empire. These policies represented, to some degree, the standardization of trading practices tested with North American and Brazilian traders during times of war in the 1780s.
Merchants from Buenos Aires and Montevideo used licences to acquire slaves in foreign ports (e.g. Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Portuguese Africa), and in addition to slaves, they would acquire goods like tobacco, cachaça (Brazilian rum), sugar and textiles. Although Spanish laws explicitly forbade the introduction of any other goods alongside slaves, this prohibition was widely disregarded.Footnote 24 In many cases, the number of slaves transported on these voyages was relatively small, sometimes fewer than a dozen.Footnote 25 In these cases, merchants would ship only a few slaves to ensure authorities would authorize the entrance of the ship into port under the slave trade regulation, but actually would conduct extensive trade in goods.
The slave trade between Brazil and the Rio de la Plata also attested to the high level of integration of the economies of Rio de Janeiro and Rio de la Plata in the South Atlantic. According to Luso-Brazilian authorities, the high numbers of slaves sent to Rio de la Plata had provoked the rise of slave prices in Rio de Janeiro from 50$000 to 100$00 réis (66 to 132 pesos), damaging rural producers, since slaves were ‘the arms of the farmers in this land’.Footnote 26 Nevertheless, contraband trade involving slaves was extremely hard to stop.Footnote 27 Authorities continuously complained that they could not patrol the harbour properly, since Rio de Janeiro merchants would send small boats with slaves to other areas along the nearby coast and then embark slaves directly onto Spanish ships after they had left the harbour.Footnote 28
Montevideo's fast-paced growth into a major regional port with extensive global commercial connections was not a smooth process; in fact, it was followed by a series of political conflicts with the mercantile community of Buenos Aires. The growing importance of Montevideo's port for Atlantic commerce created a dependence of Buenos Aires merchants on commercial agents and authorities in Montevideo, which generated a bitter competition for the legal control and regulation of the port. Control over transatlantic and global shipping became a primary object of political dispute between the port city of Montevideo and the capital city of Buenos Aires in the last decades of Spanish rule.
Between 1778 and 1806, approximately one quarter of Montevideo's merchants (21 out of 77) were the agents or attorneys of more than 26 Buenos Aires merchants and commercial houses.Footnote 29 The largest of the Buenos Aires businesses were handled by a few prominent Montevideo merchants, who had the necessary capital (both in silver and credit) to face the operational costs of transatlantic shipping. The Montevideo merchant and slave trader Francisco Antonio Maciel represented the interest of four Buenos Aires merchants: Manuel Antonio Rosales, Manuel de Aguirre, Juan Santiago Barros and M.A. Pinedo Arroyo. In 1803, Maciel paid 13,606 pesos just for posting bail on ships on behalf of Manuel de Aguirre.Footnote 30 In the same year, the total value of bails posted specifically for ships sailing on behalf of Buenos Aires merchants in Montevideo amounted to 45,064 pesos.Footnote 31 Acting as agents for Buenos Aires merchants also served the commercial interests of Montevideo's merchants. In 1800, five Buenos Aires merchants had 25,000 pesos with Montevideo merchants.Footnote 32 Montevideo merchants like Francisco Maciel, Francisco Joanico, Jose de Silva and Antonio de San Vicente benefited from counting on their influential and trustworthy Buenos Aires partners in Buenos Aires. Others, such as Pasqual Parodi and Juan de Aguirre, created companies with Buenos Aires merchants.
While Montevideo merchants sought increased local autonomy and greater control over port taxes and fees, Buenos Aires merchants tried to weaken Montevideo's authorities by presenting denunciations of corruption and contraband trade, as well as attempting to circumvent Montevideo's port. In 1798, the Consulado of Buenos Aires (the merchant's guild) announced that the city was suffering ‘los prejuicios’ (the losses) due to Montevideo's port monopoly. The Consulado demanded the maintenance of the ‘primacy of the trade of Buenos Aires’ over Montevideo, the termination of the mandatory stop of all transatlantic vessels in Montevideo, the end of Montevideo's exclusive right to receive slave ships, and the prosecution of Montevidean authorities on charges of contraband.Footnote 33 In support of their demands, the Consulado argued that the port of Montevideo was geographically disadvantaged compared to Ensenada. It claimed that the losses to Buenos Aires’ merchants caused by port fees and the requirement that ships leaving Buenos Aires stop in Montevideo was detrimental to Buenos Aires' commerce. Finally, it claimed that corruption was rampant among Montevideo's ‘bad and unfaithful officials’.Footnote 34
The merchants of the Buenos Aires Consulado alleged that the slow procedures of the officials and the fees collected at Montevideo were a source of losses in their commercial transactions. As an example, the Consulado presented the case of Josef de Maria, whose ship waited for two months for clearance by the Montevidean authorities. As a result, Maria allegedly suffered a loss of 4,000 pesos.Footnote 35 In addition, the Consulado complained to the crown that ships arriving in Buenos Aires with slaves from West Central Africa, Ile Bourbon and Rio de Janeiro were forced to return to Montevideo if they arrived in Buenos Aires with slaves or in distress. In one case, they estimated that Buenos Aires merchant Pedro Duval lost 30 per cent of his sugar cargo and 15 per cent of the cachaça.
The Consulado of Buenos Aires accused the elites of Montevideo of trying to restrain their access to transatlantic trade. According to Josef de Maria, the interim viceroy who had also served as the former governor of Montevideo, Olaguer Feliu (governor, 1790–97; viceroy 1797–99), prevented him from sending ships to the coast of Mozambique to buy slaves. Maria also denounced Feliu for not allowing two of his ships that came from Rio de Janeiro to enter Buenos Aires's harbour, forcing the ships to dock first in Montevideo's port.Footnote 36 The merchants of Buenos Aires were so inflamed by Olaguer Feliu's policy that they petitioned the court for the removal of the viceroy.
The Buenos Aires Consulado also denounced the loss of royal revenue because of smuggling in Montevideo. Montevideo officials were accused of turning a blind eye to goods arriving in foreign ships. Furthermore, illegal merchandise was rarely confiscated in Montevideo, while in Buenos Aires, the Real Aduana (Royal Customs) seized large quantities of foreign goods.Footnote 37 The strongest denunciations of smuggling were reserved for the authorities and merchants involved in the trade with Brazil: ‘the ships come [from Portuguese colonies] straight to our ports without slaves and loaded with aguardiente, rice, and other goods’.Footnote 38 Merchants of the Consulado provided details citing the case of the Portuguese ship under a Portuguese captain named D. Manuel Jose da Silva, which had entered Montevideo transporting 58 barrels of aguardiente and 50 bags of rice from foreign colonies.Footnote 39
Despite the charges of corruption and contraband trade imputed by the Consulado of Buenos Aires, the merchants of Montevideo petitioned the crown for their own independent Consulado in 1799 and 1802. They reminded the crown of their numerous acts of loyal service: protecting the borders, fighting hostile indigenous groups and maintaining the port without any support from Buenos Aires.Footnote 40 Montevideo's delegates complained that although a new tax (the averia) was created for the maintenance and improvement of Montevideo's port, these funds were diverted from their original purpose.Footnote 41 Specifically, the merchants of Montevideo complained about the failure of the Buenos Aires Consulado to build lighthouses, to construct rubble-mound breakwaters (moles) and to outfit two boats to patrol the coast (lanchas corsarias).Footnote 42 By 1802, the authorities of Montevideo commanded the Consulado to allocate the sum of 12,000 pesos that had been ordered by the crown to build lighthouses and promote improvements in Montevideo's port. As a form of putting pressure on the merchants of Buenos Aires for prompt payment of this amount, Montevideo merchants refrained from sending naval and commercial information (i.e. intelligence about port activity, the arrival of correspondence and the public auction of embargoed goods).Footnote 43 The conflict over information and services regarding global trade led the merchants of Bueno Aires to pay for the construction of a small lighthouse at the entrance of the port on the Montevideo Hill. Nevertheless, the 12,000 pesos were never invested in Montevideo's port as the crown and the Montevideo's merchants and officers had intended.
Tensions rose between Buenos Aires’ and Montevideo's merchant communities when the former opened the port of Ensenada as a physical extension of the port of Buenos Aires, also authorized for docking foreign and Spanish merchants ships entering the estuary from Atlantic between 1801 and 1803.Footnote 44 Montevideo officers, merchants and port authorities were swift in turning to action to ensure the city's shipping supremacy in the estuary, and in May of 1802, dozens of North American vessels were embargoed in the Rio de la Plata. If imperial reforms and the expulsion of the Portuguese from Colonia do Sacramento allowed Montevideo to develop into a global port, regional political disputes, in turn, also affected global trade.
In 1802, 44 out of the 49 United States merchant vessels that were docked in a Rio de la Plata port were detained by Spanish authorities in the estuary. As part of the enforcement of the Royal Order of 1799 declaring the end of neutral trade in Spanish American ports, local authorities did not authorize the clearance of the United States merchants ships in Rio de la Plata to continue their voyages.Footnote 45 The 1802 incident appeared on the pages of United States newspapers in different regions and had repercussions in other European, Asian and Caribbean ports.Footnote 46
The stranded vessels' incident illuminates the scope of foreign merchant activities in Rio de la Plata in general, and the United States presence in specific. The majority of the 44 grounded vessels sailed from ports in New England: 22 from Boston, 5 from Rhode Island and 1 ship sailing from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York, respectively. Contemporaries in the United States estimated the total impressive value of the ships’ cargoes in ‘the amount of three million dollars’.Footnote 47 Some of these ships were in the middle of longer journeys, visiting other ports in the Atlantic, Africa or Asia.Footnote 48 As a result, the grounding of United States vessels in Rio de la Plata had repercussions in other port cities, from Philadelphia to Hamburg, to Canton, to Calcutta, to Batavia, to Lisbon and Cadiz, but it also merited the attention of the United States government.Footnote 49
The United States Plenipotentiary in Spain received a representation signed by 22 United States captains and commercial agents detained in Rio de la Plata, which reveals the different business enterprises in which the United States and Spanish merchants collaborated.Footnote 50 The largest number of vessels detained in Rio de la Plata were American ships hired by Spanish merchants to export produce, followed by those vessels which had been bought by Spanish merchants to be deployed in the slave trade, while a third group of vessels grounded in the estuary were in the middle of longer voyages to the Pacific and Indian Ocean.Footnote 51
American captains in the Rio de la Plata were vocal in protesting the political nature of the confiscations. In an article published in the Philadelphia Gazette in June of 1802, the United States captains reporting to the United States consul in Madrid pointed to the role of the viceroy Joaquin del Pino (1801–04) who was a former governor of Montevideo from 1773 to 1790, and the governor of Montevideo, José de Bustamante y Guerra (1797–1804) in detaining specific ships. American ship captains and merchants were adamant about the governor of Montevideo's personal role in targeting American vessels trading with Buenos Aires houses.Footnote 52
In 1803, Spanish courts deemed that 13 vessels were indeed guilty of smuggling. The common thread connecting these vessels is that all but the Washington (which belonged to the French count of Liniers, the brother of Buenos Aires officer Santiago de Liniers) were docked in Buenos Aires’ ports, across the estuary from the Montevideo. Furthermore, 10 out of the 13 vessels deemed involved in smuggling belonged to Buenos Aires merchants involved in the Buenos Aires Consulate: Tomas Antonio Romero (4), Francisco del Sar (3), Manuel de Sarratea (3). The outcome of this affair was ultimately determined by local political and factional disputes between different merchant groups.
Between June 1803 and June 1804, the ports of Buenos Aires were responsible for 18 per cent of the Atlantic trade in the estuary, according to the maritime register of the local newspaper El Semanario de Agricultura Industria y Comercio. Montevideo accounted for 78 per cent of the Atlantic shipping in the estuary. As a result, Buenos Aires merchants were not able to challenge Montevideo's port supremacy, and this reality forced Buenos Aires merchants to maintain their agents in Montevideo. Even those Buenos Aires advocates who had supported the attempts to circumvent Montevideo still recognized the pre-eminence of the port and continued to conduct business on the north bank. Powerful Buenos Aires merchants who promoted the Ensenada port, such as Casimiro Necochea (and later his widow), Tomas Antonio Romero, Martin de Alzaga, Benito Olazabal, Manuel de Aguirre, among others, continued operating shipments in Montevideo in the early 1800s and even after 1808. Buenos Aires merchants remained dependent on the port of Montevideo to have access to transatlantic and global ship-lanes.
Conclusion
Montevideo's economic and political growth in the late eighteenth century illustrates how the intersection of regional and global economic and political processes transformed Atlantic port cities and the political and economic dynamics of the regions surrounding them. If the Spanish liberalizing reforms provided the institutional framework for Montevideo's elites to expand the city's jurisdiction over transatlantic shipping, Montevideo merchants’ control over previously existing smuggling networks with Portuguese and other foreign traders allowed for the city to become a hub of trans-imperial and global trade. The emergence of Montevideo as the main Atlantic port city in the Rio de la Plata after 1778 transformed the balance of power within the Rio de la Plata estuary and allowed the city to resist the political and economic influence of Buenos Aires. The privileged network Montevideo elites built with foreign merchants and authorities demonstrates the significance of Atlantic and global trade circuits in shaping regional economies and politics in areas regarded as political peripheries of empires in the Americas. Conversely, the intersection of these regional, Atlantic and global processes also shaped dynamics of global shipping, causing local political disputes to reverberate in port cities across the globe.
