Spain and the Latin American Wars of Independence

The Free Trade Controversy, 1810-1820

Bibliographic Data

ID2829936
AuthorsMichael P Costeloe (corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume61
Issue2
Pages209
Publication date1981-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2513829
OpenAlexW4243478826, W2318004344
LanguageEN
Citations received8

S PAIN S response to the revolution of its American provinces was determined by a single, consistent policy: recognition of independence would not be granted. Starting from that fundamental position, however, which never varied and before 1820 was rarely even questioned in public, successive Spanish governments explored every conceivable avenue open to them in the hope of finding the means of pacifying America and effecting its reunification with the mother country. Numerous ways of achieving this objective were put forward and many were tried. These included conciliation talks with leading insurgents; offers of amnesties, pardons, and bribes; industrial and agricultural reforms; the creation of empires headed by Spanish princes; and the widespread use of military force. Among these and other options suggested, the most controversial solution, fervently promoted as the best means of pacifying America and equally fervently opposed by those who argued that it would bring about the ruination of the peninsula, was the granting of international free trade to the American provinces. This article seeks to trace the course of the free trade controversy, which was at the center of Spain's American policy for much of the decade between 1810 and 1820 and which affords considerable insight into the vested interest groups and motives of those who influenced Spain's response to the independence movements. Spain's traditional trading monopoly with its American empire had been the subject of extensive debate and change, particularly during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Cadiz, Barcelona, Malaga, Santander, and other city-ports in the peninsula and in America that had benefited from the liberalization of the commercial system enacted main

Conciliation · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Free trade · Independence (probability theory) · International trade · Latin Americans · Peninsula · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Historical Studies in Latin America · Historical Studies on Spain · History · History and Politics in Latin America · Law · Mathematics

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