Redefining Empire

Robert Southey did not exaggerate when he described the England of his day as ‘South American mad.’ From the loss of Britain's North American colonies to the first Spanish American debt crisis and the ensuing London stock market crash of 1825-6, a deep fascination with Spanish America pervaded all aspects of British society. As Spain's hold on its colonies weakened under the weight of domestic pressures and ultramarine revolts, British merchants, miners, scientists, and traders rushed to exploit the mineral wealth and raw materials of Spanish America. Thousands of British soldiers enlisted to aid the colonial independence movements. Travelers flooded the British press with vivid accounts of everything from the famed silver mines of Potosí to the medicinal ‘Jesuits Bark’ of Peru, the social customs of Chile, the fatal earthquakes of Caracas, and the cultivation of logwood on the Mosquito Coast and cochineal in New Spain. The figure of Spanish America displayed itself in poems, plays, operas, cabinets of curiosity, political tracts, news reportage, reviews, stock market quotations, and even in the fashionable ladies' magazines that announced the arrival in London of the ‘Bolivar hat.’ Creole patriots gathered in England to solicit aid for their revolutions, and ministers debated tactics for liberating both the peoples and the untapped wealth of Spain's colonies. The cause of Spanish American independence bridged political gaps, galvanizing ‘intellectual alliances between revolutionaries and reactionaries, mercantilists and proponents of free trade, and champions of colonial expansion together with their detractors.’