No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Britain's Involvement in Chile's Cambiaso Mutiny, 1851–2: A Case of Political Dependency at the Dawn of the Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2023
Abstract
In mid-1851 a civil war erupted in Chile following a presidential election in which Manuel Montt defeated José María de la Cruz. Many of Cruz's supporters were sent to the distant penal colony of Magallanes. In November 1851, Lieutenant Miguel José Cambiaso, who was part of the garrison, was jailed for insubordination and subsequently led a bloody mutiny disguised as a revolt by Cruz's supporters. The mutiny is familiar to historians of the period, but what is less well known is the key role played by the British in suppressing it. Contrary to previous historiography, the Chilean government pleaded for British intervention. Given the poor state of the Chilean navy and the precariousness of communications with the penal colony, the Chilean government had no option but to resort to British naval forces. This incident illustrates a new dimension of Anglo-Chilean relations during the mid-nineteenth century which cannot be defined solely as imperialistic; Chilean authorities actively sought cooperation from the British. It also highlights the fragility of the process of state formation in a republic long praised as an example of successful political transition from colony to republic, as well as the lack of commitment of the Chilean government to shoring up state power in Magallanes.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University
References
1 Collier, Simon, “Chile,” in Spanish America after Independence, c.1820–1870, ed. Bethell, Leslie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 283–313Google Scholar; Collier, Simon and Sater, William, Historia de Chile, 1808–1994 (Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 28–32Google Scholar; Llorca-Jaña, Manuel and Navarrete-Montalvo, Juan, “The Chilean Economy during the 1810s–1830s and Its Entry into the World Economy,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 36:3 (2017), 354–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loveman, Brian, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 15–7Google Scholar.
2 Durham, Walter T., Balie Peyton of Tennessee: Nineteenth Century Politics and Thoroughbreds (Ohio: Hillsboro Press 2004), 283–5Google Scholar.
3 Joaquín Fernández, “Las Guerras Civiles en Chile,” in Historia política de Chile, 1810–2010. Tomo 1: Prácticas políticas, ed. Iván Jaksić and Juan Luis Ossa (Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2017); Maurice Zeitlin, The Civil Wars in Chile (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Vitale, Luis, Las guerras civiles de 1851 y 1859 en Chile (Concepción: Universidad de Concepción, 1971)Google Scholar; Sergio Grez, De la “regeneración” del pueblo a la huelga general Génesis y evolución histórica del movimiento popular en Chile (1810–1890) (Santiago: DIBAM, 1997); Rodrigo Fuenzalida, “El motín de Cambiazo en Punta Arenas 1851,” Revista de Marina (julio-agosto 1970), 483–90; Braun, Armando, Cambiazo: el último pirata del Estrecho (Santiago: Editorial Francisco de Aguirre, 1971), 16–8Google Scholar; Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Historia de la jornada del 20 de abril de 1851 (Santiago: Rafael Jover, 1878); Gonzalo Serrano, “Viva Cruz, abajo los godos! El general José María de la Cruz y la revolución de 1851,” in Conflictos y tensiones en el Chile republicano, ed. Carlos Donoso and Pablo Rubio (Santiago: Universidad Andrés Bello, 2014).
4 Moresby to Admiralty, Valparaíso, 2 December 1851. British Foreign Office Correspondence with Chile [hereafter FO] 16/81, The National Archives, Kew, London, United Kingdom [hereafter TNA]. Roto is a pejorative term used at the time to describe people from the lower strata of society, usually of urban background.
5 López, Elvira and Fernández, Joaquín, “Presentación: regionalismo versus centralismo: la formación del estado en Chile (1810–1850),” Illes i Imperis 20 (2018), 7–17Google Scholar; Fernández, “Guerras Civiles.”
6 Mackenna, Benjamín Vicuña, Cambiaso: relación de los acontecimientos i de los crímenes de Magallanes en 1851 (Santiago: Imprenta de “El Mercurio,” 1877)Google Scholar; Martinic, Mateo, Breve Historia de Magallanes (Punta Arenas: Ediciones de la Universidad de Magallanes, 2002)Google Scholar.
7 Alberto Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties: Postcolonial Colonialism and State Making in Patagonia, Argentina and Chile, 1840s–1922” (PhD diss., Stony Brook University, 2012), 5.
8 Martinic, Mateo, Historia de la Región Magallánica (Punta Arenas: Ediciones de la Universidad de Magallanes, 2006)Google Scholar; Martinic, Mateo, “Magallanes en el ordenamiento territorial de Chile republicano y su expresión cartográfica (1853–1884),” Magallania 39:2 (2001), 37–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martinic, Breve Historia; Braun, Cambiazo.
9 Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties,” 22. Harambour also discusses the later period, when rivalries with Argentina were more important (i.e., from the 1880s) and sheep farming became significant.
10 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso.
11 Alberto Harambour, “Soberanía y corrupción. La construcción del Estado y la propiedad en Patagonia austral,” Historia 50:2 (December 2017), 570–81.
12 Enrique Bunster, Motín en Punta Arenas y otros procesos célebres (Santiago: Editorial Ercilla, 1962), 35–107.
13 Braun, Cambiazo, 2–9.
14 “Lo que sobra en amenidad y calidad literaria le falta en información documental,” Braun, Cambiazo, x. All translations by the authors.
15 Appleton, Elizabeth Haven, Insurrection at Magellan: Narrative of the Imprisonment and Escape of Captain Charles H. Brown, from the Chilian Convicts (Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing LLC, 1854)Google Scholar.
16 Carlos Vega, Carlos Delgado, and Alejandro Vega, El juicio de Cambiaso (Punta Arenas: Editorial Taller Atelí, 2004).
17 Collier and Sater, Historia de Chile; Arana, Diego Barros, Historia Jeneral de Chile, 1884–1902 (Santiago: Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, 2000)Google Scholar; Edwards, Alberto, El gobierno de don Manuel Montt (Santiago: Nascimiento, 1932)Google Scholar; Vitale, Guerras Civiles.
18 Loveman, Chile.
19 Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 487.
20 Villalobos, Sergio, “Chile en 1852 según el diario del marino sueco C. Skogman,” Boletín de la Academia Chilena de la Historia 25 (1958), 19–49Google Scholar.
21 Parsons, Timothy H., The British Imperial Century, 1815–1914 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)Google Scholar.
22 Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties,” 1.
23 Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties”; Alberto Harambour, “Monopolizar la violencia en una frontera colonial. Policías y militares en la Patagonia austral (Argentina y Chile, 1870–1922),” Quinto Sol. Revista de Historia 20:1 (2016), 1–27; Rodrigo Rivero-Cantillano and Manuel Llorca-Jaña, “Colonización, Estado y violencia en la Patagonia chilena, Magallanes c. 1880–1910,” Magallania, (2022), 1–28; Estefane, Andrés, “Viajeros y burócratas en la historia de la exploración de la República de Chile,” Revista de Historia y Geografía 32 (2015), 133–43Google Scholar; Harambour, “Soberanía y corrupción,” 555–96.
24 Consul Sulivan to Viscount Palmerston, Santiago, 20 January 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
25 Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties,” 6. This said, the Chileans may have neglected the Magallanes settlement in the late 1840s partially because Argentine governor Juan Manuel de Rosas's power was weakening. The threat in the 1880s from a more united Argentina following Roca's Conquest of the Desert was not present in 1851.
26 In a related topic, Harambour (“Borderland Sovereignties,” 49–50), also stressed the importance of hydrographic surveys and charts drawn by British officers for Chilean admirals in the colonisation of Patagonia.
27 Platt, D. C. M., Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)Google Scholar; D. C. M. Platt, “The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations,” Economic History Review 21:2 (I964), 296–306.
28 Miller, Rory, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Longman, 1993)Google Scholar.
29 B. M. Gough, “Specie Conveyance from the West Coast of Mexico in British Warships c.1820–1870: An Aspect of the Pax Britannica,” Mariner's Mirror 69:4 (1983), 419–33.
30 Celia Wu, Generals and Diplomats: Great Britain and Peru, 1820–1840 (Cambridge: Centre of Latin American Studies, 1991).
31 Jorge Ortiz-Sotelo, “Peru and the British Naval Station, 1808–1830” (PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 1998).
32 Humphreys, R. A. and Graham, Gerald S., The Navy and South America (London: Navy Records Society, 1962)Google Scholar.
33 Llorca-Jaña, Manuel, The British Textile Trade in South America in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Mclean, David, “Trade, Politics and the Navy in Latin America: The British in the Paraná, 1845–46,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35:3 (2007), 351–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Miller, Britain and Latin America.
36 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernández: historia verdadera de la isla de Robinson Crusoe (Santiago: Rafael Jover, 1883); Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso.
37 Bunster, Motín, 36–8. This level of precariousness must be taken as lack of commitment on the part of the state to ensure proper dominion over Magallanes.
38 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 11–3.
39 Braun, Cambiazo, 108.
40 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 55–6.
41 Ibid., 56.
42 Bunster, Motín, 43; Braun, Cambiazo, 49–51.
43 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 65.
44 Ibid., 64–6.
45 Braun, Cambiazo, 10.
46 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 36–8.
47 Braun, Cambiazo, 60; Bunster, Motín, 73; Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 69–70.
48 Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 489.
49 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 33.
50 Moresby to Admiralty, Valparaíso, 21 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
51 “Abrió de par en par las puertas de la próspera colonia de Punta Arenas a todos los demonios del crímen”, Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 77.
52 Stewart to Moresby, Valparaíso, 23 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
53 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 18.
54 William Duer to Daniel Webster, Santiago, 25 January 1852, Despatches from United States Consuls in Valparaíso, 1812–1906 (M146), Roll 5, The National Archives, Washington, D.C. [TNAW hereafter].
55 Moresby to the Admiralty, Valparaíso, 24 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
56 English Reports Citation [ERC hereafter]: 1853, 164 E.R. 22, High Court of Admiralty, “Segredo,” Otherwise “Eliza Cornish,” in particular; Owners of the Eliza Cornish to the Earl of Malmesbury, Liverpool, 8 June 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
57 “A Penal Settlement,” The Times, 17 April 1852; see also ERC: 1853, 164 E.R. 22, High Court of Admiralty, “Segredo,” Otherwise “Eliza Cornish,” in particular.
58 Braun, Cambiazo, 127–30.
59 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 61.
60 “Cambiaso quiso, como Nerón, darse el placer de asar vivos a sus enemigos,” Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 116.
61 Deposition of John William Smith, mate of the “Eliza Cornish,” Puerto Bueno, 10 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
62 “A Penal Settlement,” The Times, 17 April 1852.
63 Moresby to Admiralty, Valparaíso, 21 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
64 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 101.
65 Villalobos, “Chile en 1852,” 43.
66 “The Magellan Pirates,” The Times, 20 April 1852.
67 Braun, Cambiazo, 145–7; Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 160–2.
68 Account by Commander Stewart, February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
69 The new settlements of southern Patagonia, to which Punta Arenas belongs, were rightly labelled by Harambour (“Borderland Sovereignties,” 4) as having a “triple frontier”: with the natives, with Chile, and with Argentina.
70 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 90.
71 On the relations between Britons and Chileans in the conformation of the Chilean Navy, see Baeza, Andrés, Contacts, Collisions and Relationships: Britons and Chileans in the Independence Era, 1806–1831 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
72 Consul Rouse to the Senior Officer of HM Navy at Valparaíso, Valparaíso, 12 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA. Incidentally, amongst the passengers on the Lima was Alberto Blest Gana, the famous Chilean novelist, who lived in Paris but was on his way back to Chile after his mother's death.
73 Ortiz-Sotelo, “Peru and the British.”
74 On the incipient international maritime law on piracy, see Kempe, Michael, “‘Even in the Remotest Corners of the World’: Globalized Piracy and International Law, 1500–1900,” Journal of Global History 5:3 (2010), 353–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 483–9.
76 Memorandum upon Chilian Affairs, London, 1 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA; British Underwriters of the “Arauco” to Earl Granville, Liverpool, 30 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
77 Braun, Cambiazo, 33; Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 483–9. The British had, on average, twelve men-of-war operating in the South American Pacific Station, mainly in Peru and Chile. Ortiz-Sotelo, “Peru and the British,” 261.
78 Memorandum upon Chilian Affairs, London, 1 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
79 Moresby held the position from August 1850 to August 1853. Ortiz-Sotelo, “Peru and the British”, 296.
80 “Insurrection in Chili,” The Times, 19 January 1852.
81 Memorandum upon Chilian Affairs, London, 1 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
82 Admiralty to Lord Stanley Alderley, London, 22 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
83 Manuel Blanco Encalada to Moresby, Valparaíso, 29 October 1851, FO 16/81, TNA.
84 Durham, Balie Peyton, 145–7.
85 Manuel Llorca-Jaña and Juan Navarrete-Montalvo, “Entre la independencia y la guerra del salitre, c.1810–1879”; and Guillermo Guajardo, “Las infraestructuras y los transportes,” in Historia Económica de Chile desde la independencia, ed. Manuel Llorca-Jaña and Rory Miller (Santiago: RIL Editores, 2021).
86 Moresby to the Admiralty, Valparaíso, 25 December 1851, FO 16/81, TNA.
87 Baeza, Contacts, 154. A similar situation was observed in Peru, at least until the mid-1830s. Ortiz-Sotelo,
‘Peru and the British.”
88 Consul Ross to Moresby, Coquimbo, 29 November 1851, FO 16/81, TNA.
89 Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 488–9.
90 Bunster, Motín, 98.
91 Braun, Cambiazo, 200–1.
92 Vicuña Mackenna, Cambiaso, 210.
93 Consul Sulivan to Commander Prevost, Santiago, 12 January 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
94 Consul Sulivan to Viscount Palmerston, Santiago, 20 January 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
95 Antonio Varas to British Charge d'Affairs, Santiago, 12 January 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
96 Antonio Varas to British Charge d'Affairs, Santiago, 12 January 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
97 Kempe, “Even in the Remotest Corners,” 353–5.
98 Our research also fits with the idea that the British navy was more active in the Pacific than previously thought, as Ortiz-Sotelo has noted with reference to Peru in “Peru and the British.”
99 Ortega, Luis, “La política, las finanzas públicas y la construcción territorial. Chile 1830–1887. Ensayo de interpretación,” Universum 25:1 (2010), 141–50Google Scholar.
100 Peyton to Moresby, Santiago, 15 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA; see also Durham, Balie Peyton, 128–30.
101 Consul Duer to Daniel Webster, Santiago, 25 January 1852, Despatches from United States Consuls in Valparaíso, 1812–1906 (M146), Roll 5, TNAW.
102 Braun, Cambiazo, 128; Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo.” 486–90; Bunster, Motín, 101.
103 Moresby to Stewart, Valparaíso, 15 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
104 Moresby to the Admiralty, Valparaíso, 21 January 1852; The Times, “A Penal Settlement,” 17 April 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
105 Moresby to Captain Kuper, Valparaíso, 15 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
106 Consul Rouse to the Senior Officer of HM Navy, Valparaíso, 12 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA. The information about the Quito probably arrived from Buenos Aires via an overland postal service, which covered the route in about 15–20 days, depending on weather conditions, and 2–3 times per month. Greve, Ernesto, Historia de la Ingeniería en Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1938)Google Scholar.
107 British Merchants at Valparaíso to Moresby, Valparaíso, 14 January 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
108 Baeza, Contacts, 169–70.
109 Braun, Cambiazo, 184–5; Bunster, Motín, 100–4; Fuenzalida, “Motín de Cambiazo,” 485–9.
110 “The Markets,” The Morning Advertiser [London], October 11, 1851.
111 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 145–8.
112 Ibid., 154.
113 On stranded sailors and natives and indigenous violence in this area, see Llorca-Jaña, Manuel, “Of ‘Savages,’ Shipwrecks and Seamen: British Consular Contacts with the Native People of Southern South America during the 1820s and 1830s,” International Journal of Maritime History 24:2 (2012), 127–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
114 Consul Sulivan to Lord Palmerston, Santiago, 24 February 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
115 Stewart to Moresby, Valparaíso, 23 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
116 Bunster, Motín, 99–102.
117 Ibid., 100–2.
118 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 1–5.
119 Bunster, Motín, 100–7.
120 Villalobos, “Chile en 1852,” 45.
121 Stewart to Moresby, Valparaíso, 23 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
122 Commander Stewart to Moresby, Port Famine, 2 February 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
123 “Admiralty Court,” The Times, 31 May 1853.
124 Stewart to Moresby, Valparaíso, 23 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
125 Appleton, Insurrection at Magellan, 193 and 202.
126 Bunster, Motín, 55–7.
127 Moresby to Consul Sulivan, Valparaíso, 24 February 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
128 “The Magellan Pirates,” The Times, 27 July 1853.
129 Moresby to Admiralty, Callao, 9 April 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
130 Collier and Sater, Historia de Chile.
131 “Más de tres horas aserrando los miembros del ensangrentado cadáver,” Bunster, Motín, 227.
132 Rivero-Cantillano and Llorca-Jaña, “Colonización,” 3–5; Gonzalo Serrano, ¿Quién mató a Diego Portales? (Santiago: RIL, 2022). For the history of crime in Chile at this time, see Daniel Palma, Ladrones. Historia social y cultura del robo en Chile, 1870–1920 (Santiago: LOM, 2011); Palma, Daniel, “Ladrones, policías y orden callejero en Santiago de Chile, 1896–1924,” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 46:2 (2019), 59–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Estay, Juan G. and Monteverde, Alessandro, “La criminalidad como tema historiográfico: Chile en el siglo XIX,” Revista Espiga 16:33 (2017), 131–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; León, Marco A., “Los dilemas de una sociedad cambiante: criminología, criminalidad y justicia en Chile contemporáneo, 1911–1965,” Revista Chilena de Historia del Derecho 19:1 (2003), 223–77Google Scholar; Alessandro R. Monteverde, Crimen y Delincuencia en Aconcagua 1800–1850 (Valparaíso: Ediciones de la Facultad de Humanidades de la Universidad de Playa Ancha, 2008). All this literature agrees on one fact: the levels of interpersonal violence in Chile at this time were extremely high, comparable to medieval Europe.
133 “America,” The Times, 24 March 1852.
134 “America,” The Times, 1 April 1853.
135 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernández, 158–60.
136 Consul Duer to Daniel Webster, Santiago, 25 January 1852. Despatches from United States Consuls in Valparaíso, 1812–1906 (M146), Roll 5, TNAW.
137 Moresby to Admiralty, Valparaíso, 21 February 1852, FO 16/81, TNA.
138 Antonio Varas to Consul Sulivan, Santiago, 16 March 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
139 Stewart to Captain Wellesley, 22 March 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
140 Consul Sulivan to Earl Granville, Santiago, 28 April 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
141 Antonio Varas to Consul Sulivan, Santiago, 16 March 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
142 Consul Sulivan to Earl Granville, Santiago, 28 April 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
143 Stewart to Bynon, Valparaíso, 26 February 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
144 Consul Sulivan to Earl Granville, Santiago, 28 April 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
145 Surviving Crew of the Florida to Captain Wellesley, Valparaíso, 25 February 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
146 Consul Sulivan to Antonio Varas, Santiago, 19 April 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
147 Consul Sulivan to Earl Granville, Santiago, 28 April 1852, FO 16/77, TNA; ERC: 1853, 164 E.R. 22, High Court of Admiralty, “Segredo,” Otherwise “Eliza Cornish.”
148 Captain Wellesley to Consul Sulivan, Valparaíso, 24 March 1852, FO 16/77, TNA.
149 ERC: 1853, 164 E.R. 22, High Court of Admiralty, “Segredo,” Otherwise “Eliza Cornish,” in particular.
150 Llorca-Jaña, The British Textile Trade; Cavieres, Eduardo, Comercio chileno y comerciantes ingleses, 1820–1880 (Valparaíso: Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, 1988)Google Scholar.
151 Collier and Sater, Historia de Chile, 128.
152 Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties,” 14.