El choque final entre imperios del Atlántico

DEBORAH BESSEGHINI

RESN, 5(2), 2024: 199-223

During the final clash between Britain, on one side, and France and Spain on the other, Madrid opened its American ports to specific international networks, to protect Hispanic global exchanges from British naval attack. With an eye for the opportunities offered by wartime, a few traders combined privileges and licenses obtained through different governments, thus reinforcing trans-imperial practices that later helped structure more liberal trade. The paper connects these private initiatives to specific British institutions that sought to procure coins and bullion in Spanish America in a context of financial distress. Their use in the war against France and further links between changes in flows of Spanish American silver and gold and transformations in global trade have been almost overlooked in Europe.

By following the initiatives of trans-imperial mediators of Irish descent, active in both the Spanish “licensed trade” and British “bullion contracts”, this paper unveils how Latin America influenced Europe’s trajectory during the Napoleonic Wars. Archival research shows connections between the management of British war expenditures in Europe and these public-private agencies with their networks, and the continuity in their role after the 1808 reversal of alliances and the beginning of the Peninsular War. The initiative undertaken by merchants positioned to serve the needs of various imperial systems in wartime, therefore, may be considered as a vector of the imperial and commercial reconfiguration of the Age of Revolutions.