In this erudite and comprehensive study, Adrian Pearce offers a detailed survey of British trade with Spanish America in the latter half of the eighteenth century, drawing together a variety of sources and looking at all aspects of commercial activity.

A traditional rival of Great Britain, Spain welcomed the American Revolution as an opportunity to weaken the power and prestige of the British Empire. Using research from Spanish archival sources, this study attempts to bring a new perspective to Spanish involvement in the British colonies during the period. It traces the mobilization by the Captain General of Cuba and his military subordinate, the Governor of Louisiana, of a loose network of observers who monitored the course of the revolt. The observers, positioned throughout the colonies and at other vantage points in the Americas, provided information to the Spanish government about the nature of the rebellion and its participants. Such reports directly influenced Spanish policy toward Britain and its American colonies.

In 1783 Britain had lost America and was unstable domestically. By 1793 it had regained its position as the leading global power. Three successive crises are examined during the intervening years in an effort to throw light on the British state in an "Age of Revolutions" and a crucial period of international development.

The sources in this volume focus on Great Britain’s moral, financial, and diplomatic interventions and ambitions in Latin America. It begins during the wars of independence spanning 1810-1825, when Foreign Secretary George Canning prematurely declared, "Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English." The independence movements of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, as well as their ancient past, inspired Romantic writers such as Anna Letitia Barbauld and spurred British military support and political debate, as attested by mercenary Richard Vowell’s Campaigns and Cruises in Venezuela and James Mill's "Emancipation of Spanish America."

An examination of Spanish America's impact on the British Romantic literary and political imagination.