Abstract:
With the crisis of legitimacy triggered by Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, different reactions and political projects emerged in the Spanish American colonies. In Rio de la Plata, while Buenos Aires broke away from Spanish rule, the port city of Montevideo opted for royalist and monarchical political projects in opposition to Buenos Aires. This article examines the relationship between trans-imperial trade and monarchism in Rio de la Plata. Moreover, this piece contributes to debates on the multiple and contested meanings of sovereignty during the age of revolution in Iberian America. Monarchism in Rio de la Plata was intimately associated with the maintenance of trans-imperial networks of trade and the maintenance of the political and economic order of the colonial period. Monarchism represented the continuity of the old regime’s legal principles, provided safety and stability for trade trans-imperial trade, and above all, prevented the economic, political, and social changes proposed by revolutionary projects.
Keywords:
Free trade; Cisplatin; sovereignty
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