Actitudes divergentes: la emancipación de la América española durante el Trienio Liberal vista desde Londres
-
1
Universidad de Oviedo
info
ISSN: 1579-3311, 2386-4745
Year of publication: 2023
Issue Title: Negociar, transigir, conciliar. Los fundamentos fallidos de la política americana del Trienio Liberal (1820-1823)
Issue: 27
Pages: 107-126
Type: Article
More publications in: Pasado y memoria: Revista de historia contemporánea
Abstract
During the Liberal Triennium, the British Government determined action, designed by the Foreign Office Secretary, George Canning, supported the emancipation of Spanish America –especially, in the Argentine territories– and favored anti-Spanish attitudes in Great Britain which would not fade. However, at the beginning of 1820 the rebellion in Andalusia of the army under the command of the military chiefs Quiroga, Riego, Arco-Agüero and López Baños was received and broadcast as big news in the UK. They were initially destined to embark towards Latin America with the mission of containing anti-Spanish movements on that continent. In a display of cynicism, the editors of the London newspapers gave an account of the advances of the insurgency in America in the very pages where they expressed their confidence in the triumph of the liberals in the metropolis. However, neither the British king himself, nor some of his closest collaborators, such as Wellington and Castlereagh, were clear supporters of the American independence movement. The extensive correspondence maintained by Wellington and Canning during the years of the Triennium reveals the discrepancies of the former with respect to the official position of the latter. Canning prioritized the commercial advantages for the United Kingdom deriving from the implementation of a pro-independence policy, developed with his direct support. Wellington, true to his conservatism, respected the colonial system. This paper studies such divergent attitudes, taking as reference the English press, the transcripts of British parliamentary debates and the correspondence of Wellington and Canning at the time.
Bibliographic References
- DUKE OF WELLINGTON, Arthur, K.G. (1867). Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of Field Marshall Arthur Duque of Wellington. Vol. 1. Londres: John Murray.
- BARKER, Hannah (2003). Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695-1855. Harlow: Pearson Education.
- British Library. Newsroom Research Guide (UK National Newspapers) (2005). Londres: British Library.
- CHASE, Malcolm (2013). 1820. Disorder and stability in the United Kingdom. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- COLETES, Agustín; LASPRA, Alicia (2019). Romántico País: Poesía Inglesa del Trienio Liberal. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
- JARRETT, Mark (2014). The Congress of Vienna and its legacy. War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon. Londres: I.B. Tauris.
- MCGRIGOR, Sir James (Mary McGrigor ed.). (2000). The Scalpel and the Sword: Sir James McGrigor: The Autobiography of the Father of Army Medicine. Edinburgo: Dalkeith Scottish Cultural Press.
- STITES, Richard (2014). The Four Horsemen. Riding to Liberty in Post-Napoleonic Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.