pinguin

An interesting article, that shows light on 1812 and the Falklands, too


Bad day for the empire


Britain's invasion of Argentina 200 years ago became one of our least-remembered and most ignominious failures.
Richard Gott guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 July 2007 20.00 BST Article history
The British are traditionally reluctant to dwell on the defeats and disasters during their long imperial experience, especially when defeated by black and/or indigenous peoples.
The death in battle at the hand of native Americans in 1755 of their commander-in-chief rates barely a footnote. The five-year attempt to incorporate Haiti within the empire in the 1790s, ending in humiliating retreat, is largely forgotten, as is the decade-long resistance of the kingdom of Kandy in the early 19th century. So it is hardly surprising that Britain's failed attempt to seize Latin America in that period is not part of Britain's great imperial pageant. Chile, Mexico, and Nicaragua, were all British targets, but to secure Spanish-ruled Argentina was their principal ambition.
This month marks the 200th anniversary of the defeat of Britain's second attempt to capture the city of Buenos Aires, when British troops commanded by General John Whitelocke were seized in the heart of the city in July 1807 and dragged through the streets. Their defeat by a Spanish-led militia of Indians and blacks was bleakly recorded in the diary of Colonel Lancelot Holland: "Nothing could be more mortifying than our passage through the streets amidst the rabble who had conquered us. They were very dark-skinned people, short and ill-made, covered with rags, armed with long muskets and some a sword. There was neither order nor uniformity among them."
An earlier, freelance attempt to seize Argentina had been made the year before, in June 1806, when Colonel William Beresford landed a small troop of 1,500 soldiers ferried over from Cape Town. The news caused the Times newspaper to announce on September 17 that "Buenos Aires at the moment forms part of the British Empire". An editorial two days later declared that "there can be hardly a doubt that the whole colony of La Plata will share the same fate as Buenos Aires; and from the flattering hopes held out to the inhabitants in the proclamations of General Beresford, they will see that it is their true interest to become a colony of the British empire." Sir Home Popham, the admiral of the British fleet that had brought the troops to the River Plate, had written to merchants in the city of London to tell them of the extensive new market that had been captured, and would shortly be opening up for business.
Yet commercial excitement was premature. The citizens of Buenos Aires had recaptured the city before the news reached the leader-writer at the Times. So in 1807, the British felt honour bound to make a second attempt. Grandly named as the Governor-General of South America, General Whitelocke sailed into the River Plate in May 1807 with a force of 8,000 men. But this time the local militias in Buenos Aires were well prepared when Whitelock attacked the city in July, and they secured a resounding victory.
The population of the city was nearly 50,000, and only 10,000 were white, according to the estimate of Lieutenant Alexander Gillespie. Some 6,000 were black slaves, and the great majority were Indians and mixed race mestizos, described variously as pardos, morenos, and chinos. Several thousand men from this heterogenous population - Indians, creoles and Spaniards - had had a year to prepare for the second British attack, and the town council had received warm support from the Indians. One group of caciques offered to provide "20,000 of our subjects, all men of war, with five horses each", to attack the colorados, the red-faced Englishmen. The Lonko, the Mapuches, and the Pampa Indians were mobilised against the British invaders.
This was "a victory for the city", writes the Argentine historian Tulio Halperín Donghi, "for its regiments - both Creole and Spanish - and for all its inhabitants, even for the slaves, armed in the hour of crisis with steel weapons and displaying a loyalty and courage which surprised those who had hesitated before arming them."
The imperial ambitions of the British in South America were at an end, and they swiftly sailed away from the River Plate. For the English at home, the military defeat was bad enough, notes Colonel Fortescue in his History of the British Army, but the financial implications were far worse: "The pecuniary loss which accompanied it was unendurable. There had been frantic speculation in the new market which Popham, in his vanity, had proclaimed to be open in South America. Not prosperous merchants only, but large numbers of the needy, the rapacious, and the impecunious had staked their all, or their neighbours' all, in the great venture; and, as is usual in such cases, tons of worthless artefacts, which could find no sale in any other quarter, had been shipped over to Buenos Aires. Now it was seen that the long and perilous voyage had been undertaken in vain, and that the whole of the goods exported, whether valuable or worthless, would be returned upon their owners' hands."
The military disaster led to a court-martial, and Whitelocke was "cashiered and declared totally unfit and unworthy to serve His Majesty in any military capacity whatsoever." Yet for Argentina, the failed British invasion had useful consequences, serving to illuminate the intrinsic weakness of the Spanish state. Three years later, the mixed-race militias of Buenos Aires had further cause for rejoicing, organising a successful revolution against the Spanish empire. A junta was established, whose most influential political figure, Mariano Moreno, was a Jacobin supporter of the country's Indian population who unveiled a revolutionary programme. Equality between Indians and Spaniards was proclaimed and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were distributed throughout the country.
Yet this promising start to Argentina's independence was perceived to be too radical and was swiftly undermined. Moreno was detained and exiled to Europe, and died on the sea voyage, possibly poisoned. The Blacks and Indians who had fought against two European empires were ignored by subsequent regimes and then destroyed. The Blacks disappeared into thin air, while the Indians were subsequently exterminated.
British dreams of a South American empire had to be dramatically scaled down in the rest of the 19th century, with the retention of toe-holds in Honduras and Guyana, and of course Argentina's Falkland Islands, captured by Britain in 1833, 25 years after the attempt to seize the entire continent.

pikeshot1600

Trolling again I see. "The evil Anglos lost a pop gun fight. Tee Hee."

We all eagerly await the event of your growing up.

Britain was not able (nor did it make economic sense) to hold onto her English speaking North American colonies, let alone "attempt to seize the entire (S.A.) continent." That doesn't even make any sense.

pinguin

The article was writen by a British, sir.
The events are fact.
So bad these events are such hard to swallow.

Wobomagonda

Why do you post things you can't even read?

pinguin

Read it for me, and explain me the events... please

sturm

I have a question, who recorded this war?
Where is the info about it comming? From archeological findings i guess, and from some writings of the British Empire, but is there sources written by neutral point of view?
Because during 1740's - 1750's the british were involved in the Carnatic Wars, to control eastern India. And in the begging of 19 century there was the wars against Napoleonic France. Seems to me that the attention of the British Empire was turned in different direction.

pikeshot1600

Exactly. Great Britain had far more important issues than Buenos Aries.

This was like losing a football game. BFD.

pinguin

Nope. What happens is that when Britain had bad days... The country get amnesy..

It is an event quite well known, in South America, at least.

Pictures of the British defeat,

Toltec

Actually Britain never invaded Argentina which did not even exist, but it invaded the Vice Royalty of the River Plate twice not once.

There Britain fought the Spanish taking Montevideo (Uraguay) and Buenos Aires. The aim to deny control of the River Plate to the Spanish who were at war with Britain at the time.

It wasn't just the British and Spanish fighting either, the Creoles fought on the Spanish side and the Indians on the British.

pinguin

More info. This time the source is BBC.


Britain's 'forgotten' invasion of Argentina



It's 200 years since Britain's invading army was routed from Buenos Aires - a mere footnote in British history, but, says military historian Peter Caddick-Adams, a historic event in the forging of friendship between the two countries that eclipses the Falklands fall-out.
Did I hear that right? Apparently we are now marking the bicentennial of the Reconquest of Buenos Aires by Argentine forces from the British in 1806 and the Argentine ambassador to Britain Federico Mirre is hosting a memorial.
If, as Winston Churchill said, battles are the punctuation marks of history, then the events in far off Argentina 200 years ago rate as a relatively minor comma. That said, what were the Brits doing there in the first place?
In fact this summer marks the first of two invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807: military expeditions that took place within the framework of the Napoleonic Wars with France.
Spain, then a French ally (remember that it was a combined Spanish-French fleet that Nelson attacked off Cape Trafalgar in 1805) was at war with Great Britain and one way of hitting back was for the Brits to attack the Spanish colonies in South America.
Buenos Aires weathered two invasions by the British

The overall aim was to gain control of River Plate - a large estuary between what is now Argentina and Uruguay - by conquering the dominant city, Buenos Aires.
On 27 June 1806 a British force of 1,500 men under William Carr Beresford occupied the city, for about six weeks until surrendering in mid-August to colonial militia, led by Santiago de Liniers y Bremond, a French nobleman at the service of Spain.
A second, better-resourced invasion followed in May 1807, under Lieutenant-General John Whitelock, attacking Buenos Aires in July. After a couple of days of intense street fighting, the British surrendered to an army it had considered no more than a rabble.
After losing more than half his force, the British signed a ceasefire on 7 July and left for home, where Whitelock was court-martialled and discharged.
War often defines nationhood: just as America was said to have come of age in 1776, when British colonists declared their independence from the Crown, so Argentina felt it had come of age as a separate state, having fought for themselves against the British.
In 1900, Harrods had two branches, London and Buenos Aires, surely a sign that trade had cemented the two countries


Peter Caddick-Adams

Within three years of routing the British, Buenos Aires established a government independent from the Spanish Crown, anticipating the eventual declaration of Independence of Argentina of 1816. This sparked the Wars of Independence throughout South America that ended Spanish domination in 1826.
When dignitaries gather in London on Saturday to mark the 200th anniversary, I hope Ambassador Mirre remembers not the British invasion, but its lasting impact, therefore.
In some ways, Argentina has much to thank Britain for: a war which led to her independence. Furthermore, some of the British, and Irish, prisoners-of-war from 1806 and 1807 decided to stay and took part, voluntarily, in fighting the Spanish military machine elsewhere in South America, securing the independence also of Chile, Peru and Ecuador.
Amongst these was Irish-born William Brown, considered the founder of the Argentine navy, who led Argentine fleets, first against the Spanish, then Brazil in the 1820s.
This obscure Napoleonic campaign also saw key British generals, such as Beresford, and another, known as Robert "Black Bob" Craufurd, tested in war, before they later took on the French in the Peninsular War, the setting for the Sharpe novels and TV dramas starring Sean Bean.
Maradona's "Hand of God" goal against England in 1986 poisoned football relations

Ironically by then, Spain had had enough of France - who had deposed the Spanish king and occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula - and its army was fighting alongside the British and Portuguese, led by the Duke of Wellington, to repel the French.
Of course, the Falkland Islands are never far from our minds when we think of Argentina, but they were never really a bone of contention until made into one by a military junta in 1982.
Discovered by English navigator John Davis in 1592, the French took possession and founded the settlement of Port Louis in 1764. The British, who claimed them on the grounds of their previous discovery, removed the French in 1765; meanwhile France had sold her rights to Spain who yielded the islands to Great Britain in 1771.
It was only in 1820 that the new country of Argentina laid claim to the islands, but the British declared them a crown colony in 1832.
Against this backdrop of benign diplomatic debate, to shift attention away from the faltering economy of General Galtieri's regime, the islands were invaded on 2 April 1982.
Maradona's "Hand of God" goal

Britain retaliated, forcing the Argentine surrender in Port Stanley on 14 June, but Galtieri's military junta fell shortly afterwards. The invasion, the 25th anniversary of which will be marked by "major celebrations" in London next year - was a great tragedy for British-Argentine relations. There remains a huge English-speaking community throughout Argentina, established over the last 200 years. In 1900, Harrods had two branches, London and Buenos Aires, surely a sign that trade had cemented the two countries. In some ways, the Argentine embassy's event should observe the friendship between the two nations, who have been allies for 200 years and opponents for just a few months over that period. Our real war, should I say England's real war, with Argentina is football, nothing else.