“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

the fluid character of borderlands relationships and the importance of interactions along
these corridors in defining them. 9 At its most powerful, careful attention to the way
peripheral geographies shape social relationships have led to a rethinking of the connections
between imperial sovereignty and space altogether. Scholars like Lauren Benton have noted
that sovereignty within empires is often “geographically uneven,” operating as “complex
puzzles of positive and negative space.” 10
For all of their careful attention to space and social relations, however, borderlands
scholarship and its heirs have struggled to address the radical 19 th century transformations
from empires to nation-states. The Río de la Plata, like other American borderlands,
experienced a dramatic and violent transition from imperial outpost to putative national
territory in the first decades of the 19 th century. Throughout the Americas, the Atlantic
Revolutions and Napoleonic Wars laid waste to the colonial pacts that held trans-Atlantic
empires together. Within the Spanish zone of the Río de la Plata, the disintegration of
imperial authority severed trading networks linking Buenos Aires to Andean mining centers.
Devoid of revenue, the old viceregal capital could no longer sustain the colonial relationships
upon which it relied to control the borderlands. The Spanish territories in the Río de la Plata
splintered into multiple and warring provinces. While Brazil retained its territorial integrity
throughout these revolutionary upheavals, it lacked the resources to exploit Spanish
9 Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
10 Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-
1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 38, n. 99.
9