“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

CHAPTER 1
INTO THE VORTEX
IN THE SOUTHERN WINTER OF 1806, A SQUADRON OF BRITISH SHIPS SAILING FROM
the Cape of Good Hope entered the Río de la Plata estuary. Within days British forces had
occupied Buenos Aires and the Spanish viceroy had fled into the interior. The initial British
successes were short-lived as local Creole militias beat back the invaders. 1 The political
ramifications of the events in 1806, however, were profound. The British invasion signaled
the beginning of a process that would lead the Río de la Plata viceroyalty inexorably towards
revolution, independence from Spain and internal dissolution. More than two decades later,
the region would emerge from the revolutionary vortex deeply fragmented. It would find
itself divided over seemingly intractable issues regarding the political, social and economic
aspects of the new governments vying to replace the colonial order that had been swept
away.
Within four years of the British invasions, the centuries-old Spanish empire was for
all practical purposes dissolved in the Río de la Plata. The constitutional crisis touched off
by Napoleon’s capture and imprisonment of the Spanish King, Fernando VII, accelerated
events. As the French invasions devastated the metropôle, local elites throughout the
Spanish colonies began to question whether the empire itself could be sustained. For the
Creole defenders in the Río de la Plata, the experience of successfully protecting their own
territories from the most powerful empire on Earth produced a growing sense that even if
the empire survived, it would have to do so on substantially different terms. When they
finally assumed the mantel of authority in the bloodless May revolution of 1810, they did so
not to destroy the empire, but to assert their local autonomy within it.
1 “Creole” is a general term for “American Spaniards.”
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