“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

The export bonanza along the Uruguay temporarily assuaged the old federalist
complaints about the porteño chokehold on the Río de la Plata’s rivers. Rosas could also call
upon a sense of federalist unity in the face a common, foreign threat to sustain his privileged
position at the mouth of the river. Answering calls from the foreign-dominated merchant
community in Montevideo, French naval forces blockaded Buenos Aires in 1838 in order to
force Rosas to open the river to free trade. While this first blockade proved largely
unsuccessful, a combined British and French naval force was more effective in sealing off
Buenos Aires in order to compel it to open the Río de la Plata directly to European traders.
A British squadron eventually sailed up the Paraná, hoping to link up with unitarist forces
and their allies to overthrow Rosas’ regime. European efforts to undermine Rosas, however,
only tightened his grip on power within the federalist coalition as they confronted a common
threat from the unitarists and their European allies. When these efforts failed to overcome
Rosas and his federalist allies’ dominant position on land, the European powers again
withdrew from the region.
While they did not alter the balance of power, the European naval blockades did
hasten the gradual reorientation of commercial traffic away from the Paraná River and
towards the Uruguay drainage. The ports along Entre Ríos’ Uruguayan coast were well
positioned to handle traffic moving from unitarist-controlled Montevideo and bypassing
Buenos Aires. Concepción del Uruguay and Concordia in particular prospered during the
1830s and 1840s as export centers for beef products and access points for European goods
moving upriver to the Argentine Littoral, Rio Grande do Sul and even Paraguay. Sailing
upriver from the Uruguay’s mouth in the Río de la Plata estuary, it was possible to transport
Ibid., 48-50.
11 Ibid., 71.
68
1850: 17,639,289