ABSTRACT
Placing the slave trade at the center of Spain’s involvement in America’s war for independence reveals that there were additional theaters of engagement and that these were linked not only to Spain’s resentment over British dominance in the slave trade but also to its longstanding enmity against Britain’s ally Portugal. Despite their mutual antipathy, the Spanish and the British had previously forged a mutually convenient relationship through Atlantic slavery: the British offered slaves for sale and the Spanish Americans eagerly purchased them. By the eighteenth century it was clear that wars, monopoly contracts, and legislative bans had failed to curtail the unsanctioned yet thriving relationship between British slave traders and Spanish American buyers, and Spain had the most to lose. Similarly, wresting control over the Río de la Plata slave trade from the Portuguese likely factored into King Carlos III’s 1776 decision to mount a major military expedition against Portuguese interests in the region.
