ABSTRACT
Britain’s relations w ith South America in the nineteenth century are recognised by historians o f all persuasions as providing the crucial regional test o f theories o f informal imperialism. W ith the m inor exception o f Guyana (a seventeenthcentury settlement w hich was reinforced during the French Wars), Britain neither sought nor acquired territorial rights on the South American mainland. Conse quently, the argument that Britain exercised imperialist control over the contin ent can be sustained only if it can be shown that the newly liberated states became card-carrying, if not flag-waving, members o f her informal empire. Gallagher and R obinson’s celebrated article made precisely this claim by suggesting that Britain aimed at ‘indirect political hegem ony’ in South America in order to prom ote her commercial interests there.2 However, Platt has demonstrated that British gov ernments intervened in South America’s internal affairs only w hen international law had been broken or w hen British lives and property were at risk.3 It is pos sible to argue that Platt’s ow n reading o f the evidence follows the workings o f the official mind rather too closely; additional sources and a different perspective have revealed instances where the rules were indeed bent in order to defend Britain’s
1. ‘I called the N ew W orld into existence to redress the balance o f the O ld’. Canning, 1826, quoted in William W . Kaufmann, British Policy and the Independence of Latin America, 1804-1828 (New Haven, Conn., 1951), p. 220. The present chapter deals with the continental mainland and therefore refers to South America. The larger entity, Latin America, which also covers Central America, Mexico, and (in some usages) parts o f the Caribbean, is referred to only where other sources cited here have used it as their unit o f analysis. W e are grateful to D r R ory Miller for his helpful comments on this chapter.
