Robson Martin. Britain, Portugal and South America in the Napoleonic Wars: Alliances and Diplomacy in Economic Maritime Conflict (ENG)

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of domestic exports and 62 per cent of imports, but by 1797-1798 the

figures were 21 per cent and 29 per cent respectively. In comparison trade

with American markets, including the West Indies, which in 1700-1701

had taken 10 per cent of domestic exports and provided 20 per cent of

imports (including re-export goods), by 1797-1798 had grown to 57 per

cent and 31 per cent respectively.

If financial strength gave Britain an

advantage, it was also an obvious target for her enemies. At the height of

Napoleon’s Continental blockade British exports to northern Europe fell

drastically from £10.3 million in 1805 to £2.2 million in 1808.

British re-

export trade as a whole also suffered a major decline, from over

£14,419,000 in 1802 to £7,862,000 in 1808.

But this only exacerbated

the trend pushing British trade to areas outside of Europe, as total official

British exports to the region fell from £22,662,000 in 1802 to

£13,216,000 in 1806.

It was British possessions in the West Indies that provided for the

long-term financial strength of the economy. By the 1790s the West In-

dian trade was of such value the region was where British administra-

tions feared ‘a war for maritime supremacy might be lost and also where

they hoped to achieve the ultimate victory’.

The area had a massive

influence on the British economy supplying cocoa, sugar, coffee, cotton

and rum. The West Indies provided four fifths of the income from Brit-

ish overseas investments.

In the years 1802-1808 the value of British

export trade to the region doubled to just under £7 million. At one fifth

of the entire value of British export trade, the West Indies export trade

was the most valuable for 1808.

Imports into Britain from the region

totalled just over £7 million, with sugar accounting for over half of this

amount.

As Ehrman has argued, they were ‘almost universally regarded

as still the most desirable facet of empire’.

Moreover, long distance

oceangoing trade also provided a pool of highly skilled seamen and offi-

cers which naval forces could draw upon in time of war.

A number of groups had vested interests in the region, such as ship-

ping agents, sugar plantation owners, cotton manufacturers, financiers

and insurers. West Indian merchants had ‘wealth and influence, votes

and pocket-boroughs’. Investing in the West Indies was an expensive

affair, so the merchants had formed two powerful organisations, the

Society of West India Merchants and the Meeting of West India Planters

and Merchants, to remind government of the vulnerability of the Islands.

This provided them with a strong voice in domestic politics, for instance

through direct access to the President of the Board of Trade.

BRITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

NTRODUCTION

Alongside those with a direct interest other contemporaries under-

stood the value of the British possessions in the West Indies; and the

threat from France. In 1805 when Napoleon wanted Nelson’s fleet dis-

tracted from intercepting a possible invasion attempt, he directed Ville-

neuve to sail for the West Indies.

And of course Nelson, worried at the

havoc the French might cause, followed. Nelson’s correspondence refer-

ences his concern several times during May and June 1805:

I was in a thousand fears for Jamaica, for that is a blow which

Buonaparte would be happy to give us…kind Providence, may

some happy day, bless my endeavours to serve the public weal,

of which the West India colonies form so prominent and inter-

esting a part. I ever have been, and shall die, a firm friend to

our present colonial system. I was bred, as you know, in the

good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West

India possessions.

The fears for Jamaica were well founded, the island accounted for half of

all British investments in the region.

The value was understood and impacted upon British thinking right

from the start of the war. During 1794-1797 major British offensives

were launched as Dundas ‘looked to destroy French naval power and

France’s long-term means of rebuilding it while proportionally expand-

ing British power’ by attacking French colonies in the West Indies fol-

lowed by those in the East Indies.

British offensives in the West Indies

would increase security for British commerce in what was a key region.

Britain, by expanding commerce through colonial conquest, ‘would be-

come dominant in both naval power and overseas trade for many years

to come’.

This would fund loans and subsidies to the European pow-

ers, an essential part of British coalition building.

Despite the region’s economic importance, in human and military

terms, the British West Indian campaigns have come in for some vehe-

ment criticism. Fortescue, quite rightly, bemoaned the appalling casual-

ties, blaming Dundas for practically destroying the British Army. Fortes-

cue estimates around 50,000 dead and the same number invalided whilst

campaigning in a region already feared for high mortality rates, chiefly

through yellow fever.

For Esdaile ‘colonial offensives were notoriously

wasteful in terms of lives’.

Schroeder has argued although the region

offered the best chance for easy British victories, ‘British leaders did not

expect victories there to bring France down, only to help pay for the war

and make it popular, and exhaust and demoralize the enemy’.

The main criticism, apart from the terrible human toll, is that the

troops devastated in the West Indies could have been better used to se-

cure British interests in Europe. Fortescue called the campaigns, ‘the

darkest and most forbidding tract’ in the whole of British strategy while

apparent British impotence in Europe was caused by ministers’ obses-

sion with the region.

Esdaile has pointed out Britain always seemed to

be able to find troops for overseas operations while acting perfidiously

with regard to support for her European allies, sending 4,000 men to the

Low Countries in 1793 yet dispatching 33,000 to the West Indies in

1795.

On the other hand Duffy has argued during the 1790s British

involvement in Europe actually drained resources away from West In-

dian campaigns, ‘the needs of the European war had a greater effect in

taking British troops from the Imperial war than vice-versa’. Reinforce-

ments earmarked for the Caribbean were instead sent to the campaign in

the Low Countries during 1794-1795.

While criticism of the butcher’s bill can rightly be justified, set against

the context of a maritime war the value of the West Indian campaigns

was not just what Britain protected and gained. Attacking French colo-

nies had a number of wider effects. The French West Indian colonies

provided two-fifths of total foreign trade, two-thirds of its oceangoing

shipping tonnage, and a third of its registered seamen. Exports from the

West Indies to France were valued around £8,250,000 between 1784 and

1790, compared with a French domestic export value of £11,500,000 in

1787. By 1787 re-exports of colonial produce to Europe totalled just over

a third of total French exports. The loss of colonial trade would severely

damage the French economy, it was hoped, thereby impacting on the

amount of finance available for naval development.

French oceangoing

trade would decline so the strategy would also deprive the French navy of

experienced seamen, by perhaps as much as a third, ‘thus securing to

Britain a decisive margin of superiority over its major naval rival’.

British ministers could also argue by fighting France in the West In-

dies they were diverting troops away from metropolitan France, there-

fore helping her European allies. In early 1806 Napoleon ordered Decrés

to reinforce Martinique with an extra battalion.

While criticising the

British for their colonial policy in June 1806 Napoleon was making plans

to prevent a British attack on Martinique. ‘The loss of Martinique’ he

told Decrés ‘would be the greatest failure which we could receive in the

RITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

NTRODUCTION

current moment’.

By August he was hoping to send 2,000 men to Mar-

tinique and Guadeloupe.

But, in reality, all this was small fry and made

little impact upon French military capabilities in Europe.

Of more importance, as Duffy has argued, clearing out French pos-

sessions inherently increased British security in the region. French West

Indian commerce ‘was widely recognised as one of the fundamental

sources of French naval power’.

At the start of the French Revolution

there had been bloody revolts in their West Indian possessions, many

descending into absolute anarchy. Plantation owners were massacred,

while many Europeans fled the islands. Moreover, in 1794-1795 there

had been major disturbances, leading to revolt, in British possessions

caused by French revolutionary propaganda from neighbouring islands.

Removing this threat was an important consideration.

It has been argued the massive casualties incurred in the West Indian

campaigns prompted a re-orientation of British strategy away from the

Caribbean towards Europe, evidenced by a lack of interest in colonial

warfare after 1803.

Certainly, the collapse of allies in Europe and par-

ticularly high cost of the 1795-1796 expedition led to a change in West

Indian strategy after 1797.

No major expeditions were sent from Eng-

land, the aim was to hold what was already in British hands. When com-

ing back to office in 1804 Pitt made the conscious decision to try to

build one last continental coalition to force a resolution to the war in

Europe – major offensive operations in the West Indies played no part

in his strategy. Instead, enemy possessions might be seized on an oppor-

tunistic basis, but only using local forces.

Alongside seizing French colonies Britain attacked the colonies and

trade of Spain, Portugal and Holland. With French forces overrunning

the United Provinces in January 1795, British troops were dispatched to

seize Dutch bases that could now threaten the British position in India

and the Far East. The Cape of Good Hope was captured in September

1795, Trincomalee and Malacca in August 1795, Ceylon in February

1796. In 1799 Portuguese Goa was occupied to prevent the French seiz-

ing it as a base to support anti-British factions in India.

In 1801 and

again in 1807 the Portuguese island of Madeira was occupied to prevent

the French from gaining a cruiser base in the heart of the Atlantic trade

routes. In 1804 a Spanish treasure fleet was attacked. After Trafalgar any

remaining enemy colonies were attacked, for instance the Cape of Good

Hope in 1806, Curaçao and the Danish islands of St. Croix and St. Tho-

mas in 1807, Martinique in 1809, Guadeloupe in 1810. By 1811 all

French overseas possessions were in British hands. These actions gave

excellent material for French propaganda to build on continental military

success, which could be compounded by British belligerence leading in

some instances to European states effectively siding with France. The

League of Armed neutrality of 1800-1801 and the Russian rapproche-

ment with France in 1807 were only the most obvious examples.

For those who argued for British forces to be committed to Europe

such operations frittered away precious British resources, the ‘filching of

sugar islands’, to use the radical Whig Richard Sheridan’s words. This

was contrary to the Clausewitzian doctrine of concentration of force at

the decisive point to defeat the enemy and for France the decisive point

was her armed forces. France had to be defeated in battle on the Euro-

pean Continent. Britain, the argument goes, was involved in the post war

peace discussion because ‘some of those battles had been won by British

troops under the Duke of Wellington’.

Certainly France could only be

decisively defeated this way, but such an argument approaches the issues

facing British strategists from the wrong perspective. French strength lay

in her territory and population, providing a large army, which was used

to devastating effect during the Revolution and Empire. The British

army could not pursue a Napoleonic style campaign to decisively defeat

the French in battle and force them into agreeing to British war aims at

the peace table. Instead, for military, social, economic and doctrinal rea-

sons, British strategy was subtle, relying on the nation’s strengths. An

insular position, limited European interests (besides the key Low Coun-

tries), an economy heavily involved in overseas trade and a powerful

navy provided Britain with distinct advantages in a long term maritime

war of financial strength. This was the key reason why colonial opera-

tions were undertaken – they were part of a particularly unique way of

waging war available to maritime powers.

One of the main proponents of this theory, Julian Corbett, argued the

British response to the developing economic conflict with France was ‘to

capture new markets, and to destroy the elements of his new navy

[Napoleon’s] in its ports by combined operations’. He rebuts the Conti-

nental argument with a flourish: ‘For us there was no decisive theatre

anywhere within reach of the enemy’s main forces, except the sea’. The

reason was simple: with the Royal Navy dominant Napoleon could not

strike a decisive blow against Britain, and of course Britain could not

strike a decisive blow back. Therefore until a new coalition could be

built, the war must be one of exhaustion:

RITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

NTRODUCTION

How, then, could our small army have been more profitably used

than working hand-in-hand with the navy to prevent Napoleon

from ever being able to strike the decisive blow, and by protecting

and fostering our trade to give us the means of endurance.

Corbett was not the only writer to see this. Liddell Hart argued Britain

fought with ‘economic pressure exercised through sea power. This naval

body had two arms; one financial, which embraced the subsidising and

military provisioning of allies; the other military, which embraced sea-

borne expeditions against the enemies vulnerable extremities’.

For

Duffy the considerations were:

…fundamentally defensive, financial, and naval rather than aggres-

sively Imperial and territorial: the strategy was dominated by mem-

ory of the alarms and humiliations of the War of American Inde-

pendence, in which the old Empire had come closer to annihilation

and Britain closer to invasion than ever before in the century.

100

Overseas operations provided Britain with ‘a solid commercial base from

which to continue the wars’.

101

For Baugh, ‘blue water warfare was a

form of technically advanced warfare emphasising economic pressure’.

102

In the Napoleonic wars ‘whatever was said and hoped by Englishmen

who day-dreamed of quick victories, the method pursued in the end was

financial attrition’.

103

As Esdaile has argued, even with the cost of the war

spiralling from £29,000,000 in 1804 to over £70,000,000 in 1813, ‘Britain

was able to sustain a level of expenditure that far outstripped that of

every other country in Europe’.

104

Britain could only manage this level of expenditure by preserving and

enhancing her maritime security and this issue brings us back again to

the question of maritime power. By protecting their own overseas trade

and colonies, attacking those of her enemies and expanding into un-

tapped markets British ministers increased revenue through higher and

wider taxation and expanded and increased duties on overseas commerce

thereby providing the fiscal stimulus to the British economy. It also paid

for the expansion of the Royal Navy to protect such investments as aptly

described in Till’s ‘virtuous maritime circle’ of maritime trade leading to

increased maritime resources funding naval strength which provides

maritime security (Till uses ‘supremacy’) which in turn stimulates in-

creased maritime trade and so on.

105

It is this conceptual circle which underpinned British success in the

wars against France and highlights the true value of overseas maritime-

based expeditions. By 1806, however, Napoleon was determined on a

course of action that would lead to British involvement in other regions

of commercial interest. In the face of increased French economic war-

fare through Napoleon’s Continental blockade, what Britain needed was

not just to enhance existing markets but to open up new markets to keep

the maritime cycle going. With this theoretical framework laid out we

can turn to the strategic situation in 1806 to understand exactly why Brit-

ain was so interested in the fate of Portugal and South America.

…

RITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

The Whig administration, formed after the death of Pitt, is known to

posterity as ‘The Ministry of all the Talents’. Pitt’s cousin, Lord William

Wyndham Grenville served as Prime Minister with Charles James Fox as

Foreign Secretary.

Taking up the post of Secretary of State for War and

the Colonies was William Windham. Charles, 2

Earl Grey (from April

1806 Viscount Howick) served as First Lord of the Admiralty, then re-

placed Fox at the Foreign Office in September. Howick was succeeded

at the Admiralty by Thomas Grenville. Henry Addington, 1

Viscount

Sidmouth served as Lord Privy Seal and then Lord President of the

Council. Master General of the Ordnance was Lord Moira while George

John, 2

Earl Spencer was Home Secretary. Lord Auckland was Presi-

dent of the Board of Trade.

The situation they found upon taking office in early 1806 was not

promising. Napoleon’s military dominance on the Continent was the

major factor in European diplomacy. Of the major powers, Spain had

been an ally of France since Britain had attacked her returning treas-

ure fleet in 1804, although there would be shady attempts in 1806 to

try to get the Spaniards to change sides as rumours of difficulties in

the relationship surfaced. The Third Coalition had been destroyed at

Austerlitz in December 1805 forcing Austria to make peace with

France. Prussia had apparently taken a pro-French stance by occupy-

ing Hanover, increasing Grenville’s already notable dislike of that

power and leading to the Talents declaring war on Prussia. As 1806

progressed Prussia would again take up arms against France but

would be crushed. Of course one name missing from the above is

Russia, and an alliance with that power offered the best chance for

THE STRATEGY OF THE

TALENTS MINISTRY

continued operations on the continent but the immediate priority for

the Talents was to start talking to Napoleon.

The Search for Peace

Fox was a long-term proponent of peace with France and with a less

than promising European situation it was unsurprising the ministry be-

gan tentative peace talks with France. There were also fiscal considera-

tions; faced with the spiralling cost of the war the Talents looked to re-

duce expenditure on the armed forces

and tried to raise funds by the

sale of church lands.

Peace had an obvious attraction.

The first feelers were put to the French Foreign Minister Charles-

Maurice de Talleyrand by Fox in February.

Initially conducted through

Francis Charles Seymour-Ingram, Lord Yarmouth, he was later sup-

ported by James Maitland, 8

Earl of Lauderdale, who eventually took

over sole responsibility for the negotiations. Lauderdale was certainly a

more experienced and robust negotiator than Yarmouth and hence the

peace talks stumbled along with a decreasing chance of success.

As early

as April Fox had recognised the peace talks had as their object ‘the inten-

tion of France to exclude us if possible from all connection with

Europe’.

Napoleon demanded French occupation of Sicily, a measure

the Talents would not agree to due to concern over French Mediterra-

nean ambitions and the knock on effect for Malta’s security. A Sicily-

Hanover exchange was offered by Napoleon in July but refused. In fact

the decision was taken by the Cabinet to reinforce Sicily with 6,000 men.

A half-hearted counter offer to exchange Sicily for Dalmatia came to

nothing.

With Fox increasingly ill (he would die in September), rumours of

French demands on Portugal and British attention shifting to South

America, the talks wound down.

Napoleon was now moving against

Prussia

and it seemed Russia would support the latter. With the pros-

pect of another continental campaign the peace talks finally collapsed on

6 October.

Why had the peace talks failed? At this time peace with France was

not unthinkable, only unlikely. Peace had been a reality in 1802-1803

when Britain had effectively accepted Napoleonic rule in France, many

French European conquests and had been willing to hand back the ma-

jority of captured French colonies.

Peace would remain a possibility in

1806 and 1807. But, without the inclusion of Austria, Prussia and Russia,

this could never be a general peace, rather another compromise peace

BRITAIN, PORTUGAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

HE STRATEGY OF THE TALENTS MINISTRY

like Amiens. In 1803 Britain was not willing to compromise on basic

issues concerning her maritime security, even when it meant probable

war, for instance not evacuating Malta. By 1806 neither side could offer

up much at the peace talks. Aware a balance of power on the Continent

was out of the question with Napoleon, Britain seemed willing to adapt

to strategic reality: the key war aim of a friendly or independent Low

Countries was currently unattainable.

As Schroeder has argued, the Talents were attempting to formulate

policy within three distinct competing dynamics in European power poli-

tics: Britain with naval and colonial supremacy, Russia with control over

east and northern Europe, and France with her influence over Western,

Central and Southern Europe. Britain might, and indeed would, engage

in peace talks with France and Russia, but it was always with the proviso

that ‘peace was desirable, but if the war had to go on, sooner or later

something would turn up’.

Esdaile has argued Napoleon would only

have to wait for Britain to sue for peace due to commercial, domestic

political, international pressure.

But this policy was dependant on the

attitude of Napoleon himself. Britain and Russia, who had been brought

into the talks, had taken the process seriously but Napoleon continued

his plans for further offensive moves in the Balkans and Mediterranean

while apparently treating for peace.

Moreover, Britain demanded Russia

be included in the talks, but Napoleon wanted to treat with Britain and

Russia as separate powers. Fox would not budge on this fundamental

issue and became increasingly disillusioned with Napoleon. As Schroeder

has concluded, ‘Britain and France never came close to an agreement,

even with Fox in charge’.

Britain was uninterested and unwilling to

discuss and become involved in central and eastern European issues,

vital to both France and Russia. ‘Britain’s insularity, ignorance of

Europe, and indifference to its needs were prominent among the causes

of the absence of peace’, Schroeder contends, ‘Thirteen years of war had

brought no sign of a change for the better – if anything, the reverse’.

Yet, for Britain, it appeared impossible to treat with Napoleon whose

policy appeared to be based on ‘bullying, aggression and bad faith’.

Napoleon’s seizure of more European territory after Amiens was

evidence he could not be trusted, hence Britain continued to fight him in

order to impose limits on his power. In other words, what Britain could

not tolerate ‘was the idea that he [Napoleon] could simply trample the

principles of legitimism and international law under foot’.

It appeared

Napoleon had no clear policy save imperial expansion and control by