“Unprovided Province”: Commercial Crisis, Food Shortage, and Authority in Venezuela during the Age of Revolution, 1797–1812

The collapse of Spanish imperial commercial networks during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars caused a series of crises in late colonial Venezuela at the turn of the nineteenth century.  Abnormal environmental problems exacerbated the war-time economic disruptions, and exposed the provinces’ urban inhabitants to acute shortages of prime necessities and dietary staples.  The stagnation of commerce and the sterility of agriculture had suddenly turned one of the most prospering Spanish American colonies into an “unprovided province.”  Interlinked economic and environmental problems became real challenges to both imperial and local authorities when revolutionary plots and slave conspiracies threatened to forge a new social and political order after 1797.  This paper examines how the commercial dislocations of the Age of Revolution recalibrated power within colonial Venezuela and explores how white elites and planter oligarchs attempted to safeguard their rule by promoting neutral trade with the United States and the foreign Antilles.

Key Words: Age of Revolutions, Ecomomic tensions, Commercial relations United States/Venzuela.