The Other Hemispheric Revolution: Neutral Commerce between Venezuela and the United States, c. 1797–1810

At the end of the eighteenth century, European imperial warfare and commercial dislocations interrupted and rerouted the pathways by which the merchants and traders of the Atlantic World exchanged goods and merchandise.  When the frequency and duration of those disruptions increased after 1796, the Spanish Empire sanctioned freer commerce with neutrals to hold back economic crisis and unrest in its American colonies.  Though scholars of the Americas have long been interested the Spanish Empire’s policy of neutral commerce (comercio neutral), the interposition of U.S. merchants in Spanish American trade networks remains largely unexamined.  Relying on historical newspapers, bills of lading, mercantile correspondence, and the records of the colonial Venezuelan Intendancy, this paper argues that the sudden transformation of the United States into a key commercial outlet for Venezuelan merchants and planters had political and economic ramifications.  Through their participation in neutral trade, U.S. merchants and traders helped sustain Spanish rule in Venezuela for over a decade.  Though the revolutions of commerce fostered increased cultural interaction between the Americas, they did not always promote the revolution of government.