Neutral Trade and Neutrality in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: Portuguese and United States Merchants in the South Atlantic

During the Age of Revolutions, intermittent warfare and the emergence of new sovereign polities provoked deep transformations in the economic and political circuits of the Atlantic World. Historians of the Spain and its American territories have emphasized the significance of warfare as especially disruptive to the imperial commercial system. During this period, traditional trade circuits proved unsafe for Spanish vessels. Starting in the 1780s and reaching its highpoint during the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish Empire allowed trade with neutral nations in its American territories. In the Rio de la Plata, neutral trade proved crucial for the maintenance of local economies and even for maintaining trade with Spain itself. During this period, Portuguese and United States merchants made use of neutrality and neutral trade to penetrate Spanish American markets and seize commercial and shipping opportunities in the Atlantic. This paper examines Portuguese and United States neutral trade in Rio de la Plata considering the different definitions of neutrality, the legal disputes involving neutral trade and the goods transported by neutral carriers, as well as the routes of neutral shipping and the logistics involved in conducting neutral trade in a trans-imperial setting. Despite the different definitions of neutrality and conditions for neutral trade, Portuguese and United States merchants found commercial opportunities in territories under the control of the Iberian empires in the South Atlantic. During the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, neutral trade and neutrality proved crucial to both the maintenance and survival of the Iberian empires and for the emergence of new sovereignties in the Atlantic World.