The Making of an Oceanic Borderland: British, Portuguese, and Spanish Merchants in 18th-Century Rio de la Plata

The Rio de la Plata was one the most disputed regions in the Atlantic World in the 18^th century. Since the foundation of Portuguese Colonia do Sacramento (1680) across from Spanish Buenos Aires, until the wars of independence (1810-1828), the region was the object of disputes between Portuguese, Spanish, and Indigenous groups as well as an area of interest for the British and French. Despite the geopolitical disputes over the territory and resources of the North bank of the Rio de la Plata, Portuguese Colonia do Sacramento, and Spanish Buenos Aires and Montevideo formed an important port complex where powerful networks of trade, religion, and family connected subjects of both Spanish and the Portuguese empires. This paper examines the presence of English merchants in the region during the first half of the eighteenth century. Through the close examination of the activities of British subjects as merchants, slave-traders, and smugglers in the region, their close association with the Portuguese, and their connections with Spaniard colonists and Indigenous people, this paper examines the formation and the characteristics of an Oceanic Borderland. Thus, the Rio de la Plata is not understood as the limit between the Spanish and the Portuguese Empires in the Americas, but as a zone of long-standing interactions between subjects of European empires, indigenous populations, and Africans. While borderland disputes between both Iberian empires shaped imperial policies, subjects of different European empires, Indigenous peoples, and Africans created a borderland space that was characterized by longstanding contacts and oceanic networks that extended far beyond the region.