Search

This article traces the story of one of the most significant unofficial mediators in the context of the imperial reconfiguration of the Atlantic World between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The protagonist was a woman of many identities, loyalties, experiences, and allegiances, who stood at the center of business and family networks of global dimension. Of French descent, married to an Irishman, and naturalized a Spanish subject in Buenos Aires, “Anita” Périchon was able to strike a balance between British and Hispanic-American imperial and personal interests. Wellknown in Argentina as the mistress of Viceroy Liniers, this article focuses on the role she played in the system of corruption that allowed British merchants to conduct business in Río de la Plata between the June 1808 alliance of Britain and anti-French Spain and the legal opening of direct trade with the British in Buenos Aires in November 1809.

This paper retraces the changing alliances and practices of Antony Gibbs & Sons’ Lima agent during the transition from Spanish to independentist rule. The company’s correspondence with London guides us in exploring this moment in Hispano-American history halfway between the 18th century Spanish global trading system and 19th century international trade hegemonised by Britain. It will shed light on that ‘grey area’ between royalists and independentists, kept open by a handful of international merchants from neutral countries and embracing a wide gamut of possible compromises. Gibbs quickly adjusted the hierarchy among their alliances, in order to adapt to shifting power balances between royalists and independentists and between British and Spanish interests on the Hispano-American Pacific coast. The firm’s synergy with British merchants well-connected to the independentists provided it with greater guarantees of success and better political support than those provided by its partners in Spain and royalist America. Such alliances were key in expanding the firm’s trade, as was Gibbs’ access to pre-existing commercial networks in Spanish America. The company’s initiatives became therefore a vector of change between the old system and the new, an informal means of ‘restructuring’ influence during this era of reconfiguration. Esta investigación reconstruye las mutaciones en las alianzas y las prácticas del agente en Lima de la casa Antony Gibbs & Sons, durante la transición entre la colonia y el gobierno independentista. La correspondencia con Londres de la compañía nos conduce a explorar este momento de la historia hispanoamericana, a caballo entre el sistema de comercio internacional hispánico del siglo XVIII y el del XIX hegemonizado por Gran Bretaña. Arrojará luz sobre ‘áreas grises’ entre realistas e independentistas, mantenidas abiertas por algunos comerciantes internacionales basándose en la neutralidad de sus países. Gibbs ajustó rápidamente la jerarquía entre sus alianzas, para adaptarse a los equilibrios de poder entre realistas e independentistas, y entre intereses británicos y españoles en la costa del Pacífico hispanoamericano. La alianza de Gibbs con comerciantes británicos le brindó mayores garantías de éxito y un mejor apoyo político que los brindados por sus socios en España y en la América realista. Fueron alianzas-clave para la expansión del comercio de Gibbs, como lo fue su accesibilidad a redes comerciales preexistentes en Hispanoamérica. Las iniciativas de la compañía se convirtieron, por lo tanto, en un vector de cambio entre el antiguo y el nuevo sistema, un medio informal de ‘influencia (r)estructurante’ en esta época de reconfiguración.