Chapter IX: The Effects of War and Bad Faith in Government in Buenos Aires and Provinces of the Rio de La Plata

J.A.B. Beaumont was a traveler from the UK who wanted to document his experiences and attempt to capture and convey the economic and political positionality of Buenos Aires in 1828.[1] Beaumont was writing to a broadly European audience, providing information that he thought would better inform possible migrants coming from Europe to a newly independent Buenos Aires or ‘Buenos Ayres’ as he wrote in the text. Beaumont’s writing was published around ten years after the Argentina declared its independence, but the text is greatly influenced by the exit of La Banda Oriental (modern day Uruguay) from the control of Argentina.[2] This guide to the pros and cons of migration to Buenos Aires is greatly shaped by Beaumont’s negative sentiments about movements towards independence. The underlying question of the text is whether Buenos Aires was worthy of further European investment or migration, and he bases his observations on his understanding of regional conflict and Buenos Aires’s management of resources.

                Beaumont starts chapter nine of the text titled Concluding Observations — Effects of the War- and bad Faith of the Government by quoting something he considers a classic “In the enjoyment of peace and good government, men will draw support out of barren rock”, then quickly adds “but under the inflictions of war and bad government, men may starve in the midst of plenty”.[3] It is clear that Beaumont believes that Buenos Aires falls into the later. His conclusion stars by acknowledging the powerful positionality of Buenos Aires as a prominent port that has received a high level of immigration and financial support from Europe, further suggesting that if Buenos Aires had been less interested in conflict and simply maintained status-quo peaceful operations that the political and economic influence of the city would have expanded perhaps even to the point where other areas or states would succumb to its control. The posed ‘bad governance’ that Beaumont refers to is primarily Buenos Aires’s interest in expanding its territories, which Beaumont believes is already overextended, and that in this “vain-glorious enterprise”[4] that the politicians in Buenos Aires had failed to build unity among the twenty two provinces. Beaumont was heavily responding to the political exit of La Banda Oriental from Buenos Aires’s control, which Beaumont claims ‘exposed the hollowness of the union of the twenty-two Latin American providences’, to which Beaumont states that the unity previously maintained by the union was due to Spaniard military pressure that forced the providences to work together. Without the threat of Spaniard invasion, there was no cohesion which left Buenos Aires relatively unsupported by previously controlled territories according to Beaumont.

            It is clear that Beaumont supports a greater level of military action by Buenos Aires against rebelling providences. Given the timing of this travelogue, Beaumont’s opinion is generally that Buenos Aires was given practically every advantage at succeeding, but failed simply because of weak governance. The text is riddled with fear of war, Beaumont did not think that the issue of La Banda Oriental declaring independence would end at that, but instead thought that as the presence of ‘imperialists’ decreased in the area that the people of Buenos Aires would be hated and expunged from the continent by surrounding territories that were supposedly more inclined to align themselves with Brazil than to form a mutually beneficial agreement with Buenos Aires. This travelogue conveys that foreigners viewed Buenos Aires as politically ineffective as establishing unity despite having European financial support and migration, the broader portrayal of Latin America was the belief that the surrounding areas would come to hate and eventually destroy Buenos Aires. It seems clear that Beaumont views Buenos Aires as superior to other Latin American territories, maybe specifically Brazil because compares the two frequently. The author does not outright say that its because Buenos Aires has greater European influence, but he does imply that Buenos Aires has a high level of European support and various advantages in the area of trade. Beaumont is overly suspicious of rural providences or surrounding states of plotting against Buenos Aires, which could be connected to his apparent belief that the city is distinctly more European than other surrounding states.

[1] Beaumont, Travels in Buenos Ayres, and the Adjacent Provinces of the Rio de La Plata. With Observations, Intended for the Use of Persons Who Contemplate Emigrating to That Country; or, Embarking Capital in Its Affairs, viii.

[2] Foreign Service Institute, “Uruguay – Countries – Office of the Historian”.

[3] Beaumont, Travels in Buenos Ayres, and the Adjacent Provinces of the Rio de La Plata. With Observations, Intended for the Use of Persons Who Contemplate Emigrating to That Country; or, Embarking Capital in Its Affairs, 237.

[4] Beaumont, 238.