Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This second major disturbance in the region was not quelled until
the Spanish and Portuguese mounted a joint military expedition against
the Guaraní rebels. Even so, Spain later repudiated the treaty because the
Portuguese did not completely abandon Colônia. Some Guaraní returned
to their old missions in the 1760s, although the days of glory were over.
The royal courts of both Spain and Portugal by then resented the Jesuits
who had been granted great temporal powers in order to control the
Indians. The earlier Paraguayan Revolt of the Comuneros as well as the
subsequent Guaraní revolt seemed to indicate that the Jesuits were not
the solution but the cause of social disruption in South America.
Conflict with Portuguese Brazil
The Spanish Crown had been wary of the Portuguese in Brazil since
the beginning of the Bolivian mining boom in the mid-16th century.
But there existed such a large frontier buffer between the Portuguese
coastal settlements at Salvador da Bahia and Río de Janeiro that a few
Portuguese ships in the estuary of the Río de la Plata did not seem
too threatening. However, that expansive buffer zone began to shrink
as the settlement of both the Spaniards and the Portuguese gradually
reduced the frontier. As previously noted, the Spanish Jesuits moved
their missions north and east into territory claimed by the Portuguese.
Likewise, the São Paulo slave-hunters of the 17th century gave way to
miners seeking gold in the early 18th century. Suddenly, the Portuguese
became protective of their frontier territories. The two colonial powers
would clash over Paraguay and Uruguay.
The Portuguese had an alliance with Great Britain, while the Spanish
monarchs maintained a “family compact” with Bourbon France. The first
wars of the 18th century increasingly involved the Americas in Europe's
disagreements, and Great Britain ultimately seemed to benefit most from
the conflicts. The War of Spanish Succession, from 1700 to 1713, by which
France's Louis XIV was able to place a Bourbon on the throne of Spain,
resulted in a compromise in which British merchants gained the coveted
monopoly to legally import slaves to the Spanish American colonies.
Colônia do Sacramento, the Uruguay port for contraband across the Río
de la Plata estuary from Buenos Aires, went to England's ally, Portugal.
Then came the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear (1739-48), so-named
because of the loss of a British mariner's ear to a Spaniard's knife. The
British gave up the slave monopoly, and the Portuguese gave back
Colônia do Sacramento. It was at the end of this conflict that the Jesuits
had to pull back their Guaraní missions from southern Brazil. In this
