The Weapons of Revolution: Global Merchants and the Arms Trade in South America (1808-1824)

This article investigates the role that the arms trade connected to Hispanic American Independence Wars played in the transformations at the origins of 19th century globalization. It looks specifically at how arms supplies to governments encouraged the early post-mercantilist development of South American commerce, and some of the domino effects of such development. This turning point in economic history is analyzed through the biographical trajectories of merchants who were well positioned between geopolitics and trade, and who had “imperial” functions without being formally involved in imperialist projects. Business and political correspondence, notarial documents, and customs registers from archives in Europe and the Americas reveal the workings of networks and business affairs of global merchants whose companies were major arms importers in Buenos Aires during the years leading to Chile’s liberation. The threads of John McNeile’s (an important but neglected figure) and David DeForest’s networks hook onto the principal economic and political laboratories of the countries from whence most arms were imported: Great Britain and the United States. They reached Chile and Peru from Buenos Aires and remained crucial to the liberation campaigns, encouraging further commercial expansion along the American Pacific coast and toward Asia, and pioneering financial adventures. Relations between commercial houses active in Hispanic America and Asia reveal British and US transpacific networks and ties between Hispanic American and Asian commerce and economies. The article thus shows how, by bringing together fragmented and scattered sources from both sides of the Atlantic, the significance of the arms trade in South America as a driving force of globalization emerges.