Río de la Plata, United Provinces of the

The interior of the Banda Oriental, led by Jose Gervasio Artigas, captain of the Blandengues Corps, rises in opposition to Elío when the latter prepares to take the offensive against Buenos Aires in February 1811, and Artigas offers his services to Buenos Aires.

Artigas, now forty-six years old, is the scion of a family that had settled in Montevideo in 1726.

Influenced by federalism, Artigas had been dissatisfied with the administration of the former colonial government in Buenos Aires, particularly with its discrimination against Montevideo in commercial affairs.

Artigas's army wins its most important victory against the Spaniards in the Battle of Las Piedras on May 18, 1811.

He then besieges Montevideo from May to October 1811.

Elío saves Montevideo only by inviting in the Portuguese forces from Brazil, which pour into Uruguay and dominate most of the country by July 1811.

This October Elio concludes a peace treaty with Buenos Aires that provides for the lifting of the siege of Montevideo and the withdrawal of all the troops of Artigas, Portugal, and Spain from Uruguay.

Artigas, his three thousand troops, and thirteen thousand civilians evacuate Salto, on the Rio Uruguay, and cross the river to the Argentine town of Ayuf, where they camp for several months.

This trek is considered the first step in the formation of the Uruguayan nation.

The Portuguese and Spanish troops do not withdraw until 1812.

At the beginning of 1813, after Artigas has returned to the Banda Oriental, having emerged as a champion of federalism against the unitary centralism of Buenos Aires, the new government in Buenos Aires convenes a constituent assembly.

The Banda Oriental's delegates to elect assembly representatives gather and, under instructions issued by Artigas, propose a series of political directives.

Later known as the "Instructions of the Year Thirteen," these directives include  the declaration of the colonies' independence and the formation of a confederation of the provinces (the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata) from the former Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata (dissolved in 1810 when independence was declared).

This formula, inspired by the Constitution of the United States, would have guaranteed political and economic autonomy for each area, particularly that of the Banda Oriental with respect to Buenos Aires.

However, the assembly refuses to seat the delegates from the Banda Oriental, and Buenos Aires pursues a system based on unitary centralism.

Consequently, Artigas breaks with Buenos Aires and again besieges Montevideo.

Artigas lifts his siege of Montevideo at the beginning of 1814, but warfare continues among the Uruguayans, Spaniards, and Argentines.

In June 1814, Montevideo surrenders to the troops of Buenos Aires.

Artigas controls the countryside, however, and his army retakes the city in early 1815.

Once the troops from Buenos Aires have withdrawn, the Banda Oriental appoints its first autonomous government.

Artigas establishes the administrative center in the northwest of the country, where in 1815 he organizes the Federal League under his protection.

It consists of six provinces—including four present-day Argentine provinces—demarcated by the Rio Parana, Rio Uruguay, and Rio de la Plata—with Montevideo as the overseas port.

The basis for political union is customs unification and free internal trade.

To regulate external trade, the protectionist Customs Regulations Act (1815) is adopted. 

This same year, Artigas also attempts to implement agrarian reform in the Banda Oriental by distributing land confiscated from his enemies to supporters of the revolution, including Indians and mestizos (people of mixed Indian and European ancestry).

British forces attack Buenos Aires twice during the British invasions of the Río de la Plata.

In 1806 the British successfully invade Buenos Aires, but an army from Montevideo led by Santiago de Liniers defeats them.

In the brief period of British rule, the viceroy Rafael Sobremonte manages to escape to Córdoba and designate this city as capital.

Buenos Aires becomes the capital again after its liberation, but Sobremonte cannot resume his duties as viceroy.

Santiago de Liniers, chosen as new viceroy, prepares the city against a possible new British attack and repel the attempted invasion of 1807.

The militarization generated in society changes the balance of power favorably for the criollos (in contrast to peninsulares), as well as the development of the Peninsular War in Spain.

An attempt by the peninsular merchant Martín de Álzaga to remove Liniers and replace him with a Junta is defeated by the criollo armies.

However, by 1810 it is these same armies who support a new revolutionary attempt, successfully removing the new viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros.

This is known as the May Revolution, which is now celebrated as a national holiday.

This event starts the Argentine War of Independence, and many armies leave Buenos Aires to fight the diverse strongholds of royalist resistance, with varying levels of success.

The government is held first by two Juntas of many members, then by two triumvirates, and finally by a unipersonal office, the Supreme Director.

Buenos Aires manages to endure the whole Spanish American wars of independence without falling again under royalist rule.

Formal independence from Spain will be declared in 1816, at the Congress of Tucumán.

News of the events in Buenos Aires at first stuns the citizens of Asunción, who have largely supported the royalist position.

But no matter how grave the offenses of the ancien regime may have been, they are far less rankling to the proud Paraguayans than the indignity of being told to take orders from the porteños.

After all, Paraguay had been a thriving, established colony when Buenos Aires was only a squalid settlement on the edge of the empty pampas.

Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808, the capture of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII (ruled 1808, 1814-33), and Napoleon's attempt to put his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne, severs the major remaining links between metropolis and satellite.

Joseph has no constituency in Spanish America.

Without a king, the entire colonial system loses its legitimacy, and the colonists revolt.

The Buenos Aires cabildo, buoyed by their recent victory over British troops, deposes the Spanish viceroy on May 25, 1810, vowing to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII.

The porteño action has unforeseen consequences for the histories of Argentina and Paraguay.

The porteños bungle their effort to extend control over Paraguay by choosing José Espínola y Peña as their spokesman in Asuncion.

Espínola is "perhaps the most hated Paraguayan of his era," in the words of historian John Hoyt Williams.

Espínola's reception in Asuncion is less than cordial, partly because he is closely linked to rapacious policies of the ex-governor, Lazaro de Rivera, who had arbitrarily shot hundreds of his citizens until he was forced from office in 1805.

Barely escaping a term of exile in Paraguay's far north, Espínola flees back to Buenos Aires and lies about the extent of porteño support in Paraguay, causing the Buenos Aires cabildo to make an equally disastrous move.

In a bid to settle the issue by force, the cabildo sends eleven hundred troops under General Manuel Belgrano to subdue Asuncion.

Paraguayan troops soundly thrash the porteños at Paraguan and Tacuan.

Officers from both armies, however, fraternize openly during the campaign.

From these contacts the Paraguayans come to realize that Spanish dominance in South America is coming to an end, and that they, and not the Spaniards, hold the real power.

The Espínola and Belgrano affairs may have served to whet nationalist passions in Paraguay; the Paraguayan royalists' ill-conceived actions that follow inflame them.

Believing that the Paraguayan officers who had whipped the porteños pose a direct threat to his rule, Governor Bernardo de Velasco disperses and disarms the forces under his command and sends most of the soldiers home without paying them for their eight months of service.

Velasco previously had lost face when he fled the battlefield at Paraguan, thinking Belgrano would win.

Discontent spreads, and the last straw is the request by the Asunción cabildo for Portuguese military support against Belgrano's forces, who are encamped just over the border in present-day Argentina.

Far from bolstering the cabildo's position, this move instantly ignites an uprising and the overthrow of Spanish authority in Paraguay on May 14 and 15, 1811.

Independence is declared on May 17.

Spain rules the Falkland Islands from Buenos Aires until 1811, withdrawing due to the pressures of the Peninsular war against Bonapartist rule at home and the moves toward independence by her South American colonies.

Like Britain earlier, Spain leaves behind a plaque proclaiming her sovereignty.

Following the departure of the Spanish settlers, the Falkland Islands became the domain of whalers and sealers who use the islands to shelter from the worst of the South Atlantic weather.

By merit of their location, the Falkland Islands are often the last refuge for ships damaged at sea.

Most numerous among those using the islands are British and American sealers, where typically between forty and fifty ships are engaged in exploiting fur seals.

This represents an itinerant population of up to a thousand sailors, which outnumber any permanent population by an order of magnitude.

On February 8, 1813, the British ship Isabella, a ship of one hundred and ninety-three tons and a crew of fourteen, is wrecked off the coast of Eagle Island (now known as Speedwell Island).

Captain George Higton and five other men volunteer to make the hazardous voyage to the River Plate in one of the ship's longboats.

Braving the South Atlantic in a boat little more than eighteen feet long (five point five meters), they make landfall a month later.

The British gun brig Nancy is sent to rescue the survivors.

On April 5, Captain Charles Barnard of the American sealer Nanina is sailing off the shore of Eagle Island, with a discovery boat deployed looking for seals.

Having seen smoke and heard gunshots the previous day, he is alert to the possibility of survivors of a ship wreck.

This suspicion is heightened when the crew of the discovery boat comes aboard and informs the captain they had come across a new moccasin as well as the partially butchered remains of a seal.

At dinner that evening, the crew observes a man approaching the ship who is shortly joined by eight to ten others.

Both Barnard and the survivors from the Isabella had harbored concern the other party was Spanish and are relieved to discover their respective nationalities.

Barnard dines with the Isabella survivors that evening and finding that the British party are unaware of the War of 1812 inform the survivors that technically they are at war with each other.

Nevertheless, Barnard promises to rescue the British party and sets about preparations for the voyage to the River Plate.

Realizing that they have insufficient stores for the voyage, he sets about hunting wild pigs and otherwise acquiring additional food.

However, while Barnard is gathering supplies, the British take the opportunity to seize the Nanina and depart, leaving Barnard and three of his crew marooned.

Shortly thereafter, the Nanina encounters the British ship Nancy under Lt. D'Aranda, who had sailed from the River Plate in order to rescue the survivors of the Isabella.

Lt D'Aranda takes the Nanina as a prize.

Barnard and his party survive for eighteen months marooned on the islands until rescued by the British ships Indispensible and Asp in November 1814, the British admiral in Rio de Janeiro having requested their masters to divert to the area to look for him. (In 1829, Barnard will publish an account of his survival entitled A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Capt Charles H. Barnard.)

The French invasion of Spain in 1808 had led to the collapse of the Spanish Monarchy.

Most subjects of Spain do not accept the government of Joseph Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by his brother, Emperor Napoleon of France.

At the same time, the process of creating a stable government in Spain, which will be widely recognized throughout the empire, has taken two years.

This has created a power vacuum in the Spanish possessions in America, which creates further political uncertainty.

Manuel Belgrano raises the Flag of Argentina (which he designed) in the city of Rosario, for the first time, on February 27, 1812.

José de San Martín, for twenty years a soldier for the Spanish crown, serving mostly in European campaigns, returns to Buenos Aires in 1812 to join the forces fighting for the liberation of his homeland.

Historians will propose several explanations for this action: the common ones are that he missed his native country, that he was a British agent and the congruence of the goals of both wars.

The first explanation suggests that when the wars of independence began San Martín thought that his duty was to return to his country and serve in the military conflict.

The second explanation suggests that Britain, which would benefit from the independence of the South American countries, sent San Martín to achieve it.

The third suggests that both wars were caused by the conflicts between Enlightenment ideas and absolutism, so San Martín still waged the same war; the wars in the Americas only developed separatist goals after the Spanish Absolutist Restoration.

San Martín had been initiated in the Lodge of Rational Knights in 1811.

They met at the house of Carlos María de Alvear, other members were José Miguel Carrera, Aldao, Blanco Encalada and other criollos, American-born Spaniards.

They had agreed to return to their home countries and join the local revolutionary movements.

San Martín had asked for his retirement from the military, and moved to Britain, staying in the country for a short time, and meeting many other South Americans at a lodge held at the house of Venezuelan general Francisco de Miranda at 27 Grafton Street (now 58 Grafton Way), Bloomsbury, London (the house now has a blue plaque with Miranda's name).

He then sailed to Buenos Aires aboard the frigate George Canning, along with the South Americans Alvear, Francisco José de Vera and Matías Zapiola, and the Spaniards Francisco Chilavert and Eduardo Kailitz.

They arrives on March 9, 1812, to serve under the First Triumvirate.

San Martín, proving himself a master military tactician, will aid General Belgrano in his defeat of Spanish royalist forces in early clashes in Paraguay, Chile, Peru and Uruguay.