Sullen Fires Across the Atlantic

Notes

¹ Translations in English are mine.
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² The intense involvement of the British in Latin American independence is reflected in George Canning's statement regarding the event: "The deed is done, the nail is driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English" (Galeano 173).
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³ The available critical concepts illuminate different aspects of the Americas-Africa-Europe triad, but are mostly predicated on an Anglo-American outlook. Concepts like Paul Gilroy's "Black Atlantic," focuses on the Anglophone African diaspora; Joseph Roach's circum-atlantic gestures towards Latin America, but does not engage it; the "transatlantic" implies the U.S. and Britain or Europe; Srinivas Aravamudan's "tropicopolitan" gestures to the Francophone world, but conflates Asia and the Americas;  Mary Louise Pratt's "transculturation" is a more inclusive term, but one that neglects the AfroCaribbean or Afroamerican experience in relation to the Hispanophone world. Most recently, Kaplan and Gerassi-Navarro note that "the Spanish empire and early Spanish American republics have not figured as centrally into these new transnational figurations" (2).
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⁴ For a more recent assessment of Humboldt and Romanticism, see Leask 243-97.
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⁵ For a complete catalogue of Ackermann's publications in Latin America, see Roldán Vera 239-59; for commentary on Mora's Meditaciones Poéticas, see Essick and Pailey 38-9.
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⁶ Francisco de Miranda, the general, diplomat, and ceaseless agitator for the Latin American cause, preceded Bolívar in London, and laid the groundwork for the latter's dealings with Britain. Miranda had fought as a general in the French Revolution, and upon Napoleon's expulsion of him from France, he sought asylum in London, where he began a campaign for British support of Latin American independence, including audiences with William Pitt, and William Wilberforce. For a discussion of the activities of Miranda and other Latin Americans in Britain, see Casa de Bello, vol. 1 and 2; Almeida 197-209; Racine 141-208. For a recent fictional treatment of Miranda's life, see Duncker, where Miranda figures as the stepfather of James Miranda Barry, a woman who passed as a man for over fifty years so she could study medicine.
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⁷ The London-Kingston-Latin America connection is dramatized in Robert Dunbar's The Caraguin, a Caribbean epic published in 1839. The Caraguin chronicles the failed love affair between Amy, a British planter's daughter, and Guzman, a Venezuelan revolutionary.
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⁸ Other papers carried similar bulletins. On July 6, 1806, The Morning Herald reported "A Jamaica mail arrived yesterday, and has brought us later and more authentic intelligence relative to Miranda's expedition than any we have yet received." On July 7, the Times continues "The arrival of the Jamaica Mail puts it beyond all doubt that Gen Miranda effected a landing on the Spanish Main about the end of April." See Miranda 23: 165-7.
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⁹ Robert Madden identifies Hyslop in his narrative Twelve Months in the West Indies: "My friend, Mr. Hyslop, agent of the legatee, one of the most respectable men in the islands, furnished me with these particulars" (165). Absentee planters regularly hired agents to represent their interests in Kingston while they lived in London and lobbied Parliament. See Dunn 200-217.
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¹⁰ Pons gives an excellent analysis of how Burkean thought finds its way into Bolívar's writing via Blanco White. See Pons 507-529.
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¹¹ Galeano explains how Britain's financial world was dependent on slavery. In the early nineteenth century "an Englishman could live on £6 a year; Liverpool slave merchants garnered more than £1.1 million a year in the Caribbean alone . . . An economist described the slave trade as 'basic and fundamental principle of all the rest, like the mainspring of the machine which sets every cogwheel in motion.' Banks proliferated in Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, London, and Glasgow; Lloyds piled up profits insuring slaves, ships and plantations" (81).
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¹² Grases notes that no original manuscript for the Spanish has been found (706).
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¹³ "Las Casas's writings criticizing the Spanish colonists were used by Spain's enemies as propaganda in the sixteenth-century conflicts between Protestant England and Catholic Spain. . . . These editions carried the message of Spain's cruelty throughout Europe. The Spanish conquest, not Las Casas' struggle for justice, was emphasized in these editions. Conquest, not the struggle for justice, came to define the Spanish legacy in America, at least for the English-speaking world" (Traboulay 187).
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¹⁴ See Quintero for an analysis on race relations in Bolívar's army; she notes that Bolívar had Piar executed because he allegedly was advocating a race war.
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¹⁵ For a discussion how Bolívar constructs the "family narrative" in terms of gender in the 'Jamaica Letter,' see Davies 5-19.
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¹⁶ Ramos Guédez's original reads "Tal medida no logra consolidar los esfuerzos de los independentistas por destruir a las fuerzas españolas que en poco tiempo frustran los dos primeros intentos de organización republicana. Además, en el transcurso de la guerra, muchos esclavos logran su libertad al participar como soldados en los distintos bandos en conflicto y en otras circunstancias, cuando huyen de sus sitios de trabajo y se trasladan a las comunidades integradas por negros cimarrones, en las cuales consiguen tanto protección como alimento."
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