The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata or United Provinces of the River Plate, along with United Provinces in South America, are names used to refer to the emerging state that succeeded the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata after the May Revolution, from 1810 to 1831, encompassing the Argentine War of Independence, the Cisplatine War and the beginning of the Argentine Civil Wars. The aforementioned state is now the Argentine Republic. The name "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" is recognised as one of the official names of Argentina according to its constitution.
Nomenclature
The state that succeeded the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1810 used different names depending on political interests and people's common usage. Provinces of the Río de la Plata (): Since the Viceroy had been removed from office and replaced by a government junta, it made no sense to keep referring to the state as Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Therefore, in a public edict written on the night of 25 May 1810 by the Primera Junta and proclaimed the next day, the name Provinces of the Río de la Plata made its first appearance. United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (): This name was officially adopted by the First Triumvirate on 22 November 1811, in the 1811 Provisional Statute. It became the most common name during the War of Independence and is recognised as an alternative name of the state according to Article 35 of the Constitution of Argentina, although it is not used in practice.The Constitution: "" ("Article 35. The denominations successively adopted from 1810 to the present – United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and Argentine Republic, Argentine Confederation – shall henceforth be interchangeable official names to describe the Government and territory of the provinces. The phrase 'Argentine Nation' is used for the formulation and the enactment of laws.") United Provinces of the South (): This was the name used to refer to the state in the Argentine National Anthem ("Marcha patriótica"), composed in 1813. It was not used in official documents. United Provinces in South America (): This name appears in the Argentine Declaration of Independence of 1816. It was probably chosen because it was a more encompassing name, and the borders of the new state were not clear yet. The name was also used in the Argentine Constitution of 1819. United Provinces of South America (): The use of of instead of in can be seen in the letter of marque from 1817. Republic of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (): This official name was used in a document written by Buenos Aires Governor Juan Gregorio de las Heras in response to the Empire of Brazil, which had declared war on the United Provinces due to the annexation of the Oriental Province. It was adopted to emphasise republicanism in contrast to Brazil, which was a monarchy. Argentina: The name comes from argentinus, which means "related to silver" (argentum) in Latin. It first appeared in 1602 in the poem La Argentina written by Martín del Barco Centenera, for referring the Río de la Plata, which literally translates into English as "River of the Silver". It gained popularity during the 1820s thanks to the drafting and approval of the 1826 constitution, although United Provinces of the Río de la Plata continued to be the most common name for the State. After the 1831 Federal Pact, the name Argentina as part of Argentine Confederation began to be widely spread. Argentine Republic (): This name was officially adopted by the 1826 constitution. However, in 1827, the constitution stopped being applied. Nowadays, it is the most common official name used by Argentina. Argentine Federation (): Name seen in the certificates of discharge from Buenos Aires during Rosas' administration of the province. Argentine Confederation (): This was a widely used name after the Federal Pact, although it was used before. It is also one of Argentina’s official names according to Article 35.
Río de la Plata can be translated as River Plate. This translation originated when plate could mean silver in English. One of Argentina's two largest football clubs is named after this translation (Club Atlético River Plate). A more accurate English version of Río de la Plata would be "River of the Silver", but it is not used. Also, the Río de la Plata is not a river, but an estuary.
Territory The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata were bordered on the south by the sparsely populated territories of the Pampas and Patagonia, home to the Mapuche, Ranquel, and Puelche peoples. To the north, the Gran Chaco was populated by the Guaycuru nations. To the northwest, across Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia), lay the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. Across the Andes, to the west, was the Spanish-controlled Captaincy General of Chile. To the northeast was Colonial Brazil, part of the Portuguese Empire (in 1815, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves), later the Empire of Brazil in 1822.
However, the territory of the United Provinces changed repeatedly. Since the beginning, the government of Buenos Aires (the juntas, the triumvirates and later the Directory) wanted to control all the intendancies that belonged to the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Nevertheless, this goal was never achieved due to resistance by royalist governments. The Intendancy of Paraguay (modern-day Paraguay) rejected Buenos Aires’ authority and swore loyalty to the provisional government of Peninsular Spain (the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies). Buenos Aires launched a military expedition known as the Paraguay campaign, but it was defeated and Paraguay became an independent country a few months later. The intendancies of La Paz, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Córdoba del Tucumán, Salta del Tucumán and the political and military governments of Moxos and Chiquitos were annexed by the Viceroyalty of Peru after the May Revolution; Córdoba del Tucumán and Salta del Tucumán were fully regained after the Second Upper Peru campaign, commanded by Manuel Belgrano, but the other territories (known as a whole as Upper Peru) were never retaken, and became Bolivia years later.
Montevideo did not acknowledge Buenos Aires’ government either, and was declared the new capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, where that administrative division continued to exist until 1814, when the city was conquered by the United Provinces. However, Montevideo became part of the Oriental Province (the Eastern Bank and Montevideo, modern-day Uruguay) and acted as the capital of the League of the Free Peoples, a federal alternative to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, which had a unitary government. This alternative state was composed of the provinces of Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Misiones and the Eastern Bank. In 1820, the Eastern Bank was fully captured by Portuguese Brazil, and the League was abolished; the rest of its provinces came under Argentine control. The Eastern Bank became an independent state (Uruguay) in 1828 after British intervention in the Cisplatine War.
History
The beginning of the state is situated during the May Revolution (specifically on 24 or 25 May 1810), when the viceroy of the Río de la Plata, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, was dismissed by an Open Cabildo. The reason behind this decision was a very complex political context originating after the capture of King Ferdinand VII of Spain by Napoleon: the people of the Iberian Peninsula had organised a provisional government known as the Supreme Central Junta, which had been acknowledged by Spanish America, and had appointed Cisneros as viceroy. However, this junta was disestablished by French forces, so the Viceroy legitimacy was weakened, as he had been elected not by the King, but by a spontaneous junta that did not exist anymore.
The criollos, people with Peninsular Spanish ancestry born in the Americas, were legally considered Spanish, but in practice were excluded from important government offices. Many of them were influenced by Enlightenment, popular sovereignty and liberal ideas, and wanted to change their situation and society. Besides, Spanish America had a history of indigenous and criollo rebellions, such as the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II and the Revolutions of La Paz and Chuquisaca. Therefore, when the Peninsular provisional government fell, the criollos, along with some Peninsular liberals, demanded the dismissal of Cisneros and the creation of a government junta, sustained by the principle of retroversion of sovereignty to the people, which stated that, in absence of a legitimate sovereign, such as the King, sovereignty had to return to the people, who thus had to choose how to govern themselves. They were supported by Buenos Aires' urban militias such as the Regiment of Patricians, commanded by Cornelio Saavedra. Nevertheless, other criollos oppossed the Revolution, especially those who benefited from the Spanish commercial monopoly and the bureaucratic elite.
The Primera Junta—the government created by the May Revolution—swore loyalty to Ferdinand VII and did not declare independence, but refused to recognise the authority of the Council of Regency of Spain and Indies—which was the new provisional government in the Iberian Peninsula—since it had not been chosen by Spanish American citizens and was significantly more conservative. This created a huge debate among historians, related to whether the revolutionaries wanted to declare independence from Spain from the beginning or not. This debate is usually divided between those who think that the initial discretion was a strategy of the revolutionaries—often called Mask of Ferdinand VII—while they were waiting for a better international context, and those who say that the 1810 was the best context for the revolutionaries to declare independence, but they did not do it since it was not the goal at first, and became the only option when Ferdinand VII returned to the throne and turned extremely conservative.
Political context
After the May Revolution, there were two main political groups in the Provinces. The first one was composed of those who wanted to preserve the Old Regime, such as the ecclesiastical elite, bureaucrats related to the viceregnal administration and rich merchants who benefited from the Spanish commercial monopoly. They were entrenched in the Royal Audiencia and the Cabildo of Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the second group (the revolutionaries) encompassed a petty bourgeoisie and a new merchant bourgeoisie. The first one was integrated by lawyers (Moreno, Castelli, Belgrano and Paso), popular priests (Alberti, José Ignacio Grela and Juan Manuel Aparicio), common workers (Domingo French, Antonio Beruti, Agustín José Donado, Buenaventura de Arzac, Francisco Mariano de Orma, etc.) and doctors (Cosme Argerich), primarily influenced by Enlightenment and popular sovereignty ideas. Meanwhile, the revolutionary merchant bourgeoisie was related to the free trade sanctioned in 1809 within a framework of economic crisis, although it was related to smuggling as well. It was composed of criollo families (Riglos, Aguirre, Sarratea, Escalada, García, Rivadavia, etc.) and British ones (Miller, Parish, Bellinghurst, O'Gorman, Wilde, Craig, Dillon, Twaites, Gowland, Lynch, Robertson, Mackinson, Brittain, Armstrong, Ramsay, etc.). The interests of the idealist revolutinaries would sometimes coincide with or differ from those of British and criollos merchants.
Primera Junta