Spectacular Projections

During the years 1822–5, Britain experienced a veritable mania for speculation in the newly independent states of Spanish America. An astonished Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian Ambassador in London, exclaimed, ‘You cannot imagine how mad everyone here has gone over the companies in South America. Everybody is buying shares. Everybody, from the lady to the footman, is risking pinmoney or wages in these enterprises.’ This was no exaggeration. In only three years, the new Spanish American governments floated approximately £20 million in bonds while British capitalization of Spanish American mining companies reached over £30 million. As Giorgio Fodor notes, ‘For centuries the silver of Mexico and Peru had inflamed [the] European imagination; now these riches seemed open to British enterprise and capital.’ The reading public was whipped up to a fever pitch by contemporary periodicals' reports of easy and spectacular profits. Encouraging articles followed the transaction of every loan. Information on the potential risks to investors was slim. Foreign works on Spanish America such as those of the Abbé de Pradt and Alexander von Humboldt were translated, republished, and avidly discussed in prominent periodicals such as the Annual Register, the Quarterly Review, and the Edinburgh Review. British newspapers such as The Times, the Morning Chronicle, and the Courier carefully followed the Spanish American independence movements, including in their pages details of each military victory, character descriptions of the revolutionary leaders, projections about the commercial benefits to come, and – what was new for British readers – regular stock and bond quotes.