In 1808, Britain's longstanding rivalry with Spain was interrupted by Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula and the forced abdication of both King Charles IV and his heir, Ferdinand VII. For more than a decade, Spain had effectively functioned as a French satellite in the war against Britain. But with Napoleon's invasion, the collapse of the Spanish government, and the formation of loyalist provincial juntas, British-Spanish relations entered a new era. The juntas were immediately embraced by Britain as allies against the French and, suddenly, it served British interests to maintain the Spanish empire intact in order to finance the costs of a war in the mother country and to prevent the colonies from falling into Napoleon's hands. British troops under the command of Arthur Wellesley, poised to sail for Spanish America, were rapidly diverted to the Peninsula. Much to the frustration of Francisco de Miranda and other Spanish American patriots who had long been campaigning in London, official British plans to aid their independence movements seemed to have reached an impasse.

Whereas early nineteenth-century poems such as William Lisle Bowles's The Spirit of Discovery (1804) had frequently asserted ‘British righteousness at the expense of criminalising the Spanish,’ literary works that celebrated the unity of Britain and Spain were now the order of the day.