Primera Junta - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

The Primera Junta was concerned with the risk of Portuguese expansionism towards La Plata, either directly or through the Carlotist project. The diplomacy in Spain attempted to prevent the dispatch of a punitive army, limiting the armed conflicts to the royalists in Paraguay, the Upper Peru and the Banda Oriental. The Junta declared itself a natural ally of any city that revolts against the royalists; either those that did so in support of the May Revolution or those who revolted on their own (Chile, and Paraguay shortly after Belgrano's defeat).

Britain, allied with Spain in the Napoleonic Wars, stayed neutral in the conflicts between patriots and royalists. Nevertheless, the British policy towards the conflict was to favour British trade as long as it did not conflict with the neutral policy.