British Legions - Motivation

Motivation

The motivations of volunteers for the British Legions were mixed. Many Britons were still concerned by the threat that Spain, as a restored world power, potentially posed to Britain. Despite Spain and Britain having been allies in the Peninsular War just a few years before, many Britons' image of the Spanish in America was influenced by the now-disputed Black Legend. Volunteers were also motivated by the liberal propaganda of Bolívar's supporters that portrayed the war as bringing freedom and rights to people under Spanish tyranny. For these reasons, particularly the former, the recruiting of British volunteers received tacit government support, even if in principle the British Crown discontinued its support to the insurgents after the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

However mercenary interests also played a large part in motivating potential recruits, who were often unemployed, and who perceived South America as a land of immense wealth of which they would be able to have a share. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the British Empire no longer required a large standing army. In April 1817, The Times calculated that there were 500,000 ex-soldiers in a British population of 25 million. After a quarter-century of Continental wars—both the wars against Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars—these men had no other employment history or trade and, therefore, often found themselves in poverty. South America's wars of independence provided many of them with an opportunity to continue their military careers and escape from the prospect of inactivity and poverty at home.