The French Conspiracy of 1795 and the Rise of Argentine Independence

FAIN: FB-53789-08

Lyman Johnson
University of North Carolina, Charlotte (Charlotte, NC 28223-0001)

I am applying to the NEH for funds to complete a book that reinterprets the Argentine independence movement by connecting this political transformation to altered economic realities and late colonial social conflicts. I begin with a purported 1795 plan to raise a slave insurrection in Buenos Aires. Colonial authorities believed that local French residents and slaves influenced by events in Haiti were the authors of this revolutionary plan. Among those arrested or implicated in this conspiracy are men and women who played central roles in the plots, mutinies and popular movements that culminated in the first stage of the independence movement in 1810. I have completed archival research in Buenos Aires and La Plata, Argentina and in Seville, Spain. I am currently using the published sources for this period held by the John Carter Brown Library. I need support from NEH to consult documents housed in the Real Academia de Historia in Madrid and to write the manuscript.