Scouts, spies and vaqueanos: agents of political communication in southern Portuguese America (Rio Grande de São Pedro, eighteenth-nineteenth century)

Abstract

The management of the overseas empires of the Modern Era relied largely on the maintenance of communication channels among its various component parts. The article analyses political communication for the Portuguese case in America, with an emphasis on spies who worked in the River Plate basin between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It evaluates the types of informants and the logistics involved, identifying and analysing the first level of information operators, known as scouts, spies and vaqueanos. The approach adopted places local action in the broader context of Atlantic history, studying the roles of agents responsible for collecting and passing on information to military commanders and governors who set up a permanent communication network that was in charge of producing intelligence at an immediate and imperial level.