“A Small Floating Republic”: The Privateer Bouchard and his ship La Argentina

• In Event: Gathering Piracy II

Abstract

After two campaigns for Napoleón and disillusioned with the French Revolution, Hipólito de Bouchard (1780-1837) went to the Rio de la Plata in 1809, where he grated Argentine citizenship after he joined the Granaderos a Caballos Regiment –led by José de San Martín– and defeated royalists in the Battle of San Lorenzo (1813). But Bouchard was a seaman –history shows us that his impulse in life was always to get back to the ocean– and in 1817 he obtained a privateer license (patente de corso) from the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata. Commanding a ship named La Argentina he harassed ships and Spanish possessions all around the world, spreading the ideals of the South American Revolution against Spain, from 1817 to 1819. In this paper I will focus on the ship –La Argentina– and on the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata privateer. The ship –the place where the corsair travels– is a small universe equipped with the best possible self-sufficiency. For this reason, the vessel was a “warehouse-fortress-vehicle”: the fastest transport of its time, the most dangerous war-machine ready to attack or defend, as well as a great storehouse where to accumulate profits. When the Argentina sat sail in 1817 not only was it a vessel that served to transport objects and people, in a broader sense, it was also “a small floating republic” governed by laws, hierarchies, and thoughts. In this sense, the ship is a type of container transporting the Independence movement, and could be conceived as a body with a specific identity that carries particular ideas. It is in itself a society and a culture.

Author

• Jimena N Rodríguez, UCLA