Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HAILED BY BRITISH WARSHIPS

When George Canning, the brains of the British Empire, was celebrating its worldwide triumphs in [1823] , the French chargé d'affaires had to swallow the humiliation of this remark: "Be yours the glory of victory followed by disaster and ruin, be ours the inglorious traffic of industry and an ever growing prosperity. The age of chivalry is gone; and an age of economists and calculators has succeeded. " London was entering a long period of festivity; Napoleon had finally been beaten some years earlier, and the curtain was rising on the era of Pax Britannica. In Latin America, the power of landlords and rich port merchants had been secured in perpetuity by independence, at the cost of the new-born countries' imminent ruin. The former Spanish colonies and Brazil were markets hungry for English textiles and pounds sterling at so much percent. Canning did not err when he wrote in [1824] : "The deed is done, the nail is driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English. "1