ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the various ways that imperial competition influenced the development of Spanish and Portuguese America in the long eighteenth century. The restoration of Portugal’s Independence, recognised in 1668, brought a long epoch of symbiotic and peaceful relations between Portuguese and Spanish America to an end. It initiated a new period of intense rivalry that would shape the strategies of both Iberian empires, for the question of boundaries required resolution, particularly in areas considered economically valuable. Luso-Spanish rivalry cannot be considered in isolation, however. Portugal’s alliance with an ascendant Britain had significant consequences for Luso-Spanish relations whereas Spain’s seemingly interminable conflict with Britain in the Old World and the New shaped its own approach to rivalry with Portugal in the Americas. Imperial competition and collaboration are analysed in the context of major geopolitical disputes of the eighteenth century, particularly the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and the French Revolutionary Wars, which contributed significantly to the crises of empire that ultimately unravelled the Iberian empires in the Americas.
