structural:scholar_edition
Portuguese Empire

After a long colonial dispute between Spain, and to avoid insurgency in this disputed territory, the Portuguese government organized an Army to defend the city of Montevideo against the revolutionaries (1811) and to annex the disputed territory of Banda Oriental against Spain (1816).

In 1811, the first Portuguese invasion took place in support of the besieged city of Montevideo. The Portuguese invasion forces were commanded by the governor and captain general of the Captaincy of Río Grande de San Pedro, Diego de Souza (Diogo de Souza), and their declared objective was to help Montevideo and the viceroy of the Río de la Plata, Francisco Javier de Elío, who was besieged by revolutionary forces from the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. The invasion included clashes with eastern forces led by José Gervasio Artigas. After an ephemeral agreement, the Portuguese did not completely abandon the occupied territory.

In 1816, the second Portuguese Invasion or War against Artigas, giving rise to the armed conflict that took place between 1816 and 1820 in the entire territory of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, in the Argentine Mesopotamia and southern Brazil, and which resulted in the annexation of the Banda Oriental to the Portuguese Empire, with the name of Cisplatina Province. This annexation broke relations with Spain, which prepared an army in Spain to recover Montevideo and invade the Río de la Plata, but this project ended up in rebellion of entire Army in 1820 in Cádiz. Portugal tries to ensure its annexation by being the first country to grant international recognition of the independence of Latin American Republics in 1821.