The improbable lives of Ambrosio O’Higgins and his son, Bernardo, would change the history of South America forever. Two men, father and son, both strivers and achievers. Two men who did not take the traditional paths to power and high office. Two men, who through a series of improbable events, would both become, in their own ways, among the founders of the nation of Chile. The chain of events would begin, of all places, in County Sligo in Ireland.
Erick Redington starts this series on the O’Higgins family by looking at Ambrosio O’Higgins’ extraordinary life, and how he went from an emigrant to Chile to Viceroy.
Ambrosio O’Higgins.
The Ireland that Ambrose O’Higgins was born into was a sad one for the formerly great noble Irish families. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the O’Higgins family had lost its land due to confiscations by Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth government. This reduced the members of the family to poverty and working for others, mainly Protestant settlers who were given the Irish lands to break the power of the landed, Catholic, Irish aristocracy. Irish Catholics were subject to laws restricting religious, political, and property rights to encourage conversion and assimilation. Despite this, many of the O’Higgins clan refused to convert and assimilate.
From the time when Henry VIII declared the creation of the Church of England and began to enforce Protestantism on his kingdom, official persecution of Catholics caused many Irish to emigrate. Many of these Irish were looking primarily for the right to worship as Catholics. This caused many to look to, arguably, the most rigorously Catholic nation in Europe, Spain. The Spanish government was more than happy to take in Irish men and women seeking refuge from religious persecution.
To Spain
While religion was the primary motivation, there were others as well. Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries owned a large proportion of the Western Hemisphere. The modern northern border of California to the southern tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego was largely Spanish territory (Brazil and a few other territories excepted). This was the land of Cortes and Pizzaro, the Aztecs and the Inca. It was also the riches of the Potosí mine, so rich in silver that it caused hyper-inflation in Europe and the gold of Mexico. There were limitless economic possibilities in the Spanish Empire. A combination of the push factors of persecution and land confiscation in Ireland and the pull factors of Catholic freedom and economic opportunity led many Irish to choose emigration to Spain. A young Ambrose would be just one of thousands of these emigrants.
Probably born in 1720, though no one really knows for sure, young Ambrose O’Higgins was forced to work on the farms and estates of others to earn his living. Much of the early life of Ambrose is unknown. Although he would make much in later life about his lineage from the great O’Neill family and would even commission a genealogical survey, little can really be known for sure. What is known is that Ambrose begins appearing in the historical records in 1757 after leaving Spain for South America, when he was about 37 years old. Later, he would claim that he first arrived in Cádiz in 1751. Cádiz was a window to the world for young Ambrose. It was one of the home ports for the Spanish Navy, one of the largest in the world. It was also one of the primary ports for trade with the new world. Every year, hundreds of ships would arrive carrying the wealth of the New World. In Cádiz, Ambrose was able to find work, and his natural brilliance and energy would show to his employers. In 1756, Ambrose, now Ambrosio, left Spain for South America. This appears to be a business trip, an assignment for the bank in Cádiz he worked for. In a time of slow communications and the ease of a person disappearing, this was a position of trust the bank gave to Ambrosio. They must have recognized some drive and talent in him to send him off.
While on this first trip to South America, Ambrosio would see many of the great cities of South America: Buenos Aires, Asunción, and Lima. For a man with business acumen and a striving mentality, the possibilities young Ambrosio saw were endless. When he returned to Spain several years later, after his business trip was over, he petitioned the Spanish government to grant him permission to trade in the colonies. The Spain of the 1760s was rife with corruption and sloth due to administrative decay. Without patrons, Ambrosio would have a difficult time gaining official sanction. Another Irishman, John Garland, was a military engineer being transferred to the Captaincy-General of Chile, an administrative division of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. Garland, recognizing the talent and drive of his friend, offered him a position on his staff, which Ambrosio readily accepted. The problem for a young, relatively poor civil servant in Spain at the time was the cost of maintaining office. As corruption was almost expected, salaries were very low. To pay for his transit to America, and then over the Andes Mountains, Ambrosio would bring to South America goods from the mother country to sell to the colonials. This would be the start of Ambrosio’s fortune.
Chile
When he arrived in South America, Garland wanted to take the trip to Chile at a leisurely pace. Given the pace of travel in the 1760s, crossing the Andes in winter would be difficult at best and suicidal at worst. Ambrosio, however, had drive. Whether it was bravery or foolhardiness is up for debate, but regardless, Ambrosio crossed the Andes in winter with only a few porters for the baggage and arrived at his destination. For most people, a difficult journey would simply be another chapter in the story, an interesting anecdote and nothing else. For Ambrosio, it would set him on the path to all the heights he would achieve.
Ambrosio’s assignment took him to Chile, a mountainous strip of territory on the western coast of South America. Overland travel between La Plata and Chile was difficult at the best of times due to the difficult terrain. One of the primary reasons for the separate political administration of Chile was due to its isolation from the colonial authorities in Buenos Aires. Ambrosio’s idea was to develop a way to keep the passes open in winter to safeguard travelers and keep trade open all year around. It sounds like a small idea to modern ears, but for the people of Chile, it was a matter of life and death. Due to transport and logistical issues, Chile was the most remote and underdeveloped of Spain’s American colonies. If Ambrosio could succeed in opening the Andes, the vast natural resources of Chile could be transformed into vast amounts of wealth. For a man with a natural business acumen, the attractiveness of this prospect seems obvious. For the Spanish government, improving communications between La Plata and Chile would have the benefit of tying the area to the colonial administration in Buenos Aires. A further benefit would be military. The movement of troops would be much easier with open roads and waystations. The primary route of travel and communication was through the Straits of Magellan, one of the most notoriously bad seas to sail in the world.
Ambrosio was not only looking for business possibilities. He was, after all, part of a military organization. In Chile, the primary military threat to the colony was the Araucanians. For over 200 years by this point, the Spanish and the Araucanians had had repeated wars and raids. The Araucanians were never able to drive out the Spanish, and the Spanish never had the strength to destroy the natives. Ambrosio participated in many of the battles against the Araucanians. In battle after battle, Ambrosio would distinguish himself leading troops from the front. Ambrosio would steadily rise through the ranks and would be noted for development of innovative cavalry tactics fighting the natives. His fame would only grow when he received a head wound during a fight where the Araucanians were surprised by his innovative tactics and routed at Lautaro. Despite the near-constant fighting with the Araucanians, Ambrosio was not in favor of destroying the Araucanians. Although many in the Spanish colonial administration would press for a policy of extermination against the natives. As he rose through the ranks of administration, Ambrosio pressed for more trade with the Araucanians. He had a great deal of respect for their culture and was an avid devotee of their handwoven blankets and the ponchos that were so common to the area. Although he was a man of his time and believed in the “civilizing” mission of the Spanish, as colonial administrators went, Ambrosio was forward thinking in his relations with the local tribes. This is not to say that he was a pacifist. He would go on to order multiple reprisal expeditions against local tribes in response to raids. He had no qualms about extending Spanish imperial control further into tribal lands.
During one of Ambrosio’s many trips to southern Chile at this time, he would be a houseguest of a friend of his, Simon Riquelme, a landowner near the city of Los Angeles. In a story as old as time, the young teenage daughter of Riquelme, Isabel, was impressed by the powerful and dashing Ambrosio. Ambrosio, being a man of power and wealth, also had an eye for women. Despite being over 30 years his junior, Isabel would become pregnant from the liaison between the two, and in 1778, a boy named Bernardo Riquelme was born. According to Bernardo, later in life, Isabel only yielded to Ambrosio’s advances when he promised to seek permission from the royal court to marry her. Although Ambrosio would provide some financial support for this illegitimate son, especially when it came to education, Ambrosio would never deign to meet this young boy who would have the same brilliance and energy of his father. This will not be the last we hear of young Bernardo.
Moving up
Ambrosio moved further up the ladder when he was promoted to Governor of the province of Concepción. Concepción province was the location of the capital of Chile and was a prestigious post for a man who started as a poor immigrant. While Governor of Concepción, Ambrosio would have contact with the French explorer the Comte de la Perouse. Although Ambrosio would have an adversarial relationship with the explorer, the research he conducted led the British to plan an expedition to Chile to conquer the region. Although this expedition would be redirected to Montevideo, the scare would give Ambrosio the impetus to recommend improvements to the defense of his province. Ambrosio’s noted ability, as well as his sound recommendations would lead the king, Carlos III to ennoble him as the 1st Barón de Ballinar in 1787 appoint him as the Captain-General of Chile in 1788. In 30 years, an Irish refugee had risen to the highest office in the Spanish colonial administration of Chile.
Ambrosio wasted no time. He dusted off his old plan to create stations in the Andes to improve communications with Buenos Aires. After all these years, he had not forgotten. A postal service was created. Defenses were reinforced. Surveys were made to determine the mineral and agricultural wealth of Chile. He would make frequent inspections and tours to see for himself that there was always activity. New towns were founded. Imports were encouraged, despite the resistance of local manufacturers. The success that Ambrosio had in developing the region around the city of Osorno would lead to King Carlos IV making him Marquis de Osorno in 1796. There were military tasks that Ambrosio undertook where he could showcase his skills. He ordered the development of old fortifications and construction of new ones in Southern Chile. Military roads were constructed between Santiago, Valparaíso, and Concepción. Routes were opened in Araucanian and Mapuche territory. Perhaps the greatest reform Ambrosio undertook while Captain-General was to abolish the encomienda system. This system, which combined many of the worst aspects of manorialism and slavery, required the native populations of Chile to provide labor to landowners they were bound to. Under Ambrosio’s rule, Chile rose from being a colonial backwater to highly developed colonial jewel. It was at this time that the foundations of the economic and political growth of Chile in the years after independence were formed.
Viceroy of Peru
Due to the impressive accomplishments of Ambrosio in his governorship of Chile, in 1795 he was promoted to be the Viceroy of Peru. Lima, the seat of the viceroyalty, had been the home of Spanish administration in South America for over 250 years. Peru is where a large amount of the mineral wealth of the Americas was extracted for Spain. Only Mexico provided more to Spain than Peru. This wealth kept the corrupt and incompetent Spanish court afloat. Entrusting this responsibility to Ambrosio is a window into both the importance of the office and the opinion the court held of Ambrosio.
Unfortunately, Ambrosio would not have quite the success in Peru as he had in Chile. By 1795, the French Revolutionary Wars had started, and Spain would play an active part, first as an enemy of France, then its ally. Spain needed all the money it could get its hands on to fight the British, especially the Royal Navy. The money for internal improvements and building projects would not be there for Ambrosio, unless it were for fortifications. The great plan he developed, to link Lima and the old Incan capital, Cuzco, by road would never come to fruition. The Spain of the cartoonishly incompetent and corrupt pair of Carlos IV and his prime minister, Manuel Godoy, was not the enlightened despotism of the reformer Carlos III. What could have been the ultimate capstone to his career was a disappointing and frustrating denouement. In 1801, Ambrosio died.
The life of Ambrosio O’Higgins was extraordinary for its time. He rose from a family of Irish tenant farmers to a twice ennobled colonial administrator in the Spanish Empire. Emigrant to Viceroy. Through sheer drive, energy, and competence, Ambrosio O’Higgins wrote one of the most unique chapters in the history of South America. However, this story does not end with his death. Toward the end of his life, Ambrosio declared in his will that his illegitimate son, Bernardo Riquelme, to be his heir. It would be this penniless young man who would take his father’s legacy, and his last name, to become Bernardo O’Higgins, the father of an independent Chile.
What do you think of Ambrosio O’Higgins’ life? Let us know below.
Now, read part 2 about the early life of Ambrosio’s son, Bernardo O’Higgins, here.
References
Clissold, Stephen. Bernardo O’Higgins and the Independence of Chile. Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers, 1968.
Fanning, Tim. Paisanos: The Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America. Gill Books, 2016.
Kinsbruner, Jay. Bernardo O’Higgins. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1968.
