London – 4 July 1782: Lord Sydney inherited the office of Home Secretary from William Petty, Lord Shelburne, along with a mountain of unfinished business. Included were the bare bones of what became known as the Dalrymple Plan. See: Proximity not Tyranny of Distance
Whitehall – House of Commons: In March 1782 Lord North had resigned as Prime Minister. He was succeeded by Lord Rockingham who died in July 1782 when the position passed to Lord Shelburne. He held the office for a year, until July 1783.
The Dalrymple mission aimed to launch marauding hit and run raids on Spain’s colonial possessions firstly Monte Video, present-day Uruguay, then Buenos Aires, present-day Argentina, on the Atlantic Coast of South America.
Brazil: Lord Sydney tasked Lieutenant Arthur Phillip RN design a strategy that would achieve this end. Phillip had spent nigh on three (3) years in Brazil seconded to the Portuguese Navy.
Rio: Phillip was an exceptionally effective spy. Based in Rio, fluent in French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew and Portuguese, he had access to a myriad of anti-Spanish dissenters ripe for rebellion and reported directly to Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty.
1783: Britain, driven by the humiliation that followed on from her defeat in the War of American Independence and loss of her ‘Empire in the West, the thirteen (13) American ‘middle colonies’, was determined to penetrate Spain’s ‘treasure‘ colonies in South America.