You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

This week episode 245, the San Juan Expedition. A few weeks ago in episode 240, I briefly touched on a military

campaign that took place what is today Nicaragua between the British and Spanish forces that were there along the San Juan River.

I want to dig a little deeper this week into what became known as the San Juan Expedition.

After Spain entered the war in 1779, many British military leaders saw it as a new opportunity to take more colonies.

Spain had been relatively unprepared to defend its massive land holdings in the Americas during the Seven Years War and consequently ended up having to seed territories to the British.

Spain had been reluctant to enter this war for the same reason, but with

Spain's entry British leaders once again looked for weak spots in the Spanish Empire to make

part of the British Empire.

At the time, New Spain stretched from the southern tip of South America up to what is today California.

The only large area not under Spanish control was

Portuguese Brazil. There were a handful of other European outposts including

French and Dutch Guiana, just north of Brazil, but otherwise Spain pretty much dominated what is today, the Western United States, and pretty much everything south of that.

Outside of its North American colonies in what is today the U.S. and Canada,

Britain's only other claim on the continent was a tiny outpost at British Honduras.

Britain looked at the opportunity to gain more territory,

or perhaps also use a few victories in the middle of new Spain

in order to encourage Spain to drop out of the war entirely.

Britain's first offensive to capture Spanish-controlled New Orleans failed after Spanish

commander there, Bernardo de Galvez, learned of the British plans and instead preempted the attack with an attack of his own on British outposts in West Florida.

And we went over that in episode 229. With the advance on New Orleans at a stalemate, British Secretary of State for American Affairs, Lord Germain, considered other weak spots in Spanish outposts.

The San Juan River in present-day Nicaragua was a crucial piece of territory in the center of Spain's American Empire.

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