Origins of Inter-American Interest, 1700-1812 9781512814361

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ORIGINS OF INTER-AMERICAN I N T E R E S T 1700-1812

PREPARED AND PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION FROM T H E INCOME OF THE ALBERT J . BEVERIDGE M E M O R I A L FUND FOR THEIR ZEAL AND BENEFICENCE IN CREATING THIS FUND THE ASSOCIATION IS INDEBTED TO M A N Y CITIZENS OF INDIANA W H O DESIRED TO HONOR IN THIS W A Y T H E M E M O R Y OF A STATESMAN AND A HISTORIAN

T H E AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

ORIGINS OF INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST 1 7 0 0 - 1 8 1 2 By

HARRY BERNSTEIN BROOKLYN COLLEGE, NEW YORK

Philadelphia UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1945

Copyright 1945 AMERICAN

HISTORICAL

ASSOCIATION

All Rights Reserved, Including the Right to Reproduce This Book, or Portions Thereof, in any Form. Manufactured

in the

United

States

of

Second Printing, October 19-16

America

To MY MOTHER AND FATHER

PREFACE THE choice of New York, New England, and Pennsylvania for this study calls for some explanation. The beginnings of interest in Spanish America are found in the cultural centers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, which, with purpose and organized effort, went to great lengths to promote and secure their relations with South America. T o emphasize their Hispanic ties does not mean that they were the only parts of the United States to have had contacts with the Spanish-speaking world. T h e selection was based upon the interesting fact that the earliest appearance of inter-American relations took place in an area of English influence, even though Florida, Louisiana, and the Southwest had the advantage of Spanish settlement and culture. The Hispanic contacts of the latter regions have been discussed elsewhere, and have received their due. T o have enlarged this monograph to include all of the Atlantic seaboard—from Baltimore to Charleston—would not have greatly affected its conclusions, and would have given the study an unnecessarily large scope. New York, New England, and Pennsylvania records provide quite enough material to locate the first interAmerican interest, and to show its continuity. This source material has been sifted, and from it a pattern has been assembled. While a specific North American area was selected in which to analyze relations, this could not be the case with Latin America. Here also there was a problem of choice, with less than a handful of guides into the untapped sources of the subject. In the end it was decided to look on South America as a unit—as most of that generation did—rather than to dwell on a single nation. It would be idle to discuss the many parallels with matters of current interest which the study suggests. There is undoubtedly a valuable precedent, but hardly a ready-made example which needs only a modern application to be used again. What seems to be clear, in a general way, is that European culture was not always the inspiration and model for South American intellectuals. While Spanish America, at the time of her independence, was unable to adopt the democracy of the United States, there were real efforts to follow this country's liberal republicanism. There were no religious barriers to the interchange of views: the progress

INTER AMERICAN INTEREST

viii

of inter-American relations was on a secular plane. Both continents shared the dynamic optimism of the Enlightenment, emphasizing the great future of New World man, once he was freed from European colonialism, despotism, and religious authoritarianism. T h e period between 1700 and 1812 was chosen for this monograph because it has not been investigated, and because the latter year serves as a logical stopping point for a study of origins. T h a t was a year of war and South American revolution, out of which came a more sober evaluation of United States relations with Latin America, in an era dominated by the greater strength of the Holy Alliance. T h e decade before 1823 marked the first appearance of ordered, diplomatic attitudes on the part of this country toward the southern continent. U p to that time, inter-American relations were primarily challenged by Spain—not by European politics—and had greater freedom to develop spontaneously. T h i s study of origins therefore presents the material up to the point where other investigations begin. T h e author has no better opportunity to return his thanks to those who have assisted him. T h e study originated at Columbia University in seminars directed by the late Professor William R . Shepherd and Professor Emeritus Evarts B. Greene, taking its final form under the sponsorship of Professors J o h n A. Krout and Frank Tannenbaum. Professor Arthur P. Whitaker of the University of Pennsylvania gave time and assistance to the completion of the monograph. Professor Bailey W. Diifie of the College of the City of New York, and Professor Federico de Onis of Columbia University gave their help, and Dr. James F. Mathias, now in the United States Army, aided throughout. I want to state my appreciation to Professor Merle E. Curti of the University of Wisconsin for his advice, and to the Beveridge Memorial Fund Committee for authorizing publication. T h e last place is reserved for my wife, Florence, who has shared all the burdens of work, and the satisfaction of completion. Mexico

City

February

H. B. 1944

CONTENTS Page vii

PREFACE

Chapter I. II.

T H E CONTEST F O R T H E N E W WORLD PRE-REVOLUTIONARY

TRADE

1 15

III.

I N T E R - A M E R I C A N TRADE

33

IV.

T H E FORMATION OF CULTURAL INTEREST

52

I N T E R - A M E R I C A N P O L I T I C A L TIES

66

EPILOGUE

88

CONCLUSION

99

V. VI. VII.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

102

INDEX

119

IX

I

THE CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD THE Spanish discovery of America was followed by English, French, and Portuguese explorations, each of which led to conflicting claims to territory in the New World. Spurred on by the rapid successes of the conquistadors, Spain's rivals in Europe planned to divide the Indies, and to establish parallel empires. T h e i r ambitions were further stimulated by the trade in gold, silver, brazilwood, tobacco, sugar, and slaves, but the relatively early expansion of his settlements in America in the sixteenth century enabled the Spaniard to retain the initial advantage. Spanish American wealth quickly caught the eye of British, Dutch, and French corsairs. Privateers or gentlemen adventurers sailed into American colonial waters, or lay in wait in the Atlantic for merchantmen and galleons returning to Cadiz. If their depredations were at first limited, they were also persistent. Such methods, however, were not adequate, if either England or France were going to penetrate Spanish America. T h o u g h France preceded England in the colonization of the American mainland, early French attempts to occupy Spanish or Portuguese territory failed. Spain ousted the French from Florida at about the time that the Portuguese expelled them from Brazil. Nor were Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, advance agents of British settlement, any more successful. Nevertheless, English seamen and explorers continued to harry the Indies plantations and settlers. Until 1600, Spanish land and naval defenses prevented British and French settlement in the Caribbean islands. T h e gold and silver of New Spain and Upper Peru, and the flourishing fairs at Porto Bello, lay tantalizingly out of their reach. Growing geographical knowledge and public interest helped to turn English energies toward the "Western Planting." Richard Hakluyt reprinted the Spaniards' tales of marvelous discoveries, while British naval deeds aroused popular enthusiasm. Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish, entering Spanish American waters, revealed the secrets of new trade routes. By 1600, England's commercial outlook had shifted from Muscovy and the Levant to the Atlantic. British capital, as well as New World treasure won by British privateers, set in motion the forces of colonization. Joint-stock trading com1

2

INTER AMERICAN INTEREST

panics did as m u c h as the sea raiders to undermine Spain's monopoly in America. By 1630 English settlements were to be f o u n d in Bermuda, Virginia, and New England. T h e migration of Englishmen overseas gave Britain stronger continental bases f r o m which to force their rivalry with the Spaniards. New Englanders, for example, participated with British troops in the conquest of Jamaica from Spain in 1655, thus helping to obtain a British outpost of great importance in the Caribbean. T h i s was the first recorded American venture against the Spanish, b u t provincial New England shared frequently in British interests and activities in South a n d Central America. By 1641, men, women, and children had already left Boston to join settlers on Providence Island (Santa Catalina), off the Nicaraguan coast, and New England ships h a d begun to carry cotton, tobacco, and Negroes back to Boston from that strategic island, which lay on the route of the Spanish galleons. 1 Jamaica also lay close to this route to Spanish America. T h e r e , the English could watch the flow of Spanish, French, and Dutch shipping into the Gulf of Mexico and the neighboring logwood country of Campeche, Yucatan, and Honduras, as well as the commerce of their own colonies. 2 U n d e r English law, ships engaged in logwood trade h a d to touch at Jamaica, which was also a distribution point for Negro slaves to be sold to Spanish mainland plantations. As bases for Caribbean trade, Kingston and Port Royal rendered useful service in English expansion and intrigue. 8 Less t h a n a decade after Britain had captured this valuable outpost, the Dutch lost N o r t h America, a n d Brazilians expelled Dutch traders from factories and sugar estates in Pernambuco. T h e " H i g h Mightinesses" of the Dutch West India Company yielded New Holland in Brazil, and New Amsterdam in N o r t h America. T h e Dutch Republic retained only a few islands in the Spanish Main: Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and a continental colony at Surinam— 1 Irene A . W r i g h t has e d i t e d d o c u m e n t s d e a l i n g w i t h this p e r i o d o f A n g l o S p a n i s h rivalry: " S p a n i s h Policy toward V i r g i n i a , 1606-1612," American Historical Review, X X V (1920), 4 4 8 - 7 9 ; A . P. N e w t o n , Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans, p p . 7, 221, 260; " W i n t h r o p ' s J o u r n a l , " i n J. K. H o s m e r , ed., Original Narratives of Early American History, II, 3 3 - 3 4 . 2 W i l l i a m W o o d , the E n g l i s h mercantilist writer, a r g u e d that t h e N o r t h A m e r ican c o l o n i e s w e r e b o u n d t o s u p p l y J a m a i c a w i t h provisions. Considerations on the Dispute . . . between the British Southern and Northern Plantations in America. s B o s t o n News-Letter, A p r i l 24, 1704: "By a s l o o p arrived here f r o m J a m a i c a . . . that t h e r e was an I n d i a n c a m e f r o m t h e M a i n l a n d of N e w - s p a y n a n d [said] if his E x c e l l e n c y w o u l d s e n d Forces that t h e I n d i a n s w o u l d j o y n t h e m a n d destroy t h e S p a i n a r d s [iic'J w h a t they could. . . ." Also infra., p. 9, and C. M . A n d r e w s , The Colonial Period in American History, IV, 62.

CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD

3

all that remained of a western empire, once a rival of England's. 4 Britain's colonial position in America then became second only to Spain. Prior to the Stuart restoration, these competitors had fought and negotiated over the Indies. England consistently contended that early compacts had authorized direct trade between Spanish and English citizens. T h e treaty signed at Madrid in 1670, called "A Treaty for Composing of the Differences Restraining the Depredations and Establishing Peace in America between the Crowns of Great Britain and Spain," gave no recognition to British hopes for trade with Spanish America, although it did confirm the title to Jamaica. Anglo-Spanish negotiations over the Indies were inconclusive: the outcome was international war. After the W a r of the Spanish Succession in 1713, Britain emerged with the asiento or "Contract for Allowing to the Subjects of Great Britain the Liberty of Importing Negroes into the Spanish America." ° T h i s was a valuable gain. Before the war, Spain had permitted English merchants and factors in specified cities of Spain, but this was no more than had been granted to the Dutch at Münster in 1648. T h e Madrid pact of 1670 had disappointed overseas trade interests, although it promoted British-Iberian trade. What had been a check to England's Indies traders, however, helped France, whose merchants had an eye on Spain and the Indies. T h e War of the Spanish Succession was as much an Anglo-French economic struggle as it was a dynastic. French traders looked hopefully to the advantages of having a French king at the head of the Spanish Empire. T h e i r interest in Spanish America was no longer confined to uncertain Huguenot settlements in Florida and Brazil, or freebooting corsairs who plagued Caribbean towns. Instead, it had evolved steadily from a Hispanophobia into direct claims on * H e r m a n n Wätjen, Das Holländische Kolonialreich im Brasilien, passim. T h e peace between Spain and the Netherlands, signed at Münster in 1648, permitted Dutch consular agents in Spain. T h e Treaty of Münster clearly excluded them from the Indies. Frances G. Davenport, ed., European Treaties, I, Doc. No. 40, 353-66, Article VI: "Et q u a n t aux Indes Occidentales, les subjects et habitants des royaumes provinces et terres des desdits Seigneurs Roys et Estats . . . s'abstiendront de naviger et trafiquer en touts les havTes, lieus, et places garnies de forts, loges ou chasteaux et touttes autres possedées par l'une ou l'autre partie." »Jean O. MacLachlan, Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667-1750, pp. 21-29, 46-62. T h e r e is an interesting contemporary Letter from a West India Merchant which indicates some of the hopes entertained for extensive Indies trade privileges; its anonymous author feeling that "we ought to have some ports allow'd us in Chili and Peru . . . otherwise we are as much restrain'd as ever. . . . T h e 11th and 12th articles bear very hard upon us and are calculated to prohibit all other T r a d e but that of Negroes. T h i s I take to be a bar . . . to our South Sea. Company."

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

4

the Spanish throne—a process supported by St. Malo, Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux traders, and Rouen, Lyons, and Cambrai textile producers. Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne strengthened naval power in the Caribbean, while securing, promoting, and defending French trade.® Joint stock companies colonized Cayenne, in the jurisdiction of Brazil, and tried to settle the Straits of Magellan. 7 Colbert and the Crown further stimulated activity along Spanish American coasts. In 1668, Louis XIV instructed the governor of the French West Indies to encourage corsairs to trade with Spanish America, by bribery or any other means.8 French colonies in America were as important as the English and Spanish in safeguarding mercantilistic principles in the New World. 9 Canada and the French West Indies were valuable to France against both English and Spanish America. Her wars with Britain did not conceal French aggression toward Spanish holdings. The series of Anglo-French dynastic, territorial, and commercial wars culminating in the War of the Spanish Succession, were caused in part by French interest in Spain and Spanish America. By 1700, Louis XIV had formulated his plan to secure a springboard into the Indies by way of Spain, and had presented his dynastic claims to Madrid, thus plunging Europe into war over America. 10 6

T h e French under Admiral de Pointi were strong enough to take and plunder the Spanish fortress of Cartagena in the Indies, which the British twice attacked unsuccessfully. French naval forces effectively defeated the British off Santa Marta in the opening days of the War of the Spanish Succession. For Anglo-FrenchSpanish sea rivalry in the Caribbean, see Ruth Bourne, Queen Anne's Navy in the West Indies, esp. chap, v, " T h e French Protect the Spanish Treasure," pp. 141— 88.

î Antoine Biet, Voyage de la France Equinoctiale en l'Isle de Cayenne. T h e French West India Company absorbed this company in 1664. French chartered companies were unable to keep individual Rochelle, Bordeaux, and St. Malo traders out of the Indies. 8 Charles W. Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism, I, 405; Nellis M. Crouse, French Pioneers in the West Indies, 1624—1664; for French chartered companies and merchant adventurers in Guadeloupe, see pp. 38 ff.; Stewart L. Mims, Colbert's West India Policy; for individual merchants participating in Indies trade, see Mims, ibid., pp. 236 ff. s W. C. Ford, "French Royal Edicts on America," Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc., LX (1927), 250-304; L. C. Wroth and G. L. Annan, compilers. Acts of French Royal Administration concerning Canada; also Maggs Bros., Catalogue No. 8 (French Series): The French Colonisation of America. io E. B. Greene, Provincial America, p. 139. During the war, French ships had to convoy and protect Spanish galleons. France organized the defense of the Spanish colonies, and French merchants did not overlook this opportunity for trade. As Dahlgren says, "En s'armant pour la défense de la monarchie espagnole, Louis XIV ne perdait point de vue les profits que la France pouvait tirer de cette situation politique." Erich Wilhelm Dahlgren, Les Relations Commerciales et Maritimes entre la France et les Côtes de l'Océan Pacifique, I, 246.

CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD

5

France thus tried to offset the advantages won by England in Portugal and Portuguese America. The decade-long world war which opened the eighteenth century placed dynastic fortunes in the same category with commercial rivalries. Joining of arms was the test of successful colonial empire: France was now England's only real competitor in Latin America. 11 Spanish commercial law made Cadiz the sole port and international warehouse for English, Dutch, German, and Italian traders; French commercial and maritime ministers were quick to recognize the importance of trade carried on there. French merchants had maintained agents and factors at Cadiz and at Seville to receive French goods shipped to the Peninsula for trans-shipment to the Indies, but the French stake in Spanish America could be better protected if the Bourbons assumed the Spanish Crown. The results of French action were felt immediately. On January 11, 1701, the regency for Philip V, Bourbon ruler of Spain, instructed Spanish colonial governors to open Indies ports to French ships.12 France thus tried to balance her limited seventeenth-century colonization by requiring Spain to open South Sea towns in Chile and Peru to "men with advanced political and economic ideas." 13 Moreover, Spain granted the French Guinea Company an asiento for the sale of Negro slaves in America.14 In spite of protests by the Seville and Lima monopolies, these privileges remained in effect during and after the war. French linens and silks competed in South America with English, and even Andalusian products. An extensive South Sea trade grew up with Lima and Valparaiso, and thence with Canton in China. Many Frenchmen took up residence in Chile,15 while others at home profited from Indies commerce. One exporter, who had shipped 500,000 livres of Breton and Norman cloths on the Mexican flota, demanded a forthright governmental policy of protection from the government of Louis XIV, 18 for it was "of the greatest importance to support this commerce, not only because it disposes of our manufactures and brings in money, but it accustoms Spain and its Indies ii Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763, p. 64. i'Diego Barros Arana, Historia Jeneral de Chile, V, 454. Decrees against the French in Chile were again issued from 1711 to 1717, but were disregarded. Ibid., V, 507 n. " Ibid., V, 504, 505. i* Article XXII forbade the French to unload, introduce, or sell textiles or any other commodity except Negro slaves. Davenport, op. cit., Ill, 89. T h e penalty for evasion or violation of this provision was sentence of death. i'Amédée François Frézier, Relation du Voyage de la Mer du Sud. The New York Historical Society possesses the manuscript log of a French trader to Spanish America dated from March 25, 1713 to August 27, 1715. An appendix to the log gives current prices in Tenerife, Buenos Aires, Concepción, Valparaíso, and Lima. i« Dahlgren, op. cit., I, 79.

6

INTER-AMERICAN I N T E R E S T

to the use of our cloths. . . ." Tours and Lyons silks, velours, and serges were widely used in colonial Lima, Mexico City, and Bogotá, where competition was largely confined to Chinese silks imported by way of the Manila-Acapulco route. Thus, with a Bourbon in Spain, France was able to assist her Peninsular and Indies trade by placing consuls in Spanish ports.17 French policy in the Indies adds another chapter to the story of mercantilistic rivalry over colonial empire. While Britain maintained similar agents in Spain and was permitted to distribute British goods in the navio de permiso, or annual ship of 500 tons, the French South Sea Company concession in turn balanced English overseas trade interest. When France combined trade expansion with active colonization in North America and the West Indies, British anxieties rose, as a report of 1715 to the Board of Trade and Plantations in London indicates: She [France] hath extended her acquisitions from Quebec on the back of New England very far up the great Lake of Canada almost as high as the back of Carolina into the very heart of the great Continent of North America to the heads of some Rivers which 'tis said have a communication with the great River Mississippi which falles into the Gulf of Mexico at the Mouth whereof the French have made a great Settlement whereby they will . . . be enabled to command all ships coming from Jamaica Carthagena Porto-Bello the Bay of Campeachy and from all the Ports of South America. . . . 18

Britain organized her West Indies and North American colonies, which had been established before the French obtained their hold on Spain and their colony in Canada, as outposts against France, at the same time extracting commercial benefit from these settlements. Neither commercial advantage nor Bourbon diplomacy challenged, or at any rate, displaced English primacy. i? T h e Seville consulado in 1700 estimated the number of Frenchmen in Spain at 160,000 of whom 12,000 were in Seville, the center of Indies trade. They were naturalized Spanish citizens and could trade with America. Albert Girard, Le Commerce Français à Séville et Cadix au Temps des Habsbourgs. Fascicule 17, 538 ff., 563, 567, 574-75. T h e French consul in Seville at this time was M. Ambroise Daubenton de Villebois. His reports to his superior in the Ministry of Marine, Pontchartrain, include memorials on the regulations and policies of Indies trade, the organization of the Seville consulado, and the Casa de Contratación, submitted during the war years from 1702 to 1709. The merger of thrones moved Pontchartrain to advocate joint Franco-Spanish trade interests in a vast trading company to the Americas. Roland D. Hussey, The Caracas Company, 1728-1784, p. 39. is Great Britain, Calendar of State Papers (Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1675-1733), Vol. XXVIII (1714-1715), Doc. No. 271.

CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD

7

I n addition to checking French competition, British policy strove to extend and regulate trade with the North American colonies. Commerce was an important factor in Anglo-American colonial relations, and William Wood, the mercantilist writer, observed shortly after the War of the Spanish Succession that, "our Trade and Navigation are greatly increased by our Colonies . . . and they are a Spring of Wealth to the Nation since they work for us and their Treasure centers all here." 19 Since colonies were also useful in defending North America against the French and Spanish, the settlement and development of New York, New England, and Pennsylvania peculiarly fitted into this phase of British policy. British imperial purpose toward North America was written large in explorers' grants, company charters, proprietary and manorial concessions.20 Britain tightened her rule over North America during her wars with France and Spain, evolving new offices for colonial supervision, and new enforcement agencies which included naval and customs officers. T h e Surveyor-General of Customs headed the latter group. In 1696 the Crown instituted the Board of Trade and Plantations, creating it from the earlier committees of the Privy Council. It administered British mercantilist policy down to 1776, in spite of many changes in its personnel. 21 Vice Admiralty courts were given jurisdiction over North America in the same year, and assigned powers to check illegal trade. T h e new naval officials were paid out of royal revenues and colonial trade tolls: 22 an arrangement relieving royal agents from reliance upon fees granted by colonial assemblies. T h e act of 1696 indicated a trend toward centralization of the British colonial empire and the growing domination of the Crown. Yet, despite growing British restrictions on the one hand, and Spanish monopoly on the other, North Americans began to profit by IB William Wood, A Survey of Trade, Part II, 135. 2I > Lawrence A. Harper, English Navigation Laws, pp. 151-60, for administration of the laws in the Colonies; also, Andrews, op. cit., IV, 15. 21 Andrews, op. cit., IV, 291, 375. 22 Ibid., IV, 190-91. About 1700 the assemblies of New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania reduced the fees of naval officers to the point where it was said " 'tis worth no man's acceptance." After the reorganization of 1696 these officials were paid out of the royal establishment and given regular salaries. Ibid., IV, 212. T h e Surveyors-General of New York, New England, and Pennsylvania were William Dyer (to 1681), Patrick Mein, and Edward Randolph (to 1691), Robert Quary (to 1714), and William Keith. Caleb Heathcote was surveyor of the Northern District from 1715 to 1721. At home, the Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, under the Board of Trade and Plantations, kept his finger on the pulse of mercantilist policy. George N. Clark, Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696-1782, p. 12. T h e first to hold this office was the mercantilist economist, Charles Davenant.

8

INTER-AMERICAN

INTEREST

trade with the Caribbean, the Spanish Main, and the Iberian Peninsula. Over the long span of colonial history, British trade theory and practice failed to determine American commercial destiny. In this divergence of interest lies the history of the colonial relationship from this time on. Relatively inconspicuous and unobserved as this divergence often was and subtle in its manifestations, it was to widen as the years passed and to proceed at an accelerated pace down to the American Revolution. 2 3

Colonial America, whether English or Spanish in origin, took groping steps toward mutual trade, in spite of European controls and mercantilistic principles. Early commerce carried American ships to Central America, New Granada, Spain, and Portugal. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, North Americans entered the Peninsular ports of Cadiz and Lisbon, having already traded in Central America for logwood. For most of the period, however Peninsular trade was more profitable and attractive, since Caribbean restrictions were severe. T h e Colonists did not disdain illegal commerce with Spain in certain banned commodities (naval stores, pitch, tar, lumber, sugar, indigo, and tobacco) ,24 while profits from the slave traffic, wood trade, and privateering began to draw them to Caribbean ports. Nevertheless, New York, New England, and Pennsylvania faithfully followed contemporary mercantilist theories which required colonies to trade with the mother country. Just before the Revolution, imports of these provinces from Great Britain had a commercial value only slightly less than Jamaica's: 25 British Exports to W.I. and Jamaica 1746-7 1751-2 1756-7 1761-2 1766-7 Total

£

734,092 703,915 776,882 1,397,875 1,059,956 £4,672,720

British Exports to New York, New England and Pennsylvania £ 431,028 668,976 985,140 741,630 1,195,868 £4,022,642

Much of Britain's exports to Jamaica, however, was resold to Spanish America as contraband. The North Americans were less profitable than Jamaica in this respect. North American trade with Spanish America, before the Revolution, was never so large as Jamaica's, 23 Andrews, op. cit., IV, 376. 24 Manuscript material dealing with illegal trade and confiscation by royal officers in New York province is located in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in the City of New York. 25 Compiled from George L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765, p. 138.

CONTEST FOR T H E NEW

WORLD

9

whose geographical location was excellent for trade—legal or illegal. A contemporary French estimate valued the contraband trade out of Kingston and Port Royal at 1,500,000,000 livres tournois. 28 English officials must have overlooked or ignored Jamaican violations of the Acts of Navigation. 27 Royal instructions to colonial governors also indicate the prior place which Jamaica necessarily held in plans for trade with Spanish America. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain granted general permission to trade with Spanish America; orders were sent in 1704 to the governors of Jamaica, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. 28 These governors were to take care "as much as is possible that the French may receive no benefit by this indulgence." Yet, there seems to have been a special concession to Jamaica for, in 1705, Governor Cornbury of New York acknowledged the royal instruction of the previous year in the following language: You are pleased to inform me of H e r Majesty's royal intentions of opening a trade with Spain for the advantages of her subjects which seems to be more particularly beneficial to those in the West Indies and you do not doubt but I will give all the encouragement to it that I can. 2 9

British restrictions on North American commerce on the whole were far less severe than those which Spain imposed upon interG. M. Butel-Dumont, Histoire et Commerce des Antilles Angloises, p. 93. Andrews, op. cit., IV, 62. "But whereas the States General have represented unto us the advantages and conveniences of the trade with Spain in the West Indies . . . you are therefore to permit and suffer our subjects freely and openly to carry to any place or territory under the Dominion of Spain in America all such merchandizes and commodities as might have been carried thither before the War. . . . You are likewise to permit our Subjects to bring from the Spanish Dominions in America any merchandize or goods of those ports." L. W. Labaree, ed., Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 1670-1776, II, 723. 2 9 Cornbury to Board of Trade and Plantations in E. B. O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York, IV, 1168-69. Andrews points out that the Board of Trade distinguished between French and Spanish trade, meaning that "trade with the Spanish was to be connived at rather than forbidden, while that with France was to be strictly prevented." Andrews, Colonial Period, IV, 229. Professor Osgood clearly stated the implication of Jamaica preference in his explanation of a contemporary matter: "One of the first tasks which the war imposed on Dudley as governor in New England [during the War of the Spanish Succession] was that of raising a body of troops for service in Jamaica. So far as appears, Massachusetts was the only continental colony to which this requisition was directed and it is suggested that it was imposed as a sort of compensation in view of the fact that the northern colonies were not so serviceable to the Crown in trade and customs as were the islands." Herbert L. Osgood, The American Colonies, I, 401. See also Frank Cundall, The Governors of Jamaica, p. 33. 28

10

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

American trade—especially in the C a r i b b e a n waters of h e r empire. 3 0 Spanish policy tried to prevent foreigners f r o m t r a d i n g with the Indies. A weakened navy, a n d a persistent inter-American trade accelerated the elimination of Spain, in spite of her many commcrcial reforms. But neither English, French, n o r Spanish mercantilism was destined to be p e r m a n e n t in the New W o r l d . A f u n d a m e n t a l fact underlying the g o v e r n m e n t of the Spanish empire in America was that the entire realm overseas was a possession of the King of Castilla, w h o determined Indies government, policy, a n d laws. T h e Crown, whether H a b s b u r g or B o u r b o n , always protected its prerogative of sole sovereignty over the Indies. T h e administrative agencies for America, the Consejo de Indias and the Casa de Contratación, were a p p o i n t e d by a n d responsible to the King alone, a n d to no other institution or agency. Royal absolutism h a d crushed any constitutional or political ambitions a m o n g the trading classes. Spanish commercial rules a n d the laws of trade could only be changed f r o m above, a n d if the code of the Indies proved inadequate, then the ancient code of Castilla was invoked. Spanish crown councils were constantly concerned with the menace of contraband trade in America. A f t e r the m i d d l e of the sevent e e n t h century illegal E u r o p e a n goods glutted the Spanish American market. Wars and illicit competition lowered the tonnage a n d number of the a n n u a l fleets sailing f r o m Cadiz to the p o r t of Vera Cruz. s l Spanish economic policy had to u n d e r g o repeated reform in the eighteenth century in order to prevent royal a n d mercantile losses f r o m illegal trade. 32 Commercial law was administered by the House of T r a d e , which acted cooperatively with the Seville m e r c h a n t guild, the consulado. T w o other consulados, i n Mexico City a n d in Lima, shared the monopoly. T h e s e three privileged bodies influenced legislation a n d trade policy before the Royal r e f o r m of 1778 which set u p consulados in Havana, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, a n d Buenos Aires. T h e transfer of the House of T r a d e to Cadiz in 1717, u n d e r m i n e d the Seville monopoly, giving political influence in overseas commercial policy to the Cadiz merchants. T h i s was followed in 1722 by a n action which anticipated the difficult position of Spain later in 30 For foreign contraband s^e the contemporary John Campbell, A Compleat History of Spanish America, pp. 301-3. "i Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Comercio Exterior de México desde la Cor.quista hasta hoy, Appendix I. 32 Bernard Moses, South America on the Eve of Emancipation, pp. 321-22; Vera Lee Brown, "Contraband Trade: A Factor in the Decline of Spain's Empire in America," Hispanic American Historical Review, VIII (1928), 178-89.

CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD

11

that century. "Because of the present impossibility of carrying out the laws that prohibit it," a royal order permitted foreign consignment to, and delivery of, goods into Spanish territory.83 In short, continuous war after 1700 had weakened the Spanish navy for convoy or war purposes to the point where it was also ineffective as a coast guard against illegal trade, contraband, and privateering. Another attempt to balance the situation was the creation or the joint-stock company, the Caracas Company. This monopoly was especially empowered to arm a fleet to protect its cocoa ships, and also to counter-attack contrabandists in the Spanish Main.3* But most commercial reform came toward the middle of that century, altering the nature and extent of Indies and intra-colonial trade. The most significant change, enacted in the "free trade order of 1778," tried to eliminate foreign contact with Spanish America by encouraging exchange between the Latin American colonies. Thus, by permitting direct commerce with Iberian cities, other than Cadiz and Seville, and by promoting internal American trade, the Crown hoped to restore royal revenues and make illegal activity unprofitable. Contraband robbed Spain of much of the wealth which she had expected from Indies agricultural production and mining. Repeated regulations stressed the fears of the Council of the Indies, which initiated surveys to prevent "the slightest illegality." The Casa de Contratación exerted every effort to guard the Andalusian coast, and through the Crown, demanded thorough control of the Caribbean and Spanish Main to drive out illegal traders. The waters of midAmerica, however, lay too exposed to British, Dutch, French, and North Americans, whose range of commerce and privateering carried them from Campeche in New Spain to Trinidad, guardian of ihe southern entrance to the Caribbean. Piracy, the Jamaican slave traffic, privateering, commodity trade, logwood industry, and the South Sea Company—all flourished here. In 1761, Captain Dionisio Alcedo y Herrera, a famous soldier and civil servant of the Crown in Quito and Panama, completed his offisa Rafael Antúnez y Acevedo, Memorias Históricas, p. 273. From 1779 to 1810 several Spanish decrees permitted neutral countries, i.e., the United States, to supply and provision the Spanish American provinces. T h e principle of foreign supply was in the decree of 1722 which permitted neutrals to ship supplies because Spain could do nothing to prevent it. For the entire story of the function of the House of Trade in the workings of Spanish Indies trade see the authoritative Clarence H. Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies, pp. 14-15 and passim; this subject is treated in greater detail in Albert Girard, La Rivalité commerciale et maritime entre Séville et Cadix. " Hussey. op. cit., pp. 53-57.

12

INTER-AMERICAN

INTEREST

cial survey of the smuggling region.8® From it the King and the Council of the Indies learned that the contraband area included nearly 2,300 miles of Caribbean coastline. Most of the mainland rivers flowing into the Spanish Main were "frequented by colonial [English] merchants who . . . [did] an active business with the Provinces of Comayagua, Nicaragua and Guatemala." South of Cape Gracias á Diós lay the Bahía del Almirante, where the English stirred up the zambos (Negro-Indians) chieftains against Spain, while carrying on trade with them. (Spain employed the same tactics against the British by using Jeremiah Terry, an American of Virginia birth, as a counter-agent.) 36 Below Almirante Bay, traders hove to in the mouths of the Code and Chagres rivers. Alcedo described the Chagres mouth, northwest of Limón Bay, as a free port for all trading ships from all the foreign owned islands, and in the last war [1739-48] the English sent regular fleets here from Jamaica reinforced by companies of contrabandists and they settled there until they were ousted. 8 7 85 He was governor of Panama, victor over the English at Cartagena, father of the geographer-historian, Antonio de Alcedo, and the author of important reports to the Crown. This survey outlined in the text was included in his "Descripción de las Extensivas Situaciones y Distancias de las Costas de la América Meridional por la Vanda del Norte y del Modo de hacer en ellas el Contrabando los Tratantes de las Colonias de las Naciones Estrangeras. . . . " A copy exists in the Rich Collection of the N.Y. Public Library, Item 99 in the manuscript volume called: "Spain. Documents relating to Spanish Affairs in the Latter Part of the 17th and Beginning o£ the 18th century." so Colección de Libros y Documentos referentes a la Historia de América, Tomo VIII. In his introduction. Professor Manuel Serrano y Sanz pointed out that Spain employed agents to parry British intrigue. Among them was the American, Jeremiah Terry, who came to Spain in 1777 with a proposal to stir the Mosquito Indians against the British and Jamaicans. Terry, his wife and children, became pensioners of the Spanish Court. He had met Franklin in Paris in 1777, was hired and accredited by Spain in 1778 and sailed from Bilbao for the Caribbean. Expenses were paid by Gardoqui Brothers, well known in the United States, who also supported other Americans composing Terry's Central American colony. When captured and questioned by Jamaicans, he said he was born in Virginia and served in the provincial militia in 1756. He said he had first come to Spanish America in 1773, admitted having met Franklin in Paris, but denied the latter had introduced him to the Spanish Ambassador at any time. See also Vera Brown Holmes, "La Expedición del Adventurero Norteamericano Jeremiah Terry," in Segundo Congreso Internacional de Historia de América, IV, 531^10. Professor Holmes has used Guatemalan and Spanish records, as well as English, which clarify Terry's purpose. ax Foreign contraband and the South Sea Company factors after the Treaty of Utrecht drove Spanish American merchants out of the region. There was a decline in royal revenue at Maracay, Santa Marta, Porto Bello, Panama, Campeche and Havana. For additional material on Alcedo and the conditions he surveyed, see the work of his son, Antonio de Alcedo, Diccionario Geogrdfico-Histórico de

CONTEST FOR THE NEW WORLD

13

Alcedo's report was in keeping with the spirit of contemporary Spanish literature of economic reform." The only cure for contraband lay in revised fiscal policy. The Crown decreed reforms, but maintained its restrictions upon foreigners' rights to trade with the Indies.' 9 The "free trade" order of 1778 did affect the monopoly of the Seville-Lima-Mexico City guilds, but it took time for the reform to show results, and its realization was even slower because Spain, Spanish America, Europe, and North America were plunged into war and revolution. Spain, separated by war from her New World colonies, had to supplement intra-colonial trade by allowing interAmerican commerce with the young United States. North American merchants, aided by a neutral status, took advantage of their opportunity. Wars and blockades from 1735 to 1810 nullified these Spanish attempts at reform, although the results were not apparent until Napoleon laid his hand upon the Hispanic world, and Latin America entered upon her period of independence. Spanish American sentiment for revolt was fostered by the American Revolution, 40 the las Indias Occidentales. T h e younger Alcedo wrote on the commerce, population, and revolution of the United States. He also noted the commerce of "yorck" with Surinam and Campeche. «s Georges N. Desdevises du Dezert, "Les Institutions de l'Espagne au XVIIIe siècle," Revue Hispanique, LXX (1925), 1-556; "La Société Espagnole au XVIIIe siècle," ibid., LXIV, 225-656. Bernardo Ward, Gerónymo Uztáriz, Pedro Campomanes are typical Spanish economic and social reformers of this age. Bernardo Ward, author of Proyecto Económico, traveled throughout Europe on a royal mission. He analyzed the concept of liberty of trade and pointed out the advantages of freer trade within the Spanish empire—an idea which was adopted in the free trade policy after 1778: to eliminate contraband, rebuild the Royal Navy, and strengthen the Indies. He put his case clearly: "If Spain's enemies, envious of our having such a jewel [the Indies] could not take it away by force, they could hit on no better device than to continue a system that has produced these effects," ibid., pp. 229, 251, 278. Pedro de Campomanes, of whom there is more in chap, iv, infra., p. 55, associated the free trade policy with the growing enlightenment of Spain, then being fostered by gazettes, weeklies, and periodicals, academies and institutes promoting useful knowledge. Pedro [Conde de] Campomanes, Apéndice i la Educación Popular, I, intro. xxii. a» Laudelino Moreno, "Los Extranjeros y el Ejercicio del Comercio de Indias," in Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, XIV (1938), 441-54. 40 Following service in the American Revolution, two Frenchmen, the Prince de Broglie and the Comte de Ségur, traveled south through the Caribbean to Venezuela. They met many Spanish Americans in Caracas and Puerto Cabello, but at La Victoria, a small town of two to three thousand people, the Intendant spoke to them of the American Revolution in such a way as to imply that he would willingly contribute to a similar one in Spanish America. He was eager to learn the details of the fighting and repeatedly questioned the Frenchmen— who propagandized among the Spanish Army officers there—about the military

14

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

French Revolution, Great Britain's imperial needs, a n d the growing trade of the U n i t e d States with Spanish America. New York, New England, a n d Pennsylvania merchants, as will be seen later, made use of every chance to break through Indies isolation. Blockade leveled the p r o u d Spaniard's ancient mercantilist walls, compelling Spain to open her colonies to N o r t h American neutrals. Contraband, logwood trade, privateering, a n d slave traffic had first drawn ships i n t o Spanish Caribbean waters, while colonial merchants were still part of Britain's empire. At that time, AngloAmericans were attached to British causes as d u t i f u l colonists, finding profit in raiding the Spaniard in America, serving as expeditionary soldiers in the Main a n d Caribbean, and trading with the Iberian Peninsula. D u r i n g this period the English, Dutch, and French had broken Spanish trade exclusiveness by persistent contrab a n d activity and commercial wars. N o r t h America became the latest actor in the drama of penetration into Spanish America. In the final scene, New York, New England, and Pennsylvania merchants slowly but steadily trod a stage marked off by Spain, and controlled by England, France, and Holland. It took over a century to reach the climax of a process, which was accelerated after 1783, when the United States was free to follow its own commercial interests. A series of European wars h a d served N o r t h America well, since Spain extended the precedent of 1722—permission of neutral supply—to her New W o r l d lands. Neutrality allowed the U n i t e d States to provision Spain a n d Spanish America from 1778 to 1810, and to formulate a hemispheric basis for New World relations. Access to Spanish America was difficult, and N o r t h Americans merely imitated European practices at first, by trading legally with Spain, and illegally with Spanish America. Before 1776, Americans made greater use of the former method, and as much as they could of the second. In this way, a parallel commercial interest in Iberian and Spanish American markets came into existence. capacity of the rebels. They answered by attractively painting the picture of the defeat of the powerful Cornwallis by the patriots. Deux Français aux Étais Unis et dans la Nouvelle Espagne en 1782This region—the homeland of Bolivar and Miranda—adjoined the territory where, a year before, revolution had swept Spanish America from Cuzco to Bogotá, under Tupac Amaru and the New Granada Comuneros.

II

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE B E F O R E 1776, North Americans had entered the Spanish Caribbean and trade with Spain and Portugal had grown to respectable proportions. During the seventeenth century, merchants of Salem, Boston, and Newport had sent fish and lumber to the Iberian Peninsula, and carried Central American logwood to Europe. Spanish guardacostas found it as hard as did British surveyors and port officers to curb this latter trade, 1 and by 1700, New York trade, for example, was defiantly cosmopolitan. Ships sailed to Portuguese Madagascar and Angola for slaves, sold merchandise to the Dutch at Curaçao and Surinam, and ventured as far as the South American mainland. Jacobus van Cortlandt of New York City shipped Spanish American hides, "pieces of eight and Mexican ryalls," and logwood to Madeira and London. 2 Logwood traders to Central America challenged Spanish law. By the seventeenth century, New England's vessels had penetrated the region of Campeche and Laguna de Términos. T h a t Jamaica was the center of this trade did not disturb North American merchants; they 1 For the vain efforts of Caribbean coast guard patrols to control the long length of coast against illicit traders, see Pares, War and Trade, pp. 14-28. 2 Jacobus van Cortlandt, "Shipping Book, August 12, 1699 to J u n e 30, 1702," MS, N.Y. Hist. Soc. T h e Boston News-Letter for December 10, 1704 reprinted a chart of Spanish American and Portuguese money values, then standard in the American colonies:

Weight

Sevill pc of 8 old pit. Sevill new " Mexico " " " " Pillar " " " Peru Crusades of Portugal

Value

pny wt.

gr-

sh.

17 14 17 17 17 11

12

4 3 4 4 4 2

12 12 12 4

Rale pen. 6 7 6 i 63 5 10

sh. 6 4 6 G 5 3

Set pen. 9' 2 10' 9'

Curtis P. Nettels, The Money Supply of the American Colonies before 1720Andrews holds that British failure to provide North America with a coinage system was due to the desire to obtain metals from Spanish America. Andrews, Colonial Period, IV, 351-53. 15

16

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

defied both British and Spanish restrictions. As early as 1662,3 "the English from the North Continent of America began to cut the logwood trees on the Coast of Yucatan and the Bay of Campeachy where they made a Settlement." Jamaicans, who occupied the best situation for observing North American interlopers, decried the regular traffic of New England ships to the logwood country. Governor Lynch reported to the Councillors of Trade (of the Privy Council) in London, that 600 tons of logwood were taken that year (1662) to Boston. Another Jamaican in 1675 sighted seventeen New England ships bound for Campeche within a seventy-five day period. 4 International conflict, especially over the Spanish Succession, adversely affected the wood trade. All colonial commerce declined during that war. Although the South Sea Company and British merchants generally derived some benefit,5 New England's Iberian commerce through the Port of Boston, was cut heavily." War times were additionally trying, since the Caribbean carrying trade fell to Jamaicans, who cruised from Cumanâ to Honduras and around Yucatan. Traders could take advantage of the lack of Spanish shipping and the weakness of the galleon system. Between 1711 and 1731, five ships left Spain for Venezuela, while from 1706 to 1722, not one vessel sailed from Caracas to Spain.7 The war shifted North American trade and shipping into privateering. Quick profit from prizes refilled counting-house coffers and rewarded aggression.8 Caribbean captures eased the strain of British s David Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, II, 504. • Sir John Alder Burdon, ed.. The Archives of British Honduras, I, 54, 56. Between 1660 and 1714 logwood was removed from the list of enumerated commodities. In 1717 the King's Attorney held logwood shipments to New England to be exempt from confiscation because of their foreign origin. G. L. Beer, The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754, I. 70, 74; II, 77-78. s Calendar of State Papers, XXII (1704-5), 49-50, Her Majesty to the Governors of New York and New England, February 18, 1704; Beer, British Colonial Policy, p. 73. George Scelle, La Traite Négrière aux Indes de Castille, II, 573, states that the English made a fruitless attempt in 1713, and again in 1739, to open Spanish waters to New England vessels with free navigation rights. « Quary to Board of Trade, Cal. State Papers, XXII (1704-5), 638-39. In 1708, Surveyor Quary wrote that the war destroyed one third of Boston's fish and lumber trade, formerly carried to "Lisbon, severall ports of Spain and the Streights, and this gave them an opportunity of an illegal trade bringing in the produce of those Countrys contrary to Law." Proceedings, Mass. Hist. Soc., Series II, Vol. IV, 149-55; also O'Callaghan, Docs. Rel. Col. Hist. N.Y., V, 30. 7 William Robertson, History of America, II, 511. For Jamaican trade to the mainland at this time see Curtis Nettels, "England and the Spanish American Trade, 1680-1715," Journal of Modern History, III (1931), 1-32. » Rhode Island privateers were especially active along the Main, the Gulf, and the Caribbean from 1739 to 1748.

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE

17

and Spanish mercantilist laws. In fact, England encouraged privateering as an aid to her offensive arm against Spanish America, 9 and suspended the Navigation Laws for privateersmen. In 1706, during the war, the Judge of the Admiralty Court in Boston held Spanish prizes to be legal and exempt from Navigation Law. 10 Somewhat later, colonial authorities even imposed duties on prizes as imports. Fortunes were built in Newport, Rhode Island, by privateer-traders who raided the Main, sailed up inlets and bays, and lay eagerly in wait to attack Spanish Indies shipping everywhere—Honduras, Havana, Caracas, Puerto Rico, Maracaibo, in the Rio de la Hacha, and R i o Magdalena. 11 T h e end of war revived peaceful methods of trade with Spanish America, Spain, and Portugal. Privateering was again forbidden as piracy, and commerce returned to its previous status. New York, New England, and Pennsylvania ships renewed their former journeys, developing legitimate trade with the Peninsula but also seeking to enter Caribbean ports. Between 1714 and 1718, Salem, New York, and Boston vessels to the number of 2,124 carried goods from Madeira, the Azores, and Africa to Yucatan, the Bay of Campeche, "foreign plantations," and "ports unknown" in the West Indies. 12 Massachusetts increased its logwood imports from Central America, and traded with Curacao and Surinam in South America. From 1713 to 1717, fifty-six boats carried logwood back to Boston, and as many had returned from Surinam. 13 In one month of 1714, twenty ships weighed anchor from Boston port for Campeche, and thirteen » Beer, British Colonial Policy, pp. 32-33. It was hard to curb privateersmen. Americans ranged waters off Brazil in spite of the close relations between England and Portugal, just reaffirmed in the Methuen Treaty of 1703. They sought newly discovered Brazilian treasure. Governor Dudley to Board of Trade and Plantations, July 13, 1704, Baxter MSS (Maine Hist. Col., Series II, Vol. IX, 193). T h e trial of the captured privateers was described in the Boston News-Letter for that year. 10 Leo F. Stock, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliament respecting North America, III, 277. 11 Dorothy S. Towle, ed., Records of the Vice Admiralty Court of Rhode Island, 1716-1752• Prizes were sold in Boston, Newport, and New York even when they were "not so rich in plate as was expected but very rich in other valuable goods, as cochineal." John Campbell to Governor Fitz John Winthrop of Connecticut, dated Boston, April 12, 1703, Proceedings, Mass. Hist. Soc., IX, 485. Campbell was Colonial postmaster and publisher of the Boston News-Letter. 12 Frank Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700-1763, Appendix VII. These figures appear to be minimum estimates since there is no account of Salem and New York trade to Campeche and Honduras. is "Abstract of English Shipping Records relating to Massachusetts Ports," (5 vols., compiled for the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 1931-37), "Collectors' Accounts of Ships and Goods Imported at Boston from Christmas 1713 to Midsummer 1717," Part I, "Entrances and Clearances."

18

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

for Surinam. 1 4 Boston merchants gradually won leadership in the wood trade, while actual cutting of the logs was almost completely in New England hands. On January 10, 1715, a report to the Board of T r a d e described Massachusetts as a near-monopolist in the logwood industry. New England citizens, fifteen hundred in number, had already migrated to Honduras, Campeche, and Yucatan. 1 5 T o a certain extent, North American contraband trade with Spanish America was associated with the larger Jamaican interest; that is, direct commerce with the Spanish Indies stirred up home opposition on the part of some English merchant groups which held a stake in legitimate exchange with Old Spain. These differences were part of the English background of the Anglo-Spanish wars, in which Peninsular merchants were overruled. T h e i r Indies trade by way of Spain competed with the illicit overseas commerce, which won the support of the Parliamentary opposition. Protection of the West Indies interest of Jamaica, Bermuda, and New England was dramatically joined to the defense of national honor. 1 6 T h e r e was always some Spanish resistance to any intrusion in the Caribbean, 1 7 but it failed, and a little later, New Yorkers followed the Yankees. In 1757, of twelve ships at the Mosquito Shore, nine were continually ferrying logwood cargo between Cabo Catoche, Honduras, Yucatan, and New York City. 18 Cadwallader Colden reported to London earlier, that "the great bulk of our commoditys . . . is the reason we can not trade directly to the Spanish Coast . . . but we sometimes send vessels into the Bays of Campeachy and Honduras to purchase logwood, and we have it frequently imported from there by Strangers." 1 8 New England surpassed New York in the logwood trade, whose volume grew large enough to set prices in the European market. 2 0 A contemporary French writer pointed out that « "A List of Ships and Vessels cleared Outwards at the Port of Boston New England from Midsummer 1714 to the 23rd of September following," in ibid., Part I. 15 Journal of the Board of Trade and Plantations, II (1708/1709-1714/1715), 588. MacLachlan, Trade and Peace, pp. 120-21. i r In 1722 it was reported from New York that eight Boston vessels were burned by the Spanish in the Bay of Honduras. New England Courant, March 25, 1722. On the other hand the same paper, owned by James Franklin, reported in 1721 that two ships returned to Boston from Lequerry [La Guaira] in New Spain [Venezuela], is Burdon, ed., op. cit., I, 85. 1» Cadwallader Colden, "Account of the T r a d e of New York" in O'Callaghan, op. cit., V, 686. T h e incomplete shipping lists in William Bradford's New York Gazette for 1738 show that ten ships arrived there from Spanish St. Augustine in Florida, nine from Honduras, while twenty-one Boston boats came back to Boston from Yucatan and Honduras. This was on the eve of the English war against Spain. 20 Macpherson, op. cit., Ill, 429.

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE

19

once Campeche wood sold at thirty to forty pounds sterling the ton. Then it was bought from the Spanish. Today it sells in England at eight pounds sterling. The reduction is due to the New Englanders who tried to be the first to cut the wood in the Campeche forests.21 New York traders turned away from wood-cutting and trade to another item of eighteenth century commerce: Negro slaves yielded more profits than lumber. 22 Middle America and the Caribbean needed numbers of Negroes for Spanish American sugar and tobacco plantations. Slavers coursed far and wide searching for human cargo, and a list of slaves brought into New York from 1715 to 1765, shows traffic ranging from Portuguese Africa to Spanish America. 28 Slaves came into New York City in 1715 from Campeche and the Spanish Main, and among merchants of Manhattan, the firm of Rodrigo Pacheco, William Walton, and Nathaniel Simpson did a thriving business.2* In 1725, they sold Honduran Negroes in New York, and in 1729, William Walton imported slaves from Cartagena in the Indies. 25 Supplying of slaves preceded, and led to other trade. Like the South Sea Company, Americans offered goods as well as Negroes. T h e sale of provisions, staples, horses, and rum to the West Indies 21 Butel-Dumont, Antilles Angloises, p. 110. Italics are in original. T h e same French author wrote an Histoire et Commerce des Colonies Angloises, which deals with New England's Caribbean trade before the American Revolution. 22 New York Dutch merchants first reached Spanish America by way of Curaçao, a sister colony under the West India Company. A description of New Amsterdam's trade was given by one Joseph d'Acosta, a Spaniard "resident there" in O'CalIaghan, op. cit., I, 1-4, 23-47, Appendix 41. 23 Archibald Kennedy, Customs Collector for the Port of New York, attested that from 1701 to 1726 more than two thousand Negroes were imported from Angola and Madagascar. Christopher Morgan, ed.. Documentary History of the State of New York, I, 482. 24 In 1727, Rodrigo Pacheco, Solomon de Medina, Moses de Medina, and Abraham de Medina, "subjects of the King of Great Britain," were tried in New York Admiralty Court and found guilty of importing Spanish tobacco and snuff. Charles M. Hough, ed., Reports of Cases in the Vice Admiralty Court of the Province of New York, pp. 9-10. Rodrigo Pacheco was named by the New York Provincial Legislature in 1731 to oppose the Sugar Act before Parliament. 25 Elizabeth Donnan, ed.. Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America, III, 462 ff. T h e Royal African and South Sea companies shared British slave traffic monopolies to the Indies at this time, and opposed colonial violations of their privileges. See Elizabeth Donnan, "Early Days of the South Sea Company, 1711-1718," Journal of Economic and Business History, II (1930), 419-50; Vera Lee Brown, " T h e South Sea Company and Contraband Trade," American Historical Review, XXXI (1926), 662-78. T h e Government had at first forbidden ships to sail to the African coasts without a license from the Royal African Company. In 1698, North American ships which paid an ad valorem tax of ten per cent into the Company's treasury were licensed to trade in Africa.

20

INTER-AMERICAN

INTEREST

is well known, but on at least one occasion it paved the way for Spanish American trade. In this instance, Caribbean officials welcomed and authorized exchange, although the British frowned on it: William Walton of New York left slave trading to others, exporting provisions and foodstuffs to Florida, Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico. Walton's contacts were not illegal in Spanish eyes; his ships and factors had little trouble. T o the chagrin of British provincial authorities, the Waltons supplied Spanish towns even when Britain was at war with Spain. In June, 1738, Acting Governor George Clarke of New York notified the Duke of Newcastle of the arrival of ships from Spanish Florida whose cargo was destined to William Walton of this Town, who as I am informed has supplied that Place with Provisions many years by Contract . . . Walton being the only person in this Place whom the Spanish permit to trade at St. Augustine, where he has a factor who has resided there many years. 28

Twenty years after, in 1762, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, angry because a declaration of war did not restrain Walton, protested to Acting Governor Colden of New York. Such aid [to the Spanish] had to be stopped, even if Walton should suffer a particular loss, declared Amherst. 27 But Spanish or British pressure never succeeded in revoking this New Yorker's unwritten asiento. Certainly, some years later, in times of peace, the Waltons sent at least one hundred and twenty ships from New York City to ports in Spain and Spanish America from 1773 to 1775. T h e i r vessels anchored at New Orleans, St. Augustine, Havana and in "the Spanish Main." 28 Other New York, New England, and Pennsylvania merchants also began to supply the Spanish colonies, especially those at Montecristi in Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico. Considerable commerce in fish, flour, and staples grew up with Spaniards on the island of Santo Domingo. T h e peace that followed 1763 helped to stimulate exports. Philadelphia merchants successfully delivered flour to Puerto Rico in 1768, 29 but the Montecristi trade was of considerable annoyance ® O'Callaghan, op. cit., VI, 128. Cadwallader Colden, Papers (N.Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., VI, 133). 2» William Walton, "Book of Insurances," MS (N.Y. State Chamber of Commerce Library, New York City). T h e business was left to Walton's sons who "continued the business established and enjoyed the preferences which had been granted by the Spanish in Cuba and South America." John A. Stevens, ed., Colonial Records of the New York Chamber of Commerce, p. 60. 2 8 Vicente Zaboleta, a factor for an importer, received 1,438 barrels of flour from Philadelphia in the sloops Pretty Susan and Hibernia. Governor of Puerto Rico to King, April 1768, in Boletín Histórico de Puerto Rico, X I (1924) 87. 2

27

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY

TRADE

21

to Jamaican officials, and the Governor complained to London against Americans who were seen at Montecristi: His Excellency singled out Rhode Island ships for condemnation. 80 Commodity commerce did not displace the Negro traffic. Rhode Islanders turned from privateering to a peacetime sale of slaves, and were as busy after 1763 as before. T h e emphasis in Salem, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York on commodity exchange left the slave trade in the hands of Newport and Providence. In 1772, Captain Brown, employed by the Vernons of Newport, left that town, protected by a letter from the Governor of Rhode Island to the Governor of Spanish Santo Domingo. Shortly before, on March 1, 1770, the Vernons ordered one of their captains to sell a cargo in Puerto Rico, where "the purchaser gives security that ye vessil shall be free from Seizure." S1 Laws and arrests, whether British or Spanish, did not help to keep out the "intruders." T h e Spanish Main and the Caribbean continued to enrich Anglo-American merchants and skippers. 32 Trade with Montecristi aroused particular concern, causing legal and political debate in colonial circles. J o h n Watts, a well-known, conservative merchant of pre-Revolutionary New York City, described the odd kind of Mungrell Commerce called the Mount trade, a Spanish port. . . . The Lawyers say it is legal contrary to no Statute. T h e Men of Warr say it is illegal, both take to condemn them at their own Shops while they are acquitted at others. 33 3 0 "Report of a Commission of Inquiry Relative to the State of the Island of Jamaica," Jamaica: House of Assembly, Journals, I, Appendix, 49-53. 3 1 Misc. MSS, on Slavery, Box No. 1, Folder D, 14; Box No. 2, letter 35, N.Y. Hist. Soc. 3 2 Over one hundred ships from Boston, Salem, and Newport were reported in Montecristi at one time. Acts of the Privy Council of England (Colonial Series), VI, 330. 3> Letter Book of John Watts, Merchant and Councillor of New York (N.Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. Vol. LXI, 84, 89, 92-93, 100). His letters repeatedly refer to the dilemma of New Yorkers. New York shipping to the Caribbean and Central America shortly after the war, reflected the decline in the Havana trade, but the persistence of the logwood interest:

1763 Havana Honduras Mosquitos

1764

Entered

Cleared

Entered

Cleared

1067 170

600 15

90 970 150

280 346 170

These figures are official. Virginia D. Harrington, The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution, Appendix E, 357.

22

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

New Yorkers involved in the " M o u n t " trade were B. Kip, W . Cunn i n g h a m , J a m e s W e n d e l l , a n d N . G o u v e m e u r . 3 4 J o h n van C o r t l a n d t recorded shipments to H a v a n a , Spanish H o n d u r a s , a n d Montecristi in 1762, b u t "Spanish W a r r b e i n g declared" he o r d e r e d his captains back to New York. 3 5 T h i s phase of inter-American trade occasionally tested loyalties to Great Britain; the feelings of J o h n Watts, for example, w h o later became a T o r y , were divided. T h e Anglo-Spanish war after 1760 aggravated mercantile problems. Just as colonials h a d once called the W a r of the Spanish Succession " m o r e particularly beneficial to those in the West Indies," so in 1762-63, they opposed the King's C u b a n policy. W r i t i n g t h a t "we are very anxious a b o u t the H a v a n n a , " Watts and H e n r y Cruger resented their loss of three thousand p o u n d s on Cuban- cargo, d u e to royal regulations. British rule in C u b a in 1763 b r o u g h t financial loss to New Yorkers, already aggrieved by seeing " t h e remains of o u r Provincials w h o are r e t u r n i n g f r o m the H a v a n n a . " 30 American interest in C u b a n trade was visible in the brief year between 1762 a n d 1763 when England held H a v a n a . From J a n u a r y to J u n e (when Spanish control was restored) the New York Gazette listed thirty ships in the H a v a n a trade, as compared with n i n e to H o n d u r a s d u r i n g the same period. 3 7 N o r t h Americans must have expected a growth of trade, for news of H a v a n a ' s fall was enthusiastically received, even in c h u r c h pulpits. Sermons, poems, fliers, a n d broadsides a p p e a r e d in Boston, Philadelphia, a n d New York, where this expansionist interest was expressed in the language of religious thanksgiving. T h e General C o u r t of Massachusetts greeted the surrender as "joyful news," dedicating a public holiday to its celebration. 3 8 34 E. B. O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of Secretary of State [Albany], Part II, "English Manuscripts," p. 718, A. Bradley to Governor Colden, D e c e m b e r 10, 1760, supplying a list of ships and commanders in the illegal Montecristi trade. 35 J o h n van Cortlandt, "Journal, 1757-1764," Vol. VI of van Cortlandt "Account Books," MSS, N.Y. Public Library. a« Watts, op. cit., p. 79. J o h n L a m b , organizer of the Sons of Liberty, traded to Havana. L a m b to Moses I'ranks, February 14, 1764: "We could not conceive you w o u l d have left the H a v a n n a h w i t h o u t selling them as we arc informed the Spanish Governor [MS torn] all persons w h o have contracted debts before [torn] the place was given up to pay t h e m imme[torn]." John L a m b MSS N e w York Historical Society. H e had at this time a shipment of 600 Spanish dollars cn route from Havana to Liverpool. N e w York Gazette, January 3, 1763 to November 28, 1763. 38 T h e writer is obliged to the Cuban scholar and bibliographer, Carlos M. Trelles, for this i n f o r m a t i o n o n American literary enthusiasm over the fall of Havana.

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY T R A D E

23

Colonial disappointment at British policy in Havana did not adversely affect trade with the Caribbean from 1764 to 1774. One reason was that all British officials in America did not always enforce the laws. Cadwallader Colden, then acting governor of New York Province, was one of those who expressed a prior sympathy for interAmerican commercial needs. Colden emphasized that the Council of the City of New York simply demurred at prosecuting local merchants for violation of English laws. New Yorkers, for example, were of an opinion—which was an early hint of New World trade aims— that Spanish American trade was legitimate. Colden stressed the appealing argument that Americans were selling British goods in South America, thus combining English and Anglo-American benefits. He informed the English Prime Minister, "[that] the Principal Trade from these Colonies is to this Port [Montecristi] and other Spanish Ports of Hispaniola from whence it is said the Spaniards on Cuba are likewise furnished." 89 How could British mercantilism be enforced if Americans had access to Spanish American markets? Colden's solution outlined the first program for hemispheric trade. By widening the scope of British policy, he took it for granted that inter-American trade was as legal for English America as it was for Old England. Furthermore, Caribbean commerce was a necessity for the northern colonies. He therefore recommended to the British Government that England seek a new treaty with Spain which would legally admit Anglo-Americans into Central and South America: It seems evident to me that could a mutual intercourse in Trade be obtain'd between the British & Spanish Colonies it must be highly advantageous to Great Britain. Or could a Treaty be made with the King of Spain by which the Inhabitants of the Spanish colonies were permitted to purchase provisions in the northern colonies, & the inhabitants of the British Colonies to sell Provisions in the Spanish Colonies it would greatly advance the Trade and Riches of Great Britain & cannot in any case be detrimental to it. 40 3» Colden to Pitt, October 27, 1760 and December 27, 1760, in "Colden Letters," (Bancroft Transcripts) MSS (N.Y. Public Library). On the other hand, the South Sea Company distributed North American flour to its factors in Spanish America. Pares, op. cit., p. 406. *o Robert AValpole had earlier drawn up a memorandum which recognized the importance of trade with the Spanish Caribbean: "It is well known that there is no money in any Place of the West Indies . . . but what originally comes from the Spanish mines there, and although the subjects of all these nations are expressly forbid to trade with one another yet it is well known that the French and Spanish Governors will often suffer the Northern colonies of Great Britain to bring them lumber and provisions . . . and these colonies must often receive Spanish Dollars and other Effects of the Growth of Spain." Rufus King MSS, Vol. LVI (N.Y. Hist. Soc.).

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

24

Colden could not go so far as to anticipate the trade that would come only after a free United States supplied the Indies, but he did make it clear that strong methods of law enforcement did not help either British policy or Jamaica preference, because, it is difficult to prosecute with success against the Bent of the People, while they are under the Prejudice to think that the Sugar Islands have gained a Preference inconsistent with the True Interest of their Mother Country.41 It is a far cry from Colden's proposal to the actual legislation passed by Parliament from 1763 to 1774.42 His project was more in line with that sought by the post-revolutionary missions of Arthur Lee, John Jay, and Thomas Pinckney who tried for years to win a commercial treaty from Spain. An important figure in New World government and culture, Cadwallader Colden infoimed his overseas superiors of the significance of inter-American trade on the eve of the Revolution. He did not express any concern with trade to Old Spain since that was well regulated and supervised. Spain, like England, tried unceasingly to destroy any direct New World commerce, striving always to clear trade through her Peninsular ports. From there, authorized Spanish [or foreign] traders and factors might trans-ship to Spanish America. In this way Spanish merchants drew one profit on Peninsular imports, and another on exports, and set their considerable influence against any direct Indies trade. T h e only legal avenue to the Indies led first to Spain and Portugal—a route which North American vessels followed frequently. Iberian exchanges had great value to New York, New England, and Pennsylvania merchants, and their Peninsular relations explain the long-lived support which Salem, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia political leaders gave to the Spanish treaty. T h e original instructions to Arthur Lee and John Jay were an expression of a commercial interest whose wealth already exceeded the profits of inter-American trade, even in Colden's day. Iberian trade helped to revive New England's production and 41

Colden to Pitt, December 1760 (Bancroft Transcripts). •>2 "Any real understanding of the old colonial system of which the Navigation Acts formed an important part must take into consideration not only that the system was slow to work, but that ultimately it did work." Harper, English Navigation Laws, p. 227: for the legislation passed, see Dora M. Clark, "The American Board of Customs, 1767-1783," American Historical Review, XLV (1940), 777-806. William Huskisson, sponsor of the repeal of the Navigation Acts, attributed to these much of the responsibility for the American Revolution: "If the whole history . . . between 1763 and 1773 be attentively examined it will be abundantly evident that the chain had long been laid in the severe and exasperating effort of this country to enforce our colonial and navigation code." American Quarterly Review II (1827), 276.

PRE-REVOLU TIONARY TRADE

25

commerce after the W a r of the Spanish Succession. In Boston, Peter Faneuil did considerable business with Spain through his factor at Cadiz, and from 1715 to 1725, T h o m a s Amory carried on extensive trade with Portugal, keeping his letter books and business records in Portuguese. 4 3 Commerce continued to grow from small beginnings. 44 Although at first Salem's shipments were insignificant, her ships later cleared for all parts of the Hispanic world. From 1750 to 1769, Salem boats anchored in Cadiz, Bilbao, Lisbon, Oporto, Alicante, Madeira, Fayal, Figuera, Vigo, Barcelona, Málaga, Aveiro, and Iviza in the Balearics, Coruña, and the Cape Verde Islands, and rode the harbor waters in Montecristi, Puerto Rico, Campeche, Honduras, and Havana. During these twenty years, Essex County exports to Spain and Portugal rose considerably. 45 Indirect shipments added to direct ex•"3 William B Weeden, Economic II, 567, 613.

and Social History of New England,

1620-1789,

« "Abstract of English Shipping Records," Part II: to Spain Cadiz Bilbao Alicante

Salem

Clearances,

1714-1717 16 30 15 70

to

Portugal Lisbon Oporto Madeira Fayal [Azores]

•»5 T h e following figures of Salem: A Record of the 1769 (Essex Institute Hist. 409; LXVIII, 49, 241, 337;

13 21 3 3 40 are based upon Early Coastwise and Foreign Shipping Entrances and Clearances of the Port of Salem, 1750Coll., LXIII, 193, 305; LXIV, 49, 135, 439; LXVII, 281, L X I X , 49, 155): Outward from

Spain Cadiz Bilbao Alicante

Salem

Inward to Salem

284 32 13

78 240 6

340 28 15 17

208 17 18 20

729

587

Portugal Lisbon Oporto Madeira Fayal Total

26

INTER-AMERICAN

INTEREST

ports, because New York, New England, and Pennsylvania ships carried the products of their sister provinces. Shipmasters first set sail for colonial ports along the Atlantic seaboard, and then struck for Spain and Portugal. Rhode Island captains carried Carolina rice to ports "south of Cape Finis-terre." 48 Salem ships loaded flour, wheat, corn, and staves at Annapolis, Maryland, for Peninsular ports from 1756 to 1775.47 T h e involved trade was large enough to give rise to questions of specie payments, bills of exchange, and credits.48 The American Revolution posed problems for Iberian as well as Caribbean commerce. An anomalous situation arose: priicateering against Spain in the New World existed side by side with legal trade to Old Spain. Moreover, during the Revolution, Spanish prizes and booty again attracted those remaining in British-occupied territory. Tories and patriots alike went down to the sea for raids. T h e English shrewdly analyzed and used the tempting charm of Indies spoils. During their long occupation of New York City they encouraged privateering, and in 1779, when war was declared against Spain, Lord George Germain, instructing Governor Tryon, wrote optimistically: I cannot but flatter myself that the commissions to cruize against Spanish Vessils will tempt Mr. Washington's army as well as the Inhabitants at large to fit out vessils not only against the ships of His Catholic Majesty which may be met with in the Atlantic but even to extend their views to the Spanish commerce and even to some of the Spanish possessions in the South Seas. 49

Privateering again being profitable, New England sailors also swarmed into the South Atlantic to attack Luso-Brazilian shipping. 50 Portugal imprisoned many American raiders in Lisbon. Spanish vessels likewise suffered from New England raids even though Madrid was aiding the American cause. Patriot privateering was so vexing that in 1779, when Spain declared war, Miralles, the Spanish agent Custom House Records of the Annapolis District, Maryland relating to shipping from the Ports of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1756-1775 (Essex Institute Hist. Coll., XLV, 256). Aaron Lopez of Newport also traded actively with Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, the Atlantic Coast of North America, and in 1774 sent a fleet of thirty ships to the Falkland Islands for whale-oil. Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, XI, 402. «* Custom House Records of the Annapolis District, Vol. XLV, 256-82. 48 Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776, pp. 25, 47, 48 ff. *» O'Callaghan, Docs. Rel. Col. Hist. N.Y., VIII, 766. Hugh Gaine reported arrivals of Spanish prizes into New York harbor. Paul Leicester Ford, ed., Journals of Hugh Gaine, Printer, II, 65, 71, 87, 109, 115, 171. 50 Secret Journals of the Acts and Proceedings of Congress, II, 318, 497, 500, 546.

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE

27

at Philadelphia, formally protested to the Continental Congress.' 1 Spain's role in the war, on the other hand, gave North American Peninsular traders their chance to seek the hoped-for treaty. Eastern seaboard interests represented in the Continental Congress voted support for the Arthur Lee and John Jay missions to Spain.52 The failure of their mission did not cause any decline in the promotion of trade; nor did it affect Iberian relations. T h e post-Revolutionary mission of Diego de Gardoqui, Spanish Minister to the United States in 1786, revived discussion of the pact. 03 John Jay, Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the Confederation, discussed treaty problems with Gardoqui. Rufus King wrote Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, outlining plans for American trade with Mexico and Manila, while in Congress, Jay spoke openly of his hopes for free entry into Spanish American ports.64 While Eastern merchants continued to seek the pact once outlined by Colden, opposition to such negotiations came, after the Revolution, from a novel source—the Mississippi frontiersmen. Seaboard merchants had won freedom of trade action by national independence from England, but the Ohio men openly displayed hostility toward Spain. The frontier was on the move, and even while Jay was negotiating with Gardoqui, Westerners were launching their territorial expansionism in Spanish Louisiana, Mexico, and along the Gulf. Spain understood the import of the rivalry, exploiting the possibilities of disunity, and developing tactics suited to the occasion: setting the merchants' interests against the frontier's. Spain was an American power, a New World power. She could do more than press for prosecution of privateers or frontier filibusters. Spain fortified Louisiana and Florida as buffers to protect Mexico, « W. C. Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, XIII, 158; XIV, 607, 608, 777; XX, 578. 62 While Jay was discussing the treaty with Floridablanca in Spain, two Spanish merchants called upon Congress to return $149,190 which they had loaned the United States. Journals of the Continental Congress, XVI, 315. 6 3 Merchants welcomed Gardoqui's appointment. Considerable trade with Spain passed through the House of Gardoqui in Bilbao. Lorenzo de Mena, of Bilbao, to Aaron Lopez, of Newport, and José Gardoqui & Sons to same, in Commerce of Rhode Island, 1725-1800 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., I, 303; II, 134). A letter dated at Boston in 1787, and addressed to the Vernons of Newport, promises that the writer will inform them whether Gardoqui & Sons have set up an account in Boston. Misc. MSS on Slavery, N.Y. Hist. Soc., Box I, folder B, No. 15. " Charles R. King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, I, 177. T h e gold and silver of Acapulco would thus be available, declared King and Jay. James Duane of New York City wrote in 1779: "The riches of Mexico and Peru are in a manner locked up unless the southern extremities of America and the [Caribbean] Islands can be wrested from their [Spanish] possession." Edmund G. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, IV, 42.

28

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

New Orleans, and the Caribbean, balancing the West against the East with frontier intrigues and treaty gestures. In the decade from 1786 to 1796, she effectively dangled the bait of the elusive trade treaty before North Atlantic merchants, while offering the frontiersmen the right of deposit at New Orleans. Actually Spain limited Eastern merchants to a risky, unprotected, and periodic commerce with Spanish America, refusing to sign a trade pact, until pressure from the aggressive frontiersmen became too menacing, when she signed the Pinckney Treaty. T h e concession calmed Western excitement, but Madrid did not yield on the trade issue, and as long as possible, considered inter-American relations as contraband. When the treaty was signed in 1819, it was too late, since Louisiana and Florida were lost, the balance was changed, and Spanish America was near independence. During and after the Revolution, the Continental Congress and the Confederation tried to conceal regional rivalries from watchful Spanish agents in the United States. When Arthur Lee left for Spain, his instructions were clear: Should Spain be disinclined to our cause from an apprehension of danger to its dominions in South America, you are empowered to give the straight assurances that that Crown will receive no molestation from the United States in the possession of these territories. 5 5

T h i s was the first attempt, under the national government, to stress the eastern commercial point of view in an official mission. Rufus King's later proposal to forego the use of the Mississippi for twenty years, came at a time when Jay was discussing the treaty with Gardoqui. In 1786, while negotiations were taking place, J o h n Adams wrote to Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts, cautioning American officials against "intrigues of individuals . . . said to be on foot to set South America free from Spain. But I hope the States will not only be prudent but compel individuals to be so too." 5 6 By calming the imperial concerns of Madrid, Congress and the merchants hoped for a trade pact, but, instead, exposed the regional rivalry of American politics to the view of the Spanish government. A treaty was well worth all these efforts, since trade and shipping to Spain kept growing in spite of competition caused by Iberian reforms which opened the home markets of Spain and Portugal to South American products. In certain commodities, such as woods, hides, and flour, South America competed with North America, and both Madrid and Lisbon admitted larger amounts of Brazilian, Ar5s Secret Journals, II, 30, 279. 56 Adams to Bowdoin. fames Bowdoin, Papers Vol. IX; Series VII, Vol. VI, 97).

(Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series VI,

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE

29

gentine, Mexican, and Central American goods. By establishing a tariff on lumber imports in 1783," Spain was freed from her earlier dependence upon New England naval woods, and Portugal aided Brazilian economy similarly. T h e protection of Brazilian rice by Lisbon reduced the volume of Rhode Island and New York carrying. 58 These fiscal changes, however, did not disturb all North American trade. Vernon Brothers and Champlin Brothers in Newport, Rhode Island, and Stocker and Wharton of Philadelphia, continued to maintain factors in Spain and Portugal. Their business correspondence mentions prices, port regulations, tariffs, and concern with their agents in Lisbon, Oporto, and Cadiz. 59 There was a steady entrance and departure of American vessels from Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz, Alicante, and Bilbao, as new commodities replaced lumber and rice in the Iberian market. 60 Wheat and honey came from Baltimore; cod, whale-oil, resin, and wax were imported by New York ships. 61 From January to March 1794, twenty-one boats entered Lisbon from Salem, Hull, Marblehead, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Newport. 62 " Papeles Varios sobre Administración, Aduanas, Aranceles, II, No. 6, in N.Y. Public Library. 88 T r i a n g u l a r trade had existed between Carolina, R h o d e Island, and the Iberian Peninsula since the beginning of the century. It was important enough to merit an investigation by the Board of T r a d e . Journal, 1704/1705-1708, p. 571; also Macpherson, op. cit., I l l , 156. After 1730, when rice was removed from the e n u m e r a t e d list, R h o d e Islanders took over the carrying trade. T h e shipping charge was 15 per cent less than the French and 30 per cent less than the British. P i t m a n , op. cit., p. 184. T h e estimated tax yield brought in £1200 yearly, from 1730 to 1757, and £3000 in 1763. Beer, British Colonial Policy, p. 36. Georgia entered the rice production field through the influence of George Oglethorpe. Journal of the House of Commons 1732-37; also, Stock, Proceedings and Debates, IV, 60-62, 77. T h e balance of trade between Brazil and Portugal at this time stood in favor of the former. Roberto C. Simonsen, Historia Economica do Brasil, 1500-1820, II, 196. Dr. Simonsen points out that Brazil's produce of cotton, tobacco, rice competed with North American products in Portugal, although Brazilian production was protected by the influential monopoly of the Grao Para e Marahäo Company. T h e Marquis of Pombal prohibited the production of all but Carolina white rice in the Amazon Valley. Ibid., II, 216; for the legislation favoring Brazilian trade, ibid., I, 299 n. Commerce of Rhode Island, II, 247. 80 Rice carrying passed into the hands of Philadelphia and New York shippers shortly before 1776. Harrington, op. cit., p. 169. «i Correio Mercantil e Económico de Portugal que contém toda a Qualidade d'Annuncios, Ter^a Seira, No. 14. uz Correio Mercantil, No. 10, March I I , 1794. Lisbon, Portugal's leading port, then had a population of 200,000. In 1789 there were 75 North American, 81 French and 286 British ships in its harbor. Neue Beiträge zur Völker und Länderkunde, herausgegeben von M. C. Sprengel und Georg Forster, VII, 16, 26.

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

30

T h e flag followed trade, and consuls went to Lisbon and Oporto to protect American interests in Portugal. A report by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson valued Portuguese-American trade at $2,000,000 in the first ten months of 1793. 8S Mercantile and consular agents centered their efforts, however, on Spain and Spanish America. By 1800, the commerce of the United States with Spain exceeded that with Portugal by sixteen to one,'* and this country's shipping began to equal that of Latin America with its mother country; in 1793, 162 United States ships lay in the port of Cadiz, compared with 178 from Spanish America. 95 Still, as in England's earlier relations with the Spanish Empire, New England trade with Old Spain had a rival at home, which was more interested in trade with the Indies. From 1790 to 1810, this latter trend emerged to prominence, shifting commercial emphasis from Spain to Spanish America. Trans-Atlantic trade with Old Spain was affected by European war. Madrid relaxed its controlling hold upon the Indies, and merchants again found their way south toward the other America: 0 0 Trade Exports to

.

.

with

the Spanish

Empire

in 1800

Spain T e n e r i f e and Canaries Campeche, Honduras Philippines "Spanish West Indies" Floridas, Louisiana " O t h e r Spanish American lands" . Northwest Coast "South Sea" Total

$4,743,678 303,630 291,717 14,112 8,270,400 2,035,789 . 1,280 946,153 81,596 $16,688,355

More than half the exports of the United States to the Spanish Empire went to South America, as traders sought hemispheric outlets in a generation of European embargo, blockade, revolution, and sea warfare. Here was a new situation: Spain, in decline, and at war with Great Britain after 1793, could neither supply nor protect Spanish America, nor keep alive its exclusive commercial policy. When Spanish merchants were unable to deliver goods to Vera Cruz, Havana, Caracas, Cartagena, Lima, and Buenos Aires, New es American State Papers: Foreign Relations, I, 300. si American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, I, 417, 431. William Short to Secretary of State, ibid.: Foreign Relations, I, 445. 6® Gazette of the United States and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia, February 27, 1801). T h e figures for trade with the "Spanish West Indies" hint at the extent to which Spanish colonies were supplied by the neutral merchants of the United States.

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY TRADE

31

York, New England, and Pennsylvania merchants saw their opportunity and sent their ships to Spanish America, without benefit of treaty.67 Another current bore Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, and Baltimore captains into Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Valparaiso, and La Guaira. From 1800 to 1810, inter-American trade mounted, and continued to climb in the next twenty years, as the balance sheet of trade shows: 68 Year Ending

1800 1801 1804 1812

Based

upon

experts imports "xports exports

Percent of Total ish Empire going

Trade with Spanto South America

49% 26% 43% 58%

The advantage guarded so closely by Spanish trade policy was lost as direct commerce between the United States and South America began. The liberated energies of United States merchants carried them beyond the Caribbean. They freighted goods, books, slaves, republican ideas, southward in the New World, and removed surplus crops and hides from wharves along the Río de la Plata, Callao, and Rio de Janeiro. Access to continental Spanish America now lay open. Nor can it be said that this new achievement was due entirely to the accident of European war. Inter-American relations developed out of past contacts with Cuba, the Caribbean, and Central America; the interest of the United States may be traced from Cadwallader Colden. The latter's project matured at a time when Spanish America was entering a new politico-economic era, and war kept Spain in confusion. New York, New England, and Pennsylvania were aware of the consequences of Spanish isolation in the New World, and were alert to new opportunities. Inter-American trade derived advantage from an age of continental and international wars, and the United States' stand on neutrality helped its growth. Spain also, from time to time, had to approve neutrals' trade with Spanish American colonies—even in North American ships. Opposing commercial interests arose in the United States: some merchants preferred the Iberian market, others were eager to penetrate Spanish America. The older rivalry between frontier and seaboard over policy toward Spain took new form during the Observations on the Commerce of Spain with her Colonies in Time of War, by a Spaniard in Philadelphia, passim. os Compiled from letters of the Secretary of the Treasury for the years ending 1801, 1804, 1812, 1814-15; and the American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, II, 528-605. From 1815 to 1821, Latin America's share of the cited trade rose still further, from 59 per cent to 83 per cent of the total.

32

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

era of Spanish American independence. The second French invasion of Spain, under Napoleon, created new menaces to Spain and Spanish America. Without examining the varied viewpoints toward commerce with Latin America, it is pertinent to examine further the growth of direct inter-American trade.

Ill INTER-AMERICAN TRADE 1776, Anglo-American ships had appeared in Caribbean and Gulf waters off the coasts of Yucatan, Central America, and the mainland. Trade contacts here were largely a result of their own efforts, so that the advantage of Jamaica's position in the Indies yielded to factors which became more apparent after the Revolution. North America also lay geographically near the Indies, but only one type of activity—privateering—allowed, officially, for contact with forbidden places. 1 British naval warfare against the Spaniard was an impetus to Caribbean commerce. Privateering also carried Americans into South America during the Revolution. Spain knew of their presence there, but adopted leniency as a policy since she welcomed raids against her enemies, England or Portugal. In fact, the Madrid government took an unusual step: on September 20, 1776, José de Galvez, Minister of the Indies, issued an order to Buenos Aires, instructing the newly appointed Viceroy of La Plata in his attitude toward vessels putting into the Río de la Plata. T h e Viceroy was told to admit North American ships under their own flag, in order to take aboard water and victuals. He should not prejudice Spain's legal position of strict neutrality, and so must forbid any sale of goods or commodities. Americans were free to purchase needed supplies, provided they paid in cash, in bills of exchange, or in Negro slaves: BEFORE

Señor Galvez prescribes the terms under which you are to proceed towards vessels of the English colonies which arrive at your Province: "His Majesty has resolved that Americans be received into Spanish ports, even under their own flag, different from the British. T h e y are not to be permitted to sell any goods nor have any trade. T h e y must stay over and may purchase what 1 One cannot assume, Professor Lawrence A. Harper has written, that the Colonies would have traded with England if there had been no Navigation Act or Acts of Trade. England was not the natural entrepot for American trade with Europe. English Navigation Laws, pp. 244-45. This recalls Cadwallader Colden's proposal to Pitt which would have allowed North and South American trade, if colonial policy permitted, along more natural geographical lanes; see also Max Savelle, "Colonial Origins of American Diplomatic Principles," Pacific Historical Review, III (1934), 334-50. 33

34

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

they need satisfying the amount in money, letters of exchange or negro slaves." 2 Privateering lost much of its importance at the end of the Revolution, but Americans carried out other approaches to Indies wealth. Whalers replaced privateersmen in the South Atlantic, and New England sailors pushed around the Horn into the South Sea, and far up past Mexico to Nootka Sound, above Spanish California. Lured by the sea mammal, they entered and occupied Spanish American soil, which led to disputes with colonial officials. The economic decline of fishing did not affect the daring of the mariners,3 for challenge to entrenched power for its own sake was not rare in New England. The whalers twice invaded Spanish sovereignty when, in 1786 and again in 1793, they settled the Falkland Islands and erected dwellings. La Plata officials expelled them. 4 On October 10, 1793, 2 Documentos para la Historia Argentina, V, "Comercio de Indias: Antecedentes Legales, 1713-1778," 381-383, Doc. No. 83: "El Sr. Galvez Previene los Términos con que se ha de proceder con las embarcaznes de las Colonias Ingleses qe arrivaren a estas Provincias: ha resuelto SM que en los puertos de España sean admitidos cordialmente los mismos Americanos aun que se presenten con su Vandera Propria distinta de la Britanica . . . no se les ha de permitir la venta de Efectos ni comercio alguno y solo si que se reparen y compren lo que les fuere necesario satisfaciendo su importe en dinero en letras de cambio o Esclavos Negros." In 1778 Americans could also enter Spanish ports with Portuguese or Brazilian prizes, although peace then reigned between Spain and Portugal. 3 There were one hundred and fifty sail on the coasts of Brazil, Guinea, and the West Indies from 1772 to 1775, compared with the following from 1783 to 1785: Year 1783 1784 1785

Brazil

Guinea

West Indies

7 ships 12 " " 8

5 ships 5 " 2 "

7 ships 11 " 5 "

"Progress of the Whale Fishery at Nantucket," Collections, Mass. Hist. Soc., Series I (1794), III, 161. In 1789 there were thirty-one whalers off Brazil and the Falklands. Thomas Jefferson, "Report on Fisheries," American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, I, 8. Alexander von Humboldt wrote that "according to information which I owe to Mr. Gallatin . . . there were in the South Sea in 1800, 1801, and 1802, from eighteen to twenty whalers of the United States." Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, III, 94 n. T h e presence of Americans violated the monopoly of the Royal Maritime Company, a Spanish jointstock enterprise. Docs. Hist. Arg., VI, 412 n. «April 5, 1786 a Buenos Aires expedition destroyed the huts of the intruders. Diego de Gardoqui, then in New York as Spanish Minister to the United States, informed Spain of the presence of Americans, and Madrid forwarded the information to Buenos Aires. Docs. Hist. Arg., VI, 325, where there is a copy of Gardoqui's warning. T h e Royal Maritime Company had the privilege of employing foreigners at their stations, and could guarantee them freedom of worship. Ibid., VI, 412.

INTER-AMERICAN

TRADE

35

the Governor of the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands wrote to Viceroy Nicolás Antonio Arredondo at Buenos Aires, asking advice about twelve "American Republican" ships in those islands: the viceregal reply, of December 27, 1793, stated that in the absence of specific instructions from Spain, the Governor should be guided by the Treaty of Nootka Sound with the subjects of Great Britain. 3 A contemporary, Alexander von Humboldt, added further information on the far-flung activity of New England seamen. Seeking spermaceti, they made for Pacific waters from Chile up to Mexico. Nor was whaling their only interest: T h e greatest n u m b e r of E n g l i s h a n d A n g l o - A m e r i c a n vessels w h i c h e n t e r the great o c e a n [Pacific] h a v e t h e d o u b l e v i e w of carrying o n the cachalot [sperm w h a l e ] fishing, a n d an illicit c o m m e r c e w i t h t h e S p a n i s h colonies. T h e y b e g i n to the s o u t h of C o n c e p c i ó n , Chile. A f t e r r e m a i n i n g a m o n t h . . . a n d carrying o n a c o n t r a b a n d trade w i t h the island of Chiloé, the fishing vessels generally coast C h i l e a n d P e r u . . . [ t h e n ] c o n t i n u e it northwards t o b e y o n d Cabo Corrientes o n t h e M e x i c a n coast of the I n t e n d e n c y of G u a d a l a x a r a . 6

Privateering and whaling in Spanish America preceded commodity commerce, and these contacts helped to guide contraband trade on the South American continent, as in the Caribbean area before 1776. American merchants began to trade with Havana during the 1760's, and Cuban interest continued to grow before and during the Revolution. In 1781, the Congress of the Confederation instructed Robert Smith to act as "the agent appointed to reside at Havana, to manage the occasional concerns of Congress, to assist American traders with his advice and to solicit their affairs with the Spanish Government." 7 T h e Governor of Cuba had opened the 5 Ricardo Caillet-Bois, Ensayo sobre el Rio de la Plata y la Revolución Francesa, Appendix xliv, Doc. No. 9. T h e Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1790 settled the Nootka Sound Controversy over the question of sole Spanish control of American territorial waters. Julius A. Goebel, The Struggle for the Falkland Islands, 428-29. Article VI of that treaty governed the action to be taken toward the "12 American Republicans": "It is further agreed . . . that the respective subjects . . . shall retain the liberty of landing on the coasts and islands for objects connected with their fishing, and of erecting thereon huts and other temporary structures." This was a considerable concession to New England whalers who received the privileges Spain accorded to Englishmen. For the treaty see W. R. Manning, The Nootka Sound Controversy; also Alejandro de Cantillo, Tratados de Paz y Comercio. For Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the late eighteenth century, see Vera L. Brown, "Anglo-Spanish Relations in America," in Hispanic American Historical Review, V (1922), pp. 387 ff. 8 Humboldt, op. cit., I l l , 87-88. Republican propaganda was another by-product of their activity as will be seen below in Chapter V; see also Eugenio Pereira Salas, Buques norte-americanos en Chile. •> Journals of the Continental Congress, XX (1781); XVII (1780), 370.

36

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island in 1779 by a wartime measure which admitted food and provisions, but banned sales of merchandise." Although Spain repealed the license of 1779, New York and Philadelphia merchants promoted Cuban trade. Not long after the peace of 1783, eighteen ships returned to Philadelphia from Havana, and twenty-two cleared the city for Cuba.» Financier Robert Morris, friend of Francisco de Miranda, held a considerable financial stake in these relations. 10 Connecticut firms, such as that of Joshua Huntington of New London, exported New England products to Cuba. T h e Graftons, a Salem firm, forwarded to the Huntingtons, in 1782, a list of current prices for American products in Cuba, "as received from pur Mr. Joseph Grafton in Havana." 11 Spain barred the legal growth of Cuban-American trade by the legislation of 1785. After 1789, royal decrees were again issued in attempts to maintain Iberian control over the Spanish colonies. These laws reopened Indies markets to neutral ships. In 1789, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santa Marta, Caracas, and Santo Domingo were allowed to harbor foreign-owned ships carrying slaves.12 From 1789 to 1797, other Spanish American ports, such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, and » Luis Marino Pérez, Guide to the Materials for American History in Cuban Archives, p. 55. In 1782, permission to supply food was revoked; in 178S, Spain declared American commerce illegal; and in 1785, the Captain-General expelled American traders from the island, thus ending the status of the "consul." T h e trade of New York and Connecticut firms with Cuba is mentioned in R. R. Hill, ed.. Descriptive Catalogue of the Documents relating to the History of the United States, pp. 378, S82. 0 Roy F. Nichols, "Trade Relations and the Establishment of the United States Consulates in Spanish America, 1779 to 1809," Hispanic American Historical Review, XIII (1933), 291 n. 10 Captain William Armstrong wrote from New York to Sir Guy Carleton in April 1783, reporting the arrival of vessels bringing specie from Cuba to save the bank of Robert Morris: "Captain Green brought with him 50 and 60 thousand dollars, Barry who arrived ten days ago at Providence brought 135,000—8,500 of which were publick, the other private property." Report on the American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, IV, 6. Francisco de Miranda has many references to a Philadelphia merchant, James Seagrove, who was in Havana in 1781 and 1782 in connection with the war against Florida. Archivo del General Miranda, V, "Viajes: Documentos," pp. 211, 216, 233. it Joseph and Joshua Grafton to Huntington, dated Salem, June 15, 1782 in Huntington Papers (Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., XX, 157). T h e Grafton's price list was based upon twenty commodities among which flour sold at 25 (dollars) a barrel, beef at 25, and potatoes at 8. Candles were two and one half reales, and butter was four and one half reales. Brown sugar could be imported from Cuba at ten reales an arroba, white at fourteen. "8 rials is a Dollar and an Arroba, 27 lbs." Cuban tobacco exports were a monopoly of the joint-stock Havana Company. Hussey, Caracas Company, p. 207. i2 This is the Spanish decree translated by Dr. William Bentley of Salem, for the merchant Joshua Ward. Bentley, Diary, May 25, 1789.

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

37

Cartagena, bought much-needed slaves from American traders. Although yielding such temporary license, Spanish decrees specifically limited foreign or neutral vessels to a forty day stay in all Spanish American harbors. 1 ' This was time enough, however, to take on or unload a large cargo. Yet even this concession was evaded by colonials; during wartime emergencies some officials permitted their ships to go directly to United States ports for supplies. In 1794, for example, the Governor of Spanish Santo Domingo wrote the Governor-General at Havana "[that] my need of flour and victuals for my Army and Hospitals has compelled me to issue passports to different subjects to sail to North America to obtain provisions." 14 These colonies were far from Europe, and turned to the United States for foodstuffs and stores. T h e volume of CubanAmerican trade exceeded the island's commerce with Spain, especially as European war isolated the mother country. In 1798, ninetyseven Spanish ships anchored in Havana harbor, compared to 431 American; while 130 cleared for Spain and 401 for the United States.15 Legally, commercial voyages to Spanish American lands from North America required licenses and authorization from Spanish consuls in United States cities.18 Consular approval was in theory essential to this inter-American trade, but it was not strictly followed, and exports were loaded into the holds with slave cargo. T h e Negro trade offers a good example of quick over-expansion into the Indies area after license was issued. Traffic had multiplied after the decree of 1789, and by 1796 the Havana representative of Vernon Brothers of Newport could report that "the Negro business is overdone here," 17 because 1,800 Negroes had been sold in Havana since 1794. is Docs. Hist. Arg., VII, "Comercio de Indias—Consulado, comercio de indios y de Extrangeros, 1791-1808," lxiv. " J o h n Stoughton, "Letter Book" (Montecristi, St. lago de Cuba, Havana, July 17, 1794 to February 18, 1795), MS. T h e N.Y. Hist. Soc. contains documents and letters concerning his sale of provisions on behalf of himself, Samuel Emery of Philadelphia, and other North Americans. We will later notice Stoughton in a new capacity: Spanish consul at Boston for New England. i» Luis Marino Pérez, op. cit., 57. In August and November of that year there were sixty United States ships in Havana compared with fourteen Spanish, three French, and four Danish. Beytrage zur genauern Kenntnis der Spanischen Besitzungen in Amerika. 18 Spanish consuls included: Diego Morphy (Charleston), Thomas Stoughton (New York), Carlos Martinez Yrujo (Philadelphia), and John Stoughton (Boston). Valentin de Foronda succeeded Yrujo at Philadelphia. Foronda was a member of the American Philosophical Society, a scientific and socio-economic writer, and author of the interesting "Apuntes Ligeros sobre los Estados Unidos de la América Septentrional," MS, N.Y. Public Library. " Misc. MSS on Slavery, II, Folder 3, No. 16.

38

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

Trinidad was the rival port of sale.18 T h e Newport house of Gardner and Dean, and the Boston firm of Perkins and Burling also specialized in the Caribbean slave trade. 19 This growing volume and value of inter-American trade raised the diplomatic problem of securing protection for United States consuls to be assigned to Spanish America. While the Pinckney Treaty of 1795 brought western interests the New Orleans right-of-deposit, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia merchants had welcomed the article which implied the reciprocal exchange of consuls.20 In this they were mistaken, for Madrid steadily refused diplomatic or official acceptance of agents sent to Spanish America. The precedents of the Treaty of Miinster with the Dutch in 1648, and that with the English in 1670 were applied to the American request. That is, Spain conceded a most-favored-nation basis and recognized consular status in continental Spain, the Peninsula. She refused, however, to acknowledge that status for those Americans who acted as consuls in Spanish America. T h e irregularity of trade, depending as it did on temporary or emergency Spanish decrees—which might suddenly be repealed— served to stimulate desires for security. Spanish consuls were then resident in important American commercial cities, and United States merchants persistently asked for the creation of consular posts in the Caribbean region. President Adams responded favorably and named the first of such agents to Cuba in 1797 and 1798, nominating two New Yorkers, Daniel Hawley and Josiah Blakeley.21 Philadelphia and also New York merchants pressed for the recognition of John Morton as their consul at Havana. Augustine Malan was designated for Caracas, and Daniel Clark was proposed for New Orleans.22 Mai s A letter dated a t Boston in 1798, urged the captain of a New England ship to sell his slaves at T r i n i d a d "which is now to be a free p o r t . " T r i n i d a d replaced Kingston as a trade center for Spanish America. Misc. MSS on Slavery, I, Folder B. is Elizabeth D o n n a n " N e w E n g l a n d Slave T r a d e after the Revolution," New England Quarterly, III (1930), 269. 20 William M. Malloy, comp., Treaties, Conventions . . . between the United States and other Powers, 1776-1909• T h e Pinckney T r e a t y is in Vol. II, pp. 165059, a n d the provision for consuls is in Article X I X . Article XIV ended privateering against Spanish shipping, by b i n d i n g each party to refrain f r o m issuing letters of m a r q u e or commission against the other. See S. F. Bemis, Pinckney's Treaty, 338 ff. For use made of the right of deposit, see A r t h u r P. Whitaker The Mississippi Question, p p . 89-97. 21 T h e Hawley Commission, dated December 27, 1797, a n d signed by President Adams, states that the consul was a p p o i n t e d : "Consul of the United States of America for the port of H a v a n a in the island of C u b a a n d such other ports within the allegiance of His Catholic Majesty as shall be nearer thereto than the residence of any other consul, or vice-consul of the United States within the same allegiance." A copy is in t h e New York Historical Society. 22 Nichols, op. cit., p p . 299-300, 303; A r t h u r P. W h i t a k e r Documents relating to the Commercial Policy of Spain in the Floridas, p p . 244-45.

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

39

(kid's denial of recognition had only slight significance, and did not prevent them from taking care of inter-American trade interests. Spain tried to close the opened door by refusing any permanency to commerce, thus eliminating any need for such agents. European events, however, took the sting out of Spanish laws, and practically nullified Spanish counter-measures. At war with France in 1793, Spain had to authorize neutral ships to supply her colonies," although she quickly withdrew this after 1795 when peace was declared. It was no longer possible to confine trade relations to the Negro slave traffic, however, because Spanish American needs were persistent In fact, all European wars similarly affected opportunities for interAmerican trade. Royal cédulas paved the way for emergency exchanges, even though repeal followed quickly. There were several such decrees in 1797, 1802, and 1804-5. T h e grant of 1793 gave supply privileges to seaboard merchants as if to offset the anti-Spanish agitation of the Genêt Mission in the South and West. When licence was again revoked in 1795, Spain signed the Pinckney Treaty. Yet, beneath it all, her policy in the New World was based more and more on bluff. T o repeal neutral privileges would be largely a paper action, impossible to enforce. Spain renewed neutral licenses periodically, because her colonies produced most of her wealth, and bore the strain of exporting while cut off from supplies and transportation. This play of circumstance helped United States merchants to keep up the flow of Spanish American imports and exports, even in times when royal permission was lacking. So far, most exchange was still limited to the zone of the Caribbean and the Spanish Main. In 1798, fifty-eight ships returned to Philadelphia from Cuba, four from Puerto Rico and nine from La Guaira, Venezuela. 24 Between 1796 and 1798, some venturesome New York skippers had braved Brazilian waters and the "South Seas," but of New York ships in all Indies ports in this short period, 101, or 25 per cent, were in the Havana trade. 25 By this time, however, contacts began to extend to continental South America, and United States boats anchored in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Vera Cruz, and Buenos Aires. Merchants once again followed the wake of privateersmen, whalers, and slavers, although trade left the Caribbean slowly. 28 Thomas Jefferson, Report to the Senate of the Privileges and Restrictions of the Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries (December 16, 1793), p. 6: "Our navigation is free with the Kingdom of Spain: foreign goods being received there in our ships . . . as if carried in their own." 24 Nichols, op. cit., p. 30? n; Humboldt, op. cit., IV, 289. 2 5 United Insurance Company of New York, "Marine Intelligence of New York," MS, N.Y. Hist. Soc,

40

INTER-AMERICAN I N T E R E S T

T h e older interest in Cuba and Central America held its own, continuing to attract, and even dominate inter-American relations. Spanish Americans themselves were the first to request authority for Americans to trade outside of the Caribbean area; in 1798, the cabildo or municipal council of Montevideo sought permission to admit United States ships into port. Although that petition was denied, a royal order of J u n e 1798 allowed the Viceroy of L a Plata to open the port to foreign ships carrying codfish. O n departure, ships could leave with cargo. 28 Philadelphia newspapers hailed this long stride forward in the South Atlantic region, because the "news is so important to the commercial interests of this country." 27 Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and New York merchants were as quick to strengthen their commercial ties with the River Plate as they had been in the Caribbean. Between 1798 and 1800 there were twelve Nantucket ships in Buenos Aires, and fourteen New Bedford vessels, while New York, Portsmouth, Newport, Boston, and Philadelphia cargoes awaited unloading at Montevideo. 2 3 Stagnation of trade burdened landowners, merchants, and exporters in La Plata. T h e y needed to export as well as to import, and royal taxes were not relaxed. North Americans could profitably carry porteño and Montevidean surplus hides, and supply fish, food, and slaves. Necessity undermined Spanish mercantilism and overcame fears of penalties as United States ships disposed of L a Plata products. After 1798, the overproduction of hides, "so complained of [previously was] reduced to little more than the average annual supply." 2 9 Forty-three merchant vessels entered the R í o de la Plata in 1801—2, while others were in Chile and Peru. 3 0 Tallow, dried beef, hides from Paraguay and L a Plata, Coquimbo copper from Chile composed the return cargo. T h e city of Buenos Aires controlled much of Argentine trade, serving as the outlet for goods coming from interior Paraguay and Charcas (Bolivia) or the western provinces of T u cumán and Córdoba. Buenos Aires and its rival, Montevideo, were 2« Docs. Hist. Arg., VII, 129, 134, 136, 137; documents Nos. 76, 82, 83. T h e Salem Mercury, as early as August 1787, reported the arrival of the schooner Hope, under Captain Wellman, from Buenos Aires. 27 Cited by C. L. Chandler, "River Plate Voyages, 1798-1800," American Historical Review, X X I I I (1918), 817. 28 ¡bid., p. 820. Many New Bedford and Nantucket ships came into the Plata estuary from whaling trips into the "South Seas." 2 9 Samuel Hull Wilcocke, History of the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, p. 529. so C. L. Chandler, "Ünited States Merchant Ships in the Río de la Plata," Hispanic American Historical Review, II (1919), 26; also " T h e Diary of Mr. Ebenezer Townsend supercargo of the sealing ship Neptune on her voyage to the South Pacific and Canton, 1796-1799," Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, VI, 1-115.

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

41

the Atlantic ports for the entire area from the River Plate to the Andes foothills—a country of cattle, woods, agriculture, a n d mines. Large cargoes of imports were distributed f r o m Buenos Aires by mule-train to Peru and Chile. Americans opened business accounts with leading commercial houses in Buenos Aires. T h e merchant, T o m á s A n t o n i o Romero, was also an influential u r b a n figure in the Argentine region from 1794 to 1810. R o m e r o had won royal permission to import Negroes as early as 1784, as well as to exploit mineral exports from the northwest provinces. H e was an inter-American trader who placed his orders for ships in New E n g l a n d after 1798,31 and kept his relations with Americans alive for years. Captain Samuel Chace, acting for William Vernon and his partners of Newport, sold him in 1798, a boatload of Negro slaves valued at $44,180.32. O n April 22, 1801, Captain R o b e r t Gray of Boston reached Buenos Aires with a cargo for Romero. 3 2 A n o t h e r Platine trader, Francisco del Sar, also did business with Americans. Like Romero, del Sar held an i m p o r t a n t political position in the Buenos Aires city government. H e was a member of the consulado, and councilman on the city cabildo in 1804-5. In spite of his office, at one time he was rebuked for i m p o r t i n g N o r t h American goods which included Philadelphia newspapers. 3 3 A fragment of a contemporary document also throws light on his a t t e m p t to place American-Argentine trade on a better footing. For its protection, the plan provided for a Cadiz house and the Philadelphia firm of " T " which, with del Sar in Buenos Aires, were to benefit from the result. 34 31 Docs, Hist. Arg., VII, 156. T h e Merrimac, last of the ships built for Romero in New England, reached Buenos Aires in 1804, after its voyage from Salem. Ibid., VII, 290. Romero was a member of the important Buenos Aires junta which was called November 6, 1809 to discuss the proposal to open the port of Buenos Aires to ships of friendly or neutral nations. Diego Luis Molinari, La Representación de los Hacendados de Mariano Moreno: su Ninguna Influencia, p. 66. In 1805 the Buenos Aires cabildo refused Romero's request to import flour from the United States because it might lead to extensive contraband, and also because "North American flour was spoiled, poor and mixed with other matter." 32 Further information on Romero's commercial life may be found in [Archivo General de la Nación] Consulado de Buenos Aires, see Index. Dr. José Torre Revcllo of the University of Buenos Aires has told this writer that more material on Romero and his trade can be found in the Archivo de Indias at Seville, Spain. For Romero's royal protection against envious merchants of Buenos Aires, see [Archivo General de la Nación] J. J. Biedma, ed., Acuerdos del Extinguido Cabildo de Buenos Aires, Serie III (1796-1800), II, 282-83. sa Docs. Hist. Arg., VII, 268. 3« Del Sar's importation of newspapers is mentioned in the Telégrafo Mercantil, first periodical printed in Argentina. Its editor was Francisco Cabello y Mesa, supposed to have been once associated with the liberal Mercurio Peruano.

42

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

Buenos Aires traders were unsuccessful in legalizing inter-American commerce, but there was a growing feeling against Spanish policy in the La Plata estuary. 35 Despite official prohibitions, Americans and Argentines continued their exchanges, as can be seen from the many voyages which Captain Chace was making for the Vernons of Newport, Rhode Island. This Rhode Island shipmaster knew many Latin American ports, selling, buying, carrying, loading, and discharging all kinds of goods. Chace also delivered cargo to Tomás Romero and other Buenos Aires merchants. He began his Latin American trading voyage at Havana, then made for Montevideo and Buenos Aires, before returning to Newport. He had already accounted to the Vernons, in April 1796, for profits made in R i o de Janeiro—supposedly a closed port. From there he had coasted down to Buenos Aires, selling his cargo to a Montevideo merchant who paid him with a draft on Havana. Taking on another account for Tomás Roméro, Captain Chace then spread sail for Cuba. Later, in 1798, he wrote that the cargo in Montevideo gave the Vernons a credit for 18,000 Spanish dollars. 36 As inter-American trade spread beyond the Caribbean, other firms made attempts to establish regular business connections. Francisco del Sar's proposal for a three-point commerce between Buenos Aires, Cadiz, and Philadelphia, was matched by the enterprising Vernons of Newport. Captain Chace's zeal as their agent was denounced by John Stoughton, the Spanish consul at Boston. T h e Captain had returned to Boston, not only with the usual cargo and profit, but also with two Buenos Aires merchants, supercargoes of Tomás Antonio Romero. Consul Stoughton wrote to Buenos Aires, informing Romero that the Vernons were restraining the sale of his cargo in Boston as security for a debt claimed by them. 87 «Cabello, editor of the Telégrafo Mercantil, wrote in June 1801, that Spain should suspend its mercantilist laws since European wars, blockades, and Argentine drought had ruined Platine commerce. He urged that since Spain could not supply its colony, the remedy was apparent even if it should help American, English, or French merchants. Misc. MSS on Slavery, Box III, April 4, 1797. Again from Rio de Janeiro, Chace wrote the Vernons of his success in selling his cargo in Brazil while en route to Mozambique for Negro slaves. He referred to his voyage "to this place" as one of speculation. Ibid., Box I, Folder C, No. 5. There is no indication of the nature of Chace's cargo. Dr. Simonsen the foremost economic historian of modern Brazil, points out the natural competition of North American agricultural production (cotton, rice, tobacco), as well as hides and leather with similar Brazilian commodities. Simonsen, Historia Económica, II, 301, 305. « John Stoughton, "Letter Book," July 13, 1795 to August 27, 1800. The Spanish consul wrote two letters directly to Romero, one dated Boston, March 6, 1800 and

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

43

The Vernons' eagerness for Hispanic trade led them to consider plans for enlarging their activity in Venezuela and northern South America, a short while before the British seized Trinidad. An anonymous correspondent wrote Sam Vernon from New York City that, a respectable agent of a Spanish House has handed me a plan of operation. . . . Goods are to be delivered at New Barcelona in the Province of Cumanà [Venezuela] where goods picked up by Americans are to be sold at Martinico and Havana.

The terms were most confidential, and the writer advised the Vernons to choose their most trusted captain. 38 T h e Vernons' intention illuminates commercial relations with Spanish America before 1800. As a rule, merchants in inter-American trade wanted to make their relations permanent, although there were regional differences in the methods used to achieve this end. The Rhode Islanders seem to have acted by themselves, disregarding the laws of Madrid, and the authority of the Spanish consul in Boston, John Stoughton. Massachusetts merchants, on the other hand, had the definite.aid of Stoughton, while his experience with the Vernons left him hostile to their captains. His assistance to other New England traders was generous. John Stoughton, descendant of an old Massachusetts family, was father-in-law to José de Jaudenes, Spanish representative at Philadelphia. Stoughton, moving in the cultural and intellectual circles of Boston, used these connections to promote intellectual as well as commercial relations between Spain and New England. He tended to exaggerate his own prestige slightly, as for example in 1796, after his nomination to the Boston Humane and Charitable Society, when he stated that "it was something similar to the Philosophical one in Philadelphia." While this study is more concerned with his commercial duties, he did use his lineage and office as a cultural liaison the other June 15, 1800. In his second letter, Stoughton denounced Chace as a "liar" who had lost credit and standing, because he had been imprisoned in Newport for non-payment of debt. Chace escaped and had the audacity to sail to Buenos Aires. According to Stoughton, the injunction against the sale of Romero's cargo arose from the following circumstances: Vernon, representing three Newport merchants, was eager to be paid for a note of 3000 odd pesos which Romero's agents had drawn to Captain Chace in Havana. This money was to satisfy Chace and Vernon for the delay imposed upon their ship in Montevideo plus the penalty for expiration of their contract. Chace had endorsed the note in favor of the Newport partners, but it was protested in Havana due to lack of funds. Stoughton to Romero, March 6, 1800. Romero's two agents in Boston were Pedro Vails and Juan Sanzantenea. Misc. MSS on Slavery, Box II.

44

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INTEREST

between Spanish and New England intellectuals. This served him in excellent stead in fulfilling his consular functions. Stoughton's official position gave him control over departures for South America when Spain allowed neutral trade. He had power to issue passports, permits, clearances, and licenses to New England captains." As consul, he corresponded with such merchants as Samuel Emery of Philadelphia, William Dyer of Providence, John Pintard of New York, and Captains Elias H. Derby, Nathaniel West, William Gray, Jr., and Israel Thorndike of Salem and Boston. He was also a private merchant, and his Spanish American business was conducted for him by his brother, Thomas Stoughton, who was Spanish consul in New York City. Two Spaniards in New York were associated with the Stoughtons, José Ruiz de Silva and José Covachelle or Covachiche.40 As Spanish consul and Boston merchant, Stoughton was alert to opportunities for trade. Writing in 1797 to the Cuban, Juan Francisco de Olidén y Áncola, Stoughton put the case clearly: T h e War now being waged between Spain and England may be the cause by which the Commerce of this country with Havana [can] be put o n the same footing as [it was] in the late War with France. In that case, if it suits your Grace, we can doubtless negotiate for our mutual benefit. This may be in the sale of honey, molasses, and other products of your island, or in the sale of meat, butter, staves, iron and other articles of this region: I will be pleased to receive an answer from your Grace on this point so that I may avail myself clearly of opportunity. 4 1

The consul occasionally refused to grant licenses. On the other hand, he went far in the expansive passport issued to Captain Elias Hasket Derby of Salem, a good friend, addressed "to all officers of rank commanding by Sea and by Land in His Catholic Majesty's Service." 42 He could also be stern with those who failed to apply to him. On April 13, 1798, he warned Captain Nathaniel West, stress3» John Stoughton, "Account Book, 1802-1809." ••«"Letter Book." In 1796, Alexander Hamilton argued a case in the United States Circuit Court in New York on behalf of one Diego Pintado. Having lost the issue, bond was posted for Pintado by Thomas Stoughton and José Ruiz de Silva. "Minutes of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, 1790-1798." « Juan Francisco de Olidén was a member of the influential and important Sociedad Econòmica de Amigos del Pals, organized on a basis of economic reform and improvement. See "Catálogo General Alfabético . . . del Año de 1795," in Recopilación para la Historia de la Sociedad Econòmica Habanera, I, 114-20. Writing to John Pintard, in May 1797, Stoughton confided that he did a commercial business "under our own inspection." « Stoughton to Derby, Boston, November 4, 1797. On February 20, 1799, he introduced Captain Derby to the Governor of Havana as his best friend—one of many letters of introduction that he wrote for Massachusetts merchants.

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TRADE

45

ing the need of a passport if he wanted to go to Caracas or Cartagena. Stoughton also gave useful service to many other New England merchants. In 1797, he wrote to Pedro de Erice at Havana, introducing Boston traders to Cuban customs officials and merchants. 43 His warning to Captain Robert Gray in September 1798, on the danger to be expected in the projected voyage to Vera Cruz shows the Spanish consul in a protective role. Stoughton offered Gray a passport which indicated only New Orleans as the destination, but once this formality had been observed he added, "you are at liberty to go where you please—without fear." T h i s was an attractive subterfuge, and Israel Thorndike wrote immediately, asking similar terms for his proposed voyage to Vera Cruz. Stoughlon's reply was cautiously suggestive: T h e idea of going from this C o n t i n e n t direct [to Vera Cruz] must have arisen from a mistaken representation. . . . T h a t o n e Vessel has gone from here I am well acquainted with. . . . T w o others I presume from Salem b e l o n g i n g to our friend W . Gray Esqre via N e w Orleans but it is a D o u b t with m e whether they will be admitted unless through the Interest of a G e n t l e m a n w h o is living there by the n a m e of Q u i n t a n a w h o gave that encouragement to Mr. Gray so as to i n d u c e h i m to make a trial. . . . H e is in the possession of a list of such articles as are admitted and those that are contraband. Probably you are in the habit of friendship with that G e n t l e m a n and he may give you more information than I can at present. 4 4

Stoughton apparently ignored his earlier advice to Captain Gray on the procedure to use. There were furthermore many other American traders with "the idea of going direct from this Continent to Vera Cruz." In 1801, John Morton, a Philadelphian serving as consul at Havana, wrote the United States Secretary of State, lamenting the loss of a convoy which the former had ordered to Vera Cruz to protect American shipping in Mexican waters: T h e circumstances which principally produced in J u n e last my consent to the Voyages of the U n i t e d States ship I V a r r e n , Captain N e w m a n , from the H a v a n a to Vera Cruz were as follows: . . . that it was very generally k n o w n both in the Havana and the U n i t e d States that there were very considerable sums of American property detained at Vera Cruz for want of a safe conveyance, and that to several applications to the Secretary of the Navy o n the subject he had expressed his willingness to accommodate the merchants with a vessel, w h e n one could be spared. 4 5 « E r i c e was one of those who had urged in 1796 that the duty imposed on ships carrying sugar to foreign ports be removed for the benefit of Cuban planters. Acuerdo de la Junta del Real Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio en la Celebrada el día miércoles 21 de diciembre de 1796. 44 Thorndike to Stoughton, "Letter Book," November 3, 1798; and Stoughton to Thorndike of even date. «»Dudley W. Knox, ed., Naval Documents relating to the Quasi-War between the United States and France, Nos. 1800-1, pp. 244-45.

46

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

Trade to New Spain before 1800 apparently could do without Stoughton, although it was safer to seek his letters and passports, but the Havana consul, John Morton, ordered naval protection for United States ships trading between Havana and Vera Cruz. Undoubtedly, the ship's passport or clearance papers gave only a slight clue to the port of destination. Moreover, the term "American" as used, meant that Pennsylvania and New York merchants were also participating in Havana, Vera Cruz, and Spanish American commerce. While Stoughton certainly was a great advantage to Boston and Salem merchants, by 1800, however, competitors had appeared. New York City, at first a rival of Philadelphia, Boston, and Salem, came to be the chief port for inter-American commerce. Thomas Stoughton was Spanish consul there, as his brother was in Boston. Both had assumed consular status after the signing of the Pinckney Treaty in 1795. Unfortunately, there is much more material concerning John Stoughton in New England, than there is about Thomas Stoughton in New York.46 Nevertheless, while little is known of the active agency of Thomas Stoughton, less personal factors promoted New York's trade, which grew with the national interest in South America. New York ships carried United States products to the southern continent, and brought back cargoes. T h e wheel of foreign trade turned more and more on a Manhattan hub, as New York vessels doubled their total tonnage, 47 and surpassed Massachusetts and Pennsylvania shipping. 48 During the twenty years from 1790 to 1810, «« Thomas Stoughton was a partner of the local firm of Lynch and Stoughton. Even the Portuguese consul in New York City traded with Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana under the Portuguese flag. William Barrett, Old Merchants of New York City, IV, 160. The following table was compiled from Adam Seybert, Statistical Annals Embracing Views of the United States of America, 1789-1816: Years 1795-1801 1810-1813 1814-1816

US. Customs

Income

$ 61,527,486 116,996,686 70,577,425

% N.Y.

%

27 29 34

Penn. 17 17 18

% Mass. 19 22 17

«s N.Y. State "Senate Documents" (79th Sess.), Report of the Commissioners relative to the Harbor of New York; also N.Y. "Assembly Documents" (74th Sess.); R. G. Albion, " T h e New York Port and its Disappointed Rivals, 1815-1860," Journal of Economic and Business History, III (1931):— Foreign Year 1795 1800 1815

Trade

Massachusetts 171,748 213,197 199,659

in Shipping

Tons

Pennsylvania 83,629 95,631 77,199

New York 93,421 97,791 180,684

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

47

imports from Spanish America included sugar, hides, molasses, indigo, cocoa, coffee, cigars, herbs, and woods. T h e y came in from Matanzas, Havana, and Santiago in Cuba; Santa Marta, Cartagena, and La Guaira along the Spanish Main; and from Buenos Aires and Montevideo on the R i o de la Plata. Coffee and hides were shipped from Puerto Cabello, oranges from Puerto Rico, and whale-oil and hides were brought from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. 49 In the single month of April 1801, cargo was landed from R í o de la Plata, Havana, and Santiago. 50 Many New York firms were engaged in these exchanges. There were some 341 local merchants shipping to and from South America. Some of these were affiliated with the United Insurance Company, headed by Archibald Gracie, who was for a while an active trader with Vera Cruz, Mexico. Daniel Hawley, consul to Cuba, Gouverneur and Kemble, and Archibald Gracie exported to Montevideo as well. New Yorkers who specialized in Cuba trade were Nicholas Schweighauser, W . and Charles Seton, J o h n B. Desdoity, John Jumel, Bonaventura and Sons, Snell and Stagg, Alexander Macomb, Benjamin Hyde, Benjamin Mumford, Noah Talcott, W . L. Wickham, and Dederer and Hines. 01 John Patrick sent most of his exports to Spanish Santo Domingo, while Archibald Gracie was an unusually heavy shipper to Mexico in 1806—the year in which Miranda fitted out his expedition against Spanish America from New Y o r k . " During the eleven years from 1798 to 1809, the 677 shipments indicate the activity of trade at the time. Meantime from 1803 to 1811, Great Britain, an older foe of interAmerican intimacy, and an ally of Spain, tried to harass North American shipping, by seizing vessels or molesting their captains. T h e most powerful navy in the world, the English fleet, captured and prized United States vessels in or near Spanish American waters. Ships trading with Havana, Puerto Rico, Puerto Cabello, Caracas, Montevideo, or Buenos Aires were stopped and taken to British «9 Compiled from seven boxes of customs manifests and declarations in Customs House Papers: "Port of New York," N.Y. Hist. Soc. eo New York Commercial Advertiser, April 1801. »i Arranged from eight volumes of customs registers, listing "Clearances from the Port of New York, 1789-1832," MSS, The United States Customs House, New York City. «2 The first New York ship to enter Mexico after the Revolution arrived in Vera Cruz in 1786. Lerdo de Tejada, Comercio Exterior, Appendix, Doc. No. 13. It is a matter of speculation whether Thomas Stoughton's presence was of value in Gracie's affairs, since neither the Stoughton nor Gracie papers have been found. About this time Gracie was associated with the scheme to get Mexican silver to Spain. See Arthur P. Whitaker, The United States and the Independence of Latin America, pp. 17-22. Gracie was a good friend of Rufus King; the latter's son was in Gracie's employ in Spain during the height of the Peninsular trade.

48

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

ports.53

British naval policy thus revived the spirit of her Navigation Laws and echoed a dying mercantilism. For different, but equally forceful reasons, Spain sharply resented American trade with her colonies. This was annoying and was to be expected from the sovereign of Latin America, but it became more than annoying when American ships were seized by the British and brought to Halifax where Great Britain maintained a vice admiralty court. New York shipping bore the brunt of this Spanish retaliation. Claims submitted to the United States Congress by petitioning merchants, throw further light upon New World relations. New York traders represented forty-one per cent of all the claims against Spanish confiscations from 1797 to 1805. They had lost their ships and cargoes at Lima, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Coquimbo, Ensenada, Puerto Rico, Havana, Cavite, and Santiago." Furthermore these British and Spanish seizures followed the earlier menace of French privateers in the quasi-naval war between France and the United States, from 1797 to 1800. New Yorkers were hit by French raids in the Caribbean and Spanish Main, and one commercial house in that city, Bailey and Bogert, warned John Derby of Salem in 1798 that Caribbean trade was dangerous, and La Guaira "was infested with French privateers." 56 53 Great Britain: Prize Causes, Lords Commissioners of Appeals in, New York Ships, 1803-1811• Other volumes deal with Boston, Philadelphia, Massachusetts seizures, and are in the New York Public Library. Of eighty vessels brought to the British Admiralty Court at Halifax between July 1812 and November 1814, all were engaged in trade with Puerto Rico, Havana, La Guaira, Bahia (Brazil), Manila, and Chile. In 1813, Hezekiah Niles reported that "forty one Spanish merchants of Havannah have issued a warm declaration on the British pirates and the Court of Admiralty at Nassau, in consequence of the condemnation there of many Spanish vessels bound to and from the ports of the United States." Niles' Weekly Register, VI (August 14, 1813), 386. For the confiscation of New England ships during the War of 1812, see Records of the Vice Admiralty Court at Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Condemnation of Prizes and Recaptures of the Revolution and the War of 1812 (Essex Institute Hist. Coll., XLV, 28, 161, 221, 309; XLVI, 69, 150, 257, 317). New Haven ships were taken in Bahia (Brazil) and La Guaira. «< American State Papers: Foreign Relations, VI, 36 ff.: "A List of Claims of Citizens of the United States. An Account of Spanish Spoliations." The Adams-Onis Treaty of Florida of 1819 (Article VII) renounced American claims against Spain arising from "unlawful seizures at Sea and in the Ports and Territories of the Spanish Colonies." Hunter Miller, ed.. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America (Dept. of State Publications, No. 175, III, 3-64). T h e Spanish government withdrew claims for damage caused from the Miranda and Pike expeditions. T h e 1819 Treaty confirmed many clauses of the Pinckney Treaty of 1795, but Articles II, III, IV, X X I , and section 2 of Article X X I I , were terminated. Article X I X , permitting exchange of consuls, was in no way affected. " Knox, op. ext., I, 55-34; II, 85.

49

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

Spanish or British action again failed to halt commerce completely or to curb New York, New England, and Pennsylvania merchants, because European struggles indirectly aided trade expansion." InterAmerican trade climbed as colonialism, laws, and enforcement broke down. Mutual trade had reached a certain stability before the final blow struck by Napoleon and the Latin American revolutions against Madrid. Once, the Iberian Peninsula had been most important in United States-Hispanic trade; 5 7 later the Caribbean and Cuba appeared on the commercial horizon. By 1810, New York, New England, and Pennsylvania ships were at mainland South American harbors in spite of all kinds of international obstacles. The persistence of American merchants was a major factor in maintaining ties with Spanish America, but before 1810, commerce with Cuba was still larger in volume of shipping than continental trade with Mexico, Argentina, Chile, New Granada, and Peru, just as Peninsular business continued to surpass Caribbean. 58 Cuban relations were marked by the lively rivalry of Boston and New York. Before 1810, Boston merchants pursued the profits from Havana exchanges as vigorously as New Yorkers. John Stoughton's "Account Book of Fees Received" recorded 757 Boston clearances for Havana from 1802 to 1809, a period in which he licensed two ships 58 McMaster believed that by 1806, American ships were used by Spanish merchants to keep open trade communication with Peru, Mexico, Cuba, La Plata, and the Spanish Main. John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, III, 225. According to Lerdo de Tejada, Comercio Exterior, Appendix, Doc. No. 19, New Spain's trade was:

Commerce of New Exports Spain Spanish America Neutrals

1806 803,037 pesos 565,791 " 4,101,534 "

Spain 1807 612,733 pesos 488,503 " 21,406,097 "

Bishop Abad y Queipo of Michoacin in New Spain, one of the most prominent Mexicans of his time, pointed out to the Crown the weakness of Spanish fiscal policy which, in 1805, permitted North Americans to undersell Mexican wheat in Cuba by 6 pesos per barrel. José Maria Luis Mora, Obras Sueltas, I, 86-87. F. B. C. Bradlee, ed., Marblehead's Foreign Commerce, 1789-1854, compiled from Marblehead Custom House Records, Entry Books, Import Books, and Registers (Essex Institute Hist. Coll., LXIV, 81, 161, 273, 275). Between 1790 and 1812 Marblehead sent 32 ships to Havana, 23 to La Guaira, 202 to Bilbao, 92 to Lisbon, and 46 to Cadiz. 58 Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America, pp. 190-91. American trade with the Spanish West Indies and Colonies from 1795 to 1801 amounted to $87,671,106. From 1804 to 1813, due to embargo, non-intercourse, war with England, etc., it fell to $65,846,688. This was still a large volume of trade, considering all the difficulties.

50

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

to sail for Lima, and a few others for Manila, the Spanish Main, and Vera Cruz. It is striking to observe, by way of comparison, that from 1805 to 1809 only some 350 boats left Boston for Iberian ports." Cuban trade was aided by American quasi-consuls in the island, whose status continued to be unofficial and unrecognized. Since Cuban sugar was already being sold in the United States through the port of New York,®0 New York merchants were able to explain to Congress in 1805 that they had a stake in Cuba. In January of that year, a sectional clash between Louisiana sugar planters and New York importers aroused the Northerners to petition for repeal of the tariff on Cuban sugar. T h e merchants, rightly fearing Spanish retaliation, informed Congress "that your petitioners are concerned in Trade and Navigation to a considerable Extent, between the Port of New York City, and different Ports of the Continent of South America." 8 1 In a commercial sense, Havana was largely a market, but it was also, partly, a gateway for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia shippers seeking entrance to Spanish America. As time went on the markets of the "continent of South America" were reached directly. Still, New York, like commerce itself was only a part of the whole picture of inter-American relations. An awakened interest in Latin American culture, history, and life gave a lively spirit to material matters. Cultural bonds and republican ideas clothed the coldness of commerce in warm, liberal contact, and supplied a new, intellectual bond. 62 T h e Spanish ring around so Compiled from John Stoughton, "Account Book, 1803-1809." He cleared at least twenty seven ships for Cumaná, La Guaira, Puerto Rico and Puerto Cabello. According to the "Marine List" of the Boston Repertory, January 2 to December 28, 1810, there were 120 ships in the Boston-Cuba trade that year. Boston merchants maintained agents in Spanish America: Manuel Ortega in Montevideo, Nathaniel Fellowes, Thomas Gimball in Cuba. Charles Atkins and Silas Atkins represented accounts in Cuba and Buenos Aires, respectively. «o Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez, "Las Primeras Crisis de Cuba y sus Relaciones con el Comercio de los Estados Unidos," (Pan American Institute of Geography and History), Proceedings of the 2nd General Assembly, United States Department of State Conference Series, No. 28, pp. 452-58. «i American State Papers: Finance, II, 116-17; Victor S. Clark, A History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860, I, 304. T h e expected retaliation came in June 1805: Josiah Blakely, consul at Santiago, wrote that Cubans had seized seven New York ships. Documents Accompanying a Message from the President of the United States. Blakely himself was expelled by the Spanish shortly afterward. 82 in 1815, Alejandro Ramirez, member of the American Philosophical Society and Spanish Intendant of Puerto Rico, opened certain ports on that island to United States ships bringing fish, corn, wheat, and tallow. He proclaimed that "every protection and assistance will be extended to Americans trading here, and should any doubts hereafter arise on the construction of this regulation, the

INTER-AMERICAN TRADE

51

colonial commerce and civilization had been broken by the time the two Americas were entering upon their first generation of open relations. decision shall be in favor of the American citizen." Text (in translation) in the New York General Shipping and Commercial List, March 27 and April 25, 1815.

IV THE FORMATION OF CULTURAL INTEREST 1 contact was accompanied by popular and scientific interest in New World civilization, peoples, and history. In addition, cultural relations indicated some genuine desire to understand Spanish American life. North America read about the Hispanic world while the eighteenth century Enlightenment was thinning the mist obscuring Spanish America. Although colonial North American culture was predominantly British in origin and character, 2 it gradually found an independent direction leading to Spanish American studies. Nothing reveals the eighteenth century interest in South America more clearly than North American colonial libraries. Collections of Spanish and Spanish American historians were found in the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island. 3 Thomas Prince, historian of New England and an outstanding bibliophile, owned copies of José de Acosta, Bartolomé Carranza, the Spanish religious reformer of the sixteenth century.* T h e catalogue of Harvard College Library in 1723 included Spanish theological writings, psalteries, a Portuguese COMMERCIAL

1 Harry Bernstein, " L a s Primeras Relaciones Intelectuales entre New England y el Mundo Hispánico, 1 7 0 0 - 1 8 1 5 , " Revista Hispánica Moderna, V (1938), pp. 1-17. For additional material relevant to this chapter see this writer's "Inter-American Aspects of the Enlightenment," in Arthur P. Whitaker, ed., Latin America and the Enlightenment, pp. 5 5 - 6 9 . 2 Michael Kraus, Intercolonial Aspects of American Culture on the Eve of the Revolution, p. 178. « A Catalogue of Books of the Redwood Library. Here one finds Solis, Acosta, Mariana, and Herrera in English versions and Charles Brockwell, Political History of Portugal . . . and Brazil (London, 1726); Anson's Voyage; Esquemelin, History of Buccaneers; Harris and Ashley, Collections of Voyages; Don Quijote; History of the Conquest of India by the Portuguese. * Catalogue of the Prince Library . . . Prince also possessed books and pamphlets dealing with the fall of Olinda [Brazil]; a work by J u a n Pérez de Guzmán on the British in the West Indies; and an interesting treatise for Boston merchants; Spain, or the Asiento or Contract for Allowing the Subjects of Great Britain the Liberty of Importing Negroes into Spanish America (London, 1713). 52

CULTURAL INTEREST

53

Bible, an ecclesiastical history of England written in Spanish, and most important, the 1596 edition of the classic, Celestina: Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea.6 The eighteenth century was one of maritime and mercantile expansion, and its world contracted and shrunk through trade, discovery, and conquest. Tales of voyages, exploration, and settlement, and of naval victory over Spain, could be read in many colonial libraries. The Hakluyt, Purchas, and Harris collections did not keep pace with explorers and merchants who were opening new territory. Colonial catalogues listed a good stock of travel books by Englishmen who had passed behind Spanish barriers into the Indies. T h e Burlington Library Company offered its subscribers in the New Jersey capital, the works of Anson, Captain Dampier, and the Bulkeley and Cummins voyage to the South Sea in 1740.a The center of colonial culture, Philadelphia, took part in the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. It was the capital of Hispanic studies, and had established definite relations with European science. Its literary resources went far beyond travel literature into serious historical treatises which systematized the study of Spanish America. The Philadelphia Library Company in 1764 owned copies of Garcilaso de la Vega, historian of the Incas, Juan de Solis, historian of the Conquest of Mexico and historiographer to the Council of the Indies, and John Ogilby's America. There was Lionel Wafer's description of Panama in 1699, which was a tract for the settlement at Darien, as well as the Frézier voyage to Chile and Peru, in 1712-14.* The library expanded the collection, and its catalogue for 1770 included many new books: works of the Spanish economist, Uztáriz; Thomas Jefferys, English geographer of the Spanish Caribbean; Miguel Venegas, historian of California; and the Account of the Spanish Settlements in America o Catalogus Librorum Bibliothecae Collegii Harvardensi. T h e 1725 supplement to the Harvard catalogue is in T . G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, pp. 293 ff. o The Charter, and Laws and Catalogue of Books of the Library Company of Burlington. Its literary treasure includes Don Quijote, and Baltasar Gracián, Spanish dramatist. Bulkeley and Cummins dealt with the attacks upon Spanish America, narrating the attempt against Buenos Aires and Chile, as part of the British campaign against Cartagena de Indias. t Charter, Laws and Catalogue of Books of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Thomas Gage's popular anti-Spanish book was listed. Ogilby's America was largely a translation of the Hollander Montanus, and devoted many pages to Peru (Lima and Quito), Chile, Brazil and Paraguay. There was special treatment of such Indies ports as Buenos Aires, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. » This last was one of several works in English which preceded the well-known history of William Robertson. Ascribed to William Burke, brother of Edmund

54

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST

After independence, Philadelphia kept adding to its South American materials. Efforts of the American Philosophical Society, the College of Philadelphia, and the Medical School were shared by such citizens as John Logan, Benjamin Smith Barton, and Benjamin Franklin. T h e first college course in Spanish Literature given in the United States was offered in Philadelphia. 8 Most works stressed the Hispanophobe bias of English letters and history. Others, such as those of Frézier, Woodes Rogers, and Dampier emphasized the issues of French-Spanish-British rivalry that so stirred American onlookers. A reading of the contemporary scientific descriptions of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, in the Voyage to South America, created a dislike of the Spanish colonial system. The popular mind placed their version in the same category with the history of Las Casas, and the hostile History of America, by Dr. William Robertson. 10 Pennsylvania intellectuals began to find a stronger support for culture than the Library Company collections. The Loganian Library, made up of John Logan's books and manuscripts, was merged with the Library Company in 1792. For the most part, the Logan collection contained famous Spanish literary works. An unusual item was the history written by Francisco López de Gómara, Cortes' secretary and chaplain in the expedition to Mexico. Even more striking was the extremely rare scientific account of Francisco Hernandez, who had been sent to New Spain by Philip II. 11 Scientists in the Burke, it supplied a clearly organized account of Spanish settlement, and was divided into four parts: I. Discovery and the Spanish in the Indies, II. Spanish in North America, III. Spanish in Peru, Chile, Paraguay and Río de la Plata, IV. Spanish in Tierra Firme. It was published in Edinburgh in 1762. » The instructor was Paul Fook. American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Transactions, I (1771), xvi. 10 T h e subscribers of the Library Company had other important scientific accounts in addition to those mentioned. There was the narrative of La Condamine, given before the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1745, which described the interior parts of South America and the Amazon Valley. An important reference work was the Voyage of the Ship Conde de St. Malo to Peru, 1745-1759, with its Appendix on mines, commerce, agriculture, and industry. T h e library also owned the Portuguese history of Jerónimo Osorio. 11 Catalogue of Books belonging to the Loganian Library. Gómara's history was the Historia de México con el Descubrimiento de Nueva Espanna (Amberes [Antwerp], 1554). Literary works were: Cervantes Don Quijote; Montemayor's Diana; Mateo Alemán Vida de Guzmán de Alfarache, one of the most famous Spanish picaresque novels. These were in addition to a Description of the Escurial, Los Reyes Nuevos de Toledo, Spanish editions of Mariana, Herrera, and Acosta, and Latin editions of Campanella, and Piso's controversial De Indiae utriusque re naturalique et medica libri (Amsterdam, 1648).

CULTURAL INTEREST

55

Quaker City made use oí it, although this i m p o r t a n t work could not be found in Madrid in 1777, when leading Spanish botanists h u n t e d it for the Ruíz-Pavón expedition to Peru and Chile. 12 T h e E u r o p e a n Enlightenment, after being transferred to the New World, brought liberalism in both Americas closer together. W h i l e academic societies in the United States were collecting material on Spanish history, literature, a n d ideas, the American Philosophical Society gave these a direct application. T h a t society was the first American scientific g r o u p to nominate Spaniards and Spanish Americans as corresponding members. General and bookish interests gave way to intellectual ties. T h e American Philosophical Society's most celebrated Iberian correspondent was Count Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, liberal economist, historian, and statesman-reformer of the age of Charles III. 1 3 O t h e r members included Francisco de Gardoqui, auditor for the Crown of Castile, and Diego de G a r d o q u i (minister to the U n i t e d States) of the G a r d o q u i Firm at Bilbao, Spain, which had business connections with Americans. By 1800, membership had been granted to the Conde de Caylus, Cipriano Rivera Freire, Portuguese Minister to the U n i t e d States, José de Jaúdenes, Spanish representative here, who later returned to Valencia, Francisco de Peyrolón, Luis de Urbina, José J o a q u i n de Ferrer of Cadiz, and José Miguel Flores, secretary of the Spanish Academy of History. 1 4 Pennsylvania thus gave an original turn to relations with intellectual Spaniards. I n return, the Spanish Academy of History nominated Benjamin Franklin in 1784 as its member for the U n i t e d States. Franklin deserved selection for he was the first e m i n e n t 12 This celebrated work was the Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus sen Plantarum Animalium Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia relationibus in ipsa mexicana urbe collecta ac in ordinem digesta a . . . Lyncaeo (Romae, 1649). See A. J. Barreiro, ed., Relación del Viaje hecho a los Reynos del Perú y Chile . . . por los botánicos . . . enviados para aquella expedición . , . por Hipólito Ruiz, Appendix, 393. 13 Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, 1723-1803, President of the Spanish Academy of History, 1764-1791. In 1791, William Carraichael, American chargé at Madrid, wrote to Jefferson about the "Ct. de Campomanes, Governor of the Council of Castile, who is, with those he can influence decidedly of the opinion that it is to the interest of this country to form liberal and lasting connections with the United States." W. C. Ford, The United States and Spain in 1790, p. 40. " A m e r . Philo. Soc. Transactions, I, II, III, appendices. These men were members of Spanish regional and national economic societies which promoted studies of useful knowledge in Spain and advocated industrial and agricultural reform. Some of them are today obscure, others such as Peyrolón, Urbina and Jaúdenes, are partly forgotten. Justo Pastor Fustér, Biblioteca Valenciana, II, 172, 504, 518.

56

INTER-AM ERIC AN INTEREST

American to develop an interest in Spanish thought. 1 5 Moreover, to enlightened Spanish America he became the symbol of liberation and democracy on the Western continent. Far away in Chile, he was looked upon as the prototype of the "new and virile people" in the Americas, North and South. 18 In some ways, freedom from England and the intellectual discovery of Spain were associated with these developments. T h e most concrete step taken in cultural relations came in 1801: the American Philosophical Society elected Alejandro Ramirez as its Spanish American correspondent. Ramirez, "first secretary of the junta of Guatemala," was a Fellow of the Spanish Academy of History, as well as a noted botanist. He lived most of his life in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Central America; in each of these places he held the important post of Censor of Press and Publication, later becoming Intendant of Puerto Rico. He was the first Latin American scientist chosen, but by no means the last. Ramirez' election placed interAmerican interest on a new level, setting a model precedent for other United States' societies. Although Massachusetts finally emerged from its concern with theology, Boston took a long time to overtake Philadelphia as a center of Hispanic studies. T h a t lay in the future. T h e lapse of time between eighteenth century library collections in Massachusetts and the work of Prescott and Ticknor, cannot conceal the fact that New England's later interest in Spain, Spanish America, and Indian culture began in the earlier period. A great increase took place in New England's Hispanic materials and literary resources, especially at Harvard College and the Massachusetts Historical Society, the most important libraries. T h e Historical Society received many gifts, and listed accessions not available elsewhere, such as Peter Martyr, Pedro Velarde Historia de Philippinas (gift of Dr. William Bentley, of Salem). There was a French translation of Zárate's account of Peru, and a valuable and unique i» Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1796), Tomo I, clviii. Campomanes and Flores, Secretary of the Academy of History, sent him Spanish works from time to time. Carmichael also forwarded volumes from Spain, including the complete works of Francisco Pérez Bayer, an eighteenth century Spanish philosopher. I. M. Hays, Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, IV, 205. i® Manuel de Salas, one of Chile's ablest economists and political writers, protested against the thought of New World (i. e. American) inferiority contained in the writings of de Pauw and Robertson. Salas pointed out that "we are vindicated by Peralta, Franklin and Molina. Astronomy, electricity and history have taken on a new aspect in the hands of these famous Americans." [Manuel de Salas] Escritos de Don Manuel de Salas, I, 608.

CULTURAL

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item called Chronica del Perú, which might be that of Pedro Cieza de León, printed at Antwerp in 1554. 17 Harvard College Library supplemented the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, itemizing the court historian Pero Mexía, chronicler of Charles V; the Mexican Bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, History of the Conquest of China (London, 1671). T h e College, possessor of the Celestina, now obtained the sixteenth century Aragonese historian, Jerónimo Zurita, Indices Rerum Gestarum ab Aragoniae regibus (Zaragoza, 1578). There was also an excellent collection of itineraria, not unusual, considering maritime relations with Spanish America and the Far East. 18 T h e general interest in Spanish America helped to broaden the collections of smaller New England libraries. 19 Certainly the book business profited by popular demand for Spanish American histories, literature, and descriptions. T h e Salem Gazette in 1801 proposed publication of Bernai Díaz del Castillo Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, in the Keatinge translation just issued in London. Before risking the enterprise, the publisher needed five hundred subscriptions. These were easily obtained and in 1803, Salem issued the first American copy of the famous True History of the Conquest of New Spain.20 Massachusetts societies followed in the footsteps of the American Philosophical Society by electing Spaniards to membership. T h e Spanish members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, were the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and the Duke of Almodóvar, enlightened Spaniards of their day. 21 " Other authors were Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, Bernard Romans, Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, Amédée Frézier, Peter Lôfling, and Thomas Gage. T h e cabinet and museum possessed samples of Peruvian silver, gold from New Granada mines, a small map of the viceroyalty of Peru, Inca utensils and instruments given by James Perkins, who traded with Spanish America. Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc., I, Appendix. is Catalogus Bibliothecae Harvardianae. There were several Spanish and Portuguese dictionaries and the Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana, compuesta por la Real Academia Española (Madrid, 1726). A comparison of this catalogue with that of 1723 shows an increase in secular works dealing with travel, trade, and maritime activity. 18 T h e John Adams library included Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Juan de Mariana, Abbé Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, Juan de Solís, Augustin de Zárate. T h e Spanish humanist, Antonio de Nebrija, and the philosopher, Benito Feyjóo, were included. The Catalogue of the Library of John Adams. T h e Salem Social Library owned the usual volumes of Thomas Gage, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Raynal and William Robertson—all Hispanophone in spirit. 2 ° Harriet Silvester Tapley, Salem Imprints, 1768-1825. " A m e r i c a n Academy of Arts and Sciences, Memoirs I (1793), 400; II (1804), 165-66, 181. Almodóvar was the Spanish translator of Raynal, Histoire des Indes.

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New York City did not lag behind Philadelphia and Boston in forming intellectual relations with Spain and Spanish America. In New York, the trend toward Spanish studies began with the language itself, which was taught there as early as 1735. Garrat Noel, a bookseller associated with the historian Ebenezer Hazard, published his Short Introduction to the Spanish Language, in 1751. 22 Interest was as practical as in New England or Pennsylvania, since New York City library collections gave a solid basis to Spanish language studies. T h e New York Society Library, founded in 1754, had acquired Juan Bautista Muñoz' History of the New World, and the Spanish and Portuguese Letters of Robert Southey, besides standard works already cited in Boston and Philadelphia catalogues. Several Spanish and Portuguese dictionaries were available for translators, interpreters, and general readers. T h e Library also possessed a copy of the Celestina, and Francisco Clavigero, History of Mexico collected from the Spanish and Mexican Historians (London, 1787), an authoritative work with Aztec and early Mcxican painting reproductions and manuscripts. 23 T h e New York Historical Society library, founded in 1804, owned one of the broadest Hispanic collections in the young nation. Its catalogue cited many books written or printed in Spanish, and published in Spain. Although in Philadelphia emphasis was placed upon literary and cultural material, New York interest centered upon historical and economic works. T h e Society's panel of Spanish American historians included Solís, Juan Bautista Muñoz, Antonio de Herrera, José de Acosta, Juan Ignacio Molina, Robertson, Miguel Venegas, Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca, Francisco Xavier Clavigero and Bernal Diaz del Castillo. T h e character of the collection was Both men were members of the Spanish Academy, and like many others, may be presumed to have been Freemasons. In 1803, the American Academy acknowledged gifts of a "sample of ancient Peruvian textiles, incense from Chile, different specimens of Peruvian quinine, seeds from Peru and cotton from Guatemala." Catalogue of Books in the Library of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. When James Bowdoin went to Spain in 1805 to settle the boundary problems of Western Louisiana, he went into the matter thoroughly, studying Spanish maps, histories, and treaties. He recommended in letters back home that Americans study and understand the geographers and historians of Spain, even though research and writings could only be carried out in the library of the Academy of History in Madrid. Bowdoin, Papers (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., VI, 337). 22 R. F. Seybolt, "Notes on the Curriculum in Colonial America," Journal of Educational Research, II (Nov. 1925), pp. 275, 277; "Teaching of French in Coloni,il New York," reprinted from the Romanic Review, X (Oct.-Dec. 1919), No. 4, p. 3fil. 23 A Supplementary Catalogue of the Books belonging to the New York Society Library.

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heightened by the historiographical treatise of Gaspar Ibáñez d e Segovia, a n d the transactions of the e n l i g h t e n e d a n d liberal Sociedad Vascongada de Amigos del Pais for 1776, 1779, 1783 a n d 1787. 24 Gifts a n d donations f r o m corresponding m e m b e r s enriched American library collections. I n 1788, the A m e r i c a n Philosophical Society acknowledged a c o n t r i b u t i o n f r o m P e d r o d e C a m p o m a n e s , its correspondent in Spain. 2 5 Dr. Freire, Portuguese Minister to the U n i t e d States, a n d a m e m b e r of the Society, d o n a t e d the prize-winning publications of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. H e also presented the celebrated economic analysis of Brazilian p r o d u c t i o n a n d trade by the Bishop of F e r n a m b u c o : Azeredo C o u t o de C o u t i n h o , Ensaio Economico sobre o comercio de Portugal e suas Colonias (Lisboa, 1794). 28 T h e exchange of publications between American a n d H i s p a n i c societies also helped to p r o m o t e these new-born relations. O n July 17, 1799, the American Philosophical Society f o r w a r d e d its Transactions to Spanish Academies in Valencia, M a d r i d , a n d Seville. Even more p e r t i n e n t was the s h i p m e n t of its Proceedings to the "Academy at Mexico." 27 Such actions as these led to u n d e r s t a n d i n g , exchanges, a n d even purchases. T h e Philosophical Society acquired books o n Portuguese colonization, the Philippines, H i s p a n i c America, the medical researches of Dr. H i p ó l i t o R u i z o n q u i n i n e , a n d those of Dr. H i p ó l i t o U n á n u e o n the coca p l a n t . T h e study of P e r u v i a n history a n d culture was aided by the purchase in 1803, of the " M e r c u r i o P e r u v i a n o [sic] from its C o m m e n c e m e n t . " Valentín F o r o n d a , Spanish consul in Philadelphia, sent additional volumes on medicine a n d political economy. T h e Royal Academy at Lisbon gave books on 2

' Catalogue of Books in the New York Historical Society. José Veitia Linage, Norte de ¡a Contratación de las Indias (Seville, 1672), a n d several manuscript accounts of South Pacific voyages were catalogued. T h e historiographical essay was the Noticia y Juicio de los mas Principales Historiadores de España. 2'> Transactions, III, Appendix. T h e gifts were Fastos de la Academia Real de la Historia, 1739, 1740, 1741; Informe de la Lugar de la Sepulteras de la Academia de la Historia: Johannis Gensii Sepulveda, Opera, 4 tomos; Ensayo sobre los Alphabetos de las Letras Desconocidas en las Mas Antiguas Medallas y Monumentos de España, por don Luis Velasquez, Academia de la Historia. C a m p o m a n e s donated his own Diccionario Latino-Arábigo in September 1789. Like Voltaire, Campomanes had an interest in New England a n d Pennsylvania Q u a k e r history a n d wrote u p o n their establishments. -o Memorias da Academia Real das Sctencias de Lisboa, T o m o I, Appendix. These works were: Tratado da Educacao Fysica; Institutiones Juris Civilis Lusitani; Documentos Arábicos; Memorias da Literatura Portuguesa; Memorias Económicas; Programa da Acadamia Real das Scienctas; Flora Cochinchinensis. 27 F.arly Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society compiled by one of its secretaries from the "Manuscript Minutes of its Meetings f r o m 1744 to 1835," P> oceediugs of the Atner. Pililo. Soc. X X I I .

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Portuguese history and letters, and a history of Sao Paulo, Brazil. On January 8, 1801, the Spanish Academy of History acknowledged receipt of four volumes of Transactions of the Royal [sic] Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and forwarded, in exchange, the first three volumes of its own Actas.2' Collections of Hispanic Americana are one way of measuring early study of Latin American culture and history. Yet, knowledge of the southern continent was not confined to societies, academies, or the learned world. Information reached the general public by way of magazines and newspapers which printed popular accounts, travelers' descriptions, and better known histories. Magazine articles dealt with South American history and antiquities, while newspapers devoted space to current commercial or economic news. Periodicals also gave uniformity to attitudes formed outside the walls of colleges, societies, and libraries. Magazines serialized the history of William Robertson, or the talcs of other writers on Spanish America. During 1758-59, Samuel Nevill reproduced Thomas Gage's Travels in his New American Magazine. Articles on the Potosí mines, taken from Juan and Ulloa, attracted American readers. The Columbian Magazine, for July and November 1788, printed Jeremy Belknap's study of De Soto, and literary articles on Cervantes and Quevedo.29 The American Magazine, published in Philadelphia from 1787 to 1798, gave particular attention to Spanish Louisiana and opportunities for trade with the Spanish West Indies.80 American newspapers supplemented the information available about Spanish America. Newspaper articles were largely practical and useful, emphasizing commerce and agriculture. For example, the Salem Gazette brought on discussion and correspondence by reporting the discovery of a new plant in Chile in 1784.31 T h e New York Packet followed the quinine experiments of the celebrated Spaniard, Dr. Gómez Ortega.32 The public stress on utility, or as 28 Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), IV, xx. 2» Lyon Richardson, History of Early American Magazines, 1741-1789, pp. 127, 130, 284 n., 293. 30 Among the subscribers were Diego de Gardoqui, Thomas Stoughton, and the Cuban merchant, Salvador de los Monteros. si Salem Gazette, November 2, 1784, reported that the plant was a shrub "yielding much seed each year. It was used by the Indians and its taste and uses is much like wheat." Not long afterward Jeremy Belknap wrote to Ebenezer Hazard asking, "Did you observe in a late paper that a sort of gTain, the produce of a perennial shrub has been discovered in Chile?" Belknap to Hazard, February 11, 1785. Belknap, Papers (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series V, Vol. II, 414). 32 Dr. Casimiro Gómez Ortega was an outstanding scientist. Occupying the

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contemporaries put it, "useful knowledge," was illustrated in 1794, when the New York Chamber of Commerce, at the request of the Society for Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures, instructed its ship captains to import from South America the "Vigone or Peruvian sheep. . . . From the same country, the Gulf of Mexico, and Bay of Honduras may be brought the pecari which is a small and singular species of wild hog." 33 How useful were library collections, gifts, articles, and studies in shaping inter-American relations? No doubt, discussion was aroused, but it is even more important to realize that Americans obtained their first understanding and contact with Latin American people, customs, history, and culture. Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton, and Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill of Columbia College in New York, drew upon material available here in the United States. Dr. Barton, professor of Natural History at the College of Philadelphia, dealt with Spanish American literature on the Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru. 34 Barton made use of primary published sources, but he lacked opportunity for field study. 35 Hostile to the pessimism of the Scotch historian Robertson, and to the European scientists Buffon and de Pauw, Barton upheld the American thesis that man in the New World was not in decline, but actually in a state of progress. His medical work carried his reputation into Guatemala, an unusual center of Spanish American enlightenment Post of Director of the Royal Gardens, similar to the post held by Buffon in France, he was a member of the scientific societies of London and Paris. Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Ensayo de una Biblioteca Española de los Mejores Escritores del Reynado de Carlos III (Madrid, 1785), Dr. Gómez Ortega, sponsor of the Ruíz-Pavón expedition, was a friend of Campomanes. 33 Transactions of the Society of the State of New York for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures, II, xxxi. T h e pragmatic attitude is further indicated by the pamphlet, "A Catalogue of such Foreign Plants as are Worthy of being Encouraged in our American Colonies for the Purposes of Medicine, Agriculture and Commerce," which listed plants of Spain, Peru, Mexico, New Granada, and Central America. It was written before the American Revolution and reproduced in Amer. Philo. Soc. Transactions, I, 255 ff. For actual transfer of plants and animals from Spain and Spanish America, see Harry Bernstein, "Spanish Influence in the United States—Economic Aspects," Hispanic American Historical Review, XVIII (1938), 43-66. Before the Revolution, in 1773, exchange of plants and animals and natural curiosities was frequent between Spanish and English societies, and North America participated indirectly. Great Britain: Historical Manuscripts Commission The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth "American Papers." Vol. II, 16. a* Barton to Joseph Priestley, May 16, 1796, Transactions of the Amer. Philo. Soc., IV, 196. as Barton to Priestley, ibid., I l l , 241 ff.

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at that time, where "a translation [of his work on goitre] in the Spanish language has appeared." 3 8 New York intellectuals were equally well represented by Dr. Mitchill of Columbia College, an eminent scientist and a sympathizer with Latin American independence. In December 1813, he lectured before the membership of the New York Historical Society, showing an exceptional familiarity with Spanish American science. Mitchill was aware of contemporary experiment in South America, and the work of his Spanish American colleagues. He knew of the RuizPavón expedition to Peru and Chile, the writings of Humboldt, the researches of Dr. Martin Sessé and Dr. José Mariano Morino in Mexico, and Dr. José Celestino Mutis in New Granada. 37 In general, cultural relations between the intellectual few grew out of eighteenth century internationalism. Library collections, and publication exchanges stimulated inter-American friendship. Election of Spanish Americans to North American societies was a cultural, if not a diplomatic, form of recognition. Dr. Mitchill, a friend of independence, admitted the steady progress of Spanish American thought, even under the Spanish monarchy. He declared he wished it in his power to state the particulars . . . for the improvement of American botany made by the Kings of Spain. T h e r e is not perhaps a government upon earth that has expended so much money for the advancement of this branch of natural history as that of the Castilian M o n a r c h . 3 8

Many Americans developed special interests in the Indian civilizations. Jeremy Belknap, the historian, believed that Aztec and Inca culture had no remote antiquity. 33 Mexican hieroglyphics attracted special attention. 40 Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard corresponded at 3 1 B. S. Barton, ed., The Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, II (1806), Part I, 193. s! N.Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, II, 149-216. His influence in furthering understanding may be seen in the New York Medical Repository, which he edited. Reviews, comments, and occasional reports helped disseminate knowledge of Spanish America. 33 N.Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, II (1814), 206. 33 Belknap to John Eliot. J . Belknap, Papers (Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., Series VI, Vol. IV, 221). T h e Puritan writer of the seventeenth century, Daniel Gookin, stated that he had "read of the Indians of Magellanes, Peru, Brazilia and Florida." Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series I, 1792, pp. 141-227). This work was first published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1674. Barton was sure that the "Mexicans, Acolhuas, Tlascalas, and other more improved nations of the Mexican Empire were acquainted with the hieroglyphicki." In August 1789, John Pintard wrote Belknap sending him two tomes of Clavigero, whom he considered superior to all writers upon the Aztec script. J . Belknap, Papers, IV, 227.

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length on the Inca history of Garcilaso de la Vega. T h e historical debate over the Columbian discovery of America corresponded to the study of I n d i a n origins by Barton a n d others interested in ethnology. 42 Provincialism declined as collections, pamphlets, books, correspondence, diaries, newspapers, a n d magazines steadily revealed South America's complex Hispanic-Indian culture. Materials in New York, New England, a n d Pennsylvania were popularized by J e d i d i a h Morse. Morse, using English a n d Spanish writers on the Indies, repeated superficial a n d biased accounts, which h e borrowed f r o m Robertson and de Pauw. 4 3 Still, by 1810, general interest had risen to the point where a domestic market existed for books on Spain a n d Spanish America. 44 Individuals in both Americas corresponded, a n d communicated to each other the special knowledge of their countries. B e n j a m i n Smith Barton was known in G u a t e m a l a where his work had been introduced by Dr. José Felipe Flores, a noted G u a t e m a l a n scientist a n d Honorary Physician to the Spanish Crown. Dr. Flores was an early, though little known, visitor to the U n i t e d States. H e h a d come here in 1797 to study the work of his Philadelphia colleagues. Barton's work was cited and described in the Gazeta de Guatemala of 1801, which reviewed it extensively in ten successive issues. Guatemalans also quoted the weighty medical opinions of doctors B e n j a m i n S. Barton, Benjamin Rush, a n d J o h n R. Coxe of the Philadelphia Medical School in the discussion over smallpox innoculation. It is interesting to notice that Guatemalans referred to Barton as criollo, or American. American scientific writings were read in Mexico City where a capable scientific group worked. José A n t o n i o Alzate, the famous astronomer, wrote on Franklin's accomplishments in electricity, and Alexander Garden's cochineal experiments. Alzate h a d studied the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society which he had Belknap and Hazard discussed his chronology and account of Inca history. Ibid., II, 141, 167, 306. « Transactions of the Amer. Philo. Soc., Ill, 12: J. Bowdoin, Papers, VI, 192. T h e Spanish Academy of History sent material dealing with Columbus' discovery to Franklin in 1787. Hays, Calendar, IV, 41-42. There was much discussion of the Columbian problem, even before Washington Irving wrote his biography. 43 Robertson's work had been serialized in 150 issues of the Boston Weekly Advertiser. ** Catalogue of all the Books Printed in the United States. Among these were Depons on Venezuela (New York), Molina on Chile. Others were Cooper, History of South America (Albany), 50 cents; Bernal Diaz del Castillo, True History (Salem), $4; Robertson, History of America (New York), $4 [this was in four voliimes; there was a cheaper issue for $1]; Marmontel, The Incas (Philadelphia), $2.

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seen in Mexico. He recognized the fact that he "would need much paper to deal with the discoveries of Franklin," although he did reprint some of Franklin's letters on optics, rays, and waves in his Gazeta.'* T h e Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society tersely acknowledge a formal request for cultural relations from an eminent Colombian scientist. T h i s proposal came from the famous astronomer-republican, Francisco de Caldas of Bogotá. It was forwarded to Philadelphia by "Pedro de la Lastra from Santa Fé de Bogotá. Also a Description of the Astronomical Observatory there, in charge of F. I. de Caldas who seeks correspondence with Astronomers in the United States." In his Bogotá Seminario de la Nueva Granada, Caldas, the editor, reprinted references and descriptions of the work of Jeremy Belknap, Manassah Cutler, and Dr. Barton. Mutual understanding became firmer as interest in Spanish America continued to develop. One can easily feel the pride of Dr. Mitchill, when the translation of Molina's History of Chile appeared in 1808. He wrote: " I t is an honor to our age and country that the first translation into our own tongue should have been done at Middletown in Connecticut by one of our own literati and published in this city." 47 This volume on Chile was dedicated to Dr. Barton. Considering the activity of scientific men, a question may now be asked: what concept of Spanish America did the general public derive from all these collections, exchanges, relations, histories, memberships, scientific and library interests, magazine serials, periodical accounts, and commercial contacts? T h e answer is that popular notions were drawn from British travel books, histories, attitudes, or the descriptions of Spaniards such as Las Casas and Ulloa. T h e widely read history of Robertson fitted in with accepted ideas of South American backwardness, lack of democracy, and political ineptness. T h e spirit of the age was involved here, since Robertson and others used Mexican and Peruvian cultures as well as Spanish colonial history to draw conclusions about all New World people. Although its principle for North America was rejected by Barton, Mitchill, and Jefferson, this point of view circulated enough to convince most Americans of the truth of Spanish cruelty, and the "black legend" of the Conquest. T h e contrast to the general opinion was clearly expressed by the José Antonio Alzate, ed., Gazeta de Literatura de México, I, No. 3 (1789), 22, 50; No. 15 (April 1790). Garden's work is cited in III, No. 32 (Aug. 1794), 250; and III, No. 3 (Oct. 1794), 267. « Transactions, Araer. Philo. Soc. (New Series), Vol. I (1818). " The translation was done by Richard Alsop, a neighbor of William Shaler at Middletown, who later assumed a slight role in inter-American cultural relations.

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reviewer of Humboldt's Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, contributed in 1811 to the New York Medical Repository [by Dr. Mitchill, the editor?]: Nothing has been a more trite and erroneous subject of remark than the ignorance of the lazy Dons. T h i s silly cant has been imitated in our country from the English. It has been so frequently repeated and so widely proclaimed that many of our honest patriots sincerely believe that the Spaniards are by a great difference their inferiors. This is a miserable and unworthy prejudice. A moderate inquiry will evince that New Spain has produced a full proportion of respectable observers and valuable writings. . . . And as to public spirit and patronage it has been manifested in the endowments of learned institutions and in the encouragement of scientific men to an extent of which no parallel exists in our State of Society. W e copy the author's [Humboldt] description of the liberality and munificence of the government as well for the purpose of correcting existing mistakes, as with the desire of encouraging our legislatures, associations and wealthy individuals to imitate such noble example. 4 8

Such an attitude was more in line with the sentiments of the Chilean, Manuel de Salas, who had also protested against the Europeaninspired thesis that Spanish Americans were inferior, that they were unfit for science.48 Both judgments, in their own way, show the increased awareness of Latin America, although the latter is less political and more scientific. The fact is that the differing conclusions in the United States after 1810 when support for Latin American independence was warm in some circles, and cold in others, were coupled to political events. The clash of views was part of the argument over recognition. The political or diplomatic lag behind cultural interest and inter-American trade hampered the fullest expression of these relations. New York Medical Repository, Supra, p. 56, and note.

Vol. XV [new series], 1812.

V

INTER AMERICAN POLITICAL TIES and cultural factors do not fully measure the nature of interAmerican relations. A political interest was also present; it was to appear at first as religious, spiritual concern over Indians and Spaniards. Geographic, trade, intellectual, and diplomatic factors were active to a considerable degree from the earliest days when Edward Winslow and members of the Massachusetts Colony joined expeditions against the Spanish Caribbean. Nevertheless, while culture was important, and Mexican pieces of eight were essential to specielacking merchants of Anglo-America, there was another reservoir of riches in Spanish America. For a short while, after 1700, it was the hope of some New Englanders that a new church could be brought to Spanish America, and its population converted. Under the Spanish colonial system, the Crown of Castile was actually the religious head of the Roman Church in the Indies. There was a royal trinity of government, commerce, and religion, whose absolutism kept out Protestantism as a heresy, and AngloAmerican trade as an economic fallacy. Monarchy, mercantilism, and religion were one in Spain, and the identity of Church and State meant that attacks upon either harmed both. During the years of dynastic rivalry over Indies trade, few New England citizens were as influential in the North American colonies as Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall. Few appreciated as fully as they did the economic resources and religious possibilities of Spanish America. Against a background of worldwide trade and colonial empire, New England provincials organized their plans for the Indies.1 Using the religious language of Puritan thought, Mather and Sewall preached on a spiritual aspect of British policy which good citizens of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania could TRADE

i During the War of 1739-48 a group of dissatisfied Mexicans went to a British officer in New England, offering commercial benefits in exchange for arms and men to support a revolt. T h e Viceroy crushed the plot. "Notas acerca de una Pretendida Conspiración de Mexicanos para lograr la Independencia de la Nueva España al Amparo de Inglaterra en 1766," Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, IX (Oct.-Dec. 1938), 768-81. Their purpose was similar to the commission to New England cited above. J. Fred Rippy, Historical Evolution o/ Hispanic America, p. 187. 66

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accept. Missionary activity and propagation of the faith were two main purposes of their project. They sought to open the Indies to true religion at a time when England was at war with Spain. Current opinion in England and America associated religion with expansion, for "world trade meant colonies, and colonization appealed to many classes. Patriots believed colonies could serve as a base for war with Spain. The religiously inclined thought of the Indians awaiting conversion." 2 The Bostonians felt that religion paved the way for a more subtle entrance to Spanish America than war or commerce. The translation of the Bible by John Eliot, Puritan Apostle to the Indians, set a model for them. One religion for the New World was their goal, with its center in Mexico City. Plans for religious unity of the Americas preceded cultural or political unity. Judge Samuel Sewall was one Boston colonial who searched the horizons of his war-torn generation for news of revolt in New Spain [Mexico] where he yearned to establish the New Jerusalem of Puritan tradition. Every rumor suggested to him that the time was ripe to introduce his theology into Spanish America. Beneath his religious exterior, the Judge, a good subject of Her Britannic Majesty, "was the progenitor of a practical race that was to spread the gospel of economic individualism across the continent." 3 Sewall watched for all news from Mexico and Central America. He followed the efforts of the Scot's Company to colonize Darien, heart and center of Spanish America, and in 1704, noted the arrival of royal permission to trade with the "American Spaniards." Yet, like his friend, Cotton Mather, Judge Sewall preferred a missionary program. Cotton Mather shared Sewall's interest in this project. From 1698 to 1710, New England waited for possible resistance in New Spain and the Indies against French domination of Old Spain. T h e time was opportune to launch the circulation of the gospel among New World Spaniards. Mather and Sewall went further than propaganda of the faith, hoping to introduce revolt and change in Mexico City. 2

Harper, English Navigation Laws, p. 15. s Vernon L. Harrington, Main Currents in American Thought, I, 97. In 1686 Sewall wrote in his Diary: "Sabbath Sptr 26. Mr. Lee preaches with us in the Afternoon from Isa. 52.7. Says that all America should be converted, Mexico overcome, England sent over to convert the natives, look you do it." The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series V, Vol. V, 152); also Samuel Sewall Letter Book (ibid., Series VI, Vol. I, 300). Sewall's hope for a New Jerusalem in Mexico is often repeated in his correspondence. His argument drew upon the popular seventeenth century theory of Thomas Thorogood and John Eliot which maintained that the American Indian! were descendants of the "lost tribes of Israel." He never lost his faith and in 1723 wrote to Governor Burnet of New York affirming, "I rather hope that America Mexicana will be [the New Jeiusalein]," Letter Book, II, 156.

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Before Mather issued his religious appeal to South Americans, printed in Spanish, in 1699 as "An Essay to Convey Religion into the Spanish Indies," he had trained himself for this ambitious undertaking. In January 1699, he confided to his Diary his active purpose and preparation: About this time understanding that the way for our communication with the Spanish Indies opens more and more I sett myself to learn the Spanish Language. T h e Lord wonderfully prospered mee in this Undertaking; a few liesure Minutes in the Evening of every Day in about a Fortnight, or three weeks time, so accomplished mee, I could write very good Spanish. Accordingly I compos'd a little Body of the Protestant Religion, in certain Articles, back'd with irresistible sentences of Scripture. This I turn'd into the Spanish Tongue; and am now printing it with a Design to send it by all the ways that I can into the several parts of Spanish America . . . as not knowing whether the time of our Lord Jesus Christ to have glorious Churches in America bee not at hand. 4

Sewall also prepared for the advance into the New Jerusalem by studying Spanish and its pertinent literature, especially the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, and Cipriano Valera, Spanish Protestant.6 These, he felt, were reformist arms in the arsenal of religious war on Spain. International events gave him the chance to test his project, and writing to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, in 1704, he advised * He first called his work "La Religión Pura en Doze Palabras Fieles, dignas de ser recibidas de Todos." The Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681-1708 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series VII. Vol. VII, 284-85). It was published in Boston as La Religión Pura to which is added La Fe del Christiano. En Veynte Cuatro Artículos de la Institución de Christo. An Essay to Convey Religion into the Spanish IndiesOther Bostonians interested in Spanish America, in 1699 could read the Observations of a Person of Eminence and Worth in Caledonia writing to his friend in Boston, NJL., on their Scots' Settlement New Edinburgh, at Darien in America; with an Account of the Nature and Condition of the Country, and Good Disposition of the Natives toward them, and of their addressing the President of Panama. This was dated at Fort Andrew, February 18, 1698/1699 and was printed at Boston the same year, 1699. Sewall was a great friend of this enterprise. He wrote the surviving ministers, and always kept the Latin version of the articles of surrender of the ill-fated Darien undertaking to settle Middle America. Letter Book, I, pp. 227-29, 242^14. ° In 1691 he sent to London for a copy of Las Casas, in Spanish and English, a Spanish Grammar, and Dictionary. He purchased the Valera Bible in 1698. Letter Booh, I, 297. Palau y Dulcet, Manual del Librero Hispano-Americano, VII, 101, does not attribute any translation of the Bible to Valera. He did write tracts against the Mass and Papacy, printed in Spanish (London, 1588 and 1599), and put into English in 1600 and 1604. Palau does notice a Spanish Bible printed at Amsterdam, 1602, compared with Hebrew and Greek texts, revised, corrected and annotated by Cipriano Valera.

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it would be well if you could set on foot the printing of the Spanish Bible in a fair Octavo, Ten Thousand Copies; and then you might attempt the bombing of Santa Domingo, the Havanna, Porto Rico and Mexico itself. I would willingly give five pounds toward the charge of it. . . . Mr. Leigh commends the translation of Cipriano Valera; which I am the Owner of in Folio." Sewall was also a member of the council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His language, although spiritual in tone, did not lose its political meaning. Religious "bombing" of the Indies through propagation of the gospel was part of the contemporary war against Spain. Mather and Sewall were not alone in this matter; they were associated with a group of Bostonians. These missionary-minded colonials were described as a "Number of Gentlemen who make the best Figures in this Place." T h e words are those of Edward Bromfield writing to his brother in London on their activities. T h e letter dated Boston, October 9, 1704, went on to say: "They have attempted to send the Notices of the T r u e Christian Protestant Religion into the midst of the Spanish Nation by a Sheet which one of their Number did in the Spanish language fit for that intent." 7 More than a religious mission lay behind Judge Sewall's scheme. Extracts from his Diary show the scope of his interest across the years. Matters of trade, politics, and religion were mingled in his perspective, as they were in that of other minds, during a generation of Spanish American struggle: 8 «Letter Book I, 297; Hawks Transcripts on Massachusetts (N.Y. Hist. Soc.) Vol. I. Francis L. Hawks copied the letters and minutes of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in 1836. W. H. Allison summarized these transcripts in the Inventory of Unpublished Material for American Religious History in Protestant Church Archives and other Repositories, pp. 98-128. Unfortunately, Dr. Allison omitted any reference to the Massachusetts transcripts. T h e Greene and Morris Guide, p. 305, lists the Hawks Transcripts on Massachusetts as being in the New York Historical Society, where they were found. C. M. Andrews and F. G. Davenport, Guide to the Manuscript Materials for the History of the United States to 1783, declare the Hawks Transcripts to be inadequate duplicates of only one half to one third of the originals in the S.P.G. Sewall's letter of 1704, for example, is still uncopied in London archives. T h e minute books of the S.P.G. for 1704 were in the Library of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 7 Hawks Transcripts—Massachusetts, Vol. I. Edward Bromfield to Mr. Thos. Bromfield. This letter contains a report of the general work of the Society's representatives in New England. T h e Boston group drew up literature for the French in Canada as well as other European colonies. They gave their support and contributions to libraries, churches, missions, stations, and conversion literature. « Diary, V, 485; VI, 53, 110; Letter Book, I, 192-93. T h e news of 1704 refers to

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"Mexican Revolt is a sham as Mr. Tho. Brattle saith: Report is taken from John Bant which as far as I can see is rather Negative. . . . He in his wilder'd condition heard though instead of going to Barbadoes fell near Yucatan. "Copy of a Letter to His Excellency, the Governour, Sept 16 1698 by the Post: 'Here is one John Bant who sail'd from this Port last May . . . fell into the Bay of Mexico and came within sight of Yucatan. From thence he went to the Havanna. . . . Said Bant turn'd up to the Bay of Metansis [Matanzas] to water; where he spent some days and conversed with the People. And yet heard not a word of the Mexican Revolt which makes the truth of it to be questioned here."

1701/2.

"Captain Timo. Clark tells me that a line drawn to the Comet strikes just upon Mexico. Spake of a Revolution there, how great a thing it would be. This Blaze had much put me in mind cf Mexico, because we must look toward Mexico to view it. . . . I have long pray'd for Mexico and of late in these words, that God would open the Mexican Fountain."

1704.

"July 1, 1704. Feria Septima. News is brought from New-York of T r a d e to be had with the American Spaniards."

A n episode, occurring during the War of the Spanish Succession, gave a flurry of encouragement to Sewall's reform. W h e n England backed Habsburg claims to the Spanish throne against the French, supporters of the Habsburg archduke, Charles, w o n an unusual opportunity. Anglo-Americans also adopted the Habsburg claim, and joined the war. Some Spanish American colonials supported the Archduke, and fought to defeat both the Bourbon maneuver, and French commercial interest in Spain and Spanish America. W h e n South American officials resisted the French, their aid was welcomed by Britain, Jamaica, and N e w England. O n e of these pro-Habsburg Spanish Americans was Carlos Sucre y Borda, Spanish governor of Cartagena in the Indies. Sucre, according to the British and the Jamaicans, was to be useful to their trade in the Spanish Main, 9 but his arrival in Boston, where he had been taken in 1709, the royal measure which Governor Cornbury of New York had acknowledged. Supra, chap, i, p. 9. The text of the royal order as printed in the Boston News-Letter shows that the commercial purpose of Queen Anne was "to permit and sufter Her Majesty's Subjects freely and openly to carry to any Place or Territory under the Dominion of Spain in America . . . and likewise to permit Her Majesty's Subjects to bring from the Spanish Dominions in America, any merchandise or goods of those parts." Boston News-Letter, July S, 1704: "This Morning, His Excellency in Council had ordered a Proclamation to be published signifying Her Majesty's Pleasure therein." »Lord Dartmouth to Governor Hamilton of Jamaica, March 22, 1711. Cal. State Papers (Colonial Series, America and West Indies [1710-11] p. 436).

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was also helpful to Sewall's plan. Sewall wanted to convert him ; while the British expected that the Governor, like his predecessor, 10 would promote their commercial expansion. T h e British aim ended badly however; after Sucre's return to Cartagena, he was recalled to Madrid, "upon some suspitions of his keeping a correspondence with the enemies of his Master." 11 While staying in Boston, Sucre stirred the curiosity of members of the Council, especially Samuel Sewall. As a councillor, Sewall had a special opportunity to talk to the Spanish American governor and to explain his design, dwelling on the need to convert the Indians as part of any change. T h e Judge loaned Sucre his copy of the Valera Bible, a potential weapon in bringing the Reformation to the Indies. Nothing, however, came of these discussions, but Sewall used this chance to learn about Mexico, the focal point of his dream of many years.12 Generally speaking, both Sewall and Mather emphasized hemispheric religious unity through conversion, at a time when religious unity was connected with force, and the opportunity to enter the paradise of riches in the Indies. 13 But the high hopes inspired by Sewall and Mather in the days of Puritan Massachusetts, lessened in importance as North Americans began their direct contact, and were able to penetrate behind Spanish mercantilism into the monied temples of the "New Jerusalem." Wars and maritime-commercial expansion replaced a religious with a trade vocabulary, while political factors added a new basis of interest. Naval warfare kept open the sea lanes to northern South America, while illicit trade and privateering weakened hostile Spanish comBoston News-Letter, May 27, 1701. Jamaica, February 7, 1701 by way of Philadelphia: "Piemento Governor of Carthagcen hath not embraced Philip the 5th [Bourbon] a n d would not suffer either French Officers, Souldiers or Merchant T r a d e r s into the City since the W a r but rejected those sent from St. Domingo. . . . Both Gov. Sclvin and o u r present Gov. spoke very honorably of him. . . . Lodged his Cash with o u r Merchants here to remit to England where he has a Bank as also in Holland." 11 Governor H a m i l t o n to Board of T r a d e a n d Plantations, in Cal. State Papers (Col. & W.I. [1711-12], p. 205). 12 Sewall to Sucre, December 17, 1709, Letter Book, I, 387; also ibid., I, 405, 406; Sewall to J o h n Stark, J a n u a r y 6, 1710: "Battle near Mons. Spanish Govr"; also Diary, J a n u a r y 6, 1709, VI, 248; " I n Council a Spaniard's petition is read praying his Freedom." is Elizabeth Cole, wife of the sergeant-at-arms of the Governor's Council of New York, petitioned that body in 1708 for official payment for board and lodging at her h o m e of " P a d r e Freay, T o m a s Strada, a n d Padre Pascoal," Cal. Hist. MSS, [Albany], p p . 170-72. It is not known what these Spanish priests were doing in New York while Sucre was in Boston, unless the suit could have been brought for lodgement of captives.

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mercial policy. Spain fought contraband trade by seizing AngloAmerican shipping and cargo, thereby laying a basis for colonial merchant claims which, before 1776, North American governors negotiated directly with Spanish American officials. T h e settlement of debts and claims offers numerous examples of direct, inter-colonial contact. T h i s type of commercial movement increased the tempo of mutual knowledge beyond the slow spiritual pace of Sewall and Mather. Then, too, the New World was the scene of imperial war which meant invasion of the Caribbean. New York, New England, and Pennsylvania provincials fought for England in Cuba, Central America, and on the Spanish Main. By 1770, colonial wars, illicit trade, and privateering had familiarized many Americans with Spanish American terrain, ports., currents, trade routes and geography, while others, at home, were reading about these places in travel books and libraries. As early as 1739, the British Government had instructed the governors of New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to "engage such persons within your province in the present expedition as have at any time been resident in or have a particular knowledge of Spanish Ports, Coasts or Settlements in the West Indies." 14 Of the 15,659 men in the land forces besieging Havana in 1762, 6,892 were Americans. 15 Privateering was very useful in adding navigation and hydrography to the knowledge of land armies, and aided their efforts. As Lewis Morris, New York Admiralty Judge, wrote in 1739: " T h e people of New York, Rhode Island etc are very fond of having leave to make reprisalls on the Spaniard and have fitted out some sloops for that purpose." 16 Privateering, however, could and did prove embarrassing to Britain in her peacetime relations with Spain. In 1757, William Pitt denounced the colonial practice of issuing letters of marque against Spanish shipping carrying Spanish goods in the Caribbean at a time when it was "self-evident that no Effects whatever carried by a Nation to its « Labaree, Royal Instructions, II, 735-40, Doc. No. 1017. 1 5 Thomas Mante, The History of the Late War in North America, 407. See [John Rhodes] Surprising Adventures and Sufferings of John Rhodes. T h e author describes his captivity in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Also, "Orderly Book of the Havana Expedition," in The Two Putnams. Rufus and Israel Putnam, advance agents of a New England land company, gave a description of Santo Domingo, Cuba, Montecristi, and the newly Spanish colony of Louisiana. Lewis Morris, Papers. (N.J. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV, 66). Morris to Sir Charles Wager, October 12, 1739; Journal of the New York Legislature. T h e Governor of New York, in issuing letters of marque, emphasized the success "which will greatly enlarge the trade of this province." Journal of the Legislative Council of New York, 1691-1775, II, 752.

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own Ports can in any case fall under that Description [contraband]." " T h e diplomatic problem of privateering was not limited to notes between London and Madrid only. Correspondence between AngloAmerican and Spanish American governors also became an essential part of illegal contact. Maritime difficulties brought about the first instances of direct, official communication. Disputes over Indies navigation and trade laws were negotiated by exchanges of notes and proto-diplomatic protests. Spanish officials in America did not go to war with North Americans over contraband and privateering, but rather adopted reprisals which led to more protests, claims, warnings, and even negotiation. Most notes and communication dealt with violations of Spanish mercantilist laws, confiscation of cargo, collection of debts, and, what was most unexpected, freedom for Negroes unjustly seized by Americans and carried into slavery. ' It is interesting to observe, as a suggestion of eighteenth century philanthropy, that the question of Negro slaves took first place in these notes. Enslavement of non-Negro people in the Caribbean was a by-product of "reprisal on the Spaniard," and Spanish American governors protested vehemently and directly to Anglo-Americans. Many of the "Negro slaves" taken from the Indies were neither colored nor slaves. They were freemen in their homelands. Spanish colonials, mestizo or criollo, who were taken away by privateers, pleaded their freedom in petition after petition. 18 " Gertrude S. Kimball, ed., Correspondence of William Pitt, I, 93-94, 176-78. Governor Pownall of Massachusetts blamed privateering on Rhode Islanders. Privateering did not always escape the penalty, and Admiralty Courts libeled ships that violated the law. T h e papers of James Alexander, eminent New York colonial lawyer, indicate the prosecution of Samuel Bayard of New York in 1745 for a prize taken off Cabo de la Hacha with a cargo of gold, silver, and thirteen "negroe slaves." Oliver Short was sued in 1741 for a prize of cocoa and "negroe slaves" seized near Chagres, Panama. is Petitions date from 1684 to 1756, in New York City courts. Cal. Hist. MSS, Part II, "English Manuscripts." Indians from New Spain and Brazil were also seized and sold into slavery here. A. W. Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, p p . 164, 172. There is some reason to suppose that the "negro slave" uprising in New York City in 1741, during the Spanish war, was partly caused by these Spanish American captives. J u d g e Horsmanden, who tried and sentenced the accused, wrote to Cadwallader Colden placing the blame on " R o m a n Catholics." Letter dated 1741, Colden Letters (Bancroft Transcripts), Vol. I. Horsmanden, reporting the trial proceedings, described the "cry among the People, the Spanish Negroes, the Spanish Negroes, take up the Spanish Negroes!" These were the "negroes" who had been sold into slavery, "afterwards pretending to have been Freemen in their own Country, began to grumble at their hard Usage of being sold as slaves." [Daniel Horsmanden] A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy for burning the City of New York, pp. 7, 49.

INTER-AMERICAN INTEREST Governor Greene of Rhode Island, in 1746, sent a reply to the Governor and Captain-General of Cuba in the matter of twenty-two free subjects of the King of Spain. Rhode Island privateers had taken them from Cuba to Newport, 1 9 where they were sold into slavery. A similar case in the same year which involved the New York Admiralty Court was "ex Parte Seventeen Indian Molattos and Negroes of Twenty taken from a Gaily belonging to the King of Spain," September 23, 1746. T h e New York Court issued and received depositions from Governor Espinosa of Cuba, who posted them to the Governor and Council of New York. T h e documents certified that "the molattos and negroes" were of free status in Cuba. T h e Admiralty Court in New York granted them freedom. 20 Spanish American officials filed proofs of freedom with AngloAmerican governors. T h e i r testimony was usually necessary to support the captive's claim to liberty. New York courts recognized these statements, setting "negroes" free, but holding goods and cargoes as legitimate prize. In addition to legal testimony and the interchange of depositions, there were strong notes between Spanish and American governors over the pernicious practice. In 1747, Governor Palmer of Pennsylvania entered into correspondence with the Governor of Cuba over human prizes taken from a seized ship. 21 As illicit activity in the Caribbean grew, it inevitably created other disputes that could only be settled directly. Loyal Spanish American officials denounced North American violations of Spanish mercantilist law. In 1768 one faithful Caribbean governor warned Governor Penn in a note sent to Philadelphia: Governor Bucareli of Cuba reminded that official that the laws of Spain prohibited "all Manner of Communication and Correspondence with Foreigners and no Vessel is allowed to enter this Port [Havana] but those of the King my Master." 22 T h e increase of trade to Cuba and the Caribbean [Montecristi] found New York merchants going to court to protect commercial claims. T h e need for legal evidence compelled official correspondence between New York and the Spanish Caribbean lands. In another example, Spanish shipowners sued Connecticut officials and 18 H o u g h , Reports, p p . 29-30. 2» T h e y w e r e r e t u r n e d t o C u b a w h e r e t h e G o v e r n o r v e r i f i e d t h e i r s t a t u s . If u n f r e e , t h e y w e r e t o b e s e n t t o P h i l a d e l p h i a w i t h " C a p n D a v i e s f o r t h e U s e of t h e i r C a p t o r s . " Pennsylvania Archives, 1752, Series I ; a l s o Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, V, 75; G o v e r n o r C a g i g a l of C u b a t o G o v e r n o r C l i n t o n of N e w Y o r k , C o u n c i l a n d A d m i r a l t y C o u r t in Cal. Hist. MSS, I I , 598, 6 5 0 - 5 1 , 6 6 0 - 6 2 ; " M i n u t e s of t h e Vice A d m i r a l t y C o u r t of t h e P r o v i n c e of N e w Y o r k , " MSS. -1 Infra, n . 24, p . 75. 22 E n g l i s h v e r s i o n i n Pennsylvania Archives, Series I , I V . 286. G o v e r n o r B u c a r e l i l a t e r w a s p r o m o t e d b y S p a i n t o b e t h e V i c e r o y of N e w S p a i n [ M e x i c o ] ,

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merchants for unlawfully seizing a Spanish ship in American waters. 23 Matters of salvaged cargo in Spanish American coastal regions led to a further exchange by Governor Cagigal of Cuba and Governor Denny of Pennsylvania in 1758.2* One case arising in New York City required testimony on behalf of the "Governors of Caracas and Puerto Rico and the Principal Factor of the Royal Company of the Guipuzcoano [who came] into this Court." 25 Correspondence and litigation called for clerks, Spanish interpreters, and translators, and the New York Provincial Legislature, considering the volume of business, appropriated funds for these public duties. Official Spanish translators were attached to the New York courts, 28 especially the Admiralty courts. A suit brought in New York illustrated the costs and complications of court actions, and the need for communication with Spanish American authority: The King on behalf of Philip Ybanes ag'Richard Hadden, Jany: 1758 June 1758, "Motion for swearing a Witness of the King de Castro one of them being objected to as being a Negro. Motion for leave to bring two Witnesses into Court to prove him a Free man and a Christian." August 10, "Attending Court on Defendant's Motion to examine Witnesses at the Havannah." August 29, "Motion that Don Manuel Gomara, Adjutant Major and Don Pedro Mosch Bishop of the Island of Cuba be named as Commissioners on the Part of the King." 27

Commerce and its resulting disputes created an additional type of contact. Merchants in North America pressed for collection of their 23 Wolcott Papers (Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., Vol. XVI). 2* Pennsylvania Archives, Series I, Vol. I l l , 508; Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, V, 75; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, VIII; supra, notes 20, 21, p. 74. 25 Submitted in petition by M a n u e l Joseph de la Mar. H o u g h , op. cit., 59. New York lawyers such as William Smith, William Livingston, and T h o m a s D u n c a n represented Spaniards and Spanish Americans in many suits brought in New York courts. 2« Daniel Gomez was Spanish interpreter a n d translator f r o m 1731 to 1751. G a r r a t Noel, bookseller, Spainsh teacher, p a r t n e r of Ebenezer Hazard, a n d a u t h o r of the Spanish g r a m m a r published in New York City in 1751, was paid twenty pounds by the Legislature for his services in 1764. H e was official translator from 1752 to 1763. Journal N.Y. Legislature, II, 323, 758. Richard H a d d e n , captain of the privateer Peggy, seized the complainant's ship and took it into New York City. William W a l t o n was appointed by the Court to clear the papers to a n d from Havana. "Misc. MSS. on Vice Admiralty," Box 35; J. F. Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, pp. 529-68; "Original Manuscript Records of the Court of Vice Admiralty for the Province a n d City of New York, 1753-1770," MSS.

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claims, and Anglo-American governors responded, protesting to Caribbean officials. Seizures, ship confiscations, and uncollected debts were the causes of complaints which went to Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Mexico. Acting Governor Colden of New York addressed the Spanish governor at Puerto Principe on behalf of debts due New Yorkers for losses of goods and ships, and in 1771 Governor T r y o n of the same province communicated with the Spanish at Santo Domingo. 28 Cadwallader Colden went to great lengths when he wrote to Mexico City on behalf of the Waltons of New York City. T h e i r Caribbean trade, as already stated, was as extensive as it was unusual. Governor Colden defended William Walton's claim against Cuban merchants by appealing to the Viceroy of New Spain over the head of their governor. This was the first protest sent to the chief of a Mexican government by a North American official. On June 19, 1764, Colden addressed the Marqués de Cruílla, Viceroy of Mexico, seeking assurance that the Waltons' demand would be met: Fort George, N e w York, 19th J u n e , 1764. T o H i s Excellency, the Marquis of Cruílla, Viceroy of M e x i c o a n d its Dependencies. . . . p e r m i t m e therefore Sir to r e c o m m e n d to Your Excellencys a t t e n t i o n the case of this G e n t l e m a n . It is a d e m a n d perfectly w e l l established, has l o n g b e e n ascertained a n d adjusted, and as by an Express Article in the Late T r e a t y it can be in n o ways affected by the i n t e r v e n t i o n of a War. I must therefore f r o m y o u r Excellencys k n o w n h o n o u r a n d justice rely o n your g i v i n g Orders for the i m m e d i a t e p a y m e n t of the Ballance whatever it shall appear to be, to the above n a m e d A g e n t of Mr. W a l t o n [ D o n Martin d e M i r a n d a T e l l e c h e a of Vera Cruz]. 2 9

Colden, who had presented the American case for inter-American trade, did what he could to protect it. Next year, on April 20, 1765, the Waltons again sought his help. This time the Governor asked the Governor of Havana for "his countenance and aid in collecting divers sums of money due them." 30 In October 1764, Colden wrote the Governor of Puerto Rico in behalf of certain Connecticut merchants. 31 28 Cal. Hist. MSS, Part II, 745-97; ibid., Part II, 744, Governor Manuel de Azlor to Colden, concerning seizure of a sloop. 29 For Walton's trade with Spanish America, supra, p. 20. Colden to Cruilla, Colden Letter Books (N.Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., I, 339-40); Cal. Hist. MSS, Part II, 748. T h e calendar indicates a fairly large correspondence with Spanish Americans over Indies trade matters. so Stevens, Colonial Records, p. 60. «i "To His Excellency the Governor of His Catholick Majestys Island of Porto Rico," October 1, 1764. April 22, 1765, Colden again wrote the Governor of Cuba

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This type of commercial contact foreshadowed political interest. Inter-American trade swelled the disregard for Spain and England, and plagued both their colonial systems. T h e activity of colonial courts, New World "diplomatic" correspondence, collection of trade claims, were symptoms of an underlying economic desire for Spanish American markets and inter-American trade, as Colden had already suggested to Pitt. The only effective way to secure permanent and recognized relations was through the political independence of European colonies, especially the liberation of Latin America. Political motives came frankly to replace earlier reasons for unity. T h e Revolution of 1776 brought freedom of action to North America, and some citizens tried to pass its benefits to colonial South America, but commercial and cultural interest had brushed aside missionary zeal, and plans for changing Latin American institutions did not reappear until after 1776, and then in the form of republican and free trade ideas. The United States had to win its own freedom before promoting the liberty of others. Before 1810, however, such designs had been discussed seriously in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The debate over the political advantages to the United States of Spanish American independence was not always secret,32 but on the whole, it was judicious to confine discussion to a minority. Probably the most careful proposal came from Rufus King of New York, friend and associate of Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan patriot. Both men had access to high government circles in the United States where Alexander Hamilton shared interest in their project. 33 King was a Federalist, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Confed"recommending the case of the Waltons to his favor." Letter Book, p. 371; Cal. Hist. MSS, Part II, 754, Colden to Conde de Riela [sic Regla], Captain-General of Cuba. s 2 Some Americans publicly discussed liberation in 1786: "No danger can arise from such spirited measures, for the weakness of the Spaniards both in Florida and Louisiana will not permit them to enter into such an unjust contention which would endanger even their rich empire of Mexico; and the more so as they have a formidable intestine enemy in all the natives of South America, to contend for, and wrest that independency from Old Spain which they have been struggling for, many years." Letter from Charleston, April 6, 1786 in the American Museum, III (1788), 434. See Adams' warning of the same year, supra, p. 28. as Arthur Burr Darling, Our Rising Empire, 1763-1803, pp. 316-28, for Hamilton's responsibility in the Miranda-King plan of 1798; Luis Cuervo Márquez Independencia de las Colonias Hispano-Americanas, 1, 222, 241 If., states that Hamilton and Clay are the leading benefactors of Spanish America, and that the former would have suspended our neutrality policy in order to free Latin America. But this is conjectural, since independence was not yet attained and recognition far in the future. There was no immediate need for Hamilton to put himself in that position; we know of Clay's favorable attitude.

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eration Congress, M i n i s t e r to E n g l a n d , a n d later the N e w York Senator to the n a t i o n a l Congress. H i s d e e p c o n c e r n f o r p o l i t i c a l a n d economic freedom in South America led h i m to acquire important literature o n the subject. 3 4 H i s letter of 1799 to A l e x a n d e r H a m i l t o n is e v i d e n c e of his interest i n the p r o g r a m : 3 5 By Mr. Erskine, whom I have introduced to you, I send you a copy of the famous map of South America that Fayden has lately engraved. It is a facsimile of the Spanish map so carefully concealed at Madrid. Fayden is employed on another map upon the same scale of the Spanish territories north of the isthmus. . . . I am from many considerations restrained from saying what ought to be said and what must not be delayed respecting this important country. I am entirely convinced if it and its resources are not for us that they will speedily be against us. . . . T h e next step is plain and will be by and by unavoidable. . . . Why Uien any further reserves? Yours Truly, R. K. U n l i k e the earlier p l a n of Sewall a n d M a t h e r , the K i n g - M i r a n d a project h a d p o p u l a r a n d official r e c e p t i o n . A c e n t u r y of d e v e l o p i n g interest h e l p e d K i n g a n d M i r a n d a to organize a better scheme. Moreover, E u r o p e a n war a n d the F r e n c h R e v o l u t i o n h a s t e n e d events, 3 6 so 34 There is a wealth of material on foreign and United States interest in Spanish America, in the King MSS, N.Y. Hist. Soc. King owned the Essai sur le Commerce Actuel des Colonies Hispano-Américains (1797); and Le Pain et le Bonheur du Siècle Prochain—Remontrance addressee à tous les Peuples Libres ou qui veulent l'être, signed by a "Spanish American." This pamphlet may have been written by Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmân, a precursor of independence, correspondent of King, and author of the Lettre aux Espagnols-Américains (Philadelphia, 1799). 36 Charles R. King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, II, 663, Appendix 5. Miranda, also in London at this time, had a plan for an expedition to the Isthmus which he had discussed with King. The two men surveyed the possibility of trade advantage in connection with construction of a canal through the Isthmus. King made every effort to secure a passport for Miranda so that the Precursor could leave for the United States. King to Grenville, September 7, 1799, stressed Miranda's desire to reach this country. The American minister wrote a letter of introduction for Miranda to Secretary of State Pickering, but the British never issued the passport. King MSS, LXV, 57, 75, 78, 83, 89, for most of the correspondence; also C. R. King, op. cit., II, Appendix 5. 38 The so-called memorial of Aranda who is supposed to have charted or predicted the path of North American expansion in the New World has been examined and its accuracy questioned by Arthur P. Whitaker, "The Pseudo Aranda Memorial of 1783," Hispanic American Historical Review, XVII (August 1937), 287-313; also Richard Konetzke, Die Politik des Grafen Arandas: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Spanisch-Englisch Weltgegensatzes in IS. Jahrhundert, Chap. VI, "Aranda und die Spanische Politik in Nordamerika." The original memorial has never been found. French revolutionary propaganda vied with American in the spread of republicanism. Caillet-Bois, Ensayo, pp. 44, 46.

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that a timely mixture of opportunity at home and European upheaval combined to affect the nature of propaganda for South American change. War between England and Spain once favored Sewall and Mather; Anglo-French-Spanish rivalry and war again provided the cue, this time to King and Miranda. Out of war came the United States and, a generation later, an independent Spanish America. Many citizens of New York, New England, and Pennsylvania were interested in liberation, revising older designs, and carrying republican ideas into Latin America, together with their trade. Other Americans, less prominent and influential than King and his associates, also let the republican philosophy be known in Spanish America. Entering that continent for purposes of trade, they brought along their politics. When, for example, the Massachusetts sealer Jefferson put in at Valparaiso, Chile, in 1792, Mr. Magee, first officer wrote that, "we spent the evening there with the Governor and a number of gentlemen from St. Iago, the capital of Chile. They were very inquisitive during the evening in regard to the voyage and the affairs of the United States." 37 Captain Josiah Roberts of the Jefferson had many discussions with the Chilean Captain-General, Ambrosio O'Higgins, with whom he became rather friendly. While in Chile, Roberts talked of maritime routes in the South Sea and Northwest, trade opportunity, and the Nootka Sound controversy. On June 15, 1792, O'Higgins sent a courteous note to Captain Roberts, concerning "a late certain navigator, Mr. Meares, whose voyage you were so good to send me. I return the two volumes by the bearer with this letter through the hands of Luis de Olava, governor of Valparaiso." 38 In this letter the Captain-General added, You will receive from [Luis de Olava] the credential letter given in behalf of your expedition by . . . Don Joseph Ignatius de Viar which I return. Also the passport of the United States of North America . . . with the signature of His Excellency George Washington, whose immortal name I have had infinite satisfaction to see stamped for the first time by his own hand. 39

The era of American, French, and Latin American revolutions was one of intellectual enlightenment and republican activity. Spain tried to combat the growth of the latter by increasing garrisons in 37 Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, IV, 253. 3« Ibid., IV, 254: also Barros Arana, Historia Jeneral de Chile, VII, 35, for the anchorage of New England ships in Chilean waters before 1788. 3» Italics in original. "Observations on the Islands of Juan Fernandez, Masafuero . . . and the Coast of Chile, in South America," extracted from the Journal of Mr. Bernard Magee, first Officer of the ship Jefferson.

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Spanish American towns shortly after the American Revolution. 40 Customs officials, inquisitors, governors, and religious authorities seized everything pertaining to the two principal subversions of the times, liberty and republicanism: copies of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, pins, watches, pendants, snuff boxes—any article on which might be placed a message or symbol of example and inspiration. 41 Repression, however, proved of little use. Americans continued to export republican doctrines. Shortly after 1800, young Richard Cleveland of Massachusetts and William Shaler of Connecticut set out for Spanish America. They voyaged to Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and the California coast. In Chile, they anchored at Valparaiso where Cleveland came to know some Chileans who took him into their confidence, telling him that they "resented their state of vassalage," and expressed hopes that "emancipation was not far distant." T h e young New Englander, well equipped for this purpose, met these aspirations with republican propaganda, which he supported "for the better promotion of our embryo cause with a copy of the Federal Constitution and a Spanish translation of the Declaration of Independence." 42 Cleveland's conduct in Chile did not differ much from that of the Philadelphia merchants who sent revolutionary literature into Cuba in 1794,43 and newspapers into Buenos Aires. This, however, was not the only worry for Spanish officials who could not prevent the appearance of subversive propaganda. They also feared the additional menace of Americans then resident in Spanish America. Viceroy Cisneros of La Plata reported to Madrid in 1809 on the "great number of Englishmen and American Colonials living in the towns of these dominions." 44 Contemporary documents refer to Guillermo White, *o Salem Gazette, November 23, 1784, reported that 30,000 Spanish troops were transferred to the colonies to reinforce garrisons. T h e strengthening of Spanish garrisons in America began after 1764 when France was ousted from North America. Brown, "Anglo-Spanish Relations," p. 338. 41 Miguel Luis Amunátegui, Los Precursores de la Independencia de Chile, I, 263-65; also Lillian E. Fisher, Background of the Revolution for Mexican Independence, p. 369. 42 Richard J. Cleveland, A Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises, p. 174. Shaler was a friend of Richard Alsop of Middletown, and later became special agent to Vera Cruz, although he never went there. For his service in Cuba, see Roy Nichols, "William Shaler, New England Apostle of Rational Liberty," New England Quarterly, IX (1936), 71-96. 43 Hill, Descriptive Catalogue, p. 89; supra, p. 41. 44 Docs. Hist. Arg., VII, lxxxiii. At this time many North Americans were setting u p printing presses in Chile and Uruguay. T h e first press introduced into Montevideo was mounted by William Scollay "a young gentleman from Boston educated at the University of Cambridge, in Massachusetts." Isaiah Thomas, History of Printing in America, II, 197.

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commercial p a r t n e r of the Argentine revolutionary leader, Bernard i n o Rivadavia, as an American citizen. 48 A census taken by the Buenos Aires cabildo, 4 8 gave the names of m a n y Americans living in that port. Some were free Negroes, others were merchants who stayed in the town in order to collect commercial debts d u e them. Most of them were f r o m Boston and Providence, a l t h o u g h there were some f r o m Philadelphia and Connecticut, inc l u d i n g the well-known figure of David de Forest. O n e American " D o n Estevan Juicross, Protestant, citizen of the U n i t e d States, and a native of Boston," was employed as a supercargo for the Buenos Aires merchant, T o m á s A n t o n i o Romero. Don Diego Williamson said "he was of Protestant religion, N o r t h American nationality, native of Philadelphia." H e had originally come to Buenos Aires t o sell slaves to M a n u e l Sarratea, later an i m p o r t a n t figure in the revolutionary junta a n d the Argentine envoy to the U n i t e d States. Americans who were R o m a n Catholic were permanently employed, occasionally in the Treasury, or in the case of a Philadelphian, as master bootmaker in the cobblers' guild. "El Doctor d o n José Redh e a d , " appeared before the census, to report that he was from Connecticut and practiced medicine in Buenos Aires. T h e r e was a politically serious side to this American migration. A t the celebrated meeting of the Spanish Cortes, held at Cadiz in 1810-12, a Chilean priest formally denounced the "intrigues of N o r t h Americans" then residing in Chile, Argentina, and elsewhere in Spanish America. Padre Martinez charged that the "Bostonese R e p u b l i c " was spreading republicanism, because T h e Bostonese R e p u b l i c , isolated a n d s u r r o u n d e d by so m a n y p e o p l e desirous of i m i t a t i n g its ideas of liberty, considers a n d fears at t h e same t i m e t h e weakness of its existence a n d f o r t h a t reason arouses its greatest efforts to enlarge its small size a n d e x t e n d its system as its only m e a n s of solidity a n d substance. 4 7

T h e American and French revolutions had definitely eliminated religion f r o m the language of change, and N o r t h Americans, instead, circulated liberal political ideas; as Padre Martinez expressed it, N o r t h American merchants helped f o m e n t South American inde45 Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Documentos Relativos a los Antecedentes de la Independencia, I, 9. «« Docs. Hist. Arg., XII, "Territorio y Población." See the "Empadronamiento de los Extrangeros residentes en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, en los Años 1804, 1807, 1809." There are several references to David de Forest of New Haven, Conn., long a resident of Buenos Aires. De Forest lived in the house of Benito Rivadavia, father of the Argentine liberal patriot, Bernardino Rivadavia, and played an instrument in the band of the Hussars Squadron of Puerreydón. 47 Amunátegui, Los Precursores, pp. 264 ff.

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pendence. His lengthy denunciation of the United States focused the attention of the Cadiz constitutionalists and reformers upon New World developments. T h e Chilean priest considered the United States to be the source of a missionary activity, based upon a republican gospel. T h e mission was described vividly, although his language was hostile, and his charges exaggerated: Clandestine commerce, entry into ports, fishing in islands and coasts give them access to the country. T h e y make their entry, and praising their o w n country a n d c o n d e m n i n g the colonial g o v e r n m e n t subject to Spain, they shamelessly offer all the aid of their great power to those people w h o wish to shake off the yoke of legitimate a n d just d o m a i n . . . . T h e y have adopted a n d carried o u t the most powerful scheme to destroy the political a n d religious edifice of the Spanish colonics, sending to each and every o n e of the Spanish possessions their subjects, who are purposed to establish themselves a n d become citizens in t h e m with an e n d of perverting public o p i n i o n . . . to effect which, these detestable creatures do not omit spying out means to connect themselves with the leading families, going so far as to embrace the Catholic [faith] nominally. I n all these ports, cities, and especially in the capitals, I know that many Bostonese have established themselves who, beside cultivating the seductive seed verbally, m a i n t a i n correspondence with their republic, receive the libertine writings of their country, distribute them, persuade like good apostles. 4 8

T h e extravagant statement does not minimize the interest of the United States in spreading friendly political relations. Success warranted the propagation of ideas that had once won liberation from England. Since successful ideas are apt to be borrowed, a precedent had been established for Bolivar and Miranda to follow. Support for Latin American independence crystallized around the expedition of Francisco de Miranda which set out from New York City in 1806. In that year, Depons' book on Venezuela was translated and published in New York where its sale was announced to the interested public in the New York Daily Advertiser, May 1, 1807. This newspaper emphasized that " O u r extensive commercial intercourse with Caracas and our present political situation with regard to Spain equally demand that we should possess a perfect knowledge of the former." 49