Exploring Iberian Counterpoints in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Pacific [1 ed.] 1032164093, 9781032164090

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EXPLORING IBERIAN COUNTERPOINTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-​AND NINETEENTH-​CENTURY PACIFIC

Through a number of significant case studies, this volume examines changing Iberian dynamics in the Pacific, bridging the gaps between English and Spanish speaking scholarship to highlight understudied actors and debates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book shifts the predominant emphasis on Anglo-​American studies and the historical neglect of Iberian endeavors in this ocean by focusing on several episodes that illuminate Spanish engagement in the Pacific. It describes Spain’s treatment of this sea from its discovery to the end of the overseas empire in 1899, becoming the first book to place its analytical focus in the heart of the islands rather than the Pacific Rim. In tracing shifting Spanish positions and policies, the book cautions against making generalities about the distinct histories of Pacific islands and their Indigenous populations, uncovering a much more heterogeneous world than previous research may convey. Exploring Iberian Counterpoints in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-​Century Pacific is the perfect resource for students and researchers of the Iberian world, Hispanic studies, and the Pacific Ocean in early modern and modern eras. Rainer F. Buschmann is Program Chair and Professor of History at California State University Channel Islands. He is the author of several books, including Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–​1899 (2014) and the co-​author of Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–​1898 (2013). David Manzano Cosano is a research fellow at University of Cádiz, Spain. He holds two PhDs (Contemporary History/​Law and Political Sciences). He held different fellowships in Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and Guam. He has published prominent works on Spain in Oceania.

EXPLORING IBERIAN COUNTERPOINTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-​AND NINETEENTH-​CENTURY PACIFIC

Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano

Designed cover image: National Library of Spain First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano The right of Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​16409-​0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​16412-​0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​24843-​9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003248439 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction

vi viii 1

1 The Spanish Empire in Oceania: From the “Spanish Puddle” to the “Philippine Wall”

11

2 Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes in the Eighteenth Century

29

3 Lo(o)sing the Pacific: Tahitian Interventions in Archival and Published Accounts of Spanish Voyages

49

4 Spanish Cultural Clashes with the Indigenous Inhabitants of Colonial Micronesia: Building and Contesting Metropolitan Stereotypes

66

5 Revaluating the Dual Integration of the Northern Mariana Islands

101

Index

128

FIGURES

1.1 Gustav Fraytag, Karte des Carolinen, Marshall & Pelew, Wien, Freytag, 1885, National Library of Spain, Madrid 2.1 Satirical Rendition of Masserano and Secretary of State Lord North over the Falkland Islands. The Political Register, London v. 9 (1771), p. 297. Courtesy of the Lewis Walepole Library, Yale University 2.2 A map of the Falkland Islands, Overseas Historical Archive, Lisbon, AHU_​CARTm_​096, D. 861 2.3 A view of the Town of Rio Janeiro, from the anchoring place, Alexander Buchan British Library Additional MS 23, 920, ff 7–​9 3.1 Reduced chart of the Occidental Islands located to the east of Peru, Archive of the Naval Museum, Madrid, 54-​B-​36 3.2 The site of the mission settlement on Tahiti, Archive of the Naval Museum, Madrid, 54-​B-​21 4.1 Map of the Dolores or Chickpeas Islands, 1875, National Historical Archive of Spain, Ultramar, 5352, exp. 4, doc. 17 4.2 Dumont D´Urville, Jules Sébastien César, Carte generale de l´Ocean Pacific : pour servir au voyage Pittoresque autour du monde: resume general des voyages de decouvertes de Magellan, Tasman, Dampier… Paris, Tenré, 1834–1835, National Library of Australia

21

35 39

41 52 53 70

73

List of Figures  vii

4.3 Coello, Francisco. “Posesiones de Oceanía. Islas Marianas, Palaos y Carolinas”. En Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. Diccionario Geográfico estadístico-​histórico. Madrid, 1852, Map Library Rafael Mas (The Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain) 4.4 Comba y Rico. Inauguración de la Exposición de Filipinas. Apertura del concurso bajo la presidencia de S.M. la Reina Regente, 1887, National Library of Spain, Madrid 5.1 Bellin, Carte de l´archipel de Saint Lazare ou les isles Marianes, Paris, 1752 5.2 Representation of the Ogasawara Islands or Bonin Islands. Diet Library Japan, lat. YG 913-​51725, 1876

78

86 108 109

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The book became possible thanks to the financial support obtained mainly from the University of Cádiz (Spain) and the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. The California State University Channel Islands also contributed significantly through financial support and sabbatical leaves during the academic years of 2013/​2014 and 2020/​2021. We want to thank the Micronesian institutions that have made this book possible: the University of Guam and its associated Micronesian Area Research Center, where we received great assistance from Associate Professor Omaira Brunal Perry. The Merdedaria Misioneras de Berriz at Saipan became another source of support. In particular, the endearing Sister Inmaculata M. Ochoa-​Retana helped us to contact scholars and authorities in the Northern Marianas. Similarly, we would like to thank other institutions that have facilitated the work of continuing to develop knowledge about the Pacific, such as the CREDO (Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie) at Marseilles or the Canon Foundation in Europe. On a personal level, we would like to acknowledge the scholarly support of Guadalupe Pinzón-​ Ríos (Autonomous National University of Mexico), Philipp Schorch (Ludwigs-​Maxmillian University Munich), Ander Permanyer-​Ugartemendia (Autonomous University Madrid), Ricardo Roque (Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon), Florentino Rodao (professor at the Complutense University of Madrid), Julio Pérez (professor at the University of Cadiz), and Juan Carpio and Jerònia Pons (professors at the University of Seville). Parts of this research were presented at conferences in Brussels, Marseilles, Munich, and Seville. During the Pandemic, we delivered an online presentation to the Geopolítica Americana de los Siglos XVI y XVII (GEOPAM).

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Acknowledgments  ix

Lastly, we would like to thank the commendable work of all the staff of the archives that we have consulted throughout the four cardinal points of the planet: National Library of Spain, Archive of the Naval Museum of Madrid, The Archives of the Indies in Seville, National Historical Archive of Spain, Diet Library of Japan, the National Archive of the Philippines, the British National Library, the British National Archives in Kew, Torre do Tombo Archives in Lisbon, and the Overseas Historical Archive in the same city.

INTRODUCTION

A typical timeline for the Pacific Ocean and its island world of Oceania lists two discoveries of the vast aquatic surface. Although contested until recently, archaeological, ethnobotanical, and linguistic data support a vast Austronesian movement out of the relatively sheltered waters of the islands of Southeast Asia roughly seven millennia ago, to reach even into the most distant corners of what is now considered the Polynesian triangle—​ Rapa Nui, Hawai`i, and Aotearoa—​by the early Common Era. Evidence supporting the fact that these explorations did not stop in these regions but pushed on to the shores of the Americas, earlier considered the point of origin for the settlement of the Pacific Islands, is now conclusively supported by archaeological, genetic, and linguistic data. A second, until recently much more celebrated, expansion came from Europe and followed the successful Iberian crossing into the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Magellan’s famous circumnavigation revealed a problematic connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific and proposed alternate routes. Although Iberian navigators repeatedly breached the waters of the Pacific throughout the sixteenth century, historians generally deem their voyages uneventful except for Magellan’s circumnavigation and Legazpi’s establishment of Manila as a significant Spanish outpost in Southeast Asia. The establishment of the Manila transpacific transport to Acapulco, which lasted until 1815, brought another vital element and funneled Chinese products for American silver to the respective sides of the Pacific. The establishment of Manila as a vital entrepôt linking the Americas, Asia, and beyond is now considered a significant marker of the first age of globalization. Not only did the Manila Galleon channel material culture between different corners of the globe, but it was also responsible for new DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-1

2 Introduction

material culture styles and the transfer of cultural practices between different continents that drew wider circles reaching well into the nineteenth century.1 The Manila trade, however, had only a limited impact on the Pacific Islands. The main exception represented the Mariana Islands. Since Magellan chanced on this chain in 1521, several encounters with the islands were recorded over the next century, including several wrecks of the famous ships. In addition, the arrival of Jesuit missionaries on the island of Guam in the late seventeenth century led to conflict with the Chamorro population and the establishment of a permanent base on this island as a stopover location for the Manila trade. These early Spanish ventures were responsible for some of the names and obvious misnomers accompanying the new ocean, such as Mar del Sur and Pacifico. A final Spanish endeavor of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (Quirós) in the early seventeenth century became the last major Iberian venture to the island Pacific. The navigator is believed to have touched upon the marveled Terra Australis Incognita and his accounts spurred many European ventures in search for this chimerical continent. The seventeenth century stood under the banner of the Netherlands, whose mariners ventured out from their East India Company settlements in Southeast Asia into the vast Pacific. Historians are fond of labeling the Iberian century of the Pacific (roughly 1520–​1620) as the Spanish Lake, which is, much like Océano Pacífico, an unfortunate inaccuracy, since this vast ocean was neither a lake nor entirely Spanish.2 The other issue, centrally addressed in this book, is the notion that Spain, and to a lesser extent Portugal, had little to nothing to do with European exploration. The claim continues that especially in the second half of the eighteenth century, often considered the apex of European exploration of this ocean, Spain invested in neither intellectual nor actual investigation of this aquatic surface. The eighteenth century would provide the watershed of European Pacific exploration. Increasing global competition between the French and the British on maritime theaters led to a “space race” in the Pacific. The expeditions came equipped with enhanced maritime technologies—​copper sheathing, chronometers, and sextants—​ that allowed for better mapping of the aquatic region whose combined effort laid to rest some of the most significant geographical puzzles. While the expeditions reached their destination under the guise of Enlightenment science and the purported lofty and transnational rather than national goals, secret instructions still spoke about annexations and potential colonization. Captain James Cook’s famous first circumnavigation (1768–​ 1771) underscores this dichotomy between science and politics well. The observation of the passage of Venus through the disk of the Sun was well publicized before Cook’s departure. The British Admiralty’s secret instructions, however, still spoke to the exploration and potential annexation of the Southern Unknown Continent.

Introduction  3

The eighteenth-​century exploration of the Pacific is primarily responsible for regarding this area as a new, fifth part of the world that was radically different from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.3 This Franco-​British intellectual trajectory readily incorporated earlier Iberian travels in the unfolding of this eighteenth-​ century “New World.” Recent publications, especially concerning the Spanish world, have reacted against such oversimplifications. For the early modern world, Ricardo Padrón has argued that for Spanish intellectuals, the Pacific was far from an extravagant sideshow, as an impassable or unfathomable aquatic wasteland. Instead, he proposes that “[i]‌t was a fundamental part of Spain’s entire experience as an imperial power.”4 He continued to say that the imagination of this country did not regard the Americas as separate from Asia and that Spanish navigators perceived the vast Pacific as navigable, even under more difficult circumstances. The naming of the Spanish possessions across the ocean as Las Indias del Poniente—​the Indies of the West, or in a more poetic sense, of the setting sun—​indicates this conceptual link. In connection with the eighteenth-​century voyages of exploration, Spanish officials, and to some extent their Portuguese counterparts, maintained that the Pacific was not a world filled with biological, zoological, and ethnographic wonder. Instead, the “new” world of Oceania was comprised of “few more or less pleasant islands but little else” (Unas Islas más ó menos amenas, y nada más) and that the delights encountered by the French and British mariners had been greatly exaggerated. In their view, the Pacific remained tied to the terrestrial anchor of the Spanish Americas and did not represent a separate fifth part of the world as proposed by French geographer De Rienzi.5 This Iberian vision of the Pacific gained transnational salience through the work of Alexander von Humboldt, who adopted this view in his writings. The nineteenth-​century dissolution of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, however, forced Spanish intellectuals and government officials to align themselves with the emergence of a concept of an Oceania to forge and defend their empire remnants in the Pacific.6 Ricardo Padrón’s caution to not relegate the Spanish Pacific to oblivion finds continuation in the work of the authors of the current book. Such alternative vision of the Pacific is integral to Chapter 1 of this book, which provides a chronology of the Spanish events in this geographical region. Initiating with Magellan’s circumnavigation in the early sixteenth century, the chapter traces the broader implications of four centuries of Spanish presence in the Pacific, ending with the Spanish American War of the late nineteenth century that effectively ended Spanish imperial ambitions in this region. This chapter critically examines this geographic-​historical construct of Oceania and analyzes the Spanish collective imagination throughout its imperial period.

4 Introduction

Chapter 2 of this book begins during the second half of the eighteenth century, when the conceptualization of the Pacific shifted to British and French explorers. Rather than passively observing the British incursion into an ocean that Spanish politicians regarded as “their” property, Iberian diplomats at the Court of St. James’s attempted to insist on a series of maritime treaties that seemingly guaranteed Spanish sovereignty over the Pacific. Ironically, the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors agreed to put aside their differences and work toward preventing British expeditions to the Pacific that seemingly aimed at disrupting colonial trade in the Spanish and Portuguese American possessions. Chapter 3 in this collection explores the initial rejecting view of Oceania and how it played itself out in an essential but short-​lived Spanish mission to Tahiti in the 1770s. The fear of a British settlement on this island led to three Spanish expeditions to Tahiti organized by the Viceroy of Peru. The second took a small contingent of two priests, one soldier, and one sailor to the island to establish a thriving Spanish mission. When the Spanish vessels returned less than a year later, the padres pleaded to return to Lima, and the mission collapsed. While historians have explored this episode over the past one hundred years, little attention has been paid to either the effect this mission’s collapse had on the Spanish considerations of the Pacific or the role of the Tahitians in the matter. The detailed ethnographic history behind this episode again illustrates why the Pacific never gained traction as a separate entity in Spanish archives and literature. While there seems now sufficient evidence of a separate Spanish, and like Portuguese, view of the Pacific, much of the attention is on the rim rather than the basin of this enormous ocean. As so often, the seemingly insignificant island world of Oceania vanishes compared to the momentous openings of the Manila Galleon Exchange and its rich cultural and material exchanges between Asia and the Americas. The Pacific Ocean is a tremendous obstacle to transverse and presents interesting maritime challenges, but few works explore the rich cultural contributions of the Pacific. The island of Guam stands as a main exception, which since the seventeenth century became a prominent stopover for the Manila Galleon.7 Now that the enormous cultural and economic consequences of this prominent east-​west funnel have been sufficiently explored, we believe it is time to return our attention to the island world of Oceania, something that the late Tongan writer, Epeli Hau`ofa, jokingly referred to as the hole in the doughnut surrounded by the Pacific Rim that is and was so frequently and prominently written about.8 The islands of Oceania, the authors maintain, scattered over thousands of miles, need to be rescued from the communal neglect that rightfully emerges from an (over)emphasis on the Manila Galleon Exchange. Unfortunately, Spain’s Pacific reach seems to focus more on its facades (Asia and, above all, America) and relegated the many islands of Oceania as simple oddities on

Introduction  5

the way to the ocean’s cultural and economic edge. While not trying to take away from the many studies that combine Chinese commerce and Philippine ingenuity with the shores of New Spain, we would like to focus our attention on what is lost as a consequence. We also argue that the long-​standing interest and intellectual stimulus of the Pacific’s pull from China and the surrounding nations combined with the zealous neglect of Oceania as a Franco-​British constructed separate world.9 While we argue that this neglect exists primarily in the English-​speaking world, it also manifests in the Spanish academic world. Even more so than in the English academic realm, Spanish scholars regard the Pacific as the sum of its Rim while neglecting the basin. Hence, the most prominent researchers of the Pacific—​Salvador Bernabéu, Carlos Martínez Shaw, Antonio García Abásolo, Miguel Luque Talaván, Juan Gil,10 among others—​ are housed within departments that focus on the history of the Americas. The dominant role played by the Americas in Spanish colonial history during early modern times explains the placement of these scholars. Consequently, in the Spanish academic world, faculty focusing on the history of the Americas are generally integrated into the departments of early modern history.11 The majority of the researchers focused on the colonial early modern period, including those dedicated to Asia and Oceania. Such a perspective has caused a vital harmony between Spanish and Latin American universities, which also affects the Pacific, that historically remains conceptually linked to the terrestrial anchor of the Americas. The prominent American shadow in colonial history characterizing the Spanish academic is more nuanced when moving into more modern times. For instance, Asia-​Pacific studies start to increase thanks to the work of historians Florentino Rodao and M. Dolores Elizalde.12 Elizalde serves as a great point of departure for nineteenth-​century studies on Oceania due to her research emphasis on the Spanish colonies located in Micronesia and the Philippines. Boundaries between Asia and Oceania are challenging to discern in the Spanish academic world as they find their roots in late colonial history that conflates Asia and the Pacific. Consequently, the Pacific would be firmly included within the American realm if analyzed within the early modern colonial period. In contrast, in modern times, Oceania would be associated with Asia or the Americas. Much like in the realm of archives delineated in Chapter 3, Oceania has not yet managed to achieve cognitive independence within the Spanish academic world. In Spain’s central archives, including the large Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Pacific is mainly absent and subsumed into the more prominent geographical features of the Americas and Asia. Hence, Pacific studies are conceived differently in the Hispanic and Anglo-​ Saxon academic cultures. While Hispanic academics develop the Pacific as the space that connects America and Asia, their Anglo-​Saxon counterparts

6 Introduction

grant greater autonomy to Oceania. In both cases, as anthropologist Robert Borofsky indicates, the historical experience created cognitive links that do not necessarily match with the cultural and geographical realities of Oceania.13 And it is precisely this clash of these two visions of the Pacific that makes interactions between the Hispanic and the Anglo-​Saxon academic settings difficult. Traces of this eighteenth-​century cultural war over how to interpret the Pacific and its many islands remain. Especially in Spain, academics remain reluctant to interpret Oceania as that new continent and instead strive to connect it to the Americas or Asia. Realizing that Oceania is interpreted differently in the Anglo-​Saxon and Spanish academic worlds, this book aims to bridge the gap between these two perspectives to create a more holistic vision of the Iberian Pacific. Following the lead of Anglo-​Saxon Studies, we place the analytical epicenter in the heart of the Pacific by assuming that Oceania can be studied as an independent subject, separated from Asia and America. From this perspective, we intend to explore the shifting nature of Oceania in the imperial history of Spain to answer the following question: What are the dynamics that the Spanish Empire developed in Oceania? In addition, the book analyzes the role of changing Spanish positions in the region. We maintain that Spain’s role in the Americas and Asia is decisive because it influences Spanish policy in Oceania. This book becomes the first monograph that places its analytical focus in the heart of the islands rather than the Pacific Rim. It describes Spain’s treatment of this sea from its discovery to the end of the overseas empire in 1899, although its analyses focus specifically on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter 4 analyzes precisely how Spanish authorities saw themselves radically transforming their policies in the Pacific in the face of changes in European perceptions of the Pacific. A new geographical imaginary emerged that sought to bolster Spanish diplomatic claims of the Pacific’s many islands and raise widespread awareness of this formerly neglected area to meet the challenges of increasing colonial encroachment of the nineteenth century. Spanish intellectuals chose to popularize the term Spanish Oceania to unite the Mariana and Caroline Islands with the holdings in the Philippines. The imperial thought of Spain in the nineteenth century is key in the construction of the idea of the “Spanish Oceania.”14 Spanish officials interpreted Oceania as an exotic space that evoked the memory of the much larger empire forged by the Habsburg Dynasty under the guise of patriotism. From this novel perspective, Spanish colonial representatives increased their attention to the island Pacific, essentially to the Mariana and Caroline islands that are geographically assigned to the Micronesia area. Spanish patriotism, fueled by the colonial losses in the Americas, started to rediscover Micronesia by rediscovering the Spanish early modern voyages of discovery of the Spaniards

Introduction  7

to underscore their country’s colonial claims. Ironically, the vast majority of Spaniards are unable to locate on the map the space of their former colonies in Micronesia and describe their reality outside of that generality of being part of an “empire where the sun never set.”15 The Spanish imaginary continues to exalt this idea as numerous public and academic celebrations have been deployed to commemorate the fifth centenary of the Magellan-​ Elcano circumnavigation of the Earth (1519–​1522).16 Spain has used such commemorations to defend its prominent role in the origin of globalization and the connection of the Spanish world with the Pacific.17 There is little evidence to investigate the past and current image of Spain’s former colonies in this country’s construction of this cultural diplomacy. This fact has caused the interactions between the political entities of Micronesia and Spain to not stand out despite the shared common past. Guam escapes this trend due to the symbolic role that this island has for Spain by establishing itself as the epicenter of Spanish colonial power in Micronesia and currently being the benchmark in this region that has become a kind of “American Lake.”18 This image results from recent political changes in the Mariana Islands region (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and the Compact of Free Association (COFA) signed with Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. The result of this blind spot is creating a history of the Spanish past based on generalizations and stereotypes. For example, the image that many islands in Micronesia are nominally Catholic because of Spanish efforts, even if this country’s colonial officers or missionaries never occupied the great majority of the islands. In this sense, Chapter 5 explores the role of the Northern Mariana Islands. Despite being occupied by Spain since the seventeenth century, only a few studies investigate this archipelago’s deep colonial past. Historians usually integrate the Northern Mariana Islands with the fate of Guam, especially following the US takeover of this island. This section investigates the reasons behind this neglect. It illustrates that the Northern Mariana Islands and their Indigenous population were protagonists of their Spanish colonial history that differs significantly from Guam. For example, they were much more prone to labor recruiting, a phenomenon known in the Pacific as blackbirding, while this dubious practice spared Guam. The Northern Mariana Islands case study underscores Pacific complexity and the danger of including islands under the same Western historical patterns. The lack of knowledge and information about the reality of this region has caused this tendency to generalize about islands with distinct histories. This book aims to combat these generalities and warns that the popularized “Spanish Lake” hides a much more heterogeneous world, even in those islands that were part of the Spanish colonies.

8 Introduction

Notes 1 For an overview of recent contributions of the Manila epicenter consult Arturo Giráldez, The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of a Global Economy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). For a larger global engagement consult Florinda H. Lapistrano-​Baker and Meha Priyadarshini (eds.), Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translations and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1565-​1898) (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022). 2 W. L. Schurz, “The Spanish Lake,” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (1922): 181–​194; Oskar Spate, The Spanish Lake. The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979); For a critical review, consult Rainer F. Buschmann, E. R. Slack and J. B. Tueller, Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521-​1898 (Honolulu, University of Hawai`i Press, 2014), 1–​16. 3 Bronwen Douglas, “From Terra Austalis to Oceania: Racial Geography in the ‘Fifth Part of the World,’ ” Journal of Pacific History 45, no. 2 (2010): 179–​210. 4 Ricardo Padrón, Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 3. 5 Gregoire Louis Domeny De Rienzi, Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie (Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836). 6 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific, 1507-​1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano, “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, ed. Paul D´Arcy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 635–​654. 7 Rainer F. Buschmann, E. R. Slack and J. B. Tueller, Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521-​1898 (Honolulu, University of Hawai`i Press, 2014), 97–​ 118; Museo Nacional de Anthropología, I estoria-​ ta: Guam the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture (Madrid: Acción Cultural Española, 2021). 8 Epeli Hau`ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 147–​161. 9 See, for instance, Ricardo Padrón, “A Sea of Denial: The Early Modern Spanish Invention of the Pacific Rim,” Hispanic Review 77, no. 1 (2009): 1–​27. 10 Salvador Bernabéu Albert, Carmen Mena García and Emilio Luque Azcona (eds.), Conocer el Pacífico. Exploraciones, imágenes y formación de las sociedades oceánicas (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015); Salvador Bernabéu Albert and Carlos Martínez Shaw (eds.), Un océano de seda y plata: el universo económico del Galeón de Manila (Sevilla: CSIC, 2013); Antonio García-​Abásolo, La expansión mexicana hacia el Pacífico: la primera colonización de Filipinas (1570-​1580) (México: Colegio de México, 1982); Miguel Luque Talaván (ed.), Un Océano de Intercambio: Hispanoasia (1524-​1898): Homenaje al profesor Leoncio Cabrero Fernández (Madrid: AECID–​Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 2007); Juan Gil, Mitos y Utopías del Descubrimiento. II. El Pacífico (Madrid: Alianza, 1989). 11 Spanish historiography differentiates between modern history (fifteenth–​eighteenth century) and contemporary history (eighteenth century to present) and contrasts openly with Anglo-​Saxon historiography that differentiates the early modern and the modern history.

Introduction  9

12 Florentino Rodao García, From Allies to Enemies, Japan and the Axis in World War II (London: Palgrave, 2023); Mª Dolores Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885-​1889 (Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992). 13 Robert Borofsky, Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000, p. 25. 14 David Manzano Cosano, El Imperio español en Oceanía (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020). 15 David Manzano Cosano, “La España del siglo XXI y su relación con la Micronesia: ¿Una relación que va más allá del viejo recuerdo colonial del Imperio donde nunca se ponía el Sol?” Cuadernos de la Escuela Diplomática 59, no. 1 (2017): 175–​260. 16 In fact, the Spanish State has opened its own website to commemorate this event and consult the program of activities of the 359 projects that it has approved. V Centenario 1º Vuelta al Mundo, Programa Oficial de Actividades 6 de julio 2021, https://​vcen​tena​rio.es/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2021/​07/​LIST​ADO-​COMPL​ ETO-​PROYEC​TOS-​6-​julio-​2021.pdf 17 As an example, consult Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571,” The Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201–​221. 18 Robert A. Underwood, “The Amended US Compact of Free Association with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands: Less Free, More Compact,” Pacific Island Development Series (East West Center: Working Papers, 2003), 16.

Bibliography Bernabéu Albert, Salvador and Carlos Martínez Shaw (eds.). Un océano de seda y plata: el universo económico del Galeón de Manila. Sevilla: CSIC, 2013. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador, Carmen Mena García and Emilio Luque Azcona (eds.). Conocer el Pacífico. Exploraciones, imágenes y formación de las sociedades oceánicas. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015. Buschmann, Rainer F. Iberian Vision of the Pacific, 1507–​1899. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Buschmann, Rainer F. and David Manzano Cosano. “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, General editor Paul D´Arcy, 635–​654. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Buschmann, Rainer F., Edward R. Slack and James B. Tueller. Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–​1898. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2014. Douglas, Bronwen. “From Terra Austalis to Oceania: Racial Geography in the ‘Fifth Part of the World.’ ” Journal of Pacific History 45, no. 2 (2010): 179–​210. Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, M Dolores. España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885–​1889. Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992. Flynn, Dennis O. and Arturo Giráldez. “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571.” The Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201–​221.

10 Introduction

García-​Abásolo, Antonio. La expansión mexicana hacia el Pacífico: la primera colonización de Filipinas (1570–​1580). México: Colegio de México, 1982. Gil, Juan. Mitos y Utopías del Descubrimiento. II. El Pacífico. Madrid: Alianza, 1989. Giráldez, Arturo. The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of a Global Economy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Hau`ofa, Epeli. “Our Sea of Islands.” The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 147–​161. Lapistrano-​ Baker, Florinda H. and Meha Priyadarshini (eds.). Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translations and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1565–​1898). Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022. Luque Talaván, Miguel (ed.). Un Océano de Intercambio: Hispanoasia (1524–​ 1898): Homenaje al profesor Leoncio Cabrero Fernández. Madrid: AECID–​ Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 2007. Manzano Cosano, David. “La España del siglo XXI y su relación con la Micronesia: ¿Una relación que va más allá del viejo recuerdo colonial del Imperio donde nunca se ponía el Sol?” Cuadernos de la Escuela Diplomática 59, no. 1 (2017): 175–​260. Manzano Cosano, David. El Imperio español en Oceanía. Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020. Museo Nacional de Antropología. I estoria-​ ta: Guam the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture. Madrid: Acción Cultural Española, 2021. Padrón, Ricardo. “A Sea of Denial: The Early Modern Spanish Invention of the Pacific Rim.” Hispanic Review 77, no. 1 (2009): 1–​27. Padrón, Ricardo. Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Rienzi, Gregoire Louis Domeny De. Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie. Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836. Rodao García, Florentino. From Allies to Enemies, Japan and the Axis in World War II. London: Palgrave, 2023. Schurz, William L. “The Spanish Lake.” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (1922): 181–​194. Spate, Oskar H. K. The Spanish Lake. The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979. Underwood, Robert A. “The Amended US Compact of Free Association with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands: Less Free, More Compact.” Pacific Island Development Series. East West Center: Working Papers, 200.

1 THE SPANISH EMPIRE IN OCEANIA From the “Spanish Puddle” to the “Philippine Wall”

1.1 Introduction

The Spanish overseas empire integrated the area of Micronesia as part of its domains from the sixteenth century until 1899. During this time, Spain changed its policy in this area due to changes in Western perceptions of Oceania. As a result, historical investigations into Micronesia tend to erect chronological borders between early modern and modern history. In other words, researchers specializing in the Pacific’s international relations history from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries generally do not consider Spain’s choices during the nineteenth century. The same applies to the reverse. A historian focusing on Spain in the nineteenth century does not usually consider the deeper timeframe of the early modern period. The main goal of this chapter is to break away from such chronological blind spots to create a more integrated historical perspective about the Spanish policies affecting its Oceanic holdings during the lifespan of its overseas empire. What was the role of the Micronesian colonies in the Spanish imperial network? Why did these colonies’ role change during the Spanish Empire? These are the main questions we address in this chapter. The role of Spanish Micronesian colonies can be divided into two main periods: 1 As part of the “Spanish Puddle” (from 1521 to 1828), when Spanish officials conceptualized the Pacific as the extension of its American colonies. 2 As a “Philippine Wall” (from 1828 to 1898), when Spanish administrators envisioned its Micronesian colonies as a defense bulwark to prevent

DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-2

12  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

the encroachment of other Western powers on the Philippines, the new epicenter power of the Spanish Empire in the Pacific. This chapter understands the participation of Micronesia as part of the Spanish-​ American and later Spanish-​ Asian space. In this sense, it is influenced by Spanish Pacific Studies, which focuses on the Pacific as part of the continental pull of the Americas and Asia. Nevertheless, this section reads the insights gained against those of more recent Pacific Island Studies. It maintains that only by applying these prisms more nuanced analyses of the Spanish holdings in Micronesia can result. 1.2  “Spanish Puddle” (1521–​1828)

The origin of the Spanish power in the Pacific came from the desire of the Charles I of Spain to connect “his” American dominions with the opulent Asian market. After Vasco Núñez de Balboa located and named the Pacific (Mar del Sur) for European culture in 1513, Spain financed the Magellan-​ Elcano expedition (1519–​1522) to explore the sea and create a new route to reach Asia. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth baptized the vast world ocean as the Pacific, and it established the first claims to locate the epicenters of the Spanish Pacific power in the Philippines. Despite Magellan’s feat of contacting only very few islands, his short but eventful landing in the Marianas established claims over the “Islands of the Thieves.”1 Among other things, the expedition confirmed the spherical shape of the planet, which forced a rethinking of the Treaty of Tordesillas signed with Portugal to separate the Atlantic Ocean into two spheres. The Iberian powers met and signed the treaty of Zaragoza (1529), which set in Asia the antemeridian to the line of influence drawn in the Tordesillas agreement (1494). Thereby, Portugal reached Asia through the Indian Ocean, and Spain had to connect its American colonies with the Asian markets through the Pacific because Madrid started to view the Philippines as part of its territory.2 During the mid-​sixteenth century, Spain invested in different expeditions to establish a route to this distant archipelago. Ocean currents and winds made outward travel to the Philippines possible but prevented a triumphant return to the Americas.3 Finally, the captains Alonso Ramírez de Arellanos and Andrés de Urdaneta, by sailing into the northern Pacific, located a return voyage by 1565.4 Thus, Spain inaugurated a new trade route, the Manila Galleon or Nao of China,5 which connected New Spain with the Philippines where Spanish soldiers established authority through a protracted war of colonization led by Miguel de Legazpi. He then consolidated this route with the foundation of Manila in 1571. According to authors such as Fernand Zialcita, Arturo Giráldez, and Dennis Flynn, this Manila Galleon created the birth of globalization because all populated continents were by now

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  13

connected through an emerging commercial network configured by the European powers.6 This first age of globalization, postulated by economic historians and scholars of international relations, is crucial to understanding the Spanish Pacific of early modern times. Historians of international relations, who follow the realistic perspective created by Morgenthau, assume the nation-​ state as the central unit of political power in the world.7 They further argue that it was the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, ending the Thirty Year War, that signaled the origin of the nation-​state and, therefore, the starting point of the history of studies on international relations.8 Consequently, such international relations historians tend to adopt the “Spanish Lake” concept to interpret the Pacific in the early modern times—​which they refer to as the Westphalian system—​because Spain was the sole nation-​state with a regular presence in this area. The term Spanish Lake dates back to over one hundred years, when William Schurz introduced it to designate the space connected by the Manila Galleon, uniting America with Asia.9 He reduced the dimensions of this vast ocean to a lake to demonstrate the route’s limited yet influential function for Europeans. The Spanish colonial poles in the Americas and Asia composed this “lake.” Therefore, the designation is best understood as a metaphor that evidences the existing bias in the configuration of human perceptions of the Pacific.10 Selected Spanish conservative sections currently exploit this view to generate a positive spin for their country’s role in Oceania’s history. Representatives of this outlook equate Spanish imperialism with an “empire where the sun never set” and expose a tendency to exaggerate the Iberian hegemonic role over the early modern Pacific. Ultimately, they postulate a Habsburg monarchy (1516–​1700) in complete control over the Pacific and its many islands.11 However, Spanish power in this region must be qualified for two fundamental reasons. First, Spain, much like the rest of the European powers, had a marginal position in the Oceania region that initially attracted few incentives to exploit its islands and mythological continents. Second, Spain had only marginal control over areas outside the American colonies and covered only part of the Philippines and the Mariana archipelago. As we will see in the following chapters, Spain’s control of the Mariana Islands was limited to Guam, its capital island. Nevertheless, a sector of Spanish society relies on the extended metaphor of the Spanish Lake to create an image of Spanish imperial control that does not correspond to historical reality. In this context, this chapter follows in the footsteps of Spate and Schurz to reduce the maritime category of the Pacific from ocean to lake, or, as we like to diminish it further, a “puddle.” This puddle is a more appropriate metaphor that clarifies the historical reality of the Pacific during early modern times. Where Schurz’s and Spate’s lake explored the role of the Pacific as a road that

14  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

connected America with Asia, our puddle envisions depicting the Spanish political power wielded in the heart of the Pacific islands. Spain was not the only European power present in Oceania before 1700. In fact, the seventeenth century witnessed an increasing naval rivalry between the European maritime powers over the western Pacific.12 The benefits of the Manila Galleon in the Asian markets attracted the rest of the European powers, especially England (who financed the circumnavigation of Francis Drake, 1577–​1580) and the Netherlands. This last country settled in the nearby Moluccas at the expense of Portugal, created the Dutch East India Company in 1602, and invested in a set of expeditions that searched the imagined continents of the Pacific, such as Abel Tasman’s encounter with Australia, which he named New Holland.13 However, no power established a colonial center in the heart of the Pacific due to the distance from their colonial possessions located in Asia and America. Spain, though, was the exception, whose representatives selected the Marianas Islands by the mid-​seventeenth century as a convenient stopover for the Manila Galleon. In 1662, the Jesuit Diego Luis de San Vitores traveled on one of these ships, the San Damián, and became the leading promoter of the Mariana Islands’ colonization. When he arrived in Guam, he was shocked by what he believed to be the poverty of their inhabitants. He thought Spain should evangelize the Chamorro, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, through colonization to end their poor and hereditary lifestyle. At first, his project to colonize the Mariana Islands was rejected by the Spanish authorities due to high costs. However, San Vitores insisted and contacted the confessor of Queen Mariana of Austria, the Jesuit Juan Everardo Nithard, to support his project. Finally, the occupation of the Mariana Islands was sanctioned through the royal decree of June 24, 1665, and Spain occupied the archipelago in 1668, changing the name of the archipelago from Islands of Thieves to the Mariana Islands in honor of the Queen of Spain. In this way, the Spanish authorities sought to remove the pejorative name of the Thieves Islands from part of their domains. Subsequently, the Chamorro came to reject the Spanish invader, killed San Vitores, and started a war, which ended with many of the Indigenous killed and a high concentration of Spanish forces on the island of Guam.14 In short, the new overlords controlled only a single island in this vast ocean, hardly enough to call it a lake. Schurz’s Spanish Lake is better served from an economic perspective that conceptualizes the Pacific as a space where a regular mercantile network of the Manila Galleon existed; it connected the Asian market with the Americas. Real colonial power existed only in the Americas and the Philippines. The single fledgling colonial settlement in Guam did not strengthen Spanish hegemony. In this context, we prefer to employ the metaphor of a puddle rather than the lake because it more closely describes the precarious Spanish hold on the Pacific. Despite the Marianas serving as an essential layover for

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  15

the Manila Galleon, this colony remained practically invisible to Madrid and would rarely enter diplomatic debates over the Pacific. Yet even this indefensible Spanish puddle proved quite porous during the eighteenth century as the European powers increased their interest in the geographical exploration of the Pacific. The Dutch, English, and Spanish ventures supported the evidence for imaginary continents in the mind of armchair geographers. Such learned individuals, empowered by the Age of Enlightenment, were less concerned about the riches emerging from the Galleon trade that connected the existing colonial epicenters in America and Asia. Instead, imaginary continents with equally imaginary wealth took center stage on the emerging maps of the Pacific.15 Intellectual revolutions went hand in hand with the industrial transformation that developed not only new techniques to master the Pacific’s distances but also demanded new raw materials. The crucial Seven Years’ War (1756–​1763) is frequently regarded as a watershed in the exploration of the Pacific.16 Following this conflict, an emboldened British nation started questioning the Spanish notion of the Pacific as a mare clausum. Closing off an entire ocean to other European superpowers emerged from the Iberian treaties of the Tordesillas (1494) and Zaragoza (1529). Using the lofty ideal of Enlightenment to further transnational aims of exploration, Britain and France maintained the Pacific as a mare liberum—​a place where States could navigate freely. In contrast, Spain understood the Pacific as an extension of America and, therefore, considered it under its domain.17 Spanish authorities utilized the Treaty of Utrecht signed in 1713, in which European monarchies accepted the Spanish Bourbon monarchy in exchange for a series of concessions. Among them, Spain granted the Asiento of Negros (slave trade) in the Americas to the British Monarchy, indirectly accepting the normative force of the aforementioned Iberian treaties. Using the Enlightenment and its transnational ideals, the northern European monarchies proceeded with their exploration of the Pacific. This first process of expansion of Europe through the heart of the Pacific was initiated in the second half of the eighteenth century, after the Seven Years’ War, which closed with the third expedition of James Cook (1776–​1779), and the process of independence from the United States, which led Great Britain to establish a settlement in New South Wales in 1788.18 The founding of the British colony in Australia further undermined the Spanish puddle since it displaced the Manila Galleon as the only trade route in this ocean and the Mariana Islands as the sole European colony in the island Pacific. The Nootka conflict on the Northwest Coast would become the death knell to the perceived Spanish hegemony. Its settlement in the early 1790s guaranteed British subjects free navigation and fishing rights in the Pacific.19 This further erosion of Spanish Pacific claims invited penetration of European subjects and those of the newly formed United States, primarily

16  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

merchants and missionaries. Their arrival invited additional designs and settlements in the Pacific. At the same time, mostly French geographers suggested the Pacific as a world apart, a fifth part of the world called Oceania with its further distinction into Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.20 Nevertheless, Spanish officials refused to accept this change. Instead, they claimed the Philippines and the Mariana Islands continued being a part of the American colonial network even at the height of the Pacific exploration. The expedition of Alejandro Malaspina (1789–​1794) underscores this point. Rather than emulating James Cook’s exploration, Malaspina aimed to tie an expanding network of hydrographic expeditions from the Mediterranean across the Atlantic into the Pacific and create an imperial web that linked the Spanish colonies worldwide and supported Iberian claims with scientific evidence. Malaspina’s hydrographic links received transnational salience through the writings of Prussian Alexander von Humboldt, who toured the Spanish Americas in the early nineteenth century and, with the approval of Spanish officials, inspected some of the new hydrographic maps linking the Iberian Empire.21 The Mariana Islands served as an important keystone to this mapped maritime empire, but only until the collapse of the Manila Galleon and the revolutionary wars leading to independence of Spain’s colonial holdings in the Americas. Spanish officials faced much-​needed conceptual changes at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Fighting a losing diplomatic battle to keep the Pacific as a Spanish mare clausum, again aggressive American, British, French, and Russian encroachment found its denouement in the Nootka Sound Conventions signed in the 1790s between Spain and Great Britain to resolve the conflict over the colonial rights of these powers in North America. These conventions concluded with three agreements (1790, 1793, and 1794) in which Spain recognized the English possessions in North America and its authority to navigate the Pacific Ocean.22 Thus, Spain recognized the de facto end of its hegemony in the Pacific, referred to here as the “Spanish Puddle.” The reduction of such blanket control over the entire ocean gave way to more limited maritime corridors that resulted from the Malaspina’s expedition and greatly emphasized the value of the Marianas. Although the Nootka agreements and the Malaspina expedition that coincided resulted in more limited judicial corridors in the Pacific, this restriction was still based on the exaltation of Spanish exploratory voyages and eighteenth-​century hydrographic expeditions. In this more limited view, the Pacific and its dependencies in the Marianas proved to be a crucial link. They continued to be tied to the terrestrial anchor of the Americas.23 This diplomatic maneuvering drove a wedge between the Spanish official and public view of the Pacific. Where diplomats sought to strengthen a shrinking Spanish puddle, the public demanded a return to the old hegemonic claims over the Pacific. The Spanish population refused to accept the new

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  17

consideration of a transnational Pacific because it would readily cause Spanish loss of power vis-​à-​vis other nation-​states leading in the exploration of this maritime arena. The end of the Manila Galleon in 1815 did not signal a reform of the colonial regime in the Pacific due to two fundamental factors. First, the troubles arising from Spain’s on-​going internal political problems. Second, the country’s inability to comprehend fully American independence movements and their potential for radical political change.24 The Spanish colonies’ emancipation in America began with the Peninsular War between Napoleonic France and the Spanish citizens who revolted against the monarchy of José Bonaparte in 1808. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Valençay in 1813 and, a year later, with the return of King Ferdinand VII to Spain. The ongoing political fight between absolutists and liberals caused domestic riffs that soon spilled to the Americas and supported growing calls for independence. In 1824, the battle of Ayacucho in Peru eroded the American colonies’ main Spanish royalist stronghold and accelerated the decolonization process. Ayacucho became a turning point for metropolitan Spanish authorities who became conscious of the impending end of their colonial empire in the Americas. With the imminent American independence, Spain moved its Pacific epicenter from the Americas to the Philippines to reform their overseas empire. To support reform efforts, officials appointed military officer Mariano Ricafort as Captain General (the equivalent of Governor) of the Philippines. Ricafort immediately issued a regulation in 1828 to restructure the colony of the Mariana Islands. With the cession of the Manila Galleon in 1815, these islands had lost their purpose of serving as a stopover point. Instead, Ricafort promoted the islands to serve as “antemural” or a defensive bastion to keep potential European powers from advancing toward the Philippines.25 1.3  The Marianas as a Defensive Wall to Safeguard the Philippines: 1828–​1898

The new role for the Marianas, shifting from a colonial backwater as resupplying the Manila galleons to a buttress to support the exposed Philippines, emerged out of the confluence of several factors. Starting in the nineteenth century, with a brief hiatus during the Napoleonic Wars, European powers, in addition to the United States, started concerted commercial, exploratory, and evangelical efforts that supported colonial annexations by the mid-​century. During the same time, Spain gradually lost its colonial hold in the Americas, which served as the terrestrial anchor of its empire. The imperial decline combined with the foreign threat led to a cognitive restructuring of Spain’s holdings in Oceania that now conceptualized the Marianas as a defensive line to secure the vulnerable Philippines. Three reasons, however, prevented the implementation of such a design: the domestic unrest in Spain; the refusal of

18  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

its citizens to accept American independence; and, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the rising German and Japanese designs on the islands in Micronesia. Spain experienced a civil war from 1833 to 1840. It originated with the death of King Ferdinand VII in 1833. Even if Ferdinand wanted to appoint his daughter, Isabel, as his successor, his brother, Carlos Mª Isidro, contested her right as a woman to reign over Spain. The Queen Regent, Mª Cristina de Bourbon, relied on the liberals to proclaim and protect the right of her daughter Isabel on the throne. Absolutists supported the dead king’s brother. The resulting Carlist War, named after the supporters of the usurper Don Carlos, would also affect colonial politics. In the Pacific, a weakened Spanish administration tended to focus its scarce resources on the Philippines, now regarded as the new power epicenter. On the other hand, the colony of the Mariana Islands continued its marginal role in the Spanish imperial network despite Ricafort’s intention to reinforce this former galleon stopover as a defensive wall. Lack of human resources, infrastructure, and general monetary resources prevented such implementation.26 The Marianas’ marginal role also reflected the attitude of a wider Spanish public, who erroneously continued to conceptualize the Marianas as part of America. While political authorities accepted the end of the Spanish puddle after the battle of Ayacucho and the ensuing independence of the colonies, Spanish citizens resisted this conceptual change. Instead, they continued to regard Oceania as an extension of the Americas. Moreover, they maintained that the fledgling American republics could not survive without Spanish support and would soon clamor to return to the Empire. Combined with the lack of colonial resources, such antiquated attitudes delayed reform for the Marianas. Only after a resounding Spanish defeat during the War in the Pacific (1865–​1866), where Spanish troops unsuccessfully sought to annex the guano rich Chincha Islands from Peru, the Spanish public relented its ideas of past grandeur.27 From the point of international relations, the Pacific War was of little consequence and hardly noted by Europe’s superpowers, only to signal the inevitable decline of the former Iberian colonial nations. However, this war was a crucial factor in triggering the conceptual change of the Spanish public about the Pacific. Expecting that this conflict would signal a return to former imperial glory in the Americas, Spanish citizens now had to accept the reality of the independence of the young American republics. In this context, they abandoned the interpretation of the Pacific as the extension of the former American colonies. Instead, a new Spanish learned public turned to the Philippines, especially, and, by extension, to Micronesia to implement imperial designs. To support such assertions, the term “Spanish Oceania” rose in popularity by the mid-​nineteenth century. This convenient geographical category encompassed Spain’s occupied and projected colonies

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  19

in the Pacific: the Philippines, the Mariana, and the Caroline Islands. While the Iberian nation had a colonial presence in the first two archipelagos, the Caroline and, by extension, the Palauan Islands were repeatedly contacted but never settled. Nevertheless, claimed by extension, these islands would play a crucial role in the expansion of other powers in Oceania. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Great Britain expanded into Australia and New Zealand. France undertook an aggressive policy in Tahiti and New Caledonia. The new nation of the United States enacted the Guano Act in 1856, enabling its citizens to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits. Similarly, these same nations became actively involved in the then-​sovereign nations of Samoa, Fiji, and Hawai’i. The colonial race accelerated in 1874 when Great Britain colonized the Fiji Islands, fearing a German annexation of the archipelago. This accelerated rush to establish Oceanic colonies brought conflict, most prominently in the Samoan Islands.28 Spanish officials kept a watchful eye on these developments and grew concerned about a foreign encroachment on the claimed Micronesian islands. The Spanish consul in Hong Kong, for instance, prevented the German ship Corean to travel to Palau in 1874, fearing a resulting colonial claim from this nation.29 Over the next two decades Germany was but one power challenging Spanish claim to the Caroline Islands. Another was a resurgent Japan that expanded southward into the Spanish waters. Following the restoration of Emperor Meiji in 1868, Japan developed an expansive imperial program toward the South Seas (Nanshin-​ron), which extended to the northern islands of the Mariana and Caroline Islands.30 In response to this challenge, Spain expanded from Guam to Saipan. Its officials started a leasing program that allowed foreign copra merchants access to the northern islands in the Mariana archipelago (as this book details in Chapter 5). In 1895, Spain and Japan signed the Bashi treaty, establishing a navigable channel as the border between the two nations. The islands to the north of this channel came under Japan’s influence, while those to the south remained Spanish. In exchange for ceding these islands, Spain managed to distance the Japanese threat from the vital island of Luzon in the Philippines.31 Germany increased its presence in Micronesia following the unification through wars and industrialization in 1871. Copra merchants, such as Godeffroy and Hennings, elected to expand into the Pacific in search for this valuable commodity.32 According to Spanish sources, the flags of these companies would fly over many islands in Micronesia.33 To counter this commercial and political threat, Spain proposed the active colonization of the Caroline at the end of the nineteenth century to finally enact the proposed defensive line.34 In addition, the colonization of the Caroline Islands also satisfied an agitated Spanish public, which demanded new colonization in Oceania to pressure their government into participating in the colonial race in this region.

20  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

Spain had long considered the Caroline Islands as an integral possession. The Spanish captain Francisco Lezcano encountered the archipelago in 1686, yet ensuing Spanish efforts to colonize the islands proved unsuccessful.35 Claiming rights of First Discovery, Spain authorities prepared to effectively occupy the archipelago following the Berlin Conferences (1884–​1885), where the powers with colonial interests in Africa met to settle mutual conflicts. Indeed, the Berlin Conference explicitly stated that effective occupation had to follow discovery to ensure territorial claim. In August 1885, Spain dispatched the ships San Quintin and Manila to occupy the island of Yap, the envisioned capital of this new Spanish colony. The ceremony of possession, however, had to be delayed due to the impossibility of gathering all the Indigenous leaders. The Spanish plans were further circumvented by the arrival of the German warship Iltis on August 25. The crew of this vessel raised the German flag to underscore its claims to effective occupation, repeating the action the Iltis had already accomplished in the Palauan archipelago. Spanish lieutenant Enrique Capriles, destined to be the future governor of Yap, immediately raised the Spanish flag. Then, he falsely communicated to the Germans that the Spanish flag was flying when they arrived. The German naval forces refused to accept the Spanish claim. An international conflict over the Caroline Islands loomed between Spain and Germany. Patriotism on both sides increased this crisis, which had the potential to turn into a full-​fledged European war. In Spain, citizens took to the streets to defend their country’s colonial aspirations in the Caroline archipelago against what they regarded as the German affront. This widespread outcry differed significantly from the governmental reaction since neither Spanish nor German authorities intended to wage war over some islands they regarded as marginal to their empires. Consequently, they appealed to a mediating figure to avoid bloodshed. Both nations agreed to accept Pope Leon XIII as arbitrator. On December 17, 1885, the Rome protocols gave Spain colonial control over the Caroline Islands. In return, German companies could trade freely in the archipelago, and their government retained control over the Marshall Islands.36 The agreement followed the emerging trend of colonial powers in Oceania to delimit the zone of influence through the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Countries wanted to avoid escalating regional contest, which is still considered secondary to other global areas. As a result of the conflict resolution in the Caroline Islands, Great Britain signed with Germany the declaration of April 6, 1886, to delineate their mutual spheres of influence in the Pacific.37 Spain expanded its defense to protect the Philippines’ vulnerable flanks by securing control of the Palauan and Caroline Islands. To manifest colonial rule, Spain divided the administration of the Caroline Islands into two parts: the Western Caroline Islands, whose capital focused on the island of Yap (occupied by the

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  21

Fraytag, Karte des Carolinen, Marshall & Pelew, Wien, Freytag, 1885, National Library of Spain, Madrid.

FIGURE 1.1  Gustav

Spanish in 1886), and the Eastern Caroline Island, whose capital emerged on the island of Pohnpei (settled in 1887).38 As we will see in Chapter 4, Spanish authorities cared little about the Caroline Islands without a diplomatic incident. For instance, Spanish cultural influences remain fleeting on the island of Pohnpei. In Spanish history, the island and its inhabitants are best remembered for their rebellions against colonial rule that coincided with the entirety of the Iberian presence on the island (1887, 1890, 1894, and 1898). The marginality of the Caroline Islands was an extension of the Spanish colonial vision of the Mariana Islands. Once the terrestrial anchor of the Spanish Americas was lost, these archipelagos became defensive perimeters to protect the Philippines. Thus, Spanish authorities made little effort to develop the islands as colonies as their purpose without the Philippines was meaningless. The outbreak of the Spanish American War in 1898 only underscored the role of the Marianas and the Caroline Islands. After a brief fight, negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Paris in December of that year. Spain relinquished colonial control to the United States over its possessions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and to Guam in the Mariana Islands. The American interest in this last island resulted from the desire to have a geostrategic enclave for the naval control of the North Pacific.39 Stripped of their purpose of defensive walls to safeguard the Philippines, the reason for claiming the Mariana and Caroline islands ceased to exist. Hence, the following year,

22  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

Spain sold the remainder of their overseas empire—​the Northern Mariana Islands, Western Caroline Islands, and Easter Caroline Islands—​to Germany for 25 million pesetas. The defensive wall that was to protect the heart of the Spanish Empire in the Pacific had outlived its purpose. 1.4 Conclusion

Throughout their existence, the Spanish colonies in Micronesia remained tied to the respective epicenters of power in the Pacific. During the early modern period, the islands were conceived as the extension of the Americas, while in the nineteenth century, they became an extension of the Philippines. Thus envisioned, Spain’s holdings in Oceania led them to play a distant secondary role in this country’s colonial network. As a result, in their diminished role, the Micronesian colonies remained primarily invisible to the imperial power brokers. During the early modern period, Spanish notables envisioned the Pacific as a funnel that connected Asia with America in terms of material and mental culture. The widely used metaphor of “Spanish Lake” further dwarfs into a “puddle” when one closely analyzes the actual power Spain wielded in the Pacific. Paradoxically, it was and continues to be Spanish nationalism that skewed this metaphor to reflect an exaggerated image of Spanish control in Oceania and the wider Pacific. This chapter counteracts this illusory vision of Spanish hegemony by reducing their “lake” to a simple “puddle.” The “Westphalian System,” which governed European international relations in the Pacific, rendered Oceania a marginal territory populated by imaginary continents that would propel its exploration until the second half of the eighteenth century. Of these European nations, only Spain established a permanent settlement on the island of Guam in the Marianas to serve as a stopover for the Manila Galleon run. The independence of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas in the first half of the nineteenth century shook the Iberian conceptualization to its core. Yet a defiant Spanish public refused to abandon the old thought of conceptualizing the Pacific as an integral part of their American colonies. Defeat in the Pacific War of the 1860s made it evident that the independent new republics would not revert to their old colonial status. Slowly, Spanish officials and a learned public shifted their gaze and embraced the Philippines as a new imperial hub linking the Caroline and the Mariana islands in a new “Spanish Oceania.” In this geographical construct, the region of Micronesia became a defensive “wall” preventing the advance of Euro-​American powers in Oceania. Japanese and, more importantly, German encroachment on this geographical region triggered Spanish colonization of the Caroline Islands, formerly claimed but not effectively occupied. Following defeat in the Spanish-​ American War that saw the loss of the Philippines and Guam to a rising US

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  23

nation, the Spanish colonies in Micronesia lost the conceptual anchor that supplied their meaning in the colonial system. Spain thus sold the Caroline, Mariana, and Palauan islands to Germany in 1899, who administratively integrated them as the Island Territory in the colony of German New Guinea. This chapter continues historiographical debates about the value of metaphors to describe the reality of Oceania as a series of “lakes.”40 We suggest employing the more appropriate descriptions of “puddle” and “defensive walls” to capture the geopolitical perceptions of the Mariana and the Caroline Islands in the Spanish colonial system. After concluding the wider macro-​ historical analysis of the Spanish colonial presence in the Pacific, subsequent chapters explore particular micro-​historical episodes. Chapters 2 and 3 tackle the Iberian presence in and perceptions of the Pacific during the eighteenth century, while Chapters 4 and 5 examine Spanish nineteenth-​century colonial policies in the Mariana and Caroline islands. Notes 1 Antonio Pigafetta, Primer viaje alrededor del globo, ed. Virgilio Ortega (Barcelona: Orbis, 1986), 33; Philip F. Alexander, The Earliest Voyages Round the World, 1519-​1617 (Cambridge: University Press, 2011), 1–​84. Magellan’s expedition arrived at Guam in March 1521 and baptized its archipelago with the name of the “Thieves’ Island” due to the attempt of the natives to steal a series of objects. 2 Horst Pietschmann, Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580–​1830 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 239; Alejandro del Cantillo, Tratados, Convenios y declaraciones de paz y comercio que han hecho con potencias extranjeras los monarcas españoles de la casa de Borbón desde el año 1700 hasta el día (Madrid: La Alegría, 1843), 537–​547. 3 Greg Bankoff, “Winds of Colonization: The Meteorological Contours of Spain’s Imperium in the Pacific, 1521-​ 1898,” Environment and History 12, no. 1 (2008): 65–​88. 4 Juan Gil, “El tornaviaje,” in La nao de China, 1565-​1815: Navegación, comercio e intercambios culturales (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2013), 25–​64. 5 Shirley Fish, The Manila-​ Acapulco Galleons. The Treasure Ships of the Pacific. With an Annotated List of Transpacific Galleons 1565-​1815 (United Kingdom: AuthourHouse, 2011), 1. 6 Dennis Owen Flynn and Arturo Giráldez (eds.), China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century (Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2010); Arturo Giráldez, The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of a Global Economy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Fernand N. Zialcita, “The Manila Galleon: Cradle of a fusion culture,” in Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translations and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1565-​ 1898) (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022),155–​161. 7 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948).

24  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

8 Jeremy Black, European International Relations 1648-​ 1815 (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002). 9 W. L. Schurz, “The Spanish Lake,” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (1922): 181–​194; Oskar H. K. Spate, The Spanish Lake. The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979). 10 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​ 1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014), I. 11 David Manzano Cosano, “La España del siglo XXI y su relación con la Micronesia: ¿Una relación que va más allá del viejo recuerdo colonial del Imperio donde nunca se ponía el Sol?” Cuadernos de la Escuela Diplomática 59, no. 1 (2017): 175–​260. 12 Daria Dahpon Ho, “Naval rivalry in the Western Pacific: Portugal, England, Holland and Koxinga, 1600-​1720,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, ed. Paul D´Arcy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 655–​674. 13 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​ 1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014), 18–​37. 14 Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, “The seed of martyrs and martyrdom in the Marianas (17th century),” in I estoria-​ ta: Guam, the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture: An Exhibition of “Let’s Turn Around the World” (Madrid: National Museum of Anthropology, 2021), 57–​64. 15 Bronwen Douglas, “Seaborne ethnography to the Science of Race, 1521-​ 1850,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 2., ed. Paul D´Arcy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 389–​420. 16 Mark Borthwick, Pacific Century. The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia (Colorado: Westview Press, 2007), 75. 17 Alan Frost, “Science for Political Purposes: European Exploration of the Pacific Ocean, 1763-​1804,” Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific, eds. Roy Macleod and Philip Rehbock (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 27–​44. See also next chapter in this book. 18 David Igler, The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 19 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​ 1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014), 156–​160. 20 Gregoire Louis Domeny De Rienzi, Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie (Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836). For a critical perspective see Bronwen Douglas, Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511-​1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 21 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​ 1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014), 154–​211. 22 Ramiro Alberto Flores Guzmán, “Los balleneros Anglo-​ estadunidenses y la cuestión de la ‘extranjerización’ del comercio peruano a fines de la época colonial, 1790-​1820,” América latina en la Historia económica 36, no. 1 (2011): 39–​64; John T. Norris, “The Policy of the British Cabinet in the Nootka Crisis,” The English Historical Review 70, no. 277 (1955): 562–​580. 23 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Vision of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​ 1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014), 170–​187.

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  25

24 David Manzano Cosano, El Imperio español en Oceanía (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020), 83–​95. 25 University of Philippines (Filipiniana Collection), Alonso de la Riva, Informe sobre las Islas Marianas (1829), 13. 26 David Manzano Cosano, El Imperio español en Oceanía (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020), 94–​106. 27 Agustín Ramón Rodríguez González, La Armada Española, la Campaña del Pacífico, 1862-​1871. España frente a Chile y Perú (Madrid: Agualarga, 1999). 28 Lawrence Lenz, Power and Policy: America´s First Steps to Superpower, 1889-​ 1922 (New York: Algora, 2008), 25. 29 Enrique Taviel de Andrade, Historia del conflicto de las Carolinas. Prueba del Derecho de Soberanía que sobre ellas posee España y demostración de la trascendencia que tiene la mediación del Papa (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886), 5–​6. Palau became the focus of a diplomatic incident between Madrid and the European chancelleries for the first time. The incident was resolved with Madrid’s refusal to extend Spain’s commercial rights to this archipelago. 30 Greg Dvorak, “The phantom Empire: Japan in Oceania and Oceania in Japan from the 1890s onward,” The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. Volume II. The Pacific Ocean since 1800, ed. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 98–​131; Mark R. Peattie, Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-​1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 1–​34. 31 David Manzano Cosano, “The imperial enemies of Spain in Spanish Oceania: the case of Japan,” in The Representation of External Threats: From the Modern Ages to the Modern World, eds. E. Craislsheim and M. D. Elizalde (Netherlands: Brill, 2019), 401–​417. 32 Steve Rogers Fisher, A History of the Pacific Islands (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2013), 148–​149. 33 Eloy [Monseñor], “Miscelánea, Oceanía Central” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 5, 1878, pp. 142–​144. 34 Telegram from the Ministry of Overseas to the Captain General of the Philippines, 15th January 1885, NAP (National Archives of the Philippines), Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4193, file 8; Naval Museum Archives of Madrid, source 0358, file 779, Report written by the commander Felipe Cangas de Argüelles y Villalba in Cavite, 7th de June, 1885. 35 Salvador Bernabéu Albert and José María García Redondo, “Las Nuevas Filipinas: un proyecto misional oceánico de la Compañía de Jesús (s. XVII-​ XVIII),” in Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánica, eds. S. Bernabéu Albert, C. Mena-​García and E. J. Luque Azcona (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 149–​194. 36 M. Dolores Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885-​1889 (Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992), 57–​58; David Manzano Cosano, Las Carolinas: las islas fronterizas que alientan el Imperialismo español (Sevilla: Carmona, Ayuntamiento de Carmona, 2017), 47–​55. 37 Spennemann, H. R., History Source, 11, Treaty Between British and Germany Relating to the Demarcation of the Spheres of Influence (Marshall: Digital Micronesia), http://​marsh​all.csu.edu.au/​Marsha​lls/​html/​hist​ory/​UKTrea​ty1. html: Natio​nal Historical Archives of Madrid, Spain, Ultramar 5353, Source 1,

26  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

file 23, Declaración firmada de Berlín de 6 de abril de 1886 suscrita por el Reino Unido y Alemania para repartirse el área de influencia en el Pacífico. 38 David Manzano Cosano, El Imperio español en Oceanía (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020), 314–​317. 39 Robert A. Underwood, The Changing of the Colonial Guard: What Do the Guarded Have to Say? Notas de la Conferencia pronunciada por Congresista Robert Underwood (Guam: MARC, 1998), 4–​24. 40 The metaphor of lakes is most prominently exposed and questioned in Arif Dirlik, “The Asia-​Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure,” in What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, ed. Arif Dirlik (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 15–​36; For the “Spanish Lake” in particular consult Rainer F. Buschmann, E. R. Slack and J. B. Tueller, Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521-​1898 (Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), 1–​16.

Bibliography Alexander, Philip F. The Earliest Voyages Round the World, 1519–​ 1617. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Bankoff, Greg. “Winds of Colonization: The Meteorological Contours of Spain’s Imperium in the Pacific, 1521–​ 1898.” Environment and History 12, no. 1 (2008): 65–​88. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador and José María García Redondo. “Las Nuevas Filipinas: un proyecto misional oceánico de la Compañía de Jesús (s. XVII-​XVIII).” In Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánica. Edited by S. Bernabéu Albert, C. Mena-​ García and E. J. Luque Azcona, 149–​ 194. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015. Black, Jeremy. European International Relations 1648–​ 1815. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002. Borthwick, Mark. Pacific Century. The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia. Colorado: Westview Press, 2007. Buschmann, Rainer F. Iberian Vision of the Pacific, 1507–​1899. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Buschmann, Rainer F., Edward R. Slack and James B. Tueller. Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–​ 1898. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2014. Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. “The Seed of Martyrs and Martyrdom in the Marianas (17th Century).” In I estoria-​ ta: Guam, the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture: An Exhibition of “Let’s turn around the world,” Edited by the National Museum of Antropology, 57–​ 64. Madrid: National Museum of Anthropology, 2021. Dahpon Ho, Daria. “Naval Rivalry in the Western Pacific: Portugal, England, Holland and Koxinga, 1600–​1720.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. Volume 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, General editor Paul D´Arcy, 655–​ 674. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Del Cantillo, Alejandro. Tratados, Convenios y declaraciones de paz y comercio que han hecho con potencias extranjeras los monarcas españoles de la casa de Borbón desde el año 1700 hasta el día. Madrid: La Alegría, 1843.

The Spanish Empire in Oceania  27

Dirlik, Arif. “The Asia-​Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure.” In What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea. Edited by Arif Dirlik, 15–​36, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Douglas, Bronwen. Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511–​ 1850. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Douglas, Bronwen. “Seaborne Ethnography to the Science of Race, 1521–​1850.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. Volume 2. The Pacific Ocean since 1800. General editor Paul D´Arcy, 389–​420. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Dvorak, Greg. “The Phantom Empire: Japan in Oceania and Oceania in Japan from the 1890s Onward.” In The Cambridge history of the Pacific Ocean. Volume 2. The Pacific Ocean since 1800. General editor Paul D´Arcy, 98–​131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, Dolores M. España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885–​1889. Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992. Eloy [Monseñor]. “Miscelánea, Oceanía Central.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 5, no. 1 (1878): 142–​144. Fish, Shirley. The Manila-​Acapulco Galleons. The Treasure Ships of the Pacific. With an Annotated List of Transpacific Galleons, 1565–​1815. Central Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: AuthourHouse, 2011. Fisher, Steve Rogers. A History of the Pacific Islands. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2013. Flores Guzmán, Ramiro Alberto. “Los balleneros Anglo-​estadunidenses y la cuestión de la ‘extranjerización’ del comercio peruano a fines de la época colonial, 1790–​ 1820.” América latina en la Historia económica 36, no. 1 (2011): 39–​64. Flynn, Dennis Owen and Arturo Giráldez, (eds.). China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century. Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2010. Frost, Alan. “Science for Political Purposes: European Exploration of the Pacific Ocean, 1763–​1804.” In Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific. Edited by Roy Macleod and Philip Rehbock, 27–​44. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. Gil, Juan. “El tornaviaje.” In La nao de China, 1565–​1815: navegación, comercio e intercambios culturales. Edited by Salvador Bernabéu, 25–​64. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2013. Giráldez, Arturo. The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of a Global Economy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Igler, David. The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Lenz, Lawrence. Power and Policy: America´s First Steps to Superpower, 1889–​1922. New York: Algora, 2008. Manzano Cosano, David. “La España del siglo XXI y su relación con la Micronesia: ¿Una relación que va más allá del viejo recuerdo colonial del Imperio donde nunca se ponía el Sol?” Cuadernos de la Escuela Diplomática 59, no. 1 (2017): 175–​260. Manzano Cosano, David. Las Carolinas: las islas fronterizas que alientan el Imperialismo español. Carmona: Ayuntamiento de Carmona, 2017. Manzano Cosano, David. “The imperial enemies of Spain in Spanish Oceania: the case of Japan.” In The Representation of External Threats: From the Modern Ages to the Modern World. Edited by E. Craislsheim and M. D. Elizalde, 401–​417. Netherlands: Brill, 2019.

28  The Spanish Empire in Oceania

Manzano Cosano, David. El Imperio español en Oceanía. Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020. Morgenthau, Hans J. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Knopf, 1948. Norris, John T. “The Policy of the British Cabinet in the Nootka Crisis.” The English Historical Review 70, no. 277 (1955): 562–​580. Peattie, Mark R. Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–​ 1945. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. Pietschmann, Horst. Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580–​1830. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002. Pigafetta, Antonio. Primer viaje alrededor del globo. Edited by Virgilio Ortega. Barcelona: Orbis, 1986. Rienzi, Gregoire Louis Domeny De. Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie. Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836. Rodríguez González, Agustín Ramón. La Armada Española, la Campaña del Pacífico, 1862–​1871. España frente a Chile y Perú. Madrid: Agualarga, 1999. Schurz, William L. “The Spanish Lake.” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (1922): 181–​194. Spate, Oskar H. K. The Spanish Lake. The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979. Spennemann, H. R. History Source, 11, Treaty Between British and Germany Relating to the Demarcation of the Spheres of Influence. Marshall: Digital Micronesia, http://​marsh​all.csu.edu.au/​Marsha​lls/​html/​hist​ory/​UKTrea​ty1.html Taviel de Andrade, Enrique. Historia del conflicto de las Carolinas. Prueba del Derecho de Soberanía que sobre ellas posee España y demostración de la trascendencia que tiene la mediación del Papa. Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886. Underwood, Robert A. The Changing of the Colonial Guard: What Do the Guarded Have to Say? Notas de la Conferencia pronunciada por Congresista Robert Underwood. Guam: MARC, 1998. Zialcita, Fernand N. “The Manila Galleon: Cradle of a fusion culture.” In Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translations and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1565–​1898), 155–​161. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022.

2 UNCOVERING AN IBERIAN PACIFIC THROUGH DIPLOMATIC DISPUTES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

2.1  The Relevance of New Diplomatic History

Long decried by cultural and social historians as an archaic form of historical narrative, diplomatic history had nevertheless held significant sway over the discipline until the mid-​twentieth century, when charges against this type of history were mounting. As a prominent subfield of political history, diplomatic history emphasizes high politics and the makers and administrators behind its making. In this sense, diplomats were important in negotiating and implementing bilateral treaties. Novel historical directions, especially the cultural and comparative approaches, developed out of political history but then defined themselves in contrast to this crucial direction. Since the 1960s, new trends in historical research pushed political history and allied diplomatic concerns into the realm of antiquarianism and threatened to doom such approaches.1 However, to keep their theoretical and methodological currency and counterclaims of adhering to outdated historical norms, diplomatic historians incorporated more significant developments in the field by reading and addressing their colleagues in social scientific and literary criticism. Proponents of this redesigned diplomatic history were a great deal more interdisciplinary. They skillfully unpacked diplomatic correspondence by reading it against and along the grain to reveal more dimensions than endless squabbles over war and peace. They show that diplomats were patrons of the arts and literature, transmitting fashion and scientific trends to their home courts, and, by necessity, engaged in the symbolic exchanges and pageantries surrounding life at the court.2 For Pacific exploration, diplomats and their correspondence with their respective authorities represented important funnels of knowledge about DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-3

30  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

this newly uncovered aquatic region from an eighteenth-​century European perspective. Similarly, the recipients on the other end were responsible for how this already truncated information was interpreted and diffused to the public. This chapter looks closely at the role of two diplomats, Spanish and Portuguese, based at the Court of St. James’s in England, from where most expeditions—​Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and most importantly Cook—​departed for the largely uncharted ocean of the Pacific following the year 1764. Not only does such examination reveal traditional diplomatic attempts to prevent these journeys, but, perhaps most importantly, looking closely at their correspondence unveils a very different perception of new aquatic surfaces. 2.2  The Role of the Pacific in Diplomatic Tangles

The Portuguese and Spanish diplomatic posts in England were vital to assessing this northern European nation’s continuing expansions into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Portuguese and British alliance, strengthened by the Methuen Treaty during the War of the Spanish Succession (1703), had deep historical roots that coincided with English merchants settling in Portugal while looking for wool and wine. The Spanish antagonism with Great Britain had shallower origins yet grew fiercer and increasingly hostile since the sixteenth century. The Portuguese engagement with England found its accent, in particular, for the Atlantic. Historical inquiries into the period from 1770 to 1810 generally describe this epoch as one of Portuguese imperial disintegration in the Atlantic world. On the other hand, Gabriel Paquette has recently argued that these years are better understood as a period of imperial integration that originated with the Marquis of Pombal’s ascendency as Minister of State following 1755. After Portugal’s renewed independence from Spain in 1640, the country’s imperial policies shifted away from the Indian and Pacific oceans to the Atlantic. This relocation meant investing in the alliance with England, whose increasing naval supremacy over this aquatic surface guaranteed Portuguese trade routes to Brazil and ongoing political protection. That this link was ultimately shattered with Brazilian independence has more to do with the evacuation of the Portuguese Crown to Brazil following the French invasion rather than with disintegrating forces on the colonial periphery.3 Economic growth became threatened when Brazilian authorities sought to cut out the Portuguese metropole from the third or intermediate leg of their “triangular” trade. Lisbon was trading with Angola, Angola with Brazil, and Brazil with Portugal. British merchants were increasing their demands as their nation gained increasing access to Brazilian ports in Brazil. Brazilian notables required a steady flow of slave labor to meet this rising British appetite for resources. Consequently, local governments in Brazil started

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  31

undercutting the amount of gold exported to the Portuguese Crown. This precious metal found investment in direct trade with Angola, which allowed the colonial government to meet the British merchants’ mounting demands for mineral and crop exports.4 Increasingly, the Brazilian colony started to shift allegiance away from the Portuguese Crown as their increasing reliance on British rather than Portuguese markets granted the territory a certain degree of political and economic autonomy. The Portuguese leg was losing importance, triggering an expanding income loss due to declining export duties. Portuguese officials grew gradually troubled and intensified their diplomatic efforts with Great Britain.5 In addition to the decreasing importance of Brazil for the Portuguese metropole was this nation’s increasing military dependency on Great Britain following the Seven Years’ War (1756–​1763). The initial hope by Portuguese ministers for neutrality during a conflict dissipated when the Spanish Crown invaded both Portugal and its colonies in 1762. Pombal, early in the war, labeled Great Britain as being “late” to the war as a supporting ally.6 A rushed intervention by British troops illustrated Portugal’s increasing dependency on its longstanding ally. At the end of the conflict, Pombal was weighing his options and even considered joining the Franco-​Spanish alliance against Great Britain.7 On the other hand, Spain was warring intermittently with first England and then, following the early eighteenth century, Great Britain. These also brought the Spanish authorities closer to an alliance with France that would culminate in the Bourbon Family Compact during the Seven Years’ War. The British success in this conflict started an exploration of the Pacific and drew this ocean into diplomatic entanglements. While Spain asserted its claim over this watery surface through several treaties—​Todesillas 1494, Zaragoza 1529, and Utrecht 1713—​the British position, like that of the French, who sought to recoup their losses from the war, was one that an entire ocean could not be closed off to scientific inquiry. Evoking lofty transnational goals, such as the scientific exploration of the Pacific Ocean, could mask more obvious missions of annexation and settlements.8 Although the Pacific never led to an open war between Spain and Great Britain, it caused two cold conflicts over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands in 1770, located in the southern Atlantic at the mouth of the strategic Strait of Magellan, and in the early 1790s over the Northwest Coast of the Americas. In both cases, Spain’s ally, the French, backed down, forcing the Iberian government to come to terms with their British counterparts.9 Much of the events leading up to these conflicts had to pass though the Iberian ambassador’s diplomatic funnels based in England, whose role was to steadfastly defend their home governments’ positions and to keep the superiors informed of the British intentions.

32  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

2.3  Spain: The Prince of Masserano

Vittorio Filippo (1713–​1777), the Prince of Masserano, had a solid Italian lineage but remained fiercely loyal to the country where he was born, Spain. Assuming the prominent Castilian ambassadorship to the Court of St. James’s in 1763, the very end of the Seven Years’ War, Masserano would remain in this post, with some interruption, until 1777. The Portuguese ambassador in London spoke highly of the enterprising Masserano, who actively formed ruptures in the Anglo-​Lusitanian coalition. Ambassador Masserano conspired with his French counterpart, the Count of Guerchy, to inform Portugal that Great Britain was undertaking an undeclared “cold war” (guerra surda) against Portugal. British action supposedly aimed at creating a rift between the metropole and the Brazilian colony.10 Masserano’s attempt at undermining the Portuguese-​British alliances would find its continuation in the British incursion into the Pacific Ocean. Masserano’s perhaps most uncomfortable position was to insist on treaties and the right of first discovery that supposedly turned the Pacific into a Spanish mare clausum. This enterprise was increasingly more difficult to maintain. British ministers countered his treaty claims by questioning the right of first discovery, arguing for the more beneficial transnational mindset of scientific exploration. They also raised the issue of whether countries could maintain century-​old agreements over a largely unknown aquatic space. In the end, Masserano’s mission failed to safeguard the Pacific from British incursions as mariners from this national frequently traversed the Pacific Basin between 1764 and 1780. To make matters worse, they rushed diaries, illustrations, and maps to the press, which their Spanish counterparts failed to do. As a result, following the publication of James Cook’s second circumnavigation (1777), the Pacific ceased to be the “Spanish Lake” and gave away to a period of rapid exploration and expansion.11 Masserano’s main line of defense became Article Eight of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which restored Spanish colonial hegemony before the war of Spanish Succession. This article, however, was notably silent on the status of the Pacific, leaving much room for negotiations. Masserano never failed to remind his British counterparts that “even if we do not maintain as many settlements as we would like in this region, [you] cannot dispute our rights to the South Seas.”12 However, for a victorious British nation following the Seven Years’ War, such large-​scale interpretations, based on treaty provisions signed fifty years earlier, became increasingly untenable. The Spanish ambassador thus experienced growing diplomatic pushback from British notables, who increasingly demanded freedom of navigation in the seas surrounding the Spanish Americas. They bluntly retorted, “a sea cannot be entirely closed to a maritime power.”13 Meeting face-​to-​face with the Earl of Shelburne, Southern Secretary of State, in September 1766, Masserano found himself on the defensive. The

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  33

talk between the two diplomats illustrated the stakes involved in a debate over the international law of the sea. The Earl of Shelburne first reproached Spain’s attempt to close the entire South Sea to navigation and commerce, two terms he claimed were ill-​defined. While he understood that this prohibition involved commercial vessels that had no business in interfering with the Spanish trade in the Americas, the Secretary of State vehemently contested that such exclusion should also be applied to ships of the Royal Navy that, during peace times, clearly had no viable interest in the Spanish colonies. Masserano objected to Shelburne’s semantic game, claiming that navigation was a term applicable to all vessels and not just those of British choosing. Sensing his counterpart’s aggravation, Shelburne thus attempted a different tack: right of first discovery. Indeed, he argued, the British possessed maps that charted many of the contested islands in the South Sea as their discoveries. Masserano retorted that similar maps in Spanish archives attested to his country’s discoveries in this region. Finally, in a more conciliatory move, Shelburne invited the ambassador to provide a rough outline of the territories reaching from the Southern Atlantic through the South Pacific and to the Philippines. When Masserano claimed all of them for Spain, the Secretary was aghast. Shelburne told Masserano that these claims were indeed vast, after which the ambassador replied that Britain’s ambitions were indeed greater.14 Shelburne continued: I could not consent to talk about it. That is the Spaniards talking of their possessions included the A[mericas] & S[outh] Seas, and that our navigating there gave occasion to them to Suspect a War, I had no hesitation to say that I would advise one if they insisted on reviving such a vague & strange pretension, long since worn out as the exclusive right of those Seas.15 For his unyielding stance in the face of the British Secretary, Masserano received high marks from his superiors in Spain. Spanish Secretary of State, the Marqués de Grimaldi (1720–​1786), was no friend of the British nation. Grimaldi urged Masserano as follows: “You must resist the notion that they can freely navigate to the Malvinas [Falklands], the Patagonian Coast, or, most importantly, the South Seas. The consequences of such concessions would be dire….”16 Masserano continuously questioned the prime mover of science guiding British expeditions to the Pacific. Increasingly, however, Masserano became confronted with the argument that scientific curiosity rather than commercial or imperial expansion was guiding British incursions, even if the ambassador rightly suspected that this supposed transnational paradigm shrouded national attempts at colonization. During John Byron’s expedition (1764–​1766), the Spanish ambassador raised the issue of Byron’s hoisting a British flag in the Falkland Islands to underscore the genuine motives guiding the venture. The establishment of a British settlement and

34  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

the violent Spanish reaction forcing the British to abandon the Falkland Islands in 1770 almost led to a war between the two nations. Masserano, in all of his steadfast negotiations, was forced to make a declaration restoring the Falkland settlement to the British Crown. As the cartoon below indicates, some British ministers felt that the government should have gone to war with a weakened Spanish power. Masserano became even more suspicious of two additional voyages followed in Byron’s wake. Although the Dolphin under the command of Samuel Wallis and the Swallow under Philip Carteret’s charge left England roughly at the same time, the slow progress of the Swallow forced the two vessels to separate in Magellan’s Strait. Wallis returned to port in 1768, while the Swallow arrived in England a good year later. Masserano suspected the explorer’s motives: “It can only be to our detriment that this [British] nation has focused her energies on the South Seas.”17 He consequently closely monitored the output of these voyages by clandestinely acquiring copies of their diaries obtained from mariners traveling aboard the British vessels.18 In an even bolder move, Masserano smuggled two individuals out of Britain and had them shipped to Spain for further inquiry. One of these mariners had sailed with Wallis on the Dolphin where he had witnessed the first encounter with the island of Tahiti. A second person was even more interesting since he had purportedly lived two years in the Falkland Islands. Ultimately, this risky operation was more trouble than it was worth. As soon as the two individuals touched Spanish soil, they complained bitterly that they did not receive the promised pay. Masserano urged his superiors to fulfill his promises since his diplomatic standing in Great Britain would be severely compromised lest they complained to British authorities. To make matters worse, the wife of one of the individuals, Pedro Ferron, solicited the return of her husband. Masserano decided on a monetary compensation to keep her precious silence.19 Despite growing evidence to the contrary, Masserano kept insisting that “in these waters there are no discoveries to be made that we [the Spaniards] have not already done.”20 Yet his British counterparts argued that discovery was secondary to a new catchword, “scientific curiosity,” that Masserano confronted with increasing regularity. In a particular conversation with the Duke of Richmond, Masserano was surprised about the reasons guiding Byron’s voyage: When about to take my leave I asked him whether he could tell me any particulars of the voyage made by the two ships that arrived recently. He replied in a bantering tone that they had been looking for [Patagonian] giants. I answered him that if they had enquired of me for information concerning those folks I would have given it them and spared them [the trouble] of the voyage.21

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  35

FIGURE 2.1 Satirical

Rendition of Masserano and Secretary of State Lord North over the Falkland Islands. The Political Register, London v. 9 (1771), p. 297. Courtesy of the Lewis Walepole Library, Yale University.

36  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

The target island changed further as Samuel Wallis returned from his Pacific voyage in 1768 with a new discovery—​a lush largely populated isle he christened King George Island that would soon gain fame under the name of Tahiti. Scientific and political motives came together when James Cook was sent on his mission. For Masserano, certain scientific objectives seemed tangible enough, such as the observance of the transit of Venus guiding Cook’s first venture to the Pacific. On the other hand, Masserano had a hard time understanding seemingly intangible collections of natural history that hardly justified the high voyage expenses. Masserano transferred his ambiguity directly to his superiors: “[The explorers] have returned with thousands of curiosities from one of the islands of Quiros [Tahiti]…. Solander and Banks assured us that these islands possess no commerce worth mentioning.”22 Masserano’s ambiguity about the status of curiosities proved short-​ lived, however, as he quickly realized the potentially dangerous British accomplishments in the field of cartography. As soon as James Cook returned from his second circumnavigation, the disparate patterns of motives guiding Cook’s voyage ranging from astronomy, cartography, ethnography, to natural history, began to crystallize into a coherent whole. The publication of the results in 1777 dispelled the notion of a southern continent that had preoccupied the armchair enthusiasts in Britain and France.23 The volume spotted worrisome aspects for the Italian diplomat. In his introduction, Cook tipped his hat to Dutch and Spanish exploratory voyages that preceded him. Similarly, the volume also spotted a large map of the southern hemisphere that contained for the first time a completed outline of Australia. The map also illustrated the tracks of discovery of British, Dutch, French, and Spanish navigators. Mendaña (1595) and Quiros’ (1605) tracks paled in comparison to Cook’s accomplishment during their explorations in the southern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean. The map and Cook’s two volumes highlighted the Pacific as an emerging charted entity. Masserano realized that under the veneer of scientific curiosity, Cook, now armed with a replica of Harrison’s maritime chronometer, was terminating what the Spaniards had started more than two centuries before him. Masserano quickly recognized that maps and transnational publications carried with them the potential of territorial claims at the expanse of earlier Spanish treaty rights. Alarmed he wrote to his superiors in Spain: Who knows whether this government was not excited about the riches of the Solomons discovered in 1567 by Mendaña…. We do know, however, that in the discovered regions they left the British flag as sign of dominion testifying to this nation’s raising ambitions.24

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  37

There was a clear sense of urgency in Masserano’s letter to his officials: It is of the uttermost importance to publish before long our travel relations and discoveries in the [Pacific]. We need to publish our maps, long promised, since for this [British] nation no better act of possession exists than such publications. This will show clearly that we did arrive [to the Pacific] before any other nation.25 The relationship between publication and territorial claims became obvious also to Masserano’s superior in the Spanish capital. Commenting on the appearance of a crude map of the northern regions of the Americas in a Russian almanac, the Marquis de Grimaldi commented to the Viceroy of Spain that these were certainly devised to underscore their rights to these areas.26 Masserano’s concerns about the British encroachment on the closed sea of the Pacific also took on relevancy to his Portuguese counterparts although the Pacific was refracted through decidedly Atlantic concerns. Ambassador Masserano, while he may have been steadfast in accepting the British scientific motives for sailing into the area lost little time in translating the English transgressions into terms that his Portuguese counterpart would understand. 2.4  Portugal: Increasingly Suspicious British Voyages to the Pacific

Masserano kept a close watch on the British incursions into the Spanish Lake of the Pacific, an area he and his Spanish superiors claimed to be exclusively theirs, since the Portuguese interest in the Pacific had vanished. Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their shrinking territorial hold in South and Southeast Asia, Portuguese attention started to shift to other regions. The loss of a good part of the seaborne empire in the seventeenth century had significantly reduced the Portuguese Crown’s sea legs. As mentioned earlier, the eighteenth century witnessed a reinforced interest in the Atlantic and the growing link between Angola and Brazil. Any diplomatic interest in British Pacific voyages was refracted through this prism. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Portugal emerged vulnerable. Although, with significant British help, the Portuguese managed to repel a Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762–​1763), the Spanish soon overran Portuguese defenses in South America. They regained some of the lost territory only with British diplomatic assistance following their invasion of Spanish Cuba. In many ways, the Prime Minister, Marquis de Pombal, was reconsidering his fragile alliance with Great Britain. The British expeditions following the Seven Years’ War brought two geographic points in the Atlantic into focus. The first was the contested

38  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

Falkland Islands (Malvinas), located at the mouth of Magellan’s Strait, which was claimed equally by Great Britain, France, and Spain. Bougainville’s circumnavigation originated with the French surrender of her interest in the island chain. However, Great Britain was unwavering in holding onto its stake in the islands since George Anson’s circumnavigation in the 1740s was regarded as a prized gate to the South Pacific. An actual settlement at Port Egmont solidified the British claim to the islands. The first circumnavigation to ensue following the Seven Years’ War, Commodore John Byron’s mission carried a small detachment of settlers for the Falkland and the aim of Pacific exploration, particularly the unknown southern continent. Besides the Falkland settlement, Byron’s circumnavigation yielded few geographic novelties. A small unofficial account of the voyage caused a small still stir, partially due to its lengthy description and depiction of the fabled Patagonian giants which is generally considered the first significant publication of the Pacific craze that was to follow.27 Intrigued by the conflict, Portuguese authorities listened to an unnamed French national who while in former service of the Spaniards decided to switch allegiance to the Portuguese and provide them with some basic information about the Falkland Islands that resulted in a rough map.28 Portuguese authorities were less concerned about the tangle over these strategic islands since they were far removed from Brazil. Portuguese authorities, nevertheless, recruited a French national who had worked for the Spaniards in Montevideo. This Frenchman claimed to have been to the Falkland Islands and provided the Portuguese with a hand drawn map listing the European settlements on the island.29 Rio de Janeiro was the second place that coincided with the British expansion into the Pacific. British agents may not have plotted to take over the entire Brazilian colony, but economic penetration and expanding fishing rights were clearly at the forefront. When Byron’s account circulated among Portuguese notables through either the English original or Spanish or French translation, some very concerning passages emerged. The anonymous author of this account extolled the bountiful nature of Brazil with its fertile soil, mineral deposits (primarily gold), and strategic location in the southern Atlantic. Although the port of Rio de Janeiro was defended by several batteries on strategic islands to ward off attackers, the British observer noted that the strength of the Portuguese defenses had been greatly exaggerated. “[W]‌e may safely venture to affirm that six sail of our men of war of the line would be able to destroy all their batteries in a few hours.”30 In some ways, by raising naval power, this was little more than a disparaging comment. However, Portuguese authorities could also understand this sentence as a real threat to their colonial empire. Such martial intentions on Brazilian territory made Portuguese officials receptive to Spanish overtures. Ambassador Martinho de Melo e Castro

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  39

FIGURE 2.2 A

map of the Falkland Islands, Overseas Historical Archive, Lisbon, AHU_​CARTm_​096, D. 861.

(1716–​1795), who served at the Court of St. James’s between 1756 and 1770, was initially less than taken with the Spanish arguments that the Americas and the seas and islands surrounding them should be regarded as an exclusive Castilian realm. In fact, Melo welcomed the British diplomatic to repel the “Spanish chimerical extension of their realm.”31 Much like his Spanish counterpart, he was equally apathetic about the British accounts emerging from the Pacific. When a second circumnavigation by the HMS Dolphin under Captain Wallis set out, he commented that more ships were on their way to the Falklands and the South Pacific. Yet “because these voyages are so frequent, their [reports] fail to deliver novelties, and there is consequently little talk about them.”32 Loyalty to the British endeavor, however, was stretched by the Seven Years’ War and Spanish diplomat Masserano, a master of his craft, was able to explore the cracks emerging in the alliance. Great Britain, according to Masserano, was attempting a guerra surda, an undeclared war against the rest of Europe. The Falkland Islands and the South Pacific may have incited little interest in the Portuguese. Still, Masserano emphasized that the ships destined for those regions were also attempting to undermine Spanish and Portuguese authority by introducing valuable contraband. When Melo and Pombal demanded evidence for such infractions, Masserano delivered. The sloop Tamar and the supply ship Florida, which had initially supported Wallis’s expedition, were supplying an essential intermediary in Brazil with illegal wares. A renegade Jesuit by the name of Father Lavalette was conspiring with the British to flood the colonial market in Brazil.33 Lavalette was not only a natural hated target

40  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

for his extensive role in the downfall of the Jesuit order, but Masserano’s description of the former Jesuit, complete with beady eyes, aquiline nose, and a feminine voice, made the father a racial and gendered outsider and a perfect specimen to further the sinister British objective in South America.34 Ambassador Melo bought this argument and promised to be vigilant about contraband and incursions along the Brazilian coast. He also read the extract of Byron’s circumnavigation, where the anonymous author had alluded to the ease with which British warships could overcome the Portuguese defenses in Rio de Janeiro. He further suspected that Wallis’s circumnavigation, stripped of its legitimate scientific purpose, had similar designs to undermine the colonial economy and the Portuguese control of Brazil.35 Historian Kenneth Maxwell rightfully suspects and captures that Portuguese fears of British active designs on Brazil were misplaced and sounded increasingly like conspiracy theories.36 He overlooks, however, Masserano’s role in fanning the flames of conspiracy to undermine the Luso-​British alliance. Similarly, the Spanish ambassador skillfully turned Portuguese disinterest in the British expeditions to the Pacific into an obsession with the vulnerability of Portuguese America. In at least one incident, such mind games became reality as famed explorer James Cook found out. When the HMS Endeavour carrying James Cook and Joseph Banks to the Pacific left Plymouth in August of 1768, they were naïvely unaware of the diplomatic storm brewing around them. A relative tranquil stop at Madeira on their outward journey into the Atlantic Ocean convinced Cook to direct his vessel to Brazil rather than the fledgling British settlement on the Falkland Islands for resupply. In November of the same year, they pulled into Rio de Janeiro. Still, Cook’s ship and its crew were eyed with suspicion rather than receiving the expected welcome. The local viceroy, Antônio Rolim de Moura the Count of Azambuja, distrusted the appearance of the vessel and its supposed mission, the observation of Venus through the disc of the Sun on Tahiti. He suspected, informed by his superiors in Lisbon, that the vessel’s main objective was to bring in contraband to undermine the strict colonial economy of Brazil, and science was simply employed to mask this insult. Cook and his crew were ordered to be under strict supervision. The purchase of supplies was only allowed through a viceroy-​approved merchant, and the Endeavour’s crew was hardly allowed to leave the ship. While at the Rio harbor, Cook deeply resented the viceroy’s action and wrote many memorials to Azambuja and the Admiralty to little avail. Naturalists Banks and Solander managed, under cover of night, to engage in botanizing, but Cook and his fellow shipmates left Rio in early December wholeheartedly disappointed. The British captain explicitly avoided stopping at Rio de Janeiro on subsequent voyages. Compared to the combined magnitude of Cook’s three expeditions, historians generally dismiss or barely mention this inconvenient little episode. It is usually described as a standoff between

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  41

Cook, who was fearful that his newly appointed commission was in grave danger, and the unyielding curmudgeonly viceroy. On some occasions, the encounter is also depicted to set the more enlightened British nation aside from the seemingly more backward Iberian former powers.37 The fierceness of the incident that brought about the intense stalemate between the British lieutenant and the ruler, however, speaks to both the Portuguese questions about the expedition and of Spanish ambassador Masserano’s success in triggering doubt in his counterpart from the Iberian Peninsula. This Portuguese suspicion explains why authorities were concerned about a largely imaginary alliance between the British and Jesuits. Masserano’s signature move—​discrediting British scientific missions through the accusation of contraband and undermining Spanish and Portuguese colonial economies—​can be seen in the viceroy’s refusal to accept science as an explanation. Growing increasingly irate, Cook’s explanation of why the ship had to sail to Tahiti to observe the astronomical phenomenon fell on deaf ears. Similarly, the strange appearance of the Endeavour, a former collier, was hardly classified as a royal ship and came closer to the smuggling vessel the Brazilian authorities expected. While, as mentioned before, the episode was of importance for Cook’s fabled voyages, it does speak to the increasing diplomatic tangle over the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, it illustrated that the Franco-​British vision of the world of islands in this new

FIGURE 2.3  A

view of the Town of Rio Janeiro, from the anchoring place, Alexander Buchan British Library Additional MS 23, 920, ff 7–​9.

42  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

ocean took a different shape in the Iberian Peninsula. The diplomatic funnel that represented the Portuguese and Spanish ambassadors shaped the Iberian visions of the novel aquatic space in connection with the terrestrial anchor of the Americas. Starting in 1770, however, an unexpected event would silence the Portuguese diplomatic voice at the Court of St. James’s. 2.5  Portugal II: The Inconvenient Melo Meltdown

In the midst of this controversy over the impact of the British voyages to the Pacific, long-​term ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Martinho de Melo e Castro, received a promotion to serve as Secretary of Naval and Overseas Affairs in 1770. His replacement was a younger and, compared to his long-​ standing predecessor, less experienced Francisco de Melo de Carvalho, a relative of State Secretary Pombal. Melo had earned his diplomatic legs while serving at the Danish court, where the young ambassador acquired an equally depraved and embarrassing habit of leading a wasteful lifestyle, which brought about an increasing monetary debt and a consequent diplomatic vulnerability. Initially, Melo managed to endear himself with local British dignitaries. The Secretary of State, the Earl of Rochford, wrote to an associate that he thought of the Portuguese envoy as “a man of great good sense and moderation, and extremely well disposed towards the English Nation.”38 Between the years of 1770 and 1771, Spain and Great Britain were at the brink of war over the strategic Falkland Islands, which was considered an important gateway to the Pacific Ocean. British diplomats were deeply concerned about Portuguese loyalty in this matter and the new ambassador reassured the ministers that Portugal had not joined into an alliance with Spain and France against the island nation.39 The Earl of Rochford also kept Melo well informed about the British expeditions departing to the Pacific Ocean and, following Cook’s dreadful experience with the viceroy, demanded that their ships should be provisioned in Brazil. Rochford was very concerned about extending such guarantees to James Cook’s second circumnavigation (1772–​ 1775), although the illustrious captain opted to enter the Pacific via the Indian Ocean.40 From Lisbon, Pombal also closely instructed Melo to keep Portuguese interests as neutral as possible during the impending conflict between Spain and Britain. Pombal reminded the young diplomat that whenever these two countries went to war, the conflict quickly spread to the Lusitanian metropole and the colonial periphery.41 To counter British dissatisfaction with the Anglo-​Lusitanian alliance, Pombal advised Melo to translate a small treatise he had written about the mutual grievances and distribute about 500 copies among English notables. In this booklet of about sixty pages, Pombal listed the misgivings existing on both sides and argued that that the close alliance between Lisbon and London should continue but only if both parties engaged in a mutually beneficial exchange.42

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Arming the new ambassador with many instruments to survive the diplomatic tangles that were about to happen, Pombal had to shift his worries when ominous letters started to arrive in Lisbon about numerous unpaid debts incurred by his envoy. Some of the debt stemmed from Melo’s tenure in Denmark, but his borrowing clearly went on the increase after arriving in London.43 Pombal’s polite inquiries into this matter were met with equally civil replies by Melo, who blamed his young age and inexperience for his financial transgressions. Apparently, entertaining courtiers and keeping a well-​groomed appearance rapidly outstripped the meager stipend Melo obtained from Lisbon.44 As more signed documents acknowledging Melo’s debts started to arrive in the Portuguese capital and Melo’s involvement in a prominent bankruptcy case of a Portuguese merchant, Jose Rodrigues Silva, became public, Pombal’s hand was forced. He dispatched a close associate, Joao Felipe de Fonseca, to London carrying two letters for Melo. The first official letter asked Melo to return at his earliest convenience to Lisbon for the dispatch of sensitive state papers. The second, to be delivered by Fonseca in person, ordered Melo to hand over the keys to his house, to compile an inventory of all his items of value, and to resign his diplomatic post with Lord Shelburne. The last paragraph of this letter must have struck fear into the young diplomat’s heart as it ordered him to leave the house at once with the street clothes he was wearing and to take the first ship to Lisbon to safeguard his honor.45 As Fonseca started to take inventory of Melo’s possessions and debts over the next few months, outlines of the envoy’s extravagant lifestyle emerged. Among the luxury items were mahogany cabinets, fine china porcelain sets, precious linens, and silver sets for virtually all household items. Although exact figures were difficult to obtain, Fonseca estimated that Melo owed more than 15,000 pounds (which would be more than one million pounds in current day money).46 Debtors included many foreign dignitaries, among them some of the most prominent lords in the British government. As much as the Marquis attempted to keep Melo’s meltdown from spreading, the story was just too big to be ignored. Letters to the editor in English newspapers started linking the ambassador’s own monetary troubles to the illiquidity of the Portuguese Crown. At the urging of Pombal, the foreign minister, and the former ambassador to England, Ambassador Martinho de Melo e Castro ceased his business of representing the Portuguese Crown. In turn, Melo pleaded with his superiors for time to settle his accounts before returning to Lisbon. He was fearful of the punishment he would receive upon his return and frequently pleaded with his superiors that his loss of face and economic credibility was punishment enough: “My honor is lost.”47 Fonseca, who was told to keep a close eye on Melo, shares the view of the former ambassador. In his assertion, Melo was “entirely discredited” and “a lost man” wondering aimlessly around the house while ceaselessly worrying about his fate in Portugal.48

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Fonseca was deeply involved in damage control emerging from Melo’s diplomatic meltdown, too much perhaps to notice that the young ambassador played his role very skillfully. In March of 1773, Melo finally left the house after Fonseca’s frequent urgings. Yet, despite his assurances that he would take the next ship to Portugal, Melo vanished almost without trace. Fonseca soon would find out the reason behind Melo’s disappearance. In late May, a certain James Christie presented Fonseca with a letter of debt bearing Melo’s signature. The document dated to February of the same year showed that Melo had borrowed more than 600 pounds from Christie while under Fonseca’s tutelage.49 Clearly the “dishonored” and “broken” man continued his borrowing ways. Now Fonseca had his hands full with locating the whereabouts of Melo. He was left to appease enraged and slightly amused British diplomats (who were demanding a prompt diplomatic replacement) and making certain that Melo had not taken along any of Pombal’s sensitive diplomatic correspondence as a bargaining chip.50 The hunt for the potential security breech proved elusive. Fonseca thought Melo lived in Paris, while he got word of Melo sightings around London. British authorities thought Melo had joined the French Abby of La Trappe, but this may have been a rumor that the Portuguese themselves were spreading to discredit the former envoy.51 The episode continued to occupy the agenda of the new ambassador Luis Pinto de Sousa who would arrive in London during 1774 to normalize relations. For the next eighteenth months Sousa found himself smoothing the path of destruction left by Melo by auctioning of his predecessor’s meager belongings to settle debts with the creditors.52 Even by 1779, Portuguese merchants residing in Great Britain still complained about repercussions hailing from Melo’s massive trail of debt.53 Melo’s actions, of course, left little room for other concerns let alone for the British expeditions heading to the shores of the Pacific. Where initial expeditions in the 1760s stopping over at the Portuguese possessions of Brazil or Madeira were eyed with suspicion and, as earlier indicated, even detained, the Melo meltdown left Portuguese authorities with virtually no diplomatic representation in a country that was increasingly taking the lead on Pacific exploration. For instance, while there was a strong Spanish response to Pacific voyage publications and reactions to Cook’s second and third voyages to this region, Portugal suffered long-​term effects of little to no diplomatic representation throughout most of the 1770s. 2.6 Conclusions

European exploration of the Pacific begun in earnest following the Seven Years’ War. What historians specializing on these belated expansions regard, mostly, as a Franco-​British affair, did have significant repercussions in Portugal and Spain. Officials in Madrid deeply resented the British incursion into an

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  45

aquatic surface that, based on treaty agreements, they considered a Spanish mare clausum. Novel exploratory motives usually coupled with scientific observation and collection made such protected concerns seem antiquated and without merit. Veteran diplomat for Spain, the Prince of Masserano, shifted his strategy away from an active defense of the Pacific, to exploring the cracks emerging in the Anglo-​Lusitanian alliance. Skillfully shifting Pacific attention to the Atlantic Ocean, Masserano banked on the Portuguese fear resulting from British attempts at undermining colonial commerce in Brazil and across the Atlantic in Angola. The skillful Spanish ambassador fanned the flames of Portuguese panic and caused significant conflict with James Cook’s first circumnavigation. Besides such short-​term diplomatic victories, Masserano also conceptually expanded the realm of the Pacific to regions where it mattered more, the Spanish and Portuguese colonial possessions in the Americas, thereby illustrating that perceptions of the Pacific varied greatly from an Anglo-​French vision to that of the Iberian empires. Masserano’s complicated diplomatic alliance with Portugal to counter British incursions on the South Pacific suffered greatly when his Portuguese counterpart became involved in economic predicaments and could not follow up on the actions of his predecessor. Notes 1 Stephan Berger, History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 34–​58. 2 Tracey A. Sowerby, “Early Modern Diplomatic History,” History Compass 14, no. 9 (2016): 441–​456; Karina Urbach, “Review Essay: Diplomatic History since the Cultural Turn,” The Historical Journal 46, no. 4 (2003): 991–​997. 3 Gabriel B. Paquette, Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Luso-​Brazilian World, ca. 1770-​1850 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 17–​83. 4 A. J. R. Russell-​Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415-​1808: A World on the Move (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 140; David Birmingham, Concise History of Portugal (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 87. 5 Gabriel B. Paquette, Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-​Brazilian World, C.1770-​1850 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 140; A. J. R Russell-​Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415-​1808: A World on the Move (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 140. 6 Dauril Alden, “The undeclared war of 1773-​1777: climax of Luso-​Spanish Palatine rivalry,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 41, no. 1 (1961): 55–​74. 7 Kenneth Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1995). 8 Alan Frost, “Science for Political Purposes: European Exploration of the Pacific Ocean, 1763-​1804,” Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific, eds. Roy Macleod and Philip Rehbock (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 27–​44.

46  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

9 The classic works on these two conflicts remain Julius Goebel’s The Struggle for the Falkland Islands: A Study in Legal and Diplomatic History (New Haven: Yale University, 1927) and L. Warren Cook’s Floodtide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543-​1819 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). 10 National Archive, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (ANTT hereafter), MNE, Cx 699, Martinho de Melo e Castro to Pombal 20 October 1768. 11 There are numerous volumes that explore the publication of Pacific voyages. See for instance, Alan Frost, Global Reach of Empire: Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764-​1814 (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2003); Jonathan Lamb, Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680-​1840 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 12 National History Archive, Madrid(AHN hereafter), Estado 4271, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 7 July 1766. 13 AHN, Estado 4271, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 13 November 1766. 14 AHN, Estado 4271, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 26 September 1766. 15 Alan Frost, Global Reach of Empire: Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764-​1814 (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2003), 63. 16 AHN, Estado 4269, vol. 1, Grimaldi to Masserano, 20 January 1767. 17 AHN, Estado 4259, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 27 May 1768. 18 AHN, Estado 4259, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 17 June 1768 and 24 June 1768. On a copy of a summary of Samuel Wallis voyage in the French language; AHN, Estado 4272, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 26 May 1769. Masserano was inclined to give little credence to this account of Carteret’s circumnavigation, since it reported the existence of a Spanish settlement with 16–​18 cannons on the Juan Fernandez Islands. 19 AHN, Estado 4259, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 5 August, 23 September 1768; AHN, Estado 4529, vol. 2, Grimaldi to Masserano, 18 July 1768; AHN, Estado 4272, vol. 1, Masserano to Grimaldi, 26 May 1769. 20 General Archives of the Indies, Seville (AGI hereafter) , Indiferente General 412, Masserano to Marqués de Grimaldi, 13 June 1766. 21 AGI, Indiferente General 412, Prince of Masserano to Marqués de Grimaldi, 10 June 1766, trans. Bolton Glanville Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain during the Years 1772-​1776 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913), 27. 22 General Archives of Simancas (AGS hereaftyer), Estado 6981, Masserano to Grimaldi, 21 August 1771. 23 James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World (London: W. Straham and T. Cadell, 1777). 24 AHN, Estado 4280, Masserano to Grimaldi, 18 August 1775. 25 AGS, Estado 6994, Masserano to Grimaldi, 14 June 1776. 26 AGI, Indiferente General 1630, folios 940–​944, Grimaldi to Antonio Bucareli, 26 March 1774. 27 Anonymous, A Voyage Round the World in his Majesty’s Ship the Dolphin (London: Newberry, 1767). The importance of these brief documents has been neglected partially because the official account integrates in Hawkesworth’s three volumes. Limited as this voyage may have been when compared to the three journeys of Cook (1768–​1780), its significance can be gleaned less from the

Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes  47

content of the work than from the numerous translations in several European language experienced by this work. 28 Historical Overseas Archive, Lisbon(AHU hereafter), CU Reino, Cx 16, file 20, Pombal to Minister of Naval and Overseas Affairs Melo e Castro, 5 October 1770. 29 AHU, CU Reino Cx 16, file 20, Pombal to the Minister of Naval and Overseas Affairs, 5 October 1770. 30 Anonymous, A Voyage Round the World, 15–​16. 31 ANTT, TT MNE CX 697, Melo to Pombal, 18 November 1767. Full archival citation provided above 32 ANTT, MNE, Cx 699, Melo to Pombal, 20 October 1768. 33 Masserano may have intentionally singled out this individual. Antonie Lavalette was a Jesuit stationed in Martinique whose grand speculations ended in bankruptcy. His actions contributed to the downfall of the Jesuit Order in France. See D. G. Thompson, “The Lavalette Affair and the Jesuit Superiors,” French History 10, no. 2 (1996): 206–​239. 34 ANTT, MNE, Cx 624, Masserano to Grimaldi 12 October 1767; ANTT, MNE, Cx 624, Marquis of Almodovar to Pombal, 20 November 1767. 35 ANTT, MNE Cx 699, Melo to Pombal, 30 March 1768. 36 Kenneth Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal 1750-​1808 (New York: Routledge, 2004 [1973]), 29–​31. 37 See for instance, Frank McLynn, Captain Cook: Master of the Seas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 98–​99; also the classic J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 156–​159. 38 The National Archives (TNA hereafter) SP 89/​71/​17, Earl of Rochford to John Hort, 5 March 1771. 39 TNA, SP 89/​72/​21, Melo to Lord Rochford, 4 April 1772. 40 TNA, SP 89/​71/​63, Earl of Rochford to Melo, 25 December 1771.. 41 ANTT, MNE, Liv. No. 122.It is complete 42 That the pamphlet did not carry his name indicates that Pombal did not want to make his opinions public. An Anglo-​Lusitanic Discourse Concerning the Complaints of the British Factors, Residents in the City of Lisbon by a Serious and Impartial Well-​ Wisher to the Prosperity of Both Nations (London: J. Wilkie, 1771). ANTT, MNE Liv no. 122, Pompal to Melo e Carvalho, 17 November 1770. 43 AHU, Reino, Cx 200 and 200 A. 44 AHU, Reino Cx 200, doc. 42. 45 AHU, Reino, Cx 200, doc. 43. 46 To provide a comparative figure, the prize associated with unraveling the mystery of longitude was “only” 25,000 pounds. The magnitude of Melo’s debt covers many files, AHU, Reino, Cx 200, docs. 19, 23, 44 and Cx 200 A, doc. 1. 47 AHU, Reino, Cx 200, doc. 32. 48 AHU, Reino, Cx 200 A, doc. 2. 49 AHU, Cx 200 A, doc. 10. 50 ANTT, MNE Cx 701. 51 TNA, SP 89/​75/​15 ANTT, MNE Cx 701, R. Walpole to Earl of Rochford, 19 June 1773. 52 ANTT, MNE Cx 701. 53 AHU_​CU Reino_​Cx 269, doc. 19.

48  Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes

Bibliography Alden, Dauril. “The Undeclared War of 1773–​1777: Climax of Luso-​Spanish Palatine Rivalry.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 41, no. 1 (1961): 55–​74. [Anonymous]. A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty’s Ship the Dolphin. London: Newberry, 1767. Beaglehole, J. C. The Life of Captain James Cook. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. Berger, Stephan. History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Birmingham, David. Concise History of Portugal. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Cook, James. A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World. London: W. Straham and T. Cadell, 1777. Corney, Bolton Glanville. The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain During the Years 1772–​1776. London: Hakluyt Society, 1913. Frost, Alan. “Science for Political Purposes: European Exploration of the Pacific Ocean, 1763–​1804.” In Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific, edited by Roy Macleod and Philip Rehbock, 27–​44. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. Frost, Alan. Global Reach of Empire: Britain’s Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 1764–​1814. Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2003. Goebel, Julius. The Struggle for the Falkland Islands: A Study in Legal and Diplomatic History. New Haven: Yale University, 1927. Maxwell, Kenneth. Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal 1750–​ 1808. New York: Routledge, 2004 [1973]. Maxwell, Kenneth. The Making of Portuguese Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. McLynn, Frank. Captain Cook: Master of the Seas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Paquette, Gabriel B. Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Luso-​Brazilian World, ca. 1770–​1850. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pombal, Marquis. An Anglo-​Lusitanic Discourse: Concerning the Complaints of the British Factors.. London: J. Wilkie, 1771. Russell-​Wood, A. J. R. The Portuguese Empire, 1415–​1808: A World on the Move. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Sowerby, Tracey A. “Early Modern Diplomatic History.” History Compass 14, no. 9 (2016): 441–​456. Thompson, D. G. “The Lavalette Affair and the Jesuit Superiors.” French History 10, no. 2 (1996): 206–​239. Urbach, Karina. “Review Essay: Diplomatic History since the Cultural Turn.” The Historical Journal 46, no. 4 (2003): 991–​997. Warren, L. Cook’s Floodtide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543–​1819. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

3 LO(O)SING THE PACIFIC Tahitian Interventions in Archival and Published Accounts of Spanish Voyages

3.1  Curious Archival Tales

While researching Pacific history in the famous Archive of the Indies in Seville in 2006 and 2007, archivists and fellow historians frequently considered one of the authors of the present book an exotic creature. When he attempted to explain the purpose of my research, Oceania in the Spanish imagination, he was repeatedly asked if he was researching the Philippines, a territory with deep Spanish colonial roots that contributed to establishing a separate archival branch in the archive. Bewildered faces met his waving off such inquiries, and the historians suggested that he move to a different archive since Seville might not yield fruitful research. Puzzled by such receptions, he continued his search in the depository to prove his doubters wrong. After several months in the archives, he emerged from the files with a more differentiated view. He encountered that the Pacific existed in the files associated with the Philippines. In addition, it materialized in correspondence associated with Mexico and Peru, the two powerful colonial regions in the Americas. Hence, his research turned to an alternative understanding of the Pacific through intellectual and diplomatic channels that clashed with the hegemonic Anglo-​ French vision emerging in the eighteenth century.1 While this archival labor shaped upcoming historical monographs, the tomes did not address the cognitive dissonance with the fellow historians at Seville and what Ann Stoler has identified as a distorting force field of the archives: Here I treat these colonial archives both as a corpus of writing and as a force field that animates political energies and expertise, that pulls on some DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-4

50  Lo(o)sing the Pacific

“social facts” and converts them into qualified knowledge, that attends to some way of knowing while repelling and refusing others.2 Stoler’s cautions that colonial archives erect a powerful force field that, in turn, influences and shapes the researchers’ perspectives and narratives are equally helpful in this context. Stoler and others have been behind a perceptual shift in historiography generally labeled the archival turn. In this turn, practitioners do not simply regard the archive as a passive depository of primary sources but as an institution that shapes and guides research agendas. Inspired by Derrida and Foucault, historians now perceive the need to archive as a search for elusive historical foundations. In this view, archives commit violence by suppressing alternative accounts. Similarly, archives could be understood figuratively as discourses that create and restrain historical research.3 Approaching archives from this perspective also explained the cognitive conflict with archivists and historians in Seville. It was a logical outcome of the archival force field that made historical inquiries outside the well-​trodden paths seem ludicrous and implausible. Below is a close reading of a particular file, Lima 1035, that chronicles the Spaniards’ exploration of main islands located in the South Pacific, most notably Tahiti. In this file, the argument not only chronicles the failure of a mission station on Tahiti but also illustrates how the fate of this Spanish venture shaped the emerging archive of the Indies as well as the Spanish perception of the Pacific. This chapter explores an intellectual cul-​de-​sac associated with the treatment of Oceania within Spanish archives. The failed mission to Tahiti was more than an eighteenth-​ century oddity. This botched venture casted a large shadow on historical investigations, which still has repercussions for historical investigations in the twenty-​first century. 3.2  The Spanish Expeditions from Lima

The tangle over the eighteenth-​century Pacific received much attention in the anterior chapter on diplomatic issues. Suffice it to say that Spanish authorities were intrigued and troubled by the Franco-​British incursion into an ocean that the Spaniards had regarded as their realm for centuries. Consequently, a two-​pronged attempt to halt or intervene in these expeditions emerged. The first, most immediate attempt was to alert the respective ambassadors at the British and French courts. Another was to urge the Viceroys in Peru and New Spain (Mexico) to be watchful for British and French vessels and to forestall all attempts at establishing a base in the Pacific close to the Spanish colonial strongholds. Partially in response to such actions, the Spanish intellectual view of the Pacific remained tied to the Americas and a diplomatic and academic refusal to perceive the Pacific and the emerging region of Oceania as a new and intellectually stimulating world.4

Lo(o)sing the Pacific  51

Viceroy Manuel de Amat y Junyent, who governed Peru between 1761 and 1776, underscored the Spanish fear of Pacific incursion. Already in the late 1750s, while Governor of Chile, Amat had alerted his superiors on the strategic importance of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands when he identified the islands as an ideal location for an English settlement. Through the correspondence with government officials in Spain, Amat also transpired as an avid reader of Pacific travel literature, illustrating a thorough knowledge of George Anson’s adventurous circumnavigation or Charles de Brosses’s compilation of Pacific accounts in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes.5 When Spanish Minister of the Indies, Julian de Arriaga, forwarded a British note to Amat that a French spy would be dispatched to survey Chile’s coastline, the Viceroy’s worries seemed confirmed.6 Small wonder then that Amat overreacted when in April of 1770, a battered French vessel by the name of St. Jean Baptiste arrived off the coast of Peru. Although the scurvy-​ ridden crew hardly represented the expected spy mission, Amat immediately impounded the vessel and its cargo. In reality, St. Jean Baptiste, under the command of Captain Jean de Surville, was a hybrid venture partially inspired by Charles de Brosses’s suggestions about the Pacific’s economic potential. Departing from India, where the French commercial influence was on the wane, Surville was to look for unknown continents and islands, develop trade with their Indigenous inhabitants, and provide a foundation for future French colonies. Charting the Solomon Islands mentioned by the Spaniards, Surville proceeded to the North Island of New Zealand. The vessel’s crew desperately attempted to reach the Spanish colony with dwindling resources. Unfortunately, once Surville reached the Peruvian coast, he drowned in a freak accident while trying to land, leaving the ship in the hands of Guillaume Labé. Fearing St. Jean Baptiste was the expected spy vessel, Amat decided to impound the boat for the three years.7 Labé ultimately convinced Amat that his mission carried neither military components nor the expected Franco-​ British designs on the Peruvian coast. Matters were further complicated when Amat received word of James Cook’s first circumnavigation accompanied by the naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander.8 Given the transnational interest in the Pacific, Amat took great interest in the St. Jean Baptiste’s account and even commissioned a translation of the official diary in hope to find new information about the Pacific Ocean.9 The arrival of the St. Jean Baptiste and the suspected British expeditions to new islands in the vicinity of his realm induced Amat to closely explore the French aims of locating the mythical Davis’s land.10 The arrival of a Spanish warship in Lima provided just such an opportunity. When the San Lorenzo under the command of Don Felipe Gonzalez limped into Callao in May of 1770 with a scurvy-ridden crew, Amat decided to employ the ship-​of-​the-​line with the supporting frigate Santa Rosalia for an ambitious exploratory venture in search of Davis’s Land.11

52  Lo(o)sing the Pacific

FIGURE 3.1 Reduced

chart of the Occidental Islands located to the east of Peru, Archive of the Naval Museum, Madrid, 54-​B-​36.

The two vessels chanced upon Easter Island (Rapa Nui), took possession of it, and crisscrossed the ocean to assure that no other land was nearby.12 Encouraged by the venture’s success, Amat decided to deploy additional vessels to explore Tahiti and the surrounding Society Islands archipelago between 1772 and 1776. Three expeditions to Tahiti yielded much information, but an attempt at a settlement on the island spearheaded by an apt soldier well versed in the language and two Franciscan missionaries ultimately failed to take root, relegating this episode to a secondary role in the history of Tahiti.13 The timid and uncompromising Franciscans and the location of the mission settlement on the Tahiti-​Iti, the minor southeastern part of the island, are usually attributed to the mission’s failure. In addition, the death of Vehiatua II, the paramount chief committed to protecting the Spanish venture, is frequently cited as a secondary reason for the collapse. 3.3  The Centrality of Narratives and Their Suppression

Technically the four expeditions had little impact on the course of Pacific history other than claiming Rapa Nui, Tahiti, and the surrounding islands for the Spanish Empire. Other nations, especially the British and Dutch, regarded themselves as the first European ships to land in the area and contested the Spanish declaration. More importantly, however, was the second Spanish

Lo(o)sing the Pacific  53

voyage to Tahiti (in 1774) that left a small contingent of Franciscan friars—​ Fr. Gerónimo Clota and Narciso Gonzáles—​an equally minuscule military detail, a soldier, a sailor, and a few Tahitian converts who had accompanied the first Spanish expedition to Lima. When the Spanish vessels returned to Tahiti a third time in 1775, the Franciscans asked to be taken off the island recounting tales of Tahitian betrayal and stubborn adherence to pagan ritual. However, a soldier assigned as protection to the friars and the nascent mission outpost, Máximo Rodríguez (whom the Tahitians called Matimo based on his name or the Spanish word for maritime), wrote an account that opposed the church officials’ version. His journal chronicling the over nine-​month stay on the island not only represents the first long-​term observation of Tahiti but also chastises the friars for their lack of nerve and lack of interest in the cultural life on the island. It was his narrative, carefully excluded from the official file associated with this expedition in Seville that convinced Viceroy Amat, who, in his directions for his successors, explained the abandonment of the mission by the removal of the friars from their apostolic context that turned them into soldiers who lacked faith and love of their sovereign and country.14 The ease with which the soldier was able to immerse in Tahitian society suggests that Matimo may have had a Mestizo background that presented him with glass ceilings in Lima but allowed him to integrate into the novel cultural environment on the island. His account points fingers in the direction of the mission rather than the Tahitian population and doomed his journal for the better part of two centuries. Two copies of Matimo’s account exist in

FIGURE 3.2  The

site of the mission settlement on Tahiti, Archive of the Naval Museum, Madrid, 54-​B-​21.

54  Lo(o)sing the Pacific

French and British archives, none though in Spain indicating the danger and the value inherent in the version of the young soldier. The diary represents a valuable first-​eye description of early Tahitian customs for French and British archivists. From a Spanish perspective, Matimo’s incisive criticism against the mission threatened one of the central pillars underscoring Spanish expansion. According to the British historian Bolton Corney, who in the early twentieth century was one of the first to recover and translate Matimo’s diary, four different renditions of the journal existed at different points in time. The first was handed to Viceroy Amat shortly after Matimo returned from his Tahitian adventure. This copy, unfortunately, seems to have vanished. The second copy handed over to one of the successive rulers to Amat was penned again by Matimo but had a prologue added to his account in which the young soldier takes issue with the British rendition of his persona in James Cook’s third voyage account. This diary and the prologue survive in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, probably extracted by French forces during the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.15 In the nineteenth century, Matimo’s heirs handed two further copies to two British ship captains. The copy brought to England by Captain Fitz Roy, of the HMS Beagle fame, now resides in the archive of the Royal Geographical Society. What provides Matimo’s account its uniqueness is his long-​term residence in the Pacific Islands in the 1770s. While such writings would become more common during the Beachcomber era of the early nineteenth century, his early chronicle is exceptional and virtually unprecedented. Initially, Matimo does not engage growing readers’ doubt about travel accounts and their multiple compilers.16 Yet when confronted by a less than flattering statement of his stay in the pages of Captain Cook’s third voyage publication, he reacted forcefully. In the account, the young soldier supposedly informed the Tahitians about the weakness of the British nation and presented a wholly negative image of this nation. When compiling a second copy of his stay, Matimo thus added a prologue that took issue with Cook’s characterization of his persona and stays on Tahiti. His prologue accused the British of spending only short periods on the island. It contrasted his nearly yearlong stay, allowing him to delve deeper into the Tahitian cultural and linguistic universe. At the same time, he lacked the protection of marines and warships and depended on his fair dealings with the local population for survival. He observed, “I would gladly like to see Captain Cook and three of his Englishmen live on the island for nine months with no guarantee for their lives other than their own conduct (because the ideas of grandeur disappear once the ships leave).”17 Matimo argued that the English’s brazen actions culminated in Cook’s death at Kealakekua Bay. He was contrasting their accounts’ superficiality and the violence of their actions with his own cautious and culturally sensitive deeds on the island. Undermining British authority in narrating the Tahitian

Lo(o)sing the Pacific  55

encounter was, however, not the only function of Matimo’s prologue; he also chastised the timid actions of the Franciscan friars and blamed them for the mission’s failure. Although correct, his singling out the missionaries as the real culprits behind the mission collapse represented a threatening accusation for Spanish authorities. This episode also reflects on how this venture is represented in Spanish archives. As mentioned before, no distinctive section in Spanish archives dedicated to the Pacific, especially in the Archives of the Indies, exists. There endures, however, a file, relatively thin in comparison to others in Seville titled “Lima 1035” dedicated to the exploration of Tahiti and Easter Islands, along with others in the Pacific.18 The initial debate was whether archivists should bring all the exploration material together in a file or potentially an entire section in the archive dedicated to the exploration of the Pacific landed on the former. The short archival debate was reflected through a few added leaflets to Lima 1035, and it was decided to omit other archival materials on British and French expeditions and compile only those ventures emerging out of Peru. The potentially separate Franco-​British vision of the Pacific—​a new world of the eighteenth century—​thus fades in favor of attaching the Spanish ventures to the Kingdom of Peru. The Spanish ventures to Tahiti became, as they are now, an afterward to Cook and others and remain tied to the fortunes of Spanish colonies of the Americas. Lima 1035 reflects much preparatory correspondence and some, but not all, of the participants’ diaries. Some of these absences were oversights, as the many accounts and journals held in private and ecclesiastical collections did not find inclusion as the archivists prepared the file. Others were probably intentional omissions, as the most notable absence is, of course, Matimo’s diary. Likewise, of the missionaries’ diaries, only that of Father Clota finds inclusion. Matimo’s explicit criticism of the friars could have upset the careful crafting of the file. However, by supporting the friar’s diary, the version of the unwilling and uncommitted Tahitians explains Spain’s failure to establish a mission on the island. The likely loss of heart among the Franciscans seems forgotten and successfully omitted from the file. There exists a short undated and anonymous report of Tahiti available in the Royal Academy of the History in Madrid that represents an explicit defense of the religious padres.19 Despite its title, Description of the Islands of Tahiti, this document serves little in the way of describing of the islands and presents more an apologia for the Franciscans without even a mention of Matimo and his diary. The document asks the reader multiple questions as to how the padres should have reacted while finding themselves outnumbered by the Tahitians, their converts deserting them, and surrounded by pagan practices and a Tahitian “cruelty combined with many superstitions and idolatry and extraordinary abuse” that left the religious individuals with God as their only refuge.20 The author suggested that it was better to leave

56  Lo(o)sing the Pacific

the inhabitants to their infidel ways and found a larger mission with settlers and that a garrison would have been a better choice for a successful venture on Tahiti. One can only speculate as to the author of this document, but there is some strong indication that it was Pedro Estala. This writer often employed guiding questions as a literary device and had a propensity to selectively use Spanish sources to offset the numerous British and French accounts that would attempt to downplay Iberian accomplishments. Estala was a prolific writer and translator of many works and found his explicit masterpiece in El viagero universal o Noticias del mundo antiguo y nuevo. He initially understood his task to be a literal translation of Joseph de Laporte’s work Le voyageur française, a compilation of travel accounts spanning forty-​ two volumes. Thus, he would maintain Laporte’s style of letters written by an imaginary voyager. Still, by the fourth volume, he is overwhelmed by what he regarded as inaccuracies that characterized Laporte’s narratives. Consequently, starting with the fifth volume, Estala develops into a critic of the sources presented, arguing that many Spanish accounts were unknown to the French compiler. Estala’s tour de force would culminate in forty-​three volumes (thirty-​nine volumes and four supplements) published between 1795 and 1801, with over 16,000 pages. By 1801, the work went into a second edition and witnessed a Portuguese translation. Estala is quite adamant about the nationalistic potential of his collection. After all, he forcefully believed that foreign travel accounts essentially disparaged Spanish accomplishments.21 Estala wrote in great detail about the expeditions of Captain Cook and juxtaposed these events with Spanish sources, unpublished up to that point. In volumes sixteen through nineteen, published in 1798, Estala discussed the implications of the British expeditions to the South Pacific and juxtaposed their findings with the Spanish expeditions that paralleled these ventures. Departing from this apparent political premise, the undisputed right of first discovery by Spanish navigators, Estala proceeded to attack the value of British ethnographic accounts on three major thematic issues: • the inadequacy of the English language, unlike the Castilian tongue, to capture the intricacies of the Pacific and, most importantly, Tahitian culture; • the juxtaposition of British violence with the more peaceful Spanish encounters in the Pacific; and • the exaggerations found in ethnographic accounts that highlighted the notion of the Pacific as a wondrous new world. On the surface, Estala’s account shares much with Matimo’s project of undermining British narrative authority on Tahiti, suggesting that the author may have been familiar with the young soldier’s account and his,

Lo(o)sing the Pacific  57

later, attached prologue. On the other hand, Estala must have recoiled at the negative impression of the Franciscan friars, which prevented him from acknowledging and ultimately publishing the journal in its entirety.22 Estala’s version of the Spanish Pacific expeditions aroused little transnational interest. His journals found translation in Portuguese, but the Pacific craze that developed in eighteenth century Britain and France took little notice of the writer. The sole exception to this rule is in Germany where, thanks to Johann and Georg Forster, a great deal of interest in the Pacific emerged. Friedrich Bratring in the early nineteenth century thought that Estala’s rendition of the Spanish Tahitian episode was important enough to warrant a German translation. In his introduction, however, Bratring also accused the Spanish author of simply lacking the keen philosophical eye of Georg Forster. He is also less convinced that the Spanish language and their accounts of Tahiti were at all superior to that of the British. In fact, Estala’s translator was deeply bothered by the mutual national hatred that often clouded the accuracy of the accounts on Tahiti.23 Had Estala included Matimo’s diary, however, the long-​term stay of this soldier and his thoughtful prologue would have alerted Bratring to this unique account. Reading Matimo’s long-​term residence among the Tahitians could have seen success where Estala failed, in demonstrating the superiority of the Spanish account. Omitting Matimo’s account from the evaluations, however, relegated the Spanish episode to a mere footnote of the Franco-​British accounts and Estala’s criticism of the northern European encounters to vain nationalism. Matimo’s stay was also alive in the Tahitian memory when James Cook arrived at the mission site in Tautira in 1777. The famous British captain not only changed the inscription on the Christian cross to reflect the British right to first discovery, but he was surprised by Matimo’s overwhelming sympathy among the local people. This contrasted sharply with the missionaries who were remembered as sullen and withdrawn. Tahitians frequently pantomimed their litanies and made light of their prayer beads and endless Roman Catholic rituals. Most importantly the friars’ rejection of the pleasures of the flesh, something that Matimo, although he was careful of omitting this from the pages of his diary, more than made up for by sleeping with a great many women.24 The Tahitians residing at Tautira remembered the young soldiers as one of their own and rejected the brooding padres. 3.4  Tahitian Interventions

This commonsensical approach of reading the archives along the grain explains the emergence of the file, Lima 1035, and why the failure of establishing a permanent mission on Tahiti prevented the establishment to a more robust presence of the Pacific in Spanish archives. Reading this archival story against the grain, however, reveals a different version that privileges

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Tahitian resistance to the Spanish venture, which was then omitted from the archives and, in turn, prevented the establishment of a distinct place for Oceania in Spanish archives. Brownen Douglas has provided the researcher with a roadmap to identify Indigenous presences and countersigns in both printed and archival resources. As much as such accounts were colored by European eighteenth-​ century discourses and philosophical outlooks, the traveler’s versions could not control the encounters with the Indigenous population and the traces of their presences that impregnated European narratives.25 In his, by now famous, essay “Possessing Tahiti,” Greg Dening reflected upon the many European—​British, French, and Spanish—​attempts to claim the island for their nations. The essay’s exceptionality emerges less from examining the European attempts at possession and more from his astute analysis to reach beyond the beach providing sharp insights into the Tahitian cultural universe and its attempt to possess the many of European artifacts and pageantries guiding the foreign arrivals.26 On the whole, Dening says little about the Spanish attempts and their interactions with Tahitians. This prominent ethnographic historian, no doubt influenced by the archival situation, seemed convinced that the Iberian episode plays a distant secondary role in the contest over the island. Nevertheless, the primary sources and their alternative reading afford speculations about Tahitian actions that were either supportive or detractive of European narratives about the island. The structuring process of the archival narrative originates in the conflict between the two Franciscan friars and Matimo. When the latter informed the padres that Viceroy Amat had placed him in charge of writing an official account of their stay in Tahiti, the missionaries argued that they had received no such instruction. The viceroy trusted Matimo’s rudimentary skills in the Tahitian language enough to appoint him as translator and official chronicler of the mission. As the situation between the missionaries and the young soldier went from bad to worse, the friars even denied him access to paper and ink, which forced Matimo to resort to local Tahitian dyes and paper. Fortunately, despite their actions, the padres were unable to prevent the young man from writing his critical journal, although his detailed account of Tahitian customs, as well as an extensive dictionary and grammar on the language, vanished upon his return to Lima.27 The missionaries’ denial of the tools to write was strategic, presumably, so Matimo could not record episodes detrimental to the friars. At the same time, by forcing the soldier to turn to Indigenous alternatives for his writing (local dyes and bark cloth) he may have faced Tahitian inquiries into the purpose of his action. Historian David Hanlon, for instance, recalls a particular episode from the Island of Pohnpei in Micronesia where an encounter with writing—​the English method of tattooing—​led to confusion. When castaway James O’Connell introduced Pohnpeians women to a book, they tore the

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colorful pages out of the work and weaved them into their clothing. To their disappointment, the next downpour washed away the ink and made the colors on the pages run. The women rightfully argued that the Pohnpeian method of tattooing that etched permanent histories and genealogies on the human bodies was vastly superior to the short lifespan of the English way that could not withstand the change in weather.28 Reading and writing were not available to the Tahitians until the European encounter. Pacific historians assume that this European craft would arrive in the late eighteenth century with the advent of Protestant missionaries. The teaching of reading and writing through the missionary system was, after all, an effective tool of conversion as the first text to be translated into Polynesian languages was religious. For instance, the first Indigenous historians in Polynesia to be trained in reading and writing were mission-​ educated individuals.29 Through Matimo, however, the Tahitians may have encountered this strange craft a great deal earlier. After all, the soldier had to procure the tools for writing denied to him by the friars. Similarly, Tahitians may have been complicit in hiding the diaries and other observations about their culture and language to prevent falling into the hand of the padres, who would have certainly destroyed the fruit of his labor. On the other hand, it is possible that the Tahitians observed Matimo jotting down his notes on the island to aid his memory and may have inquired about its purpose. It is also conceivable that the soldier taught them the meaning of his activity and introduced them to a rudimentary understanding of reading and writing. Perhaps even the friendship bond between Matimo and some of the higher-​ranking individuals in Tahitian society required him to share this expertise. One particular episode related in Matimo’s diary reveals the value Tahitians attributed to books and writing. In April of 1775, the young soldier visited the ailing high chief Vehiatua who controlled the district where the mission settlement was located. Looking through the gifts Vehiatua had received, Matimo discovered an English book entitled Mathematical Tables, probably employed for calculations by Cook and the naturalists accompanying his expeditions. The high chief claimed that the work had been stolen by one of his associates, although it is not entirely clear whether it was from the British themselves or they had gifted the book to another high chief. Matimo asked for the book Vehiatua complied. According to the young Peruvian, the illiterate High Chief would have little use for this work. Most likely, Vehiatua relented because his bound friendship (taio) obliged him to gift the book to Matimo.30 Although the Peruvian makes no further observation about the book, its special status may have derived from its association with Cook’s expeditions or, alternatively, it stood for the power of the written word, which the Tahitians were just beginning to appreciate.

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The Tahitians cared less about the written accounts of their actions than about the European interests on the island and making sense of the novel arrivals. The long-​ term residence of the Franciscan padres and Matimo proved to be more of a nuisance. After all, the padres cared little about reciprocity—​returning gifts in kind to the Tahitian donors—​or about sacred spaces which, much like for most of the Tahitian population, were off limits. Such violations could and would not be tolerated and brought a seemingly unending chain of conflicts. While the friars recorded only a few such incidents, Matimo, in his diary, was much more honest and detailed about his or the missionary transgressions. Rather than a steady onslaught on Tahitian religion that would have, in theory, allowed Catholicism’s foothold on the island, the Spanish mission to Tahiti became a slow but steady train wreck that is, for the modern reader, at times hard to follow. Most significant would have been any violations (hara) of ritual prohibitions (tapu) or the refusal to follow cultural customs. These offenses could range from the widespread Franciscan denial of sharing their possessions and food with the people of the district who supplied the mission with a steady stream of fish, meat, and vegetables. Even if the missionaries established a garden next to their house and kept a few animals, they would have been hard pressed to survive without local help. Franciscans also revealed their entitlement to perform spiritual rather than manual work, which did not endear themselves with neighboring Tahitians nor with those entrusted to assist with the mission. The single individual associated with supporting the padres, the sailor Francisco Pérez, was less practical as he often quarreled with the missionaries as well as Tahitians. Nevertheless, the friars refused to part or were very stingy with items they had brought from Peru, especially medications that the Tahitians regarded as the only cure for maladies imported by the Europeans. These reciprocity violations threatened the mission’s survival as individuals living around the compound threatened to leave. Only the intervention of High Chief Vehiatua, who reminded his people that they would violently retaliate when the Spanish vessels returned, would convince them to stay. Likewise, the violent behavior toward the two Tahitian converts who arrived alongside the missionaries, neighboring Tahitians, and Matimo and Pérez, made the padres seem irrational and unconcerned with local customs.31 Yet even Matimo committed transgressions, which, given his rudimentary understanding of Tahitian culture, must have appeared as even more grave than those committed by the missionaries. For instance, in his search for purslane, a weed high in vitamins and minerals that made it highly desirable for combating minor ailments, Matimo was no stranger to stepping on Tahitian marae, sacred temple enclosures that served as portals between the worlds of the gods and the mortals. There was, of course, reason for his hara breach as purslane frequently grew in building cracks and disturbed soil. The marae provided the perfect condition for the weed to thrive. Matimo stepping

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on the sacred site to remove the purslane, even after stern warnings, was associated with many misfortunes such as the flooding of the local river or the long illness and ultimate death of Vehiatua. As the young soldier made no effort to stay out of the sacred enclosures, the Tahitians decided to burn the purslane, thus depriving Matimo of his reason to visit the marae in the first place.32 By gradually undermining the sustenance of the mission, Tahitians actively contributed to the departure of the friars and the people associated with their undertaking. The costly, yet ultimately failed venture to Tahiti and the steadfast resistance of the Tahitians against the cultural encroachment of the mission and her inhabitants warranted a file, Lima 1035, in the Archivo de Indias. The establishment of a separate realm for the new encounters in the sea of islands of the Pacific seemed less deserving. The islands encountered by the Spaniards, Tahiti in particular, was certainly opulent but not deserving of more than passing mention. The Tahitians would have been hard-​pressed to address constant cultural violations and retain an amicable relationship with the newcomers. They retorted less with violent behavior, fearing Spanish swift and ferocious retaliation. Instead, they invoked passive resistance, such as keeping the marae surrounding the mission free of weed so Matimo would not violate these sacred spaces. The missionaries found themselves increasingly isolated with inadequate food supply. As the spiral of paranoia and mounting distrust continued, the mission ended up in chaos, giving way to the struggle over its narrative. While Tahitians certainly would not intervene in the writing and the archiving of documents associated with their island, their actions, at least in part, shaped the Spanish acceptance of the Pacific in general and Tahiti in particular. Where the French would extol the island as a miracle and employ real and imagined customs to question their own society, the Spanish were less impressed by what they regarded as “more or less pleasant” islands that appeared to the British and French as earthly paradises due to the vast Pacific’s sensory deprivation.33 3.5 Conclusions

The Spanish visits to Tahiti were powerful undertakings when compared to the ventures of the French and the British. To provide some comparative figures, the frigate Águila (Eagle) that went to Tahiti three times came equipped with twenty-​two cannons, which would have easily outgunned the British Endeavour’s measly contingent of twelve pieces and would have given Louis de Bougainville’s frigate the Boudeuse quite a prolonged firefight. This was also reflective of the contrasting missions of the Europeans. Where the British and the French went on exploratory or even explicitly scientific expeditions, the Spanish journey officially explicitly relied on military objectivity, that of preventing European settlements in the South Pacific. It took exploratory aims

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into consideration, but even cultural, geographical, and linguistic knowledge were to serve the aim to forestall northern European establishments in the region. This also explains the attempt to establish a more permanent mission settlement. While conversion of the Tahitians to the Roman Catholic faith was the official aim of this settlement, the primary intent was that a successful transformation of Tahitian society would also prevent any European nation’s attempt to settle on this island and establish a formal claim on the same. At the same time, the staffing of the mission with just four individuals depended on the goodwill of the Tahitians. While the local paramount chief Vehiatua was more than willing to allow and protect the establishment, it was the behavior of the missionaries that awoke the ire of the local Tahitians at Tautira. Matimo’s skillful navigation of Tahitian cultural mores managed to prolong the life expectancy of a doomed mission that collapsed as soon as the Spanish returned to Tahitian waters. The slow but steady Tahitian attempt to make life less bearable for the miniscule mission contingent also ensured that a savage contest over the narrative of the episode erupted between the padres and Matimo that would ultimately spill from their pages into the archives and the publications associated with this mission. This contest over the narrative may have kept the missionaries’ faults at bay, but it also ensured that the Spanish mission would remain a marginal chapter in the initial encounter history with Tahiti that tends to favor British and French accounts. Perhaps most importantly, the failure of the Spanish mission in the Society Islands doomed any sort of extensive Oceanic presence in the large archives of the Indies in Seville. Notes 1 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Visions of the Pacific, 1507-​1899 (Houndmills: Palgrave-​Macmillan, 2014). 2 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 22. Stoler’s expert ethnography of the Dutch colonial archives has applications also for other imperial archives. For instance, the comparatively shallow timeframe of German colonialism, generally between 1884 and 1914, did not allow for a standalone building for colonial files as one would find such in Spain (Seville’s Archivo General de Indias), France (Aix-​ en-​ Provence), or Portugal (Lisbon’s Arquivo Historico Utramarino). Until the outbreak of major and bloody reprisals in German East and Southwest Africa, colonialism was relegated to a small division Foreign Office. Only less than a decade before the outbreak of the Great War did an independent Office dedicated to German colonialism emerge. Despite such limitations, the German colonial files still exercise Stoler’s force field and consequently influence the resulting research. 3 For an overview of the archival turn consult Elizabeth Yale, “The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline,” Book History 18, no. 1 (2015): 332–​359.

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4 For a summary, consult Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano, “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, ed. Paul D´Arcy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 635–​654. 5 General Archives of the Indies (AGI hereafter), Audiencia de Buenos Aires 552. Ramo 1, Amat to Julian de Arriaga, 8 April 1758. 6 AGI, Audiencia de Lima 1498, Arriaga to Amat, 20 August 1767; AGI, Audiencia de Lima 1498, Amat to Arriaga, 23 February 1767. 7 The story of the Baptiste is best chronicled in John Dunmore, The Expedition of the St Jean-​Baptiste to the Pacific, 1769-​1770 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1981). 8 AGI, Audiencia de Lima 1035, Arriaga to Amat, 9 October 1771; AGI, Audiencia de Lima 1035, Amat to Arriaga, 20 March 1772. 9 Diario de la Navegacion que hizo el avío Frances nombrado el San Juan Bautistia desde el Golfo de Bengala hasta el Puerto de Callao de Lima traducido en Lengua Castellana presented to the Viceroy, 20 October 1770. The original is not, as expected, in the Spanish archives but can be found in Paris, Centre de Investigation Archives Nationales (CHAN), Archive de la Marine (AM), B4 316. While this is pure speculation, it is possible that Viceroy Amat returned the French and spanish version of the navigation diary to Labé upon his departure from Callao in 1773. 10 AGI, Audiencia de Lima 652, n. 43, Viceroy Amat to Julian de Arriaga (Minister of the Indies), 20 April 1770; AGI, Audiencia de Lima 652, n. 113, Viceroy Amat to Julian de Arriaga, 15 August 1771; AGI, Audiencia de Lima 652, n. 120, Viceroy Amat to Julian de Arriaga, 2 October 1771. 11 AGI, Audiencia de Lima 652, n. 63, Amat to Arriaga, 22 May 1770. 12 The two main documents associated with Amat’s venture to Easter Island remain Bolton G. Corney, The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez in the Ship of the Line San Lorenzo, with the Frigate Santa Rosalia in Company, to Easter Island in 1770-​1 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1908) and the above cited Francisco Mellén Blanco, Manuscritos y documentos españoles para la historia de la Isla de Pascua (Madrid: Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas, 1986). 13 The classic account on the Tahitian expeditions remains Bolton Glanville Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain During the Years 1772-​1776, vol. 3 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–​ 1919). More recently Francisco Mellén Blanco has compiled vital primary documents that complement Corney’s efforts in his Las expediciones marítimas del virrey Amat a la isla de TahitI 1772-​1775. Manuscritos españoles del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Ediciones Gondo, 2011). 14 Francisco Mellén Blanco, Las expediciones marítimas del virrey Amat a la isla de Tahiti 1772-​1775. Manuscritos españoles del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Ediciones Gondo, 2011), 875. 15 An assessment and translation of this important prologue can be found in Rainer F. Buschmann and Rafael Ramírez, “Manuscript XXIX: Máximo Rodríguez’s ‘Lost’ Prologue,” Journal of Pacific History 49 (2014): 328–​340. 16 Metropolitan doubt about accounts of the Pacific goes on the increase in the eighteenth century. See, for instance, Jonathan Lamb, Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680-​1840 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 82–​89. 17 Rainer F. Buschmann and Rafael Ramírez, “Manuscript XXIX: Máximo Rodríguez’s ‘Lost’ Prologue,” Journal of Pacific History 49 (2014): 338.

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18 AGI, Lima 1035, Expediente sobre el descubrimiento de las islas de David, San Carlos, Pepis, y Otehyte; y otras en el Mar del Sur, 1771–​1788. 19 “Descipcion de las Yslas de Otaheti o Carolinas” in Francisco Mellen Blanco, Las expediciones marítimas del virrey Amat a la isla de Tahiti 1772-​1775. Manuscritos españoles del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Ediciones Gondo, 2011), 863–​865. 20 Ibid, 863. 21 María Elena Arena Cruz, Pedro Estala,vida y Obra (Madrid: CSIC, 2003) 436–​449. 22 Pedro Estala, El Viagero Universal ó Noticia del Mundo antiguo y nuevo. Obra Recopilada de los mejores Viageros por D. P. E. P., vols 16–​19 (Madrid: Imprenta de Villapardo, 1798). 23 Friedrich W. A. Bratring, Reisen der Spanier nach der Südsee, insbesondere nach der Insel O-​Taheite (Berlin: F. Maurer, 1802). 24 Anne Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 422–​423. 25 Bronwen Douglas, Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511-​ 1850 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 18–​22. 26 Greg Dening, “Possessing Tahiti,” Archaeology in Oceania 21, no. 1 (1986): 103–​118. 27 Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island, 365 full citation provided above; Bolton Glanville Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain during the Years 1772-​1776 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–​1919), vol. III, XXXIII. 28 David Hanlon, “Beyond ‘the English Method of Tattooing’: Decentering the Practice of History in Oceania,” The Contemporary Pacific 15, no. 1 (2003): 19–​40. 29 See for instance, Jocelyn Linnekin, “New Political Orders,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, ed. by D. Denoon et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 1997), 185–​217, especially 200–​205. 30 Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti, vol. III, 111. 31 Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti, vol. III 69–​70, 80, 83, 85.. 32 Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island, 367; Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti vol. III, 103. 33 Pedro Estala, El Viagero Universal ó Noticia del Mundo antiguo y nuevo. Obra Recopilada de los mejores Viageros por D. P. E. P. (Madrid: Imprenta de Villapardo, 1798), vol. 26, 311–​312.

Bibliography Arena Cruz, Marìa Elena. Pedro Estala, vida y obra. Madrid: CSIC, 2003. Bratring, Friedrich W. A. Reisen der Spanier nach der Südsee, insbesondere nach der Insel O-​Taheite. Berlin: F. Maurer, 1802. Buschmann, Rainer F. Iberian Vision of the Pacific, 1507–​1899. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Buschmann, Rainer F. and David Manzano Cosano. “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, General editor Paul D´Arcy, 635–​654. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Buschmann, Rainer F. and Rafael Ramírez. “Manuscript XXIX: Máximo Rodríguez’s ‘Lost’ Prologue.” Journal of Pacific History 49 (2014): 328–​340.

Lo(o)sing the Pacific  65

Corney, Bolton G. The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez in the Ship of the Line San Lorenzo, with the Frigate Santa Rosalia in Company, to Easter Island in 1770–​1. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1908. Corney, Bolton G. The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain during the Years 1772–​1776. 3 vol. London: Hakluyt Society, 1913–​1919. Dening, Greg. “Possessing Tahiti.” Archaeology in Oceania 21, no. 1 (1986): 103–​118. Douglas, Bronwen. Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511–​ 1850. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Dunmore, John. The Expedition of the St Jean-​Baptiste to the Pacific, 1769–​1770. London: Hakluyt Society, 1981. Estala, Pedro. El Viagero Universal ó Noticia del Mundo antiguo y nuevo. Obra Recopilada de los mejores Viageros por D. P. E. P., vols 16–​19. Madrid: Imprenta de Villapardo, 1798. Hanlon, David. “Beyond ‘the English Method of Tattooing’: Decentering the Practice of History in Oceania.” The Contemporary Pacific 15, no. 1 (2003): 19–​40. Lamb, Jonathan. Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680–​1840. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Linnekin, Jocelyn. “New Political Orders.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders. Edited by D. Denoon et al., 185–​217. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Mellén Blanco, Francisco. Manuscritos y documentos españoles para la historia de la Isla de Pascua. Madrid: Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas, 1986. Mellén Blanco, Francisco. Las expediciones marítimas del virrey Amat a la isla de Tahití 1772–​ 1775. Manuscritos españoles del siglo XVIII. Madrid: Ediciones Gondo, 2011. Salmond, Anne. Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Yale, Elizabeth. “The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline.” Book History 18, no. 1 (2015): 332–​359.

4 SPANISH CULTURAL CLASHES WITH THE INDIGENOUS INHABITANTS OF COLONIAL MICRONESIA Building and Contesting Metropolitan Stereotypes

4.1 Introduction

In his book Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (2005), Matt Matsuda underscored the importance of constructing the development of the imperial policy based on French views of the Pacific. This chapter applies Matsuda’s conceptual framework to the Spanish colonies in the same ocean. In particular, attention is given to the formation of Spanish metropolitan and peripheral stereotypes about the Indigenous inhabitants of Micronesia. It further investigates how such images were maintained and contested and, perhaps most importantly, how such stereotypes informed Spanish colonial policies in the nineteenth century. Since Magellan’s circumnavigation, stereotypes about Mariana and Caroline islanders emerged in Spanish literature. Although, as earlier chapters explained, this region occupied a secondary place in the Spanish colonial policy, encounters formed visions of its inhabitants from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries that often became foundations of Spanish colonial policies. Magellan’s contact with the Chamorro people in the early sixteenth century initiated the process of stereotyping the Indigenous people of Oceania. Imperial discourse influenced these characterizations in two conflicting ways. The first image regarded Micronesian people as objects of Divine Providence. In this vision, Spanish officials believed Chamorro and Caroline Islanders as inherently innocent beings who inhabited rich and exploitable islands. Their potential for embracing or rejecting the true faith created a prism through which Spanish colonial policy became enacted until the nineteenth century when the independence of the American colonies signaled a much-​needed shift. The second image emerged from imperialism and its associated Social DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-5

Building and Contesting Metropolitan Stereotypes  67

Darwinism, which led to the rejection of earlier Christian romantic views to those based on racial perceptions. As the Spaniards asserted their presence in the Caroline Islands, which provided more concrete, yet also partial, ethnographic information, a differentiation between the inhabitants of the Mariana and the Caroline Islands started to crystalize. In accordance with racial conceptions of the time, Spanish officials regarded the Chamorro as more advanced than the Caroline Islanders. 4.2  Creating Micronesian Stereotypes

The Magellan-​ Elcano expedition (1519–​ 1522) conceptually integrated Oceania’s inhabitants into the expanding Spanish world. The journey arrived at Guam on 6th March 1521, christening the island with the pejorative name of the “Islands of the Thieves” because the inhabitants tried to steal the skiff from the Trinidad.1 Later, new expeditions arrived in the archipelago due to the Spanish desire to connect the Philippines with their colonial holdings in the Americas. For instance, Miguel López de Legazpi’s voyage arrived in Guam on 22nd January 1565. Unlike Magellan’s encounter with the island, Legazpi’s arrival was peaceful and hospitable. The Indigenous peoples repeated “chamurre,” meaning “friend.” From that moment on, the Spanish referred to the inhabitants as Chamorros.2 This term progressively entered the cognitive map of the Spanish colonial authorities bound on consolidating the commercial traffic associated with the Galleon de Manila, where Guam became a convenient stopover point. The dual dichotomy between “Islands of the Thieves” and the more hospitable Chamorro would characterize Spanish imperial visions until the nineteenth century. During the Early Modern period until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Spaniards had limited ethnographic information about the Mariana Islands. The Pacific, with its limited Spanish bases, fell under the cognitive spell of the Americas.3 This lack of information contributed to the construction of stereotyped images that were largely based on the account of the Spanish authorities or expeditions that reached the Marianas on board of the Manila galleons. Such was the case of the San Damian in 1662, which transported the Jesuit missionary Diego Luis de San Vitores. This Jesuit would continue Legazpi’s tradition by perceiving the Chamorros as kind people who were friendly and docile and living in a territory full of bountiful natural resources. However, their presumed heathen state would keep them in a backward appearance. San Vitores understood that if Spain’s benevolence guided the Chamorros toward Catholicism, the negative attributions to their people would end. Consequently, San Vitores proposed in 1664 to Philip IV the creation of a mission on the Island of the Thieves. In this way, Spain supported spreading divine providence by spreading the Catholic faith throughout the islands. Enshrined in the Treaty of Tordesillas and supported by several

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ordinances, Spain and Portugal received Papal blessings for their maritime and terrestrial conquests. The exploitation of the population and resources found legitimization in the transference of the true faith. Consequently, Indigenous people were judged according to whether they embraced or rejected Christianity, a specific marker of civilization.4 Despite its theological validity, Spanish authorities initially deemed San Vitores’s project too costly. The Jesuit, nevertheless insisted and, in 1665, received final approval.5 The colonization of the Mariana Islands started in earnest in 1668. However, rather than a rich field of conversions, the islands became a killing field as Chamorros rejected both Spanish religion and colonial incursion. San Vitores was one of the first casualties of a terrifying set of wars that the Spanish won at the expense of tremendous Indigenous losses. Spanish lessons from the conflict illustrated that San Vitores’s vision of docile Chamorros and the islands’ rich natural resources was mistaken.6 On one hand, the role of San Vitores proved crucial for the correction of Spanish ideas on the archipelago. Perhaps, he renamed it Mariana Islands, in honor of Philip IV’s wife (Mariana of Austria).7 The long-​standing pejorative name Island of the Thieves was thus omitted from the future Spanish colony. But, on the other hand, his romantic vision extolling the Chamorro’s good disposition and the supposed riches of the Marianas started to fade. The bloody and protracted Chamorro Wars consolidate this dichotomous vision of the Marianas Islands and its inhabitants. Spanish observers contrasted the gentle Chamorro soul longing for conversion with their resistance to colonialism and Christianity. The Spanish evoked a mythical individual, the Sangley Choco, to be the main culprit for the outbreak of the Chamorro Wars. According to Spanish sources, Choco perverted the good-​ natured Chamorros described by San Vitores.8 Choco ascribed Sangley status which meant that he was a Chinese trader who had arrived on Saipan more than two decades before the Spaniards started their campaign to colonize the Mariana Islands in 1668. Choco revealed real Spanish intentions and convinced the Chamorro to reject the Christian faith and to take on arms opposing Spanish colonization.9 Moving into the eighteenth century, Spanish overlords still assumed that the Mariana Islands represented a place of opportunities. At the same time, the Spanish ironically blamed the Chamorro for religious fanaticism, which prevented them from converting to Christianity. In addition, their supposedly stubborn resistance to change was a significant obstacle to developing the archipelago. Spanish blind paternalism believed that a communal Chamorro conversion would lead to the automatic development of the Marianas. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this mental image was equally applied to an unsuccessful attempt to colonize the Caroline Islands. The plan to apply Spanish rule to the south of the Marianas originated with a tragedy. In 1696, several people from Palau, shipwrecked in the

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Philippines, alerted authorities to the existence of these islands. Jesuit Andrés Serrano envisioned the evangelization of these islands as following the example of Francis Xavier in Asia. While encountering and interviewing the Palauans, Serrano wrote about the islands and their inhabitants, addressing it to the new Spanish Bourbon monarchy and Pope Clement XI. He hoped for their approval to open these islands as a mission field. His flawed report was the first to reach Madrid. Serrano highlighted the location of the Palauan Islands between the Philippines and the Mariana Islands. He maintained that a tyrannical king ruled them, and they belonged to the same ethnic group as the Filipinos, with considerable linguistic variety. Their men, he continued, carried long hair and would paint their bodies yellow as a sign of respect. Most importantly, much like San Vitores claimed of the Chamorro, the Palauans were “gentle,” “very docile,” and more than ready “to receive the Catholic truth and lights of the Gospel.”10 Following San Vitores’s example, Serrano promoted the inhabitants of Palau as gentle beings still trapped by idolatry. Much like in the Marianas, Spain was now charged with bringing enlightenment through Christianity and colonization. Through the evocation of Divine Providence, Serrano succeeded in getting Philip V to support the colonization project through a royal decree on October 19, 1705. Several ventures departed the Philippines intending to attempt to explore the region with limited success. Finally, just as Spanish authorities in the Philippines were considering abandoning the project, a group of Caroline Islanders arrived in the Mariana Islands in 1721.11 The Spanish authorities immediately showed interest in the islands’ location, and the Caroline arrivals employed chickpeas to explain their location. Alluding to the supposed size of the islands and the tools to highlight their geographical location, Spanish authorities would refer to the islands as Chickpeas Islands (Islas de los Garbanzos).12 Francisco Lezcano, who captained the Santa Rosa, a Manila galleon, first encountered the islands in 1686. Lezcano gave them the name Carolines, in honor of King Charles (Carlos) II of Spain.13 Following this encounter, contact between Spain and the Caroline Islands became infrequent and the archipelago faded from the Spanish imaginary. With the Caroline Islanders’ arrival in the Marianas in 1721, the memory of the archipelago was revived, and Guam would replace the Philippines as the Spanish organizers of the colonizing effort in the region. Italian Jesuit Juan Antonio Cantova went southward with the Caroline Islanders from May 6 to June 11, 1721, in a failed attempt to locate their homeland. Cantova appealed to Manilan authority to obtain financial backing for a second attempt. He drew an influential map depicting these new colonies he called “New Philippines” and promised great potential for colonization.14 Cantova received permission to establish a mission on Ulithi in the Caroline Islands in 1731.15 The several failed attempts by Spanish authorities from

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either the Marianas or the Philippines to locate the islands to the south once again underscored the Iberian geographical ignorance of the region. Cantova provided a detailed report on Ulithi. He characterized its inhabitants as good sailors and knowledgeable individuals who tended to eat sweet potatoes instead of bread and accepted divorce and polygamy. He elaborated on burial customs, cleanliness, dancing practices, extraordinary mastery of astronomy, and great reverence for their ruler. On the negative side, the Ulithians were, of course, idolaters who worshiped the devil.16 Setting the expected stage of Christian conversion, Cantova’s mission soon erupted in bloodshed, as he and many of the Jesuits accompanying him were found dead. The endeavor ended in failure. The Spanish’s limited amount of ethnographic information about the Micronesian islands originated from encounters with Guam and some Palauan and Caroline islands. Consequently, Spanish officials made few cultural distinctions between the different ethnic and linguistic groups existing in the region. While broadly defining the islands as a colonial dominion, Spanish officials judged Indigenous people by their willingness to embrace or resist Christianity. There are obvious parallels between Spain’s colonizing project in the Mariana Islands and Ulithi. Both were based on initially positive

FIGURE 4.1 Map

of the Dolores or Chickpeas Islands, 1875, National Historical Archive of Spain, Ultramar, 5352, exp. 4, doc. 17.

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images of the Indigenous people, characterized, without much context, as gentile and docile. Their supposed idolatry called for immediate salvation. Once conversion and consequent Spanish colonization found Indigenous resistance, the positive image changed and was replaced by one of religious fanatics resisting the true faith. The Catholic vision thus created stereotypes about the peoples of Micronesia and underscored Spanish biases. Initially, Spanish officials regarded Micronesians as children to be protected and educated through Catholicism. However, the image became more damaging once they encountered resistance through the Chamorro Wars and the slaying of the missionaries on Ulithi. When Spanish administrators and missionaries wrote about the Mariana Islands and their inhabitants, they did so primarily in connection with the Chamorro’s progress toward evangelization.17 Most of these reports ended up in Manila, as the Mariana Islands were a political dependency of the Philippines. After these reports arrived in Manila, Spanish authorities sifted through the descriptions and forwarded an edited version to Madrid. Nevertheless, few essays on Chamorro ethnography ended in the Spanish capital, as the colonial powers in the Philippines assumed that such news would be of little interest to authorities residing in the metropole. This lack of information was evident when Madrid tried to reform the archipelago’s colonial system after the independence of the American colonies. Thus, Micronesian ethnographic information was rare in Spain during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Only after Alejandro Malaspina’s voyage (1789–​ 1794) would some news about the region’s geography and population return to Spain. Spanish authorities would start to complain about the lack of detailed cartography from Micronesia, which illustrates its marginalization within the colonial network.18 There were some notable exceptions, such as the expeditions by Juan Ibargoitia (1800–​ 1801) and Juan Bautista Monteverde (1805–​1806). Monteverde’s journey to the Caroline Islands was perhaps the best known of these two ventures because a summary was published in the official government newspaper Gaceta de Madrid. Our knowledge about Juan Ibargoitia’s expedition derives from the sailor Ignacio María de Álava, who referenced Ibargoitia’s nautical chart on his trip to the Pacific in 1803. According to Alava, Ibargoitia arrived in Palau on 27th August 1800. He describes the inhabitants as good-​natured. Subsequently, the expedition arrived in Chuuk in April 1801, where the inhabitants met the Spanish crew in canoes to exchange goods. But, as with other encounters in the Pacific, “[t]‌hese Indians showed an extreme greed for iron.”19 Monteverde, on the other hand, encountered Nukuoro Atoll in February 1806. He described these inhabitants as peaceful and hospitable as they

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received the Spaniards with their canoes and selflessly offered coconuts. According to the author: The Indians were of full and graceful stature, robust and agile, of a light mulatto color, with a somewhat flat nose, and long, black, curly hair. There was a venerable older man in each canoe, naked like the others, whom they obeyed, recognizing him as superior. Still, it is noteworthy that these two older men were white, gray-​haired because they were old, with a white beard and aquiline nose, so that none of the other Indians was so white, none had a long beard, nor a nose as aquiline as them. More than anything else, they looked like two Spaniards among those natives.20 Both Ibargoitia and Monteverde’s contacts with the Caroline Islands followed the typical pattern of Spanish stereotyping that was observed earlier: as gentle inhabitants who welcomed the Spanish sailors suggesting fertile ground for evangelization and consequent Spanish expansion into this region. Monteverde’s report added to this a component of similarity between the inhabitants and Nukuoro and the Spaniards, which suggests the racial overtones that would characterize the Age of Imperialism and thus provide a convenient transition to novel images about Micronesians in the Spanish Pacific. Without knowing it, Monteverde encountered a society that displayed cultural and linguistic traits divergent from the surrounding Micronesian cultures. Over the next century, anthropologists would refer to such anomalies as Polynesian outliers.21 Monteverde’s superficial preference for Nukuoro’s physiognomy may have resulted from European selection for Polynesian societies over others in Oceania. 4.3  Stereotypes in Transition: From Divine Providence in the Early Modern Times to Imperialism in Modern Times

One of the main themes of this book is the European cultural struggle to interpret the Pacific that came into sharp focus in the eighteenth century when northern European powers—​ chiefly France and Great Britain—​ contested the ocean as a Spanish closed sea. Where the Franco-​British vision saw a “New World” or a fifth part of the earth needing cultural and geographical exploration, the Iberian monarchies, Spain and Portugal, conceptualized the Pacific as an extension of the Americas.22 Rejecting the emerging Franco-​ British vision, Spanish officials pushed their version until the third decade of the nineteenth century when the halting of the Manila Galleon exchange and the independence of their American colonies forced a rethinking. However, previous chapters highlighted that a stubborn metropolitan Spanish public still embraced such an image until the end of the War of the Pacific in the 1860s.23 As the 1870s signaled a rush to Oceania by new imperial powers,

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chiefly Germany and Japan, Spanish officials needed to embrace the hegemonic visions of the Pacific—​this required adaptation of the age-​old images of the Indigenous peoples living under Spanish rule. Bronwen Douglas expertly analyzes the conceptual change of the Pacific through the diffusion of European maps of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.24 Spearheaded by British and French explorers, Oceania emerged as a new world ripe for exploration, rich in resources, and inhabited by gentle people who were regarded as intellectually inferior to the Europeans. Much like the Spanish before them, although less evangelical, the explorers suggested a paternalistic role for Europe to educate Oceania’s inhabitants to achieve development toward the models of the Enlightenment. Europeans fixated on skin color as a conceptual marker for intelligence and supposed cultural standing in this context. Durmount D’Urville’s model to merge geography with racial classification would prevail, and, by 1840, European geographers opted to divide Oceania into Melanesia—​based on the supposed skin color of its inhabitants as “black isles”—​Micronesia and Polynesia, and in many cases maps still delineate this region as such to the present day.25

D´Urville, Jules Sébastien César, Carte generale de l´Ocean Pacific : pour servir au voyage Pittoresque autour du monde: resume general des voyages de decouvertes de Magellan, Tasman, Dampier… Paris, Tenré, 1834–1835, National Library of Australia.

FIGURE 4.2 Dumont

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Micronesia is thus an artificial geographic category that has deep roots in the European nineteenth-​century imaginary and, as we have seen earlier, few bases in actual ethnographic exploration. French geographer De Rienzi popularized the term to distinguish its inhabitants from their “black” Melanesia neighbors and the lighter-​ skinned Polynesians.26 As anthropologists and historians took greater care to evaluate the region, the borders between these supposed airtight geographical areas became more and more diffuse.27 The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed attempts to deal with populations that did not fit the tripartite classification by assigning peoples that did not match the linguistic and cultural model of their geographical regions as outliers.28 Ironically, as mentioned before, Monteverde noted the similarity between Nukuoro elders and Spaniards in the early nineteenth century. Spanish officials started to adopt the new model of Oceania after losing the battle of Ayacucho in Peru in 1824, signaling the loss of colonial territory in the Americas. As a result, control over the Spanish colonies in the Pacific shifted to the Philippines.29 Colonial officials residing in Manila sought information about the islands in Micronesia to discover that: This Captaincy General [of the Philippines] has located only a few loose items about the islands and possesses no topographic map of any of the Marianas Islands. Given the political circumstances in the Americas, it is of the utmost necessity to provide the government with more precise knowledge of this region.30 To follow-​up on such instruction, in 1827, Manual Sanz, local Justice of Peace on the Island of Guam, penned a report. He extolled the Chamorro’s virtues: their long-​ life expectancy, lively artistry, and lack of greed and superstition. He added that they were honest; they neither gambled nor stole. In addition, they were friendly and community-​ oriented people because everyone was ready to prepare for a wedding four days before. Most importantly, Sanz regarded the Chamorro as docile as they were “blindly obedient to the authorities.”31 In addition, he constantly reiterated the great fertility of the islands: “According to the excellence of the soil, the Mariana Islands could become a wealthy dependency if we were to attract the [Indigenous] inhabitants to work. But insurmountable obstacles prevent the development [of this archipelago].”32 Among these hindrances were the problematic connection between the islands and the lack of investment by the administration. Consequently, the Sanz report encouraged the Spanish authorities in Manila to rediscover the Marianas and further their territory’s investment. The Captain General of the Philippines, Mariano Ricafort, considered Sanz’s account due to his need to reform the Spanish colonial systems in the

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Pacific and the lack of detailed information about the Mariana Islands in Manila. In late 1828, Ricafort published regulations to promote and assist the Mariana Islands.33 He appointed a commission led by Francisco Villalobos to overlook implementing the new regulations for the Mariana Islands. At the same time, colonial authorities in the Philippines forwarded Sanz’s report to their superiors in Madrid to raise awareness about the Marianas and to increase funding for this hitherto neglected region. Consequently, Spanish notables in Madrid created an investigative committee for “the promotion, support, and fortification of the Mariana Islands to assist the improvement of trade and defense in the Philippine Islands.”34 This committee soon realized the paucity of information about the region in Spanish archives. Thus, in late 1828, Madrid requested additional information from individuals knowledgeable about the archipelago.35 One of them, Alonso de la Riva, who served as State Secretary of the Navy, issued a report that seemingly contradicted the one submitted by Sanz: These Islands are barren, uncultivated, and entirely deserted. They are subjected to periodic floods, storms, and a plague of rats that devour everything. In addition, the islands are infected by an awful and destructive disease [leprosy, the cause of which Riva would, wrongly, relate to the amount of fish consumed by the Chamorro]. Therefore, I doubt any European nation would covet [the Marianas] as a possession… [It would therefore be] best to leave the Marianas as they are and to concentrate only on Guam. All the other [islands] (it pains me to say and write this) should be laid to waste, leaving them without any livestock and destroying, if possible, all [food] production so that no one can find refuge on them…36 The divergent discourses of Sanz and Riva are very telling about the ambivalent cognitive Spanish estimate of their colonial domains in Oceania. On the one hand, the Spanish accepted the European discourse to understand the Pacific islands as a place of opportunities typical of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Sanz’s report suggests an image of the noble savage that populated mostly French accounts about the Pacific. Much like the eighteenth-​ century explorers, Sanz suggests that Spanish authorities following the patterns developed by missionaries earlier should develop the Marianas’ population and resources. In light with the changing times of the Enlightenment, Sanz extracted the evangelical agenda and focused on the archipelago’s more secular economic development. Where the clergy identified Chamorro idolatry as the main impediment to the development of the Marianas, Sanz highlighted their idleness as a similar predicament. According to Sanz, and very much central to colonial discourse of the nineteenth century, it was the state that had to intervene in the islands to teach proper work ethic to the Indigenous inhabitants.

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On the other hand, Riva’s report illustrates not only the metropolitan vision of the Marianas but also their marginal location in the colonial network. To make matters worse, based on their marginal status, the State Secretary of the Navy argued against economic development in the Marianas, except for Guam. To prevent the arrival of European interlopers, islands outside of Guam should become wastelands devoid of livestock and agricultural resources. Rather than investing heavily in a losing proposition, Spanish authorities should focus development on Guam and discourage the same in the archipelago’s other islands. The divergent views of these reports illustrate the ambiguity at the heart of Spanish colonial authorities. While colonial officials in the Philippines believed in developing the Micronesia islands following colonial loss in the Americas, metropolitan authorities refused to engage in such visions. The marginalization of the Marianas and the even more distant Caroline Islands was also due to the erroneous ethnographic assessment of their populations. While evangelical images associated with idolatry gave way to more secular views of idleness, ironically contradicting Sanz’s account of labor meaningful to the Chamorro, the Indigenous populations were still charged with their misfortune and the lack of potential economic development. As the nineteenth century moved on, the Spanish, as opposed to those of other European nations, did not embrace the category of Oceania and largely neglected the islands in this new geographical region. Unsurprisingly, Ricafort’s regulation, announced with great fanfare, failed because Madrid would refuse much-​ needed financial investment. This failure is best exemplified by Guam Governor Francisco Villalobos, who served for five years in the 1830s. He claimed that Ricafort’s well-​intended reforms fell on deaf ears in Madrid, where the Marianas were left to fend for themselves. Villalobos further argued that Chamorro idleness was compounded by alcoholic beverages introduced by the ever-​increasing presence of whaling vessels in the archipelago.37 The combination of Sanz’s more benign and Riva’s dangerous vision of the Marianas molded a self-​fulfilling prophecy that doomed the islands and their inhabitants. During the first half of the nineteenth century, this pessimistic vision of the Marianas prevented Micronesia from developing into an autonomous region in Spanish geographical and cognitive constructs. In other words, while the Mariana Islands were conceptualized as an extension of America during the early modern times, the nineteenth century witnessed them as the extension of the Philippines, which Spanish authorities frequently called “the Pearl of the Orient.”38 The Spanish desire to both rediscover and extoll the virtues of the Philippines frequently relegated their Micronesian colonial holdings to a conceptual blind spot.39 Scholarly books dedicated to the Philippines, as a rule, save just a few lines to the Micronesian extensions.40

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An exception to this conceptual neglect emerged from conceptualizing the Mariana Islands as a convict colony borrowed from the British example in Australia. The soldier and columnist Antonio Puig y Lucá envisioned such a project in 1834 where he advocated the dispatch of Spanish deportees, their numbers swelling due to the Peninsular conflicts, to the Philippines, Marianas, and Caroline Islands partially to keep foreign interests at bay. Spanish authorities ultimately rejected this project, but the proposal also illustrated the author’s and, by extension, Spanish ignorance of the region. Most importantly, according to Puig y Lucá, the Mariana and Caroline Islands inhabitants spoke Tagalog, a widespread language spoken in the central Philippines, which underscored his lack of linguistic understanding.41 Puig y Lucá’s assumption that Philippine languages would be spoken in Mariana and Caroline Islands once again highlighted the general Spanish view of tying them to the larger territories in Southeast Asia. Although Tagalog, Chamorro, and the myriad of Caroline languages could be found in the Austronesian language family, Spanish authorities showed little interest in investigating the apparent differences. 4.4  The Incorporation of Micronesia in the Spanish Imperial Imagination

The below (Figure 4.3) map, published in 1852 by Francisco Coello, marks a vital turning point in the Spanish relationship with Micronesia for two fundamental reasons: first as a political intention to defend Spanish colonialism in Oceania against other imperial powers, and second as a pronounced cognitive independence of Micronesia from the Philippines. The map formed part of the Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, a large-​scale project with significant public investment aimed at capturing Spain and its colonial empire on a grant geographical scale. In 1847, the very first map depicted the capital of Madrid. Two years later, a general map of the Spanish territories in the Pacific appeared as “Possessions in Oceania.” Then, in 1852, three more maps appeared to expand the available map of Oceania: two of them depicted the Philippines, still considered the central possession, and one showed the Spanish holdings in Micronesia. Compared to maps of Spain, which saw significant delays, the Possessions of Oceania maps appeared rather quickly, which was tied to the political intention behind their publication. With more and more foreign powers encroaching on the Pacific, Spanish authorities sought to signal and cement their imperial claims and presence in the region. Coello’s employment of the title “Oceania” illustrated the Spanish’s tardiness in embracing this important geographical category. As illustrated in this work, Spanish authorities initially rejected the term for favoring British and French arguments to regard Oceania as a new world region. However, Spanish intellectuals maintained that the Pacific islands

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FIGURE 4.3  Coello,

Francisco. “Posesiones de Oceanía. Islas Marianas, Palaos y Carolinas”. En Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. Diccionario Geográfico estadístico-​histórico. Madrid, 1852, Map Library Rafael Mas (The Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain).

were conceptually tied to the Americas, where Spain held extensive territory. The gradual colonial loss in these continents demanded conceptual shifts that resulted in Coello’s maps. His geographic conceptualization marked the acceptance of a “Spanish Oceania”: the Philippines, the Mariana, and the Caroline Islands. Spain was not the only country to embrace the new geography; Portugal followed a similar tendency in defining its colonial possessions on Timor as a “Portuguese Oceania.”42 Spanish conceptual changes also demanded a greater interest in the cultural and geographical realties of Micronesia. This cognitive recognition of the separation of Micronesia from the Philippines also meant that Spanish officials embraced a romantic vision of the Europeans about Oceania as a territory open for exploration and exploitation. According to this stereotype, the islands had rich and fertile soil and were inhabited by noble savages longing for European civilization.43 Coello’s map was thus the first to separate Micronesia from the Philippines and raise Spanish awareness in this region. The Spanish public would consequently demand more detailed knowledge of the area and urged its government to invest in colonial projects in Micronesia.

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The Spanish public demand for ethnographic information led to the classification into two main groups: the Chamorro and the Caroline Islanders. In the Spanish imperial vision, the former ethnic group was considered more advanced than the Caroline Islanders due to their prolonged contact with the Spanish colonial authorities. Coello’s map of 1852 already reflects this colonial reality when he described the Chamorros as follows: The natives have a docile character, [they are] Catholics without superstition, generous and hospitable, but prone to laziness. Their customs are simple: they help each other in hardship or duties, they respect family ties, they are not prone to quarrels, and they do not indulge in excessive gambling or drinking.44 Coello’s rendition of the Chamorro showed clear parallels to Sanz’s general positive report of the 1820s. However, his opponent Riva’s much harsher account suggested a unique focus on Guam and the elimination of animal husbandry and agriculture on other Mariana archipelago islands, gradually falling out of favor. In contrast to the Chamorro, Coello describes the inhabitants of the Palau and Caroline Islands as: They are all tall, well-​ built, and regular-​ featured, [a description] that generally fits the men better than women. In addition, they are wiry, strong, agile, and good swimmers. Their character is gentle, cheerful, kind, and hospitable, they are not likely to steal, and their women are chaste and keep their distance from foreigners, especially in the high islands… Although polygamy and divorce are permitted, the inhabitants do not normally have more than one woman and respect social bonds. The single barbaric custom of infanticide exists only on some small islands where this practice as a form of population control is acceptable among women who already have three children. Some [accounts] also assume Cannibalism and human sacrifice to exist in these islands.45 Coello’s description is generally positive and provides a homogeneous image of the very heterogeneous populations of Micronesia, which is partially due to the lack of ethnographic information. Nevertheless, over the following decades, the necessities of colonial administration would introduce a more clear-​cut differentiation between the Chamorro and the Caroline Islanders. 4.4.1  The Mariana Islands

As this book underscores, the Marianas played a somewhat subdued role in the Spanish imagination. The largest island of Guam played a small part as a

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stopover on the route of the Manila Galleons. Nevertheless, once this route ceased in 1815, Guam and the other islands again fell into imperial neglect. A little later, the loss of the American colonies attracted attention to Oceania. Still, the archipelago struggled to gain an autonomous existence apart from the important Philippines as plans to invest in the Marianas as a penal colony failed. As more foreign powers arrived in Oceania, the mid-​nineteenth century Spanish public started to take a renewed interest in the region. Convict colonies had a long and suffering history in the Pacific from the initial British settlement in Botany Bay to the French takeover of New Caledonia.46 Spain also attempted this trend, even if initial proposals to use the Marianas in this way failed. It was the French increase in convict consignment bound for New Caledonia due to the incidents of the Paris Commune in 1871 that influenced authorities in Madrid to export their convicts to the Marianas. In this way, the Spanish administration dusted off those 1830s projects that conceived Mariana Island as a prison settlement. It was the government of the First Spanish Republic (1873–​1874) that put such a project into action when it deported 1,076 Spanish prisoners to the Marianas and the Philippines.47 The majority of these migrants would arrive in the Marianas due to the Philippine authorities’s stern opposition to housing them in the Philippines.48 However, the arrival of the convicts worsened the situation in the Mariana archipelago. The islands’ limited resources of the archipelago could not feed the population which significantly increased by the influx of prisoners. Hunger was the leading cause of outbreaks of riots on Saipan, encouraged by the political ideologies of the deported Spaniards. The convicts motivated the Chamorro to participate in the takeover of some commercial ships arriving on the island.49 The increasingly volatile situation found resolve through the remission of aid from the Philippines and an amnesty law that took effect in 1876, which allowed the transfer of deportees to Spain.50 Thus, the Spanish penal project in the Marianas came to a disastrous end caused by the lack of food in the islands. Contemporary Spanish scholars explained the failure through the lack of information: Little has been written about our possessions in Micronesia and cannot be employed for serious study. Those first [authors] to make the Marianas known published numerous exaggerations that claimed that the inhabitants walked backward and that most of them stooped like quadrupeds, although their arms did not reach the ground. They also added that [the knowledge of how to make] fire had not been known in that archipelago for many centuries.51 Despite the failure of the penal colony, the Spanish public’s interest in the Marianas continued, and the islands did not fall into the usual imperial neglect. Instead, stimulated in part by the European Romantic focus on Oceania,

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Spanish authors started to publish books about the Mariana Islands, and the increase of knowledge about the archipelago provided it with a conceptual autonomy from the Philippines. Two of these books stand out: Felipe del Pan’s Diez millones de pesos o tesoro de las Mariana: Novela Histórica (Ten million pesos or treasure of the Mariana Islands: Historical novel), and Felipe de la Corte´s Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana (Descriptive and Historical Memory of the Mariana Islands).52 Felipe de Pan’s work postulated the existence of a treasure hidden by the pirate Andrew Gordon Robertson on one of the Mariana Islands. The island is identified only by its first letter, “A,” which Pan believed to be Asuncion. The novel was based on a Spanish attempt, presumably by Villalobos in the 1830s, to locate the wealth that, according to him, the Spanish left in Peru between 1823 and 1825, probably on the island of Pagan.53 Another alternative was the hidden treasure by the mutineers of the English schooner “Caledoña” in 1829.54 Pan’s work indicates hidden wealth in the Mariana Islands, and its popularity derives from the fact that there was enough demand for the book to warrant a second edition. Where Pan’s work aimed at entertaining a larger Spanish public longing for stories of piracy and buried riches, De la Corte’s book targeted a more educated audience that sought more concrete ethnographic and geographic information about the Spanish colonial holdings in Oceania. The publisher of the work, the National Printing of Madrid, underscored its importance for Spanish authorities who sought to diffuse it to a more learned Spanish public. The book’s author had served a long tour, between 1855 and 1866, as a Governor of the Mariana Islands. In January of 1865, Governor De la Corte penned and dispatched a report to his superiors in Madrid. Ten years later, his report served as the basis for the book that would become one of the most critical existing Spanish references about the Marianas in the late nineteenth century. It is vital since it broke the idyllic Spanish stereotypes about the Chamorro inhabitants. Already in his introduction, De la Corte criticized all those who contributed to the romanticized images of the archipelago and substituted it with a much more dire vision that condemned not only the islands but also its Indigenous population: If one examines what has been written about the Mariana Islands, one can only find poverty and misery everywhere; agriculture is unknown, trade does not exist; each inhabitant is wretchedly poor; there have never existed news about the location of even lower ranking minerals. The entire population, without exception, has depended from the beginning until now on the Government and only on the Government…55 As was common among occupiers, De la Corte blamed the Chamorro population for the desolate situation in the Mariana Islands. He went on to

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describe them as communally acting as a “kind of capricious child, without any present need, without any accumulated wealth…[The Chamorro] remain in their primitive wild isolation.”56 Influenced no doubt by the rising Social Darwinism at the time that would replace the romantic images of the inhabitants of Oceania, the former governor saw Asian immigration, primarily from the Spanish-​held Philippines, as the only viable solution to bring development to the Mariana Islands. The nineteenth century witnessed widespread discussions to explain human differences, to which the uncovering of the societies inhabiting the Pacific contributed significantly. Earlier flexible and more fluid explanations of human variation started to become reified into an inexorable biological racism, which received additional support from the writings of Charles Darwin. As much as this scientist sought to develop evolution as a mechanism of change in nature, of which human beings were but one expression, there were those eager to apply his teachings to society. The resulting Social Darwinism became a convenient justification for European exceptionalism and consequent intervention to assist other cultures in their upward mobility.57 De la Corte’s wholesale condemnation of Chamorro limitations fit well into this European trend. As did his suggestion to strengthen the lower-​ranking Chamorro through the stipulated higher-​ranking races in the Philippines. Spanish convict settlement on the islands was to have an equal, if not more extraordinary, result. However, as we have seen, it resulted in a dismal failure when the radicalized convicts combined their dissatisfaction with the downtrodden Chamorro population. Pan and De la Corte’s accounts reveal two types of antagonistic discourses, which paradoxically fed off each other. The romanticized image of Oceania plays a prominent role in Pan’s narrative that extols the Marianas as a diamond in the rough ready to be developed by Spanish authorities. On the other hand, De la Corte’s report represents a much harsher evaluation of the islands’ situation. The former governor of the territory condemned not only the romantic notions associated with the archipelago but also questioned the ability of the Chamorro to contribute to the Mariana development. Consequently, in his view, only an influx of Asian and European labor could assist the island territory. Even without acknowledging Pan’s influences, De la Corte nevertheless saw potential in the Marianas, which could only be unlocked by replacing the Chamorro population. Felipe del Pan had little to say about the Indigenous people in his romanticized account of the Marianas. De la Corte also believed in the islands’ potential, but only at the expense of the Chamorro. Unfortunately, the latter’s negative view of the Indigenous population continued throughout the late Spanish rule of the Marianas. Two former governors of Guam, Francisco Olive y García and Luis Ibáñez, published books following the conflict over the Caroline Islands that continued in the tradition of De la Corte. They advocated a complete

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overhaul of colonial policy in the Marianas, as it was exemplified in the speech by Francisco Brochero, Governor of the Mariana Islands from 1880 to 1884: For a long time, the Mariana Islands have steadily declined. They have always been orphaned [by the administration] regarding agriculture, industry, and commerce. As a result, the islands had few moments of their vitality. Nowadays, these islands are rather insignificant, merely reduced to a tiny output of agriculture. [And it even is questionable] if we can call agriculture the tilling of a lesser part of a territory in the deplorable manner that these natives do. Furthermore, [we hardly can call] trade the exchange they do with foreign ships that arrive at these deserted beaches. Thus, without hesitation, one finds nothing in the Marianas resembling what could be called substance in other regions.58 Luis de Ibáñez y García, another former governor of the Mariana Islands (1871–​1873), wrote the monograph Historia de las Islas Mariana (1886).59 He aligned with the traditional Spanish vision of the Chamorro that brands them as vagrants consolidated by De la Corte. Ibáñez cites female sterilization and infanticide examples of throwing infants into the sea as Chamorro customs of population control. He denounced the state of supposed weakness of the colony and the lack of control of the Hispanic authorities over its population, which in tone followed what most governors had to say. On the other hand, Olive y García’s, who served as governor in 1884, book blamed Spanish state officials as the actual cause behind the decline of the colony and not, as it had so often been done, the idleness and supposed low civilization standing of the Chamorro. His monograph Islas Marianas (1887) stands as a monument to the Indigenous population, which is best exemplified by his dedication to the book: “To the inhabitants of Marianas, to this nation representative of all races, which languishes forgotten and only exists because of [divine] providence.”60 Olive y Gracia depicted the Chamorro as unfortunate victims of a flawed colonial system that Spain imposed on the islands. Not idle by nature, the Spanish intervention predestined the Chamorro toward laziness. In this way, he intended to refute the Luis Ibáñez thesis. 4.4.2  The Caroline Islands

If the Mariana Islands did not achieve cognitive autonomy in Spanish thought until the second half of the nineteenth century, the Caroline Islands did not attain a similar status until 1885. In that same year, a diplomatic conflict broke out between Germany and Spain over claiming the island of Yap. Spanish authorities understood this dispute as a direct insult to their age-​old

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rights based on first discovery. Furthermore, Spanish colonial claims in these islands mobilized Iberian patriotism. The hitherto neglected Caroline Islands thus moved to the center of Spanish public debates, and learned individuals from this country demanded ethnographic and geographic information about the region. Before the German-​ Spanish dispute, Spanish officials imagined the Caroline Islands as a mere extension of the Mariana Islands. However, through several events detailed earlier, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the Marianas gradually archived conceptual independence from the Philippines. For its colonial officials, the Caroline Islands covered all Micronesia-​considered Spanish territory, including Palau and the Marshall Islands along the Caroline archipelago. This Spanish vast but vague colonial claim informed Coello’s map depicting Spanish Oceania. The initial Spanish conceptualization of the expanded Caroline Islands followed a familiar pattern. First, the little ethnographic and geographic knowledge available was exaggerated to a region with rich islands and a large population—​ according to De la Corte, the Caroline Islands had 139.200 inhabitants—​ only waiting to be colonized so that Spain would reap “honorable and lucrative benefits.”61 There were few specific cases that exposed the Spanish public to the Caroline Islands. One of these examples was the media coverage surrounding the supposed “King of Palau.” The story of the Spaniard Antonio de Triay became a prominent source of attention for readers in his country. In 1845, Triay was a sailor on the ship Carmen, which stranded him in the Palauan Islands. The sailor quickly earned the Indigenous people’s esteem during his involuntary stay in this archipelago. He integrated into the local society to the point that he was appointed chief of Atewa in Palau. In the 1860s, Triay left Palau behind and boarded the Cervantes. Once he arrived in Spain, he appeared at the Court of Isabel II with a Palauan child named Aulokopé. With the participation of the royal family, this young boy was baptized and took on the Christian name of Ignacio, who lived the rest of his life in Spain.62 Spanish encounters with Palau paralleled the British experience with the arrival of the Palauan Prince Lee Boo in London at the end of the eighteenth century.63 Likewise, the child’s baptism is reminiscent of the Spanish practices of quickly converting Indigenous arrivals to turn them into Spanish agents in their home society. For instance, in the late eighteenth century, the Viceroy of Peru baptized a small number of Tahitians before returning them to their home islands with a contingent of missionaries to establish a Spanish presence in the Society Islands to forestall a British or French presence.64 After this episode, Spanish authorities did not pay much attention to the Caroline Islands until the conflict with Germany over the colonization of this region. Spain dispatched the expedition of Captain Emilio Butrón (February–​ April 1885) to learn more about the islands and to raise the Spanish flag.

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Butrón’s report proved crucial for buttressing Spanish visions concerning the Caroline Islands. The information was divided into two parts, a first part to describe Yap and a second one dedicated to the Palauan Islands. The report also included a small dictionary that translated Indigenous words into Spanish.65 As expected from such a colonizing venture, Butrón emphasized the positive aspects of islands and their inhabitants, especially in contrast to the Marianas: “The possession of Yap and the Palauan group would be more useful, rich and profitable than that of the Mariana Islands as Carolinians prove to be much more hardworking and robust than the [Chamorro].”66 Butrón described the islands as densely populated. He listed 10,000 inhabitants, twelve foreigners in Yap, and found Palau even more populated. He saw the islands as rich in resources, which would presumably pay and provide a reason for a Spanish occupation. To support a Spanish claim to the islands, Butrón claimed that two chiefs from Palau spoke fluent Spanish. Agitation against Spanish rule, according to the captain, came mainly from the few residing foreigners. Significantly, the Irish American David O’Keefe, who made a fortune partially from shipping the famous stone disks from their Palauan quarries to Yap, was no friend of the Spanish and was set against their colonizing efforts. Emilio Butrón’s report and subsequent publication did much to enlighten the Spanish public about the neglected islands south of the Marianas. At the same time, the account also showed significant gaps and errors. For instance, Butrón regarded Palau and the Caroline Islands as a single archipelago, and he erroneously attributed the discovery of Palau to Father Cantova. Despite its apparent shortcomings, Butrón’s report accelerated the need for Spanish colonization in the Caroline Islands. According to the Spanish captain, Yap was the best location for a colonial capital, something his superiors in Madrid took to heart, much to the chagrin of later governors appointed to the Caroline Islands. His account brought the region into Spanish consciousness at a time when Spanish and German diplomats were locking horns over the possession of the island of Yap in the summer of 1885.67 The Caroline Islands would soon become a significant protagonist of Spanish foreign policy. Although the islands revealed few resources, they became a focal point for Spanish patriotism that sought to revolt against the perceived international backwardness. To voice their discontent, Spanish citizens took to the streets in the big cities to assert Spanish reign over the Caroline Islands. Ironically, few of them had accurate geographical knowledge about the location of these isles. Once the Pope resolved the impending German-​Spanish conflict through arbitration in December 1885 favorably to the Iberian side, Spanish officials created two colonial centers: the Western Caroline Islands, with its capital located on Yap (1886), and the Easter Caroline Islands with administration located on Pohnpei (1887). Nevertheless, following this act, the Caroline Islands returned to their prior

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marginal place within the Spanish administration. Scholar Miguel Gregorio, for instance, decried in 1887: “What a year ago was the object of national enthusiasm has now fallen into the greatest of oblivion.”68 Despite its declining role following the conflict, scholars now turned their attention to Spanish Oceania.69 In fact, the 1887 General Exhibition of the Philippines brought the distant and exotic Spanish colonies in the Pacific closer to the Iberian consciousness. One observer wrote: This exhibition is truly transcendental because the little knowledge we had about this fertile region has now been expanded in Spain. [Our thirst for more] needs to be attended to. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that [this region] deserves attention demanded by justice.70 The exhibit’s inauguration took place in the Cristal Palace of the Retiro Park in Madrid on June 30, 1887. The Queen Regent and the Infanta Isabel were in attendance.71 The Pacific inhabitants were carefully selected to illustrate the Iberian civilizational reach. A primarily Philippine population, which included Chamorro from the Marianas, were dressed in elegant Spanish clothing. In contrast, Figure 4.4 depicts more “primitive” peoples of

y Rico. Inauguración de la Exposición de Filipinas. Apertura del concurso bajo la presidencia de S.M. la Reina Regente, 1887, National Library of Spain, Madrid.

FIGURE 4.4 Comba

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the Philippines beyond Spanish colonial control. Included in this purposeful staged event that had Indigenous peoples dressed in traditional clothing, were people from the Caroline Islands72, which the Spanish considered to rank below the inhabitants of the Marianas.73 Besides the success of the Philippine exhibition of 1887, what brought the Caroline Islands to the forefront of the Spanish public were several books published about the area due to the German-​Spanish conflict over its colonial administration. Generally, the authors who addressed this disagreement had little knowledge of Carolinian ethnography and geography, and the islands were a tool to assert Spanish colonial claims. A good example of this politicized ignorance are Enrique Taviel’s books Historia del conflicto de las Carolinas (1886) and Historia de la exposición de las Islas Filipinas en Madrid el año 1887 y un compendio de la historia de las Mariana, Carolinas, Filipinas y Palaos (1887). Both works support the national enthusiasm generated by the conflict, and the author was keen to maintain that they had been claimed by the Spanish for almost 500 years, going back to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1493.74 When presenting the reader with factual information about the islands Spain claimed, Taviel’s books disappoint as he does little more than exaggerate the Caroline Islands’ wealth to buttress Spanish colonization. On the other hand, works can be found that reproduce a great deal more detail on the islands, which were authored by individuals who had visited the area. Such authors generally lamented the partial information available and were not shy of criticizing the Spanish government for its policy of neglect. José Montero Vidal’s El archipiélago filipino, y las islas Mariana, Carolinas y Palaos. Su historia, Geografía y Estadísticas (1886) illustrates this trend. Providing more accurate information about the islands, Vidal reproaches the Spanish Overseas Ministry for reproducing little verified and largely biased information in their reports.75 Even if Vidal attempts to provide a more detailed picture of the Caroline Islands, he still falls victim to missing information and common Spanish stereotypes that exalt the idea of the wealth of these islands, inhabited by strange beings yet to be educated. In the last years of the Spanish Empire, Cabeza Pereiro’s work La isla de Ponapé (1895) would curb this trend of cultural and geographical exaggerations. The author served as a governmental surgeon on Pohnpei, during the numerous Indigenous uprisings against Spanish rule. These conflicts signaled Cabeza Pereiro’s apparent bias against the local inhabitants, which he derogatorily referred to as “kanaka.”76 He painted the Pohnpeians negatively because they possessed no currency, and their industry was limited to shipbuilding. Cabeza Pereiro was also no friend of their social practices. For instance, he despised isipal, a term referring to sharing wives between friends and brothers. He further criticized the inhabitants for allowing divorce and polygamy, although he affirms that the only one who is not monogamous is

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the king, because women give up their virginity with ease and for anointing themselves with Kisión (a kind of coconut oil mixed with fat extracted from the head of the fish). Furthermore, he affirms that men also paint their bodies yellow and apply coconut oil when falling in love with a woman. He also confirmed that men had piercings in their ears, would undergo tattoos, and sometimes cut off one of their testicles.77 Thanks to reading this work, many Spanish began to criticize the large number of resources Spain was spending for a colony where its military had little influence. Some Spaniards even favored the end of their reign over the Caroline Islands. Julián del Pozo y Bresó spread this view in an article he wrote in 1888 for the Opinion de Manila.78 Following the Pohnpei revolt of 1887, he believed that Spain should abandon the Caroline Island due to the high cost associated with its administration, its distance from Manila and lack of infrastructure, the fierce resistance of the Pohnpeians, and, lastly, the limited resources that these islands represented for Spain. He published a book in 1890 advocating that the Caroline Islands added little to the Spanish Empire other than spiraling costs and conflicts.79 His opinion was shared by Ex-​Governor General of the Philippines Valeriano Weyler: I declare that true patriotism, as I understand it, requires the abandonment of those remote islands, whose possession I consider so useless that I had even figured that the Germans if they had occupied them, would have abandoned them when they realized their limited worth… For the development of trade? It cannot be because we could not export anything from them, as they produce nothing, and their savage inhabitants only live from fishing and hunting and do not know other needs. Moreover, their exuberant vegetation, impossible to extinguish, prevents [trade]. Nor should we entertain settlement [in these islands] for it is fruitful only in countries that support agriculture ….the only thing we have harvested from [the Caroline Islands] to date are sacrifices of men and money.80 Information about the Caroline Islands indeed increased following the Spanish occupation in 1885. The uprisings on Pohnpei, however, clouded much of the evidence and questioned whether all the Spanish blood spilled on the island justified the expansion of the colony. Nevertheless, some intellectuals still supported the occupation, encouraged in part by the symbolic worth the Caroline Islands represented during the excessive land grab during the New Imperialism. One of the proposals circulating to support this plan was to change the capital of Western Caroline Island from Yap to Palau. This move was based on a Spanish assessment that the Palauan people were generally more friendly and hospitable, and their islands promised greater riches.81 In 1893, for instance, the Governor of the

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Western Caroline Islands Manuel Anton wrote: “The [Palauans] are much more [culturally] advanced than the rest of the [Caroline] archipelago. Although these [islands] are not as rich as they should be, they project a lot of promise, and their natural resources make them a suitable place for the capital of the archipelago of Western Carolinas and Palau.”82 The Pohnpei revolts caused the Spanish to separate the Caroline Islands into distinct ethnic groups. This conflict meant that the Iberian gaze classified the inhabitants of Easter Caroline Island where the fierce Pohnpeians were located as savage and of lesser civilizational standing. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Western Caroline Islands would be much more peaceful and welcoming. Inside the Western Caroline Island, Spanish officials distinguished Palau with better qualities than Yap (more hospitable and friendly people, rich soil, and better situation), which was underscored by their desire to transfer the location of the colonial capital from Yap to Palau due to its lack of colonial development. This opinion was best exemplified by Manuel Torres y García de Quesada, who served as governor of Yap between 1887 and 1889. His report criticized the Yapese for their vices, including indiscriminate killing and slavery. On the other hand, the island had some exploitable natural resources, and Spanish regulations controlling firearms and liquor had brought the situation under control.83 Contrasting with the Western Caroline Islands, Spanish officials regarded the inhabitants of the eastern islands as outside even the most elemental realms of civilization. The limited contact with Asians and Euro-​Americans, the presence of whom was threatening to Spanish colonial claim, only worsened the Indigenous peoples’ disposition toward Spanish authorities. A report by José Pidal, the Governor of the Eastern Caroline Islands, in 1895 following a tour through the islands illustrates this pejorative view well. Within the eastern group, the inhabitants of Chuuk stood out. They were represented as the most bloodthirsty for not having only limited contact with Europeans. Many Japanese island residents only exasperated tribal conflict by introducing liquor and firearms. The islands of Pohnpei and Kosrae had benefitted from the arrival of American Methodists, but the Protestant missionaries wasted no time indoctrinating their congregation against the Catholic Spanish. Pidal concluded that surrendering the Eastern Caroline Islands was not an option. Still, he encouraged his Spanish superiors to increase their presence on the island to ward off foreign missionaries and traders and convince the Indigenous population to embrace Spanish rule. 4.5 Conclusion

Spanish images of the Micronesian isles’ claims varied throughout their long colonial history. Spanish views ranged from near abandonment, to saving

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the galleon stopover in Guam, to islands with great economic promise during the early modern period. The Indigenous inhabitants played a crucial role in the Spanish perception of Micronesia. Romantic images about agreeable populations ready to embrace the Catholic religion, one of the main reasons behind Iberian expansion, quickly took a negative turn when the inhabitants rejected the Spanish faith and swayed, as it happened during the Chamorro Wars and an early attempt to gain a Jesuit foothold in the Caroline Islands. In this case, romantic perceptions gave way to projected images of debased savagery that propelled military intervention in Guam. The exact process would repeat on Pohnpei following the Spanish colonization after 1885. The Spaniards’ desire to exploit their empire’s wealth, even in its perceived most remote corners, projected these islands as prosperous land. In this economic context, Spanish thinking about Micronesia changed little from San Vitores’s seventeenth-​century visions of the Marianas until the very end of the overseas empire in the Pacific in 1899. Generally, the process involved five steps: (1) Spanish visitors exaggerated the virtues of the islands and their inhabitants to convince the metropolitan authorities to colonize Micronisia; (2) Spanish officials accepted such fleeting descriptions due to the lack of ethnographic and geographic information about the islands; (3) once the colonization of the territory became a reality, Spanish rulers arriving in the islands realize that Romantic discourses about land and peoples had little merit; (4) the Spanish dons were unable to fathom how their presence triggered resistance and sought to justify violence by pointing out character flaws in the populations they sought to submit; and (5) following the abolition of the Manila Galleon Exchange and the independence of the Spanish American colonies, Micronesia returned to its marginalized position in the imperial network. The consequent lack of ethnographic information, especially for the unsettled but claimed Caroline, Marshall, and Palauan islands, gave rise to the original stereotypes that characterized the Marianas in the early modern period: exoticism, mystery, and potential wealth. This circular model dominated the Spanish colonial imagination in Micronesia. However, the New Imperialism of the late-​nineteenth century broke this cycle as outside interest in the region demanded detailed knowledge of these islands. Following the conflict over the Caroline Islands with Germany, Spanish intellectuals demanded more information about the neglected islands. Although the Marianas and the Caroline Islands started to develop cognitive independence from the Spanish-​controlled Philippines, the 1887 Philippine Exposition in Madrid still ranked Micronesian groups according to their willingness to embrace Spanish rule and lifestyle. In this way, the Chamorro people, who had been subjugated at the very start of Spanish colonial rule, appear as the most advanced. The inhabitants of the Caroline Islands, depicted as almost naked, ranked much lower, given their

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limited contact with the Spanish. Following the exhibition, as the resistance of the Pohnpeians against Spanish rule hardened, the inhabitants of the Eastern Caroline Islands were further debased from their Western counterparts, who the Spanish regarded as hospitable and willing to accept their faith and rule. Notes 1 Antonio Pigafetta, Primer viaje alrededor del mundo, ed. Leoncio Cabrero Fernández (Madrid: Historia 16, 2002), 80. 2 Rafael Rodríguez-​Ponga y Salamanca, “El primer vocabulario de la lengua de las islas Marianas (1565),” Archivo Agustino 95, no. 203 (2011): 445–​ 460; Manuel Valdemoro, Colección de diarios y relaciones para la historia de los viajes y descubrimientos. V. Esteban Rodríguez, 1564-​1565; Miguel López de Legazpi 1564-​1565; Esteban Rodríguez y Rodríguez de Espinosa, 1565 (Madrid: Instituto Histórico de la Marina, Madrid, 1947), 21. 3 Gaceta de Madrid, no. 38 (11/​05/​1804): 424. In this official newspaper of the Spanish government, the news from the Philippines is integrated into the section “In America.” 4 Rainer F. Buschmann, Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-​1899 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 28–​29. 5 Fernando Palanco Aguado, “Sanvítores, Diego Luis de S. I.,” in Diccionario histórico, geográfico y cultural de Filipinas y el Pacífico, ed. L. Cabrero et al. (Madrid: AECID, 2008), vol. 1, 821. 6 Francisco García, The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father Diego Luis de Savitores of the Society of Jesus (Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, 2004); Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, “The seed of martyrs and martyrdom in the Marianas (17th century),” in I estoria-​ta: Guam, the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture: An exhibition of “Let’s turn around the world” Official Program of the Fifth Centenary of the First Round the World (Madrid: National Museum of Anthropology, 2021), 57–​64. 7 General Archives of the Indies, Seville (AGI), Fil. 82-​2-​29, Memorial de Fr. San Vitores a la Reina, julio de 1667. 8 Peter Coomans, History of the Mission in the Mariana Islands, 1667-​ 1673, trans. and ed. by Rodrigue Levesque (Saipan: CNMI Division of Historic Preservation, 1997). 9 Luis de Morales and Charles Le Gobien, History of the Mariana Islands, ed. Alexandre Coello de la Rosa (Guam: University of Guam Press–​MARC, 2017 [1st ed. 1700]), 131–​132. 10 Andrés Serrano, Noticias de las Islas Palaos (Madrid: 1895 [1st ed. 1705]). 11 Francis X. Hezel, The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-​ colonial Days, 1521-​ 1885 (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 1983); Paul D´Arcy, The People of the Sea. Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2006), 144–​163; David Hanlon, “A different historiography for ‘A handful of chickpeas flung over the sea’. Approaching the Federated States of Micronesia´s deeper Past,” in Pacific Futures. Past and Present, ed. W. Anderson et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2020), 81–​110.

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12 Amancio Ladín Carrasco, Islario español del Pacífico: identificación de los descubrimientos del mar del Sur (Madrid: Cultura Hispana, 1984), 141. 13 Patricio Hidalgo Nuchera, Redescubrimiento de las Islas Palaos (Madrid: Miraguano, 1993), 9–​12. 14 Salvador Bernabéu Albert and José María García Redondo, “Las Nuevas Filipinas: un proyecto misional oceánico de la Compañía de Jesús (s. XVII-​ XVIII),” in Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánica, eds. S. Bernabéu Albert, C. Mena-​García and E. J. Luque Azcona (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 149–​194. 15 [Anonymous], “Carolinas, descubrimiento y descripción de las islas de los Garbanzos,” Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 10, (1881): 263–​279. 16 Archive of the Naval Museum of Madrid (AMN), 0358, Ms 0079, Informe escrito por el capitán de fragata Felipe Cangas-​Argüelles, Cavite, 7 June 1885, pp. 12–​19. 17 Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, “Jesuit presence in the Mariana Islands. A historiographic overview (1668-​ 1769),” Pacific Asian Inquiry 11, no. 1 (2020): 13–​42. 18 David Manzano Cosano, “Expediciones a la Micronesia del Imperio español decimonónico,” in América: problemas y posibilidades, ed. by A. Martínez Riaza et al. (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2019), 291–​309; Pablo Ortega del Cerro, “Expediciones a los mares de Asia: la Armada como agente de información en los circuitos globales asiáticos (1785-​1820),” Hispania 82, no. 270 (2022): 39–​75. 19 AMN, 0101, MS. 000096/​002, folio 23, Juan de Ibargoitia’s Report, copy by the Nautical Academy of Lima on 12th January, 1814; AMN, 0101, MS. 0096/​ 09, María de Álava, Ignacio “Mejora hidrográfica de Juan Ybargoitia,” 9 February, 1803. 20 Gaceta de Madrid, “Nuevos descubrimientos en el Mar del Sur,” no. 54 (26/​06/​ 1807), 646–​647. 21 See for instance, Janet M. Davidson, “Archaeology on Nukuoro Atoll: A Polynesian Outlier in the Eastern Caroline Islands,” Bulletin of the Auckland Institute 9 (1971): 1–​108. 22 Gregoire Louis Domeny De Rienzi, Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie (Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836). 23 Rainer F. Buschmann and David Manzano Cosano, “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific,” in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. vol. 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, ed. Paul D´Arcy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 635–​654. 24 Bronwen Douglas, “Imagined futures in the past. Empire, place, race and nation in the mapping of Oceania,” in Pacific Futures. Past and Present, ed. W. Anderson (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2020), 131–​154. 25 Scholars have attempted to arrive at alternative designations since the late-​ twentieth century. Pacific archaeologists and historians have proposed an alternative, less racially driven, categorization based on the original settlement of the islands and biogeographic diversity into near and remote Oceania. See, for instance, Patrick V. Kirch, On the Roads of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, 2nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 4–​5.

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26 Serge Tcherzékoff, “A long and unfortunate voyage towards the ‘invention’ of Melanesia/​Polynesia distinction 1595-​1832,” The Journal of Pacific History 38, no. 2 (2003): 175–​196. 27 Robert Borofsky, Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 15. 28 Patrick V. Kirch, “The Polynesian outliers: Continuity, change, and replacement,” Journal of Pacific History 19, no. 4 (1984): 224–​238. 29 Ascensión Martínez Riaza, “Ayacuchanos en el gobierno de Filipinas: primera mitad del siglo XIX,” in Filipinas y el Pacífico, ed. Salvador Bernabéu Albert et al. (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2016), 485–​516. 30 Ortigas Foundation Library of Manila, Manuel Sanz, Descripción de las Islas Marianas (1827), 27; MARC Educational Series, no. 10, pp 27–​46. 31 Micronesian Area Reseach Center (University of Guam), Educacional Series, no. 10, Manuel Sanz, Descripción de las Islas Mariana (1827), 33. 32 Ortigas Foundation Library of Manila, Manuel Sanz, Descripción de las Islas Marianas (1827), 34. 33 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 251–​255. 34 Filipiniana Collection, University of the Philippines Diliman, Alonso de la Riva, Informe sobre las Islas Mariana (6/​1/​1829). 35 General Archives of the Indies, Seville, Spain (AGI), Ultramar, 561, 1–​4. The Spanish State sends letters to collect information from heads of the general archive of the Indies, the provincial of the Jesuits in the Court, the Ministry of State, War, Navy, Grace and Justice, the General accountant of the Indies, the Governor of the Mariana Islands, the Augustinian Recollect commissioner of the Philippines, the order of the Philippines Manuel Bernaldez y Pizarro, the directors of the Philippine Company, the general commissioner of the Augustinian Recollects in the Philippines, the father general of San Francisco and the general commissioner of the Indies (whom he demands the possibility of sending twelve nuns who were going to be sent to America for the Mariana Islands), the secretary of the Council of the Indies, and Ciriaco González Carbajal. 36 Filipiniana Collection, University of the Philippines Diliman, Alonso de la Riva, Informe sobre las Islas Mariana (6/​1/​1829), 9–​13. 37 National Archives of the Philippines (NAP), Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4339, file 57, s. 63, Villalobos denounced the arrival of the English ship Gitana from Zamboanga, which sold twelve rifles to a certain Pedro, before which he cried out to Manila to limit the arrival of whalers. 38 Gaceta de Madrid, no. 56 (09/​05/​1826), 222. 39 David Manzano Cosano, El Imperio español en Oceanía (Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020), 95–​110. 40 The most important are: Luis Prudencio Álvarez y Tejero, De las islas Filipinas: Memoria (Valencia: Imprenta Cabrerizo, 1842); Andrés García Camba, Los diez y seis meses de mando superior de Filipinas (Cádiz: Imprenta Domingo Feros, 1839); Sinibaldo de Mas y Sanz, Informe sobre el estado de las islas filipinas (Madrid, 1848); Manuel Buzeta and Felipe Bravo, Diccionario

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geográfico, estadístico, histórico de las Islas Filipinas (Madrid: Imprenta José C. de la Peña, 1850). 41 Antonio Puig y Lucá, Memoria acerca la consideración y fomento de las posesiones españolas en Oceanía y utilidades que puede ser de ellas de los delincuentes deportados a aquellos remotos países escrita a 1 septiembre de 1834 (?), 44. 42 Affonso de Castro, As possessões portuguezas na Oceania (Lisbon: Imprenta Nacional, 1867). 43 Matt M. Matsuda, Empire of love. Histories of France and the Pacific (Oxford: Oxford University, 2005). 44 Francisco Coello, “Posesiones de Oceanía. Islas Mariana, Palaos y Carolinas,” in Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. Diccionario Geográfico estadístico-​ histórico (Madrid: 1852). 45 Idem. 46 Jöel Dauphiné, Les debuts d´une colonisation labouriese. Le sud calédonien (1853-​1860) (Paris: L´Harmattan, 1995), 185. 47 Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997, [PhD]), 700; Carlos Madrid Álvarez-​ Piñer, Beyond Distances: Governance, Politics and Deportation in the Mariana Islands from 1870 to 1877 (Saipan: Northern Mariana Islands Council for Humanities, 2006). 48 Francisco Engracio Vergara, La masonería en Filipinas. Estudio de Actualidad. Apuntes para la Historia de la Colonización española en el siglo XIX (Paris, 1896), 12. 49 NAP, Varias Provincias, Mariana, SDS 4365, s 544–​545. Letter from the Governor of Agaña to the General Government of the Philippines dated August 19, 1976. In it he mentions that a gang of deportees led by a certain José María tried to rob a British ship. 50 Gaceta de Madrid, no. 52 (21/​02/​1877), 483. 51 Francisco Lastre y Juiz, La colonia penitenciaria de Marianas y Fernando Poo (Madrid: Martínez, 1879), 40. 52 José Felipe del Pan, Diez millones de pesos o tesoro de las Mariana. Novela Histórica (Manila: Imprenta Oceanía española, 1885);   Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875). 53 NAP, Varias Provincias, Mariana, SDS 4336, 1807–​1840, file 68, s 621–​s 622. 54 NAP, Varias Provincias, Mariana, SDS 4339, 1821–​1835, file 33. 55 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 4. 56 Ibidem, 38. 57 Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard eds., Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Sciences of Race 1750-​1940 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2008). 58 NAP, Varias Provincias, Mariana, SDS 4344, 1829–​1897, file 15, s 137–​138.

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59 Luis de Ibáñez y García, Historia de las Islas Marianas con su derrotero y de las Carolinas y Palaos desde el descubrimiento por Magallanes en el año 1521 hasta nuestro días (Granada: Imp. y Lib. de Paulino V. Sabatel, 1886). 60 Francisco Olive y García, Islas Marianas: lijeros apuntes acerca de la Misma: provenir á que pueden y deben aspirar, y ayudar que ha de prestar la administración para conseguirlo (Manila: Imprenta y Litografía de M. Pérez, 1887), I. 61 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 114–​115. Quote hales from page 115. 62 Francisco Mellén Blanco, “Un marino español jefe en las Palaos: Datos biográficos de D. Antonio María Triay y Montero,” in 1898: España y el Pacífico. Interpretación del pasado, realidad del presente, ed. Luque Talaván, Miguel (Madrid: AEEP, 1999), 505–​509. 63 National Library of Australia, William Darton, The history of Prince Lee Boo, a native of the Pelew Islands, brought to England by Captain Wilson [game] (London: Holborn Hill, opposite Ely Place, 1822). 64 This episode is chronicled in Chapter 3 of the present book. 65 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4193, s 9–​12, Report written by frigate Captain Felipe Cangas de Argüelles y Villalba in Cavite on June 7, 1885; Emilio Butrón, “Memoria sobre las Islas Carolinas y Palaos, presenta al Excemo Sr. comandante general del apostadero de Filipina por el Comandante del Crucero Velasco Capitán de fragata D. Emilio Butron de la Serna,” Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 9 (Madrid): 23–​31, 95–​128, 138–​162. 66 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4193, s 9–​12. Report written by frigate Captain Felipe Cangas de Argüelles y Villalba in Cavite on June 7, 1885. 67 M. Dolores Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885-​1889 (Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992); Agustín Rodríguez González, “La crisis de las Carolinas,” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 13 (1991), 25–​46. 68 Gregorio Miguel, Estudio sobre las Islas Carolinas (Madrid: José Perales y Martínez, 1887), VI. 69 David Manzano Cosano and Rocío J. Delgado Sánchez, “Música y Patriotismo en el Conflicto de las Carolinas, 1885,” in Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánicas, ed. Salvador Bernabéu Albert et al. (Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 337–​371; Ingrid Schulze Schneider, “El papel de la prensa madrileña en el conflicto de las Carolinas,” in La sociedad madrileña durante la Restauración, ed. Ángel Bahamonte et al. (Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid, 1989), vol. 2, 299–​306. 70 Martín Ferreiro, “Memoria sobre el Progreso de los trabajos geográficos leída en la junta general de 23 de mayo de 1887. por Don Martin Ferreiro,” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 12 (1887): 289. 71 Luis Ángel Sánchez Gómez, Un imperio en la vitrina: el colonialismo español en el Pacífico y la Exposición de Filipinas de 1887 (Madrid: CSIC, 2003).

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72 Emilio Castelar, Exposición de Filipinas: colección de artículos publicados en “el Globo,” diario ilustrado político, científico y literario (Madrid: 1887), 200. 73 Víctor Balaguer, Islas Filipinas (Memoria) (Madrid: R. Angles. Imprenta y cromotipia, 1895), 22. 74 Enrique Taviel de Andrade, Historia del conflicto de las Carolinas. Prueba del Derecho de Soberanía que sobre ellas posee España y demostración de la trascendencia que tiene la mediación del Papa (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886); Enrique Taviel de Andrade, Historia de la exposición de las Islas Filipinas en Madrid el año 1887 y un compendio de la historia de las Marianas, Carolinas, Filipinas y Palaos (Madrid: Imprenta de Ulpiano Gómez y Pérez, 1887). 75 José Montero y Vidal, El Archipiélago filipino y las islas Marianas, Carolinas y Palaos. Su Historia, Geografía y Estadística (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886), 170. 76 The term derives from the Hawaiian language meaning “human being.” Its pejorative connotations arose in connection with the exploitive labor trade affecting Pacific Islanders in the second half of the nineteenth century. 77 Anacleto Cabeza Pereiro, La Isla de Ponapé: Geografía, Etnografía e Historia (Manila: Tipolitografía de Chofré y Cia., 1895); Analeto Cabeza Pereiro, “Isla de Ponapé, conferencia dada en reunión ordinaria de la sociedad geográfica de Madrid el 24 de noviembre de 1891,” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 34 (1893): 7–​68. 78 Julián del Pozo Y Bresó, Contra la colonización por España de las Islas Carolinas (Manila: Litografía Chofré, 1890), 15. 79 Julián del Pozo Y Bresó, Contra la colonización por España de las Islas Carolinas (Manila: Litografía Chofré, 1890). 80 Valeriano Weyler, “Prólogo,” in Anacleto Cabeza Pereiro, La Isla de Ponapé: Geografía, Etnografía e Historia (Manila: Tipolitografía de Chofré y Cia., 1895). 81 Antonio de Valencia, Islas Palaos (Madrid: Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 1892). 82 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4197, s 664–​670. Report of Governator of Yap Manuel Antón on 8th May, 1893. 83 National Library of Spain, Memoria referente a las islas Carolinas redactada por un oficial del ejército que desempeñó una comisión de la misma. Manila, 15 January 1889.

Bibliography Álvarez y Tejero, Luis Prudencio. De las Islas Filipinas: Memoria. Valencia: Imprenta Cabrerizo, 1842. [Anonymous]. “Carolinas, descubrimiento y descripción de las islas de los Garbanzos.” Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 10 (1881): 263–​279. Balaguer, Víctor. Islas Filipinas (Memoria). Madrid: R. Angles. Imprenta y cromotipia, 1895. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador and José María García Redondo. “Las Nuevas Filipinas: un proyecto misional oceánico de la Compañía de Jesús (s. XVII-​XVIII).” In Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánica. Edited by S. Bernabéu Albert, C. Mena-​ García and E. J. Luque Azcona, 149–​ 194. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015.

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Borofsky, Robert. Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Bronwen, Douglas. “Imagined Futures in the Past. Empire, Place, Race and Nation in the Mapping of Oceania.” In Pacific Futures. Past and Present. Edited by W. Anderson, 131–​154. Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2020. Bronwen, Douglas and Chris Ballard (eds.). Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Sciences of Race 1750–​1940. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2008. Buschmann, Rainer F. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–​ 1899. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Buschmann, Rainer F. and David Manzano Cosano. “Iberian Conceptions of the Pacific.” In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. Volume 1. The Pacific Ocean to 1800, General editor Paul D´Arcy, 635–​654. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Butrón, Emilio. “Memoria sobre las Islas Carolinas y Palaos, presenta al Excemo Sr. comandante general del apostadero de Filipina por el Comandante del Crucero Velasco capitán de fragata D. Emilio Butron de la Serna.” Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 9 (1885): 23–​31, 95–​128, 138–​162. Buzeta, Manuel and Felipe Bravo. Diccionario geográfico, estadístico, histórico de las Islas Filipinas. Madrid: Imprenta José C. de la Peña, 1850. Cabeza Pereiro, Anacleto. “Isla de Ponapé, conferencia dada en reunión ordinaria de la sociedad geográfica de Madrid el 24 de Noviembre de 1891.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 34 (1893): 7–​68. Cabeza Pereiro, Anacleto. La Isla de Ponapé: Geografía, Etnografía e Historia. Manila: Tipolitografía de Chofré y Cia., 1895. Castelar, Emilio. Exposición de Filipinas: colección de artículos publicados en “el Globo”, diario ilustrado político, científico y literario. Madrid, 1887. Castro, Affonso de. As possessões portuguezas na Oceania. Lisbon: Imprenta Nacional, 1867. Coello, Francisco. “Posesiones de Oceanía. Islas Mariana, Palaos y Carolinas.” In Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar. Diccionario Geográfico estadístico-​ histórico. Madrid, 1852. Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. “Jesuit Presence in the Mariana Islands. A Historiographic Overview (1668–​1769).” Pacific Asian Inquiry, 11, no. 1 (2020): 13–​42. Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. “The Seed of Martyrs and Martyrdom in the Marianas (17th Century).” In I estoria-​ ta: Guam, the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture: An Exhibition of “Let’s turn around the world” Official Program of the Fifth Centenary of the First Round the World. Edited by the National Museum of Antropology, 57–​64. Madrid: National Museum of Anthropology, 2021. Coomans, Peter. History of the Mission in the Mariana Islands, 1667–​ 1673. Translated and edited by Rodrigue Levesque. Saipan: CNMI Division of Historic Preservation, 1997. Corte y Ruano Calderón, Felipe de la. Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Mariana y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden. Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875. D´Arcy, Paul. The People of the Sea. Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2006.

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Darton, William. The History of Prince Lee Boo, A Native of the Pelew Islands, Brought to England by Captain Wilson [Game]. London: Holborn Hill, opposite Ely Place, 1822. Dauphiné, Jöel. Les debuts d´une colonisation labouriese. Le sud calédonien (1853–​ 1860). Paris: L´Harmattan, 1995. Davidson, Janet M. “Archaeology on Nukuoro Atoll: A Polynesian Outlier in the Eastern Caroline Islands,” Bulletin of the Auckland Institute 9 (1971): 1–​108. Elizalde Pérez-​Grueso, Dolores M. España en el Pacífico: la colonia de las islas Carolinas, 1885–​1889. Madrid: CSIC-​Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992. Ferreiro, Martín. “Memoria sobre el Progreso de los trabajos geográficos leída en la junta general de 23 de mayo de 1887. por Don Martin Ferreiro.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid 12 (1887): 289. García, Francisco. The Life and Martyrdom of the Venerable Father Diego Luis de Savitores of the Society of Jesus. Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center, 2004. García Camba, Andrés. Los diez y seis meses de mando superior de Filipinas. Cádiz: Imprenta Domingo Feros, 1839. Hanlon, David. “A Different Historiography for ‘A Handful of Chickpeas Flung over the Sea’. Approaching the Federated States of Micronesia´s Deeper Past.” In Pacific Futures. Past and Present. Edited by W. Anderson et al., 81–​ 110. Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2020. Hezel, Francis X. The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-​ colonial Days, 1521–​ 1885. Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 1983. Hidalgo Nuchera, Patricio. Redescubrimiento de las Islas Palaos. Madrid: Miraguano, 1993. Ibáñez y García, Luis de. Historia de las Islas Marianas con su derrotero y de las Carolinas y Palaos desde el descubrimiento por Magallanes en el año 1521 hasta nuestro días. Granada: Imp. y Lib. de Paulino V. Sabatel, 1886. Kirch, Patrick V. “The Polynesian Outliers: Continuity, Change, and Replacement.” Journal of Pacific History 19, no. 4 (1984): 224–​238. Kirch, Patrick V. On the Roads of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact, 2nd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Ladín Carrasco, Amancio. Islario español del Pacífico: identificación de los descubrimientos del mar del Sur. Madrid: Cultura Hispana, 1984. Lastre y Juiz, Francisco. La colonia penitenciaria de Marianas y Fernando Poo. Madrid: Martínez, 1879. Madrid Álvarez-​ Piñer, Carlos. Beyond Distances: Governance, Politics and Deportation in the Mariana Islands from 1870 to 1877. Saipan: Northern Mariana Islands Council for Humanities, 2006. Manzano Cosano, David. “Expediciones a la Micronesia del Imperio español decimonónico.” In América: problemas y posibilidades. Edited by A. Martínez Riaza et al., 291–​309. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2019. Manzano Cosano, David. El Imperio español en Oceanía. Córdoba: Almuzara, 2020. Manzano Cosano, David and Rocío J. Delgado Sánchez. “Música y Patriotismo en el Conflicto de las Carolinas, 1885.” In Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánicas. Edited by Salvador Bernabéu Albert et al., 337–​371. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015.

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Martínez Riaza, Ascensión. “Ayacuchanos en el gobierno de Filipinas: primera mitad del siglo XIX.” In Filipinas y el Pacífico. Edited by Salvador Bernabéu Albert et al., 485–​516. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2016. Mas y Sanz, Sinibaldo de. Informe sobre el estado de las islas filipinas. Madrid, 1848. Matsuda, Matt M. Empire of Love. Histories of France and the Pacific. Oxford: Oxford University, 2005. Mellén Blanco, Francisco. “Un marino español jefe en las Palaos: Datos biográficos de D. Antonio María Triay y Montero.” In 1898: España y el Pacífico. Interpretación del pasado, realidad del presente. Edited by Luque Talaván Miguel, 505–​509. Madrid: AEEP, 1999. Miguel, Gregorio. Estudio sobre las Islas Carolinas. Madrid: José Perales y Martínez, 1887. Montero y Vidal, José. El Archipiélago filipino y las islas Marianas, Carolinas y Palaos. Su Historia, Geografía y Estadística. Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886. Morales, Luis de and Charles Le Gobien. History of the Mariana Islands. Edited by Alexandre Coello de la Rosa. Guam: University of Guam Press–​MARC, 2017 (1st ed. 1700). Olive y García, Francisco. Islas Marianas: lijeros apuntes acerca de la Misma: provenir á que pueden y deben aspirar, y ayudar que ha de prestar la administración para conseguirlo. Manila: Imprenta y Litografía de M. Pérez, 1887. Ortega del Cerro, Pablo. “Expediciones a los mares de Asia: la Armada como agente de información en los circuitos globales asiáticos (1785–​1820).” Hispania 82, no. 270 (2022): 39–​75. Palanco Aguado, Fernando. “Sanvítores, Diego Luis de S. I.” In Diccionario histórico, geográfico y cultural de Filipinas y el Pacífico. Edited by L. Cabrero et al., vol. 1, 821. Madrid: AECID, 2008. Pan, José Felipe del. Diez millones de pesos o tesoro de las Mariana. Novela Histórica. Manila: Imprenta Oceanía española, 1885. Pigafetta, Antonio. Primer viaje alrededor del globo. Edited by Leoncio Cabrero Fernández. Madrid: Historia 16, 2002. Pozo Y Bresó, Julián del. Contra la colonización por España de las Islas Carolinas. Manila: Litografía Chofré, 1890. Pozuelo Mascaraque, Belén. Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828–​1899). Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1997 [PhD]. Puig y Lucá, Antonio. Memoria acerca la consideración y fomento de las posesiones españolas en Oceanía y utilidades que puede ser de ellas de los delincuentes deportados a aquellos remotos países escrita a 1 septiembre de 1834. (?). Rienzi, Gregoire Louis Domeny De. Oceanie, ou, cinquieme partie du monde: revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie. Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1836. Rodríguez González, Agustín. “La crisis de las Carolinas.” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 13 (1991), 25–​46. Rodríguez-​Ponga y Salamanca, Rafael. “El primer vocabulario de la lengua de las islas Marianas (1565).” Archivo Agustino 95, no. 203 (2011): 445–​460. Sánchez Gómez, Luis Ángel. Un imperio en la vitrina: el colonialismo español en el Pacífico y la Exposición de Filipinas de 1887. Madrid: CSIC, 2003. Schulze Schneider, Ingrid. “El papel de la prensa madrileña en el conflicto de las Carolinas.” In La sociedad madrileña durante la Restauración. Edited by Ángel Bahamonte et al., vol. 2, 299–​306. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid, 1989.

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Serrano, Andrés. Noticias de las Islas Palaos. Madrid, 1895 (1st ed. 1705). Taviel de Andrade, Enrique. Historia del conflicto de las Carolinas. Prueba del Derecho de Soberanía que sobre ellas posee España y demostración de la trascendencia que tiene la mediación del Papa. Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1886. Taviel de Andrade, Enrique. Historia de la exposición de las Islas Filipinas en Madrid el año 1887 y un compendio de la historia de las Marianas, Carolinas, Filipinas y Palaos. Madrid: Imprenta de Ulpiano Gómez y Pérez, 1887. Tcherzékoff, Serge. “A Long and Unfortunate Voyage Towards the ‘Invention’ of Melanesia/​Polynesia Distinction 1595–​1832.” The Journal of Pacific History 38, no. 2 (2003): 175–​196. Valdemoro, Manuel. Colección de diarios y relaciones para la historia de los viajes y descubrimientos. V. Esteban Rodríguez, 1564–​1565; Miguel López de Legazpi 1564–​1565; Esteban Rodríguez y Rodríguez de Espinosa, 1565. Madrid: Instituto Histórico de la Marina, Madrid, 1947. Valencia, Antonio de. Islas Palaos. Madrid: Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 1892. Vergara, Francisco Engracio. La masonería en Filipinas. Estudio de Actualidad. Apuntes para la Historia de la Colonización española en el siglo XIX. Paris, 1896.

5 REVALUATING THE DUAL INTEGRATION OF THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS

5.1 Introduction

This chapter analyzes the role of the Northern Mariana Islands within the Spanish colonial network from their imperial insertion in the late seventeenth century until the very end of the Spanish Pacific Empire in 1899. This section reads Spanish imperial integration attempts against Asian and European designs on these islands. Although Spanish employment of the Northern Marianas as a defensive wall of the Philippines reigns supreme in this chapter, it explores how such strategies came about and how resorting to outsiders, whether Oceanian or imperial interlopers, became the Spanish administration’s favorite tool. The Spanish administration of the Northern Marians can be divided into two stages. The first phase ranges from the seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, where Spain assumed the Northern Mariana Islands to be part of its colonial sphere of influence. Beyond claiming these islands, colonial officials did little to develop these islands due to the lack of economic resources and adequate infrastructure. A noticeable exception to this imperial neglect was a local Spanish policy in the early nineteenth century encouraging Caroline Islanders to trade and settle in the Northern Marianas. The second phase starts with the arrival of New Imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century when Spanish authorities had to redefine their regional negligence policy to protect their colonial borders from Asian and European interlopers. Consequently, Spanish authorities decided to lease some of the archipelago’s main islands to European copra traders. In this context, Caroline Islanders also played an important role in staffing the growing plantations in the Northern Mariana Islands. Spanish authorities managed to consolidate its porous DOI: 10.4324/9781003248439-6

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empire in Micronesia despite suffering from a chronic lack of financial and infrastructural resources by resorting to individuals outside of the Mariana Islands. 5.2  A Porous and Neglected Region: The Northern Mariana Islands from the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries

Previous chapters illustrated that the Mariana Islands formed part of a Spanish imperial vision with the establishment Manila Galleon exchange in the middle of the sixteenth century. In fact, in 1569, the Spanish Emperor Philip II encouraged the occupation of Saipan Island to provide a base for the nascent commercial route.1 However, Spain’s imperial concentration on the Philippines and Mexico as the starting and ending points of the galleon trade meant that a colonization of the “Islands of the Thieves” fell by the wayside. At the initiative of Father Diego Luis de San Vitores, the colonizing project of the Marianas became a reality. As mentioned before, his romantic image of the friendly population ready for conversion initially did not find the support of the Spanish authorities seeking to eschew further expenses. San Vitores insisted however, that the project fit Spanish expansion under the treaty of Tordesillas that, with the Pope’s blessing, sought a global “enlightenment of the savage” through the Catholic faith. It finally obtained Philip IV’s approval in 1665. Consequently, Spanish officials initiated the colonization of the Mariana Islands three years later. San Vitores’s romantic visions proved premature as the Chamorro, rejecting Spanish religion and rule, rebelled in the Chamorro Wars that would last into the late seventeenth century with a significant loss of Chamorro lives.2 Besides human losses, the wars led to the resettlement of most of the Chamorro population on Guam, which became a focal point of their cash-​strapped administration.3 The Northern Marianas, mostly denuded of their population, were islands claimed by Spain but mainly fell outside their control due to limited infrastructure resources. Initially, Chamorros and their watercrafts maintained contact with the northern islands to harvest agricultural and livestock resources for the main island of Guam. Many Spanish governors on Guam complained to their superiors about the lack of larger ships to patrol the Northern Mariana Islands. Residing in Agana, they frequently could not even travel to more remote areas of Guam. To ameliorate this problem, governors resorted to foreign vessels to transfer new colonial officials from the Philippines.4 This precarious colonial toehold on Guam generally prevented the governors to patrol the islands located to the north.5 The exposed status of the colony was underscored when Commodore George Anson’s squadron, greatly decimated by scurvy and the loss of most ships, pulled into Tinian during the War of the Austrian Succession in 1742. Anson aimed to resupply the remaining flagship Centurion and allow for

Revaluating the Dual Integration of the Northern Mariana Islands  103

his recovery from illness. Intercepting an outrigger proa crewed by four Chamorro and one Spaniard, meant to supply Guam with fresh meat and vegetables, Anson was anxious not to alert the Spanish garrison on this main island for his debilitated men would be easy prey for a concerted Spanish attack. His fear proved premature, however, as the capture of the Indigenous vessel kept his presence and convalescence well hidden from Spanish view, even if Anson’s brief capture of Tinian transpired a mere 150 miles north of Guam.6 For the Spanish administration, the lack of vessels symbolized the maritime colony’s vulnerable position. More threatening than Anson’s stay in Tinian was an uprising in May of 1829, when Chamorros on Guam created a temporary alliance with foreign sailors against the administration. The trigger of this conflict was the elimination of Indigenous community jobs and increasing import taxes. In addition, the coalition planned to assassinate Spanish officials, including the governor José Medinilla.7 Ultimately, the uprising was put down, but the governor highlighted Guam’s feebleness as a confluence of “the weakness of the previous government and the arrival of foreign ships,”8 which he could not police for the lack of ships and troops. To make matters worse, as Spanish authorities attempted to investigate what transpired in Guam, the appointed commission did not reach the island until 1833.9 A similar lag in information transpired, when news of Isabel II’s coronation in 1833 took a full two years to reach Guam.10 To alleviate this desperate situation, Guam’s officials enlisted the aid of the Caroline Islanders’ maritime expansion from the south. What has been known as the sawei network linked the western and central Caroline Islands with Palau. Tribute and exchange voyages encouraged a vibrant trade between the lower-​lying coral atolls and the higher islands such as Yap and Palau. Primarily, the central Caroline Islanders trained expert canoe makers and skilled navigators that rivaled European dexterities until well into the twentieth century. Although this exchange system was labeled an empire, it shared few European characteristics. Better put, the sawei system exemplified what the late Tongan scholar Epeli Hau’ofa emphasized when referring to Oceania as a “sea of islands” connected through the ocean. Hau’ofa was keen to eschew imperial views, such as the Spanish vision delineated above, that characterized Oceania as isolated islands in the sea separated by the vast Pacific Ocean from metropolitan centers of power and economic wealth. “Their universe comprised not only land surfaces, but also surrounding ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it… Their world was everything but tiny. They thought big and recounted their deeds in epic proportions.”11 The Spanish regarded the Marianas as a negligible appendage of their overseas empire divided from the Philippines by a vast ocean. Officials stationed in Guam could thus only bemoan the situation and the absence of vessels to patrol the colony or to connect it to the Philippines. But, on the

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other hand, the Carolinians perceived the high islands of the Marianas as a welcome shelter from the ocean’s unforgiving elements and for trade items, such as iron, colored cloth, and tobacco, that were not available in their home waters.12 In the early nineteenth century, it took one official, Luís de Torres, who was of Chamorro as well as Spanish descent, to recognize the Caroline Islanders’ potential.13 Torres was well aware of the infrastructural weakness of the Spanish and developed a curiosity for both his Chamorro roots and the Carolinian arrivals from the South. Visitors to Guam stemmed mainly from the central Caroline Islands and appeared on purpose, looking for novel trade items, or as castaways throughout the eighteenth century. Later in this century, a misunderstanding led to a hiatus in the Carolinian voyages north. A small fleet of canoes hailing from Lamotreck led by Luito arrived at Waghal, the Carolinian name for Guam. The Spanish treated them well and provided them with the desired trade items as it was in their interest to strengthen the link between the Marianas and the Caroline Islands. When Luito returned to his home island, however, his boats were lost at sea, and many inhabitants from the Caroline Islands suspected Spanish treachery. They had learned from the Chamorro about Spanish cruelty and decided that sailing north was not worth the risk. Torres grew increasingly worried about the absence of Caroline canoes. In the early nineteenth century, an impatient Torres, who now advanced to the role of vice governor, took the opportunity to travel on the American ship, María, to visit several central Caroline Islands (Woleai, Faraulep, Pikelot, among others) and convinced their inhabitants that the Spanish had nothing to do with the disappearance of Luito’s fleet. He further promised a warm welcome for any Caroline Islander flotilla destined for Guam. From 1805 onward, several fleets visited Guam every year. The navigators guiding the boats took advantage of the relatively high islands in the Marianas and expanded their target by observing weather and bird flight patterns. The Carolinians offered shell, Indigenous cloth, sennit rope, and their watercraft for inter-​island travel in exchange for the aforementioned European trade goods. The increasing isolation of Guam’s Spanish garrison after the cessation of the Manila Galleon travel and the looming independence of the American colonies induced the administration to welcome the Carolinians with open arms. Where Anson, in the mid-​eighteen century, had witnessed how Chamorro proas were responsible for the inter-​island trade in the Marianas, the dawn of the nineteenth century saw this role falling to the Caroline Islanders. When typhoons devastated some of the central Caroline Islands, the Spanish government enlisted permission from the Philippines to allow for a Caroline settlement on Saipan. Over the first decades of the nineteenth century, this settlement became known as Arabwal. Although the settlers promised to embrace Christianity as one of the conditions stipulated by the Spanish administration, the Carolinians continued their languages

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and cultural practices underscoring their importance for providing inter-​ island connections.14 Enlisting Caroline Islanders for travel brought some respite to the governors of the Marianas, who could not control most of the archipelago. Instead, their garrison focused on concentrating their power and influence on Guam, where the presence of foreign ships sometimes threatened to overpower the fledgling defenses. The northern islands of the Mariana chain would continue to supply agricultural goods and meat provided by the increasing Carolinian inter-​island navigation. However, imperial control over these islands proved illusionary. Even in the Caroline settlement of Arabwal on Saipan, a lone Chamorro official provided Spanish oversight. Spanish control in the Marianas was limited to Guam and the following few close islands: Rota, Tinian, and Saipan. This state of affairs emerged also in Ricafort’s regulation of 1828: First Article. The Government and Public Administration of the Mariana Islands will be composed of a political and military Governor of competent rank with 1,800 pesos a year and 500 more for boat expenses that will serve him on his trips to the islands of Rota, Tinian, and Saipan and the coasts of Guajan so that the poor natives are not bothered in or excused from their duties.15 As described in the previous chapters, Ricafort’s attempt at reform is of the utmost importance to the history of the Mariana Islands. After assuming the independence of America, Spain assigned the administration of the Philippines to Mariano Ricafort in an attempt to restructure the overseas empire. As Captain General of the Philippines (1825–​1830), he issued his regulation to reform the Mariana Islands following the end of the Manila Galleon route. The principles also illustrate that Spanish metropolitan authorities in Madrid took notice of this archipelago for the first time in almost 150 years, since the Chamorro Wars at the end of the seventeenth century. Ricafort’s recommendations explicitly advocated the integration of Saipan within Spanish control. The same was true for Rota, which had a sizable settlement, unlike the other islands. However, Tinian, the island reached by Anson in the eighteenth century, was “deserted of people and populated with cattle.”16 The island nevertheless spotted a leprosy hospital and, much like Rota, Spain’s administrative power consisted of a single Chamorro mayor (alcalde). Ricafort recommended abolishing the mayoral position for Rota due to his desire to concentrate the scarce existing resources in Guam. In this sense, Spanish officials perceived the Mariana Islands under the hegemony of Guam. Thereby, no elements existed for the autonomous development of the northern islands in Ricafort’s regulations. However, the report continued to emphasize the importance of Tinian and Rota in supplying fresh meat for Guam and even suggested shipping, whenever possible, some of the herds to the main

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island. Ricafort’s other recommendation was to strengthen the resources of the Lazarin Leper Hospital located on Tinian. This reactive measure sought to halt the advance of the disease, which threatened to become endemic due to the increasing arrival of foreign ships in the Spanish territory.17 Acting on the increasing magnitude of the infection, governor Manuel Villalobos, who oversaw the Marianas 1831–​1837, founded a new Lazarin hospital on Saipan toward the end of his reign.18 Spain, much like other island nations, such as the King of Hawai’i Kamehameha V, employed the less populated outer islands to exile those suffering from Hansen’s Disease from population centers.19 Despite the changing nature of the Mariana Islands following the end of the Manila Galleon Exchange and the independence of the Americas, Spanish officials in Madrid and Manila continued to conceptualize the Northern Mariana Islands as an area claimed by the Iberians with little possibility of development. Hence, these administrators conceptualized Rota and Saipan as islands that provided a vital supply of vegetables and livestock for Guam. In addition, they visualized these islands as an area to exile lepers and other undesirables. In Guam, however, measures to populate Saipan with Caroline Islanders proved more successful. However, the Carolinians remained marginally under Spanish imperial control and could practice their cultural rituals. Moreover, their presence significantly alleviated the shipping shortage in the Marianas as their canoes linked Guam with the Northern Mariana Islands. By the mid-​nineteenth century, Spanish officials envisioned a tripartite division of their rule over the Marianas. Guam, as it had done for almost two centuries, was the actual center of power, secured by a garrison and fortifications. The islands closer to Guam became secondary due to their relative distance to the main islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian, which all acquired importance as Guam’s food supply and a place for exile for people afflicted with contagious diseases. An increasing Caroline Islanders’ presence maintained the maritime link between these islands and ferried food and exiles between the islands. A third level of islands in the Mariana chain, located north of Saipan, remained nominally under Spanish control but were little visited by either Carolinians or Spanish officials. While Saipan was initially included in the evangelical missionary work carried out by the Spanish following the end of the Chamorro Wars, the Saipan mission was abandoned in 1730, partially due to the lack of boats.20 Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, governors in Guam shifted their colonial claim to the Northern Marians. For instance, in 1827, Governor José Medinilla located the border of the Spanish maritime territory at Farallon de Pajaros.21 In the 1830s, Governor Manuel Villalobos extended this border by including the Bonin-​Volcano Islands (currently located in the Japanese islands of Ogasawara). In theory, Villalobos envisioned Saipan as the control center of northern islands claimed by Spain. However, effective colonial control, except for the settlement of Caroline Islanders, was greatly lacking.22

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The massing of imperial claims throughout the late-​nineteenth century would offset the Spanish status quo in the Marianas. Consequently, the installation of an additional leper hospital on Saipan in 1836 was a slight attempt to solidify the claims over the Northern Marianas.23 Spanish officials sought to alleviate the problem of leprosy in Guam and consolidate its power in the northern islands before the advance of foreign empires. Spanish authorities assumed that the effective occupation of Saipan would also automatically extend their colonial claim to all the islands further north. Saipan hence became a symbolic gateway to the Northern Mariana Islands. This gateway status became even more pronounced in the second half of the nineteenth century when imperial powers sought to expand into Oceania. A strengthened Japan, in particular, would challenge Spanish claims in the region and force local authorities to a greater incorporation of the Northern Marianas. By focusing on the role of Saipan as a new center of Iberian power in the region, Spanish officials hoped to forestall any Japanese designs on the islands in the archipelago. Year

Number of inhabitants

Islands with registered population by Spanish authorities

1792 1793 1799 1800 1801 1821 1827 1828 1829 1834 1835 1836 1840 1841 1842 1843 1845 1846 1847 1855 1859 1860 1881 1882 1887

3.680 3.484 4.001 4.158 4.245 5.802 6.380 6.448 6.480 7.021 7.159 7.241 7.502 7.751 7.914 8.015 8.241 8.366 8.492 8.775 5.374 5.145 c.9.000 9.896 9.896

Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam, Rota y Saipan Guam, Rota y Saipan Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam y Rota Guam, Rota y Saipan Guam, Rota y Saipan Guam, Rota, Saipan y Tinian Guam, Rota, Saipan, Tinian, Pagan y Agrigan Guam, Rota, Saipan y Tinian

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Carte de l´archipel de Saint Lazare ou les isles Marianes, Paris, 1752.

FIGURE 5.1 Bellin,

Revaluating the Dual Integration of the Northern Mariana Islands  109

The table above was derived from the paper “Quantifying the Mariana Islands’ population: From the Hispanic colonization to the anti-​ Spanish Black Legend” presented in the journal Araucaria (2023).24 The population censuses listed above nicely illustrate the shift in Iberian perception. While the Spanish initially centralized population and power in Guam to solidify their tentative role on the Marianas, other islands were soon included in the count. Until the nineteenth century, only Rota received mention in the census. However, the noteworthy changes affecting the archipelago in the early nineteenth century—​the loss of the galleon trade, American independence, and Ricafort’s regulations—​brought other islands into focus. By 1828, the date of Ricafort’s memorial, Saipan started to appear in the population count, which besides the political weight attributed to the island may also be the result of the growing Caroline Islander presence and their importance for inter-​island commerce. Nevertheless, the lack of resources hindering Ricafort’s

FIGURE 5.2  Representation

of the Ogasawara Islands or Bonin Islands. Diet Library Japan, lat. YG 913-​51725, 1876. In the lower middle box, specifically the outline of the archipelagos of Chichi-​jima to the north and Haha-​jima to the south. This indicates how at the end of the nineteenth century Japanese imperialism embraced these islands, named Bonin by the Spanish, as part of their territory. This practice is consolidated in the following years, incorporating the southern Volcano Islands (Kita Iwo Jima, Iwo Jima, Minami Iwo Jima) as part of the Ogasawara Islands that was part of Japanese territory.

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implementation would cause Saipan to disappear from the census until the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time, Spanish officials renewed their efforts to establish a presence in the Northern Marianas that goes beyond Saipan. Still, the Spanish colonial reach beyond Saipan was tentative since it relied on foreign copra traders to justify the effective occupation of the islands. In the second half of the nineteenth century, fear of Japanese expansion became troubling for Spanish officials, as this Asian power would set its sight on the Northern Mariana Islands. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese state developed an expansive imperial program toward the South Seas (Nanshin-​ron) and the North Seas (Kokushin-​ron).25 Cartographical documentation shows Japan’s growing interest in the Ogasawara-​ Jima Islands. During the 1870s, Japanese interest in these islands started to increase and clashed with Spanish interest in the northernmost islands in the Mariana chain that reached into the Ogasawara-​Jima Islands.26 Unable to finance boots on the ground, Spanish officials opted to lease some of the islands to foreign merchants to strengthen their claim. 5.3  Leasing as Colonial Claiming

Spain began its colonization in the Northern Marianas Islands during the Chamorro Wars. This conflict negatively affected the region by reducing its population. During the eighteenth century, Spanish administrators conceptualized these islands primarily as uninhabited. The exceptions were a few settlements on Rota—​the closest island to Guam and Tinian that housed a leper hospital. Consequently, Spanish sources of this time were virtually silent on the islands outside of Guam. They rarely captured, for instance, the increasing presence of the Caroline Islanders who would, as mentioned earlier, take advantage of the Spanish imperial vacuum to monopolize the inter-​island trade. Similarly, natural disasters befalling their home islands led to the establishment of a settlement on Saipan. Their navigational prowess and the virtual absence of Spanish control over Saipan contributed to the longevity of cultural traditions.27 Their influence over Spanish colonial affairs was vast. In fact, the failed Spanish project to colonize the Caroline Islands in the early 1730s emerged out of a Carolinian arrival on Guam.28 Over the following decades, their navigators also reached the island north of Guam. Following Torres’s travel to the central Caroline Islands and his assurances given to populations residing there that no harm would be inflicted on them should they voyage to Guam, contact between the Mariana and the Caroline Islands increased. Spanish sources indicate that in the year 1815, a significant number of Carolinians arrived on Saipan.29 In addition, the central Caroline navigators would also venture to the islands of Alamagan, Agrigan, and Pagan.30 In

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1818, Spanish authorities, inquiring with the Philippines, allowed a regular Carolinian settlement on Saipan.31 As indicated, Spanish authorities required this “foreign” presence to guarantee regular inter-​island transport. It also gave the Spanish authorities a toehold on Saipan, which would become a central place for claiming and overseeing the Northern Marianas. In return for shelter from the elements on the high island of Saipan, the Caroline Islander population on this island became an informal occupation force for the Spanish authorities who, due to the lack of funds and boats, remained largely restricted in Guam. Ironically, as much as the Spanish emphasized their humanitarian mission to allow shelter from destructive typhoons in Guam, the Caroline Islanders displayed a more diverse understanding of these harmful entities illustrating, once again, the divergent experience of the ocean from European and Oceanian perspectives. Although Caroline Islanders, mainly hailing from coral atolls, acknowledged the destructive nature of the typhoons on their homes, they also focused on the positive aspects of these phenomena in creating fish runs vital to survival in an island environment. Where the Spanish, depending on Carolinian inter-​island trade, relied on resources, agriculture, and livestock that would be harvested on the islands, Caroline Islanders regarded the sea, teaming with life following a typhoon, as a foremost provider of food.32 Carolinians and desperately exposed Spanish imperial fringe forged a classical symbiotic relationship in the islands to the north of Guam. This symbiotic relationship would also remain important with the advent of the New Imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century as Spanish authorities invited foreign copra merchants to lease land for plantations in the Northern Mariana Islands. This act was connected to a new norm associated with imperial annexation: effective occupation. According to this principle, a territory’s “first discovery” did not warrant imperial inclusion; it necessitated “boots on the ground” to administer the emerging colony.33 The outcome of the Berlin Conference (1884–​1885), the principles of which were to apply only to the African continent, would soon be understood as a mandate against the aging former colonial overlords. The Spanish critic Servando Marenco understood only too well that this conference would cast long shadows over the reduced Spanish Empire: “Although the [Berlin Conference] only seemed to extend its claims to the African coasts that were at that point not yet effectively occupied, the main aim of this congress was located elsewhere: the pact of strong contemporary powers against those [established empires] that came before.”34 The Berlin Conference was a culminating event that on a smaller scale had already been played out when Japanese and Spanish interests clashed in the Mariana Islands. To ward off Japanese claims, Spanish officials employed both the leasing of land to foreign merchants and the settlement of Caroline Islanders to strengthen their claim to the region.

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Almost three decades before the Berlin Conference, Felipe de la Corte, governor of the Mariana Islands from 1855 to 1868, sought to reform the status quo of this colonial territory.35 His restructuring had two crucial implications for the Northern Marianas. First, he was the initial governor to attempt to delineate the actual borders of the territory. Second, in anticipation of the Berlin Conference, he was also the first to advocate for a policy of effective occupation to underscore the Spanish claim to the islands. According to De la Corte, the Marianas archipelago could be divided into two groups: a Islands under indisputable colonial rule of Spain. This group would be made up of the sixteenth islands that Spanish sources define as the essence of the Mariana Islands and would range from Guam to Farallon de Pajaros. The islands to be included would be Guam, Rota, Aguijan (Aguiguan), Tinian, Saipan, Anatajan, Farallon de Medinilla, Sariguan (Sarigan), Farallon de Torres (Zealandia Bank), Guguan, Alamagan, Pagan, Agrigan, Asunción, Urraca, and Farallon de Pajaros.36 Listing Farallon de Pajaros and Urraca as separate islands, when they are in fact one and the same, illustrated the geographical ignorance of the administration.37 b Islands near the Mariana archipelago claimed within the Spanish sphere of influence. This group would include all the islands located south of Japan and north of the Mariana Islands, which colonial officials considered their property. However, Spanish authorities would continue to neglect them given their relatively low international value. Spanish notables would direct their energy to the first group of islands only. They tended to ignore confrontations with expanding colonial powers over the second group due to a general lack of control and their low economic value. Even within the first group of islands under direct Spanish claim, officials identified two forms of colonization associated with the importance of the islands: those under immediate colonization (Rota, Tinian, and Saipan), and those under indirect colonization, which included the rest of the Mariana chain. Direct colonization meant dispatching Spanish officials and garrisons, a costly endeavor. On the other hand, indirect colonization was more cost-​effective as it involved leasing land to foreign merchants. Through the combination of formal and informal colonization, Spanish administrators sought to consolidate their hold over the Northern Mariana Islands. On the island of Saipan, these two types of colonization would meet. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, Spanish authorities regarded the island of Saipan as the gateway to the Northern Marianas. In this context, in 1855, De la Corte ordered the first step toward a direct colonization of Saipan by requesting an evangelical mission.38 Authorities in the Philippines approved his suggestion, and, in 1858, ordered the Augustinian Recollects

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friar Isidro Liberal to oversee mission efforts on Saipan and Tinian.39 This move illustrated that officials on Guam were prepared to hand over Tinian’s administration to the mission and the mayor’s office on Saipan. The newly strengthened mayor’s office would overlook lease contracts for the Northern Marianas starting in the 1860s. As imperial discourses in the second half of the nineteenth century, codified during the Berlin Conference, displayed a clear preference for effective occupation over rights of first discovery, Spanish officials had to reconsider their colonization plans for the Northern Marianas. This proposal included shifting the center of administrative power in the Northern Mariana to Saipan. In addition, De la Corte’s instructions sought to increase the number of people residing on the inhabited islands (Rota and Saipan) and to populate other islands (Tinian, Pagan, and Agrigan) formerly considered uninhabited.40 To accomplish these goals and to raise the Spanish flag in the unpopulated islands, De la Corte enlisted foreign merchants and the leasing of islands outside of direct Spanish control. As soon as Governor De la Corte took office, he intended to strengthen the Spanish presence in the northern islands. He accomplished this action by embarking on a controversial policy of leasing the islands outside of his direct control to foreign merchants to establish a Spanish presence that would be later outlined in the Berlin Conference. De la Corte’s innovative policy would not only survive his tenure as governor, in fact, it would also become an established norm until the end of the Spanish colonial reign in the Marianas. Exploring Spanish colonial authorities’ colonial leasing strategy also demands a closer look at the files related to this activity at the National Archive of the Philippines. While these records contain traces of the leases, their evidence remains fragmentary, forcing the historian to inquire why some leases made it into the archives while others did not. One potential argument is that the passage of time may have led to the deterioration of the leases that the authorities may have frequently consulted. Another worthwhile line of argumentation, more central to this chapter, illustrated frictions between colonial powers in the Marianas, Manila, and Madrid. In the Spanish legal system, the control over colonial territory resided in Madrid, including leasing individual islands to businesses. However, the ultimate authority remained the monarch who “authorized by a special law, can alienate, assign or exchange part of the Spanish territory.”41 In theory, Madrid, and their overseeing agents in Manila, had to be consulted every time a lease agreement with a foreign company existed. In practice, however, involving the proper chain of command would have complicated the leases that served the Spanish officials on Guam, and it would have had their power extended to the northern islands of the Mariana archipelago. The absence of leases in Philippine archives thus suggests that the files may have been intentionally omitted to allow authorities in Guam a relatively free hand

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in their political machinations. If colonial officials in Guam sought a more restrictive lease, Manila and Madrid would be invited to comment, which created the appropriate paper trail in the archival correspondence. This differential treatment in assigning leases is best demonstrated by foreign merchants with close, familiar ties to the Spanish residing in Guam. During De la Corte’s tenure, George Johnston arrived in Guam. The Irish captain wasted little time cementing his allegiance to the Spanish colonialist through marriage. By wedding Ana Calvo, the daughter of Spanish public treasury administrator Félix Calvo, Johnston elicited De la Corte’s trust and became a welcomed agent to extend Spanish control to the more remote islands in the Mariana chain. In 1857, in return for exploiting the natural resources on the islands of Pagan and Agrigan, Johnston agreed to fly the Spanish flag over his settlements and to maintain steady shipping connections between the main populated islands and those located on the fringe of the Spanish Empire. Both parties renewed this initial agreement annually to ensure harmony. Initially, colonial authorities in Manila were consulted to gain approval. But, as expected, officials in the Philippines were all too happy to enlist the Irishman with Spanish roots by marriage as a Spanish administrative agent in the more distant islands of the Marianas.42 Over the years, the rift between the Marianas and Manila authorities over the lease agreement became more pronounced. Much of this was related to the rising copra business in the Pacific, which significantly increased the number of traders dedicated to this resource in the Micronesian islands. Primarily, German traders would focus on many coconut groves in the region, including the Marianas.43 Johnston’s close, familiar connections to the Spanish in Guam protected his leases against other incoming foreigners. In 1864, for instance, F. Danelsberg, captain of the Hawaiian vessel Abbey Forest, requested a lease for the island of Pagan. While authorities based in Manila granted this lease, Spanish officials in Guam rejected it due to an existing lease with Johnston. Until he died in 1876, Johnston was not only able to consolidate his leases over Agrigan and Pagan, but he also gained a foothold on Tinian. Johnston would establish his residence on this last island where his father-​in-​law, Félix Calvo, served as mayor. Johnston may have had a similar lease on Saipan, but existing sources are unclear on this issue.44 Besides the favorable treatment in the northern islands due to his family’s connection, Johnston was also responsible for the immigration of a large section of Caroline Islanders to the Marianas. It is in connection with this migration that Johnston violated his respective leases. As a proxy for Spanish authorities located in Guam, Johnston became the primary agent for the repopulation of the northern islands. His two schooners Ana, named after his wife, and Aguila, Spanish for eagle, shipped a large contingency to the islands he leased. In 1865, Johnston brought 265 inhabitants from Pulusuk, and over the next four years he imported 1,234

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Carolinians from Namonuito. The inhabitants enlisted with Johnston to evade a threat and conflict with the island of Puluwat.45 The large number of arrivals is in line with Spanish sources that cite the appearance of 608 Carolinians from Namonuito atoll who arrived on the Ana in July 8, 1867.46 Over 400 Caroline Islanders would arrive on other ships in 1869.47 The Carolinian population had the most negligible impact on the more settled island of Guam, which had the highest concentration of Spanish officials. Nevertheless, Johnston’s import of Caroline Islanders significantly increased the population in the Maria Cristina neighborhood in the current district of Tamuning. In 1867, Spanish authorities founded Maria Cristiana to provide a more familiar place to Carolinians arriving in Guam and to avoid conflict due to adapting to a new place.48 Spanish authorities became aware of Johnston’s actions against the recruits from the Caroline Islanders and started an investigation. In 1872, for instance, Carolinians complained about contract breaches that guaranteed them free clothing and supplies for work. Officials in Guam worked around such violations by granting the Caroline Islanders their parcel of land once they finished their contracts with Johnston. The Irish captain was in line with deceptive labor practices throughout Melanesia and Polynesia in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the discipline of Pacific Studies, such deceptive hiring practices and downright kidnapping has been referred to as “blackbirding” and has had a long history of investigation.49 In the Marianas, the deceptive hiring practices acquired a specific twist. Spanish officials were aware of Johnston’s violation but decided not to interfere. By granting the Carolinians access to their land, something that came to be known as La Concepción, they bypassed imposing sanctions on the Irish captain. Governor Luis de Ibañez y García, stationed on Guam 1871–​1873, best expressed the Spanish moral ambiguity. This governor had a good relationship with Johnston. He could ill afford a rocky relationship with this captain, who was incredibly instrumental in populating the northern islands of the Mariana archipelago. Granting the Caroline Islanders freedom and land at the end of their contracts was one way to avoid sanctioning Johnston. Another was Ibañez y García’s argument that the Irishman supposedly undertook an advancing mission by moving the people from their “barbaric” homeland to the more civilized Marianas.50 In this distorting colonial narrative, Johnston did not just become a prominent instrument in expanding Spanish colonial power to the northern islands. Indeed, the governor made him fit with the Spanish evangelical mission, underpinning Spanish expansion, which sought to bring Christianity to Micronesia. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Spanish authorities shifted their attention to Saipan, from where they sought to strengthen their colonial claim of the Northern Marianas. In the 1860s, through their dubious contract

116  Revaluating the Dual Integration of the Northern Mariana Islands

with Johnston, the Spanish significantly increased the population with the arrival of the Carolinians. As mentioned before, most of these arrivals settled in the Arabwal district. However, when in 1868, a large typhoon devastated this area of Saipan, the Caroline Islanders relocated to a new neighborhood christened San Isidro de Garapan, named after the Augustinian Recollect friar Isidro Liberal, who opened a mission on Saipan.51 By combining repopulation with mission outreach, Spanish authorities hoped to develop Saipan as their local district office overlooking the archipelago’s northern islands. Guam and neighboring Rota remained the capital islands; however, Saipan started to rise in prominence. The Spanish lease experiment to extend their rule over the northern islands experienced problems when George Johnston was lost at sea in 1876. The Guam authorities’ hopes regarding his widow, Ana Calvo, were dashed when she left for Manila and renounced her lease rights a year later. Candidates to fill in the power vacuum in the islands Johnston had formerly controlled for the colonial government quickly emerged, attracted by the lucrative potential of the copra harvest. One of them was Adolph Capelle, an influential German entrepreneur based in the Marshall Islands. He conducted business through his agent Alexander Milne who had moved to the Marianas. Milne appealed to Spanish authorities for a lease of Tinian based on the same terms provided to Johnston. He furthermore expressed interest in leasing the islands of Agrigan and Pagan.52 Where the Irishman had enjoyed the absolute confidence of the Spanish authorities, they remained suspicious of the German company Milne represented. Despite his nationality, Johnston, partly through his marriage, had become a Spanish agent in the Northern Marianas. He received extensive freedom to manage the economic and political affairs of the leased islands. In contrast, the Spanish authorities on Guam remained suspicious of the loyalty of Capelle’s company and their role in the Marianas. After long deliberation, the Spanish administration decided to grant Milne’s requests. Unlike Johnston’s case, the application for Capelle leases was forwarded to Madrid to gain the official approval of and protection under Spanish law. After consulting with the Spanish capital, authorities limited Capelle’s lease by applying Spanish rule. By not involving Madrid or Manila, the leases granted earlier to Johnston were in violation of Spanish law, a detail that did not escape authorities on Guam. The Mariana’s colonial powers introduced a much more circumscribed process by following the proper legal channels to issue the Capelle Company lease. The response of the Ministry for Overseas Territories on June 15, 1877, indicated that the lease spoke only to the economic exploitation of the islands in question.53 Under no circumstance was the new leasing party empowered to oversee the colonization of the islands, which remained the exclusive purview of the Spanish colonial authorities. Authorities in Guam thus displayed a clear preference for foreign agents with local connections. On the other hand, leases

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for powerful companies with no local ties had shorter runs and, through engaging officials in Madrid and Manila, more restrictions. Spanish colonial authorities in Guam thus employed selected leases to extend their control over the islands in the north. In addition, they benefitted from the rising demand by copra in the second half of the nineteenth century to charge more money, including the salary to have a governmental representative or mayor on the island in question, and to shorten the leasing period, best exemplified by the renewal of Capelle’s contract on the island of Pagan in 1880.54 Spanish authorities felt more comfortable with British businessman Williams, who arrived in the Marianas in the early 1880s to profit from the rapidly expanding copra trade. By replicating Johnston’s strategies, Williams would acquire the lion’s share of the leases in the Northern Mariana Islands. He married María Portusach y Martínez, daughter of Joaquín Portusach, who served as Gobernadorcillo, a little governor encompassing many jobs, including municipal judge. Williams entered into a prestigious family in Guam. His family ties ensured that his two ships—​ the Beatrice and Esmeralda—​took over the shipping service between the populated islands of the Northern Marianas (Rota, Tinian, Saipan), and those he leased (Pagan and Agrigan). On the last two islands, Williams would harvest copra that he would transfer to the markets in Yokohama, Japan.55 Like Johnston before him, Williams assumed the role of a Spanish agent, with the authorities’ blessing, in colonizing the northern islands by transplanting Caroline Islanders. Most of the Carolinian migrants hailed from other islands in the Mariana chain, notably Guam and Rota, where they faced integration problems and clashes with Spanish authorities and the Chamorro population. In 1885, to ensure better integration, colonial powers in Guam devised a project by transferring a large part of the Carolinian population from Guam and Rota to Saipan. Williams, with the aid of his two vessels, became the primary agent in this transfer, which ensured that Saipan not only became the major colonial epicenter in the northern islands through the transfer of Carolinians to this island, which increased their presence and identity. Manila authorities, however, had concerns about the depopulation of the main settled islands of the Mariana chain and proceeded to halt the transfers.56 Despite Manila’s interceding in the transfers from Guam and Rota, local authorities from Guam proceeded to transfer Caroline Islanders from the island of Tinian to Saipan. These new Carolinian residents would find the Tanapang neighborhood on Saipan.57 With William’s death in 1889, the transfers came to an end. His widow, María Portusach, continued to operate the copra business her husband started with the colonial authorities’ support. Problems emerged, however, when she remarried British citizen George Harrison. Disagreements between the company and the Agaña authorities resulted from the new couple’s refusal to transfer a prisoner to Guam. In response to their snub,

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an enraged Governor, Luis Santos, proceeded to strip Portusach of their leases in the northern Islands.58 Deprived of their income, Portusach and her English husband had to return to Guam. Both felt that their lease rights had been violated and appealed to the British consulate in Manila for an investigation into the Spanish leasing contracts in the Marianas Islands. The authorities in Manila, which formerly played a somewhat secondary role in the leasing process, were keen on avoiding an international incident and followed the recommendation of the British Consul and inquired into the conflict. Ironically, Governor Santos accused Harrison of the same crimes that authorities in Guam had previously tolerated in the case of Johnston and Williams, namely abuse of Carolinian workers and exploiting islands, especially Alamagan, not included in the confines of the lease. Ultimately, Manila authorities chose to side with Portusach to an international conflict with Great Britain. When her lease, however, expired in 1892, it was not renewed, and Guam colonial authorities petitioned Manila for additional funds to exploit the northern islands without resorting to foreign merchants. Unfortunately, Manila could not raise funds, so the lease experiment had to continue.59 Guam authorities decided to auction the contracts for the northern islands to make the leases more competitive and less tied to nepotism. Three companies expressed interest in the leases due to the rising importance of copra: José María Portusach y Martínez (María’s brother and Harrison’s brother-​in-​law), Galo Kamminga (a Dutch who had become a naturalized Spaniard due to his residence in the Marianas), and the Spanish Félix Torres.60 The Manila authorities oversaw the auction on November 19, 1892, to avoid any wrongdoing by the local colonial officials in the Marianas. In the end, José María Portusach emerged victorious by acquiring leases for the islands of Agrigan, Pagan, and Alamagan for four years.61 By including Alamagan in the lease, Spanish authorities avoided the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of this island formerly not included in the contracts. In 1896, Portusach’s contract would expire, providing Guam officials to split the leases of the northern islands between Galo Kamminga and Félix Torres.62 To conform to the newly adopted norms, Guam forwarded the leases to Manila for approval. However, the poor communications between the Marianas and the Philippines prevented Manila’s endorsement of the leases before the outbreak of hostilities between Spain and the United States of America. When, in 1899, Spain sold the northern Marianas to Germany, the Spanish experiment with leases ended abruptly. In the final years of the Spanish colony in the Marianas, the new legal underpinning of the leases for the northern islands gained additional significance when, in 1892, Spanish authorities became aware of Japan’s annexation of the uninhabited Volcano Islands, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima, site of a famous Second World War battle63 The Japanese

Revaluating the Dual Integration of the Northern Mariana Islands  119

government decided to annex these islands in 1891 following extensive exploration.64 Spanish authorities had to make a strong case for an effective occupation to ward off Japanese encroachment on the Marianas. Manila had informed the authorities in Guam that a robust Spanish presence in the northern island was a financial impossibility. Leases, now reformed to avoid troubling international incidents, proved an alternative to costly garrisons. Merchants acquiring these leases became unofficial Spanish agents committing to obey Spanish law and fly the Spanish flag alongside the company colors. In return for the lucrative copra business, merchants were obligated to provide shipping connections to the more populated islands—​specifically Guam and Saipan—​at least four times a year, provide free passage to the governor, and pay the salary of governmental officials in the islands under the lease. Spanish authorities residing on Guam treated merchants leasing the northern islands differently. First, if a merchant developed close ties to the administration and was willing to support the Spanish need to extend the colonial reach and imperial banners to the northernmost islands, officials disregarded potential labor abuses and poaching on islands not covered by the lease. Second, local authorities were willing to involve their distant colonial superiors in Madrid and Manila to provide checks and balances and more restrictive leases for commercial companies lacking clear-​cut resident connections. Lastly, when locally allied merchants, such as Harrison, failed to comply with the Guam administration’s needs, their formerly overlooked abusive and exploitative by nature endeavors were used against them to shorten their lease. In the last four decades of the nineteenth century, Spanish colonial officials lacked the financial means and the human resources to effectively occupy the northern islands of the Mariana chain. Leasing the islands to foreign merchants became the only alternative to claim these islands. The signing parties of these leases were under close watch by the Spanish authorities, which, depending on their compliance with the colonial goals, imposed restrictions and shorter timeframes on the contracts. 5.4 Conclusions

From a Spanish perspective, the Mariana Islands occupied the very fringe of the empire and often succumbed to the broader needs of the country. While contacted early during Magellan’s circumnavigation, it took the better part of 150 years before the archipelago gained value through the vital Manila Galleon trade. The seventeenth-​century colonization came at an enormous price and depopulated many islands to consolidate Spanish power in Guam. In the early nineteenth century, when the Manila exchange came to hold, Mexican independence called for a realignment of the Marianas. Ricafort’s Regulation (1828) envisioned a great future for the colony. Still, the maritime territory that covered over 1,500 miles of ocean posed insurmountable

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obstacles to the colonial administration that opted, once again, to concentrate scarce resources on Guam. The Chamorro Wars of the late-seventeenth century provided a rift for the Marianas. Guam, Rota, and Tinian became the only populated islands, while Spanish authorities conceptualized those located to the north as uninhabited territories with minimum to no colonial oversight. Indigenous proas—​ Chamorro watercraft—​ secured the communication between the inhabitant islands until the eighteenth century, highlighting the Spanish dependency on outsiders to patrol the colonial realm and transfer food to Guam. Similarly, the eighteenth century witnessed an increase in the arrival of Caroline Islanders in both inhabited and depopulated islands. Expanding their sawei exchange network to encompass the resources of the high islands of the Mariana chain, the increasing arrivals from the Caroline Islands also caught the eye of Spanish officials. From the nineteenth century on, Spanish authorities encouraged both the exchange of goods as well as a Carolinian settlement on Saipan in a symbiotic relationship that assisted the Iberians in claiming the northern islands of the Marianas. Partially through settlers from the Caroline Islands, Saipan emerged as a gateway to the northern islands that Spanish authorities sought to safeguard from foreign occupation from Imperial Japan, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition, through Carolinian settlers, Spanish authorities on Guam, provided with limited resources from Manila, devised a complex plan to lease selected northern islands—​ especially Agrigan, Pagan, and Alamagan—​ to foreign copra trading companies. Ideally, the merchants functioned as Spanish agents on these islands. In addition to exploiting copra, traders committed to flying Spanish colors alongside their own company, paying for an administrator’s salary and maintaining regular shipping connections between the leased islands and Guam. Spanish limited supervision of the commercial companies operating at the very edge of their maritime empire gave way to a preference for renting to foreigners with strong local connections in the Marianas. If such relationships did not exist, Guam authorities involved their superiors in Madrid and Manila in providing greater control and limiting the contract’s timeframe. The same leaders also ignored violations of labor contracts and the exploitation of islands not covered by the lease if the traders adhered to Spanish needs. In the case of traders not respecting Spanish requirements for the effective occupation of the northern islands, the very violations could be turned against the merchants to bring the lease agreement to an end. With limited financial and infrastructural resources, Spanish colonial officials in Guam became creative to ensure the claiming and occupation of the islands to the north of their widespread colony. Employing arriving Caroline Islanders as settlers, navigators, and human resources, authorities leased the northernmost islands to foreign copra merchants. This tentative

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arrangement, which emerged in the nineteenth century as the significance of the Marianas was changing in the Spanish Empire, lasted until the end of the Iberian reign in the Pacific. By reinforcing the island of Saipan as the gateway to the northern isles, Spanish authorities initiated a political split—​between Guam and the Northern Marianas—​that governs the political picture of the Marianas today. Notes 1 Royal Instruction of 28th August 1569. The National Historical Archives of Madrid (Spain), Overseas, bundle 5352-​3.1-​3.8, expedient 63. 2 Peter Coomans, History of the mission in the Mariana Islands, 1667-​ 1673 (Saipan: CNMI Division of Historic Preservation, 1997); Luis de Morales and Charles Le Gobien, History of the Mariana Islands, ed. Alexandre Coello de la Rosa (Guam: University of Guam Press–​MARC, 2017), 131–​132; Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, “The seed of martyrs and martyrdom in the Marianas (17th century),” in I estoria-​ ta: Guam, the Mariana Islands and Chamorro Culture: An exhibition of “Let’s turn around the world” Official Program of the Fifth Centenary of the First Round the World (Madrid: National Museum of Anthropology, 2021), 57–​64. 3 Paul Carano and Pedro Sanchez, A complete History of Guam (Tokio: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964), 85. 4 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4339, 1821–​1835, file 18, s 97; NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4334, 1791–​1889, file 4, s 53–​54. Report from José Ganga Herrero to the Manila’s governor. He informed at 13th October 1824 that the English Transit go to Manila with his predecessor José Montilla. 5 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, 4351, file 38, s. 528. Report of Mariana Island governor, Emilio Galisteo, to the Captain General of the Philippines, October 1894. He affirms that he has “absolutely” no means of transport, since there is only a small boat at the disposal of the port. He argues that no northern island (Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) has been visited by any governor. This is not correct because Felipe de la Corte in 1864 and Francisco Olive in 1885 visited them. 6 Glyndwr Williams, The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters 1570-​ 1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 237–​239. 7 Robert F. Rogers, Destiny´s Landfall. A history of Guam (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i, 1995), 92; Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 164. 8 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4336, 1807–​1840, file 42. Report from José Medinilla to Manila’s Governor in 1830. 9 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4339, 1821–​1835, file 50, s 367. The commission was led by Ramón F. de Luna. 10 NAP, Varias Provincias, MARIANAS, SDS 4339, 1821–​1835, file 68, s 570–​575. 11 Epeli Hau`ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 147–​161. 12 On the Sawei consult Mark L. Berg, “Yapese Politics, Yapese Money, and the Sawei Tribute Network before World War I,” Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (1992): 150–​164; Rosalind L. Hunter-​Anderson and Yigal (Go`opsan) Zan,

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“Demystifying the Sawei: A Traditional Interisland Exchange System,” Isla: A Journal of Micronesian Studies 4 no. 1 (1996): 1–​45. 13 On Torres’s local family connections consult Robert F. Rogers, Destiny’s Landfall. A History of Guam (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i, 1995), 89. 14 Paul D’Arcy, The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2006), 156–​162. 15 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4354, 1857–​1879, file 1. The full text is published in Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 251–​255. 16 Idem. 17 Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 208. 18 NAP, Varias Provincias Marianas, SDS 4342, 1828–​1885, file 3. 19 J. S. Spencer et al. “Mycobacterium leprae in Humans,” in The many hosts of Mycobacteria, ed. H. Mukundan, M. Chambers, R. Waters and M. Larsen (Boston: CABI, 2015), 474. 20 Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 41. 21 Cartographic and Geographic Studies Archive of the Spanish Army Geographic Center (Madrid), Filipinas, c-​19–​II, no. 27, M. Sanz, Descripción de las Islas Marianas (1827), 27–​46. 22 NAP, Varias Provincias, SDS 4336, 1807–​1840, file 55, s 483–​484. Villalobos Report of the governor Villalobos, 1st November 1834. 23 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4359, 1840–​1895, file 1, s 1. Letter from Felix Calvo to the government of Manila on July 1, 1839. He reports that Saipan is populated by Carolinians, despite the fact that many abandoned the island due to the failure of Spanish colonization in 1823. 24 David Manzano Cosano, “La cuantificación de la población de las islas Marianas: De la colonización hispana a la leyenda negra antiespañola,” Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política, Humanidades y Relaciones Internacionales 25, no. 52 (2023): 199–​220. 25 Mark R. Peattie, Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-​ 1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 1–​34. 26 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, 1807–​1840, file 55, s. 483–​484; Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria descriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 98–​100. 27 David Hanlon, “A different historiography for ‘A handful of chickpeas flung over the sea’: Approaching the Federated States of Micronesia’s deeper Past,” in Pacific Futures. Past and Present, ed. W. Anderson, M. Johnson and B. Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2020), 81–​104. 28 Salvador Bernabéu Albert and José María García Redondo, “Las Nuevas Filipinas: un proyecto misional oceánico de la Compañía de Jesús (s. XVII-​XVIII),”

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in Conocer el Pacífico: exploraciones, imágenes y formación de sociedades oceánica, eds. S. Bernabéu Albert, C. Mena-​ García and E. J. Luque Azcona (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 149–​194. 29 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 125. 30 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4336, 1807–​1840, file 55, s 483–​484. Report of the Spanish Guam’s governor Francisco Villalobos to Manila, 1st of November 1834. 31 Francis X. Hezel, The first taint of civilization: A history of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-​ colonial days, 1521-​ 1885 (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 1983) p. 106; Don A. Farrell, History of the Mariana Islands to Partition (Saipan, Public School System Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, 1991), 201. 32 Jennifer F. McKinnon and Julia Mushyusky, “A Fluid Sea in the Mariana Islands: Community Archaeology and Mapping the Seascape of Saipan,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology 9, no. 1 (2014): 59–​79. 33 This principle emerged out of the minutes chronicling the Berlin Conference of 1884–​1885. The normative force of the principle of effective occupation was applied only to the African continent. However, the practice found extension to other global regions in the second half of the nineteenth century. In their search for new territory, rising new global powers sought to argue that the Iberian rights to first discovery was a necessary but not sufficient condition for imperial annexation. Gaceta de Madrid, 185 (04/​07/​1885): 37–​40. 34 Servando Marenco, La Ficción y la Verdad de lo Ocurrido en Yap. Reseña histórica con instrucciones y documentos oficiales (Madrid: El Globo, 1888), 41. 35 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4192, 1825–​1898, s 21. Decree of the Philippine government for the development of the commission in the Mariana Islands, 8th June 1853. 36 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 97; Luis de Ibáñez y Gracia, Historia de las Islas Marianas con su derrotero, y de las Carolinas y las Palaos, desde el descubrimiento por Magallanes en el año 1521, hasta nuestros días, por el coronel de Infantería, D. Luis Ibáñez y Gracia, gobernador que fue de dichas islas (Granada: Paulino V Sabatel, 1886). 37 James A. Bier, Reference Map of Oceania: The Pacific Islands of Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i Press, 2009). 38 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 125.

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39 Governor General of the Philippines, Fernando Norzagay, to Governor of the Mariana Islands, Felipe de la Corte, Manila 27 May 1878, Cited in Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 76. 40 Felipe de la Corte y Ruano Calderón, Memoria decriptiva e Histórica de las Marianas y otras que las rodean, en relación con ellas y su organización actual, con estudios analíticos de todos sus elementos físicos, morales y políticos y propuesta de su reforma en todos sus ramos para elevarlos al grado de prosperidad que le corresponden (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1875), 158–​165. 41 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4202, 1882–​1898, s 996–​998; AHN, Ultramar 5354, doc. 1, no. 13–​15. Resolution of the Consejo de Filipinas y el Golfo de Guinea transmitted by the government of Manila itself on May 8, 1894. 42 Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 311–​ 322; Marjorie G. Driver and Omaira Brunal-​Perry, Carolinians in the Mariana Islands in the 1800s: selected documents from the holdings of the Spanish Documents Collection at the Micronesian Area Research Center (Guam: MARC and Cultural Affairs, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, 1996), Document no. 16. 43 Stewart Firth, “German firms in the Western Pacific, 1857-​1914,” The Journal of the Pacific History vol. 8, no. 1 (1973): 10–​28. 44 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4344, 1829–​ 1897, file 2, s 47–​ 50. Royal order of the Ministry of Overseas on March 25, 1877. Officials from the Marianas, including Governor Francisco Moscoso (1866–​1871) are implicated in the falsification of the contract. 45 Paul D’Arcy, The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2006), 162. 46 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4354, 1857–​1879, s 478–​479. 47 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4354, 1857–​1879, s 480–​482. 48 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4358, 1880–​1897, file 3, s 20–​32, Report of the Mariana governor, Francisco Brochero, to Manila, 5 de Febrery of 1884. O´Connor Lopaka, “Autonomy, mobility and identity: The re-​Tamuning of Guam, 1869-​1901,” The Journal of the Pacific History 56, no. 4 (2021): 415–​436. 49 Tracey Banivanua-​Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-​Pacific Indentured Labor Trade (Honolulu: University of Hawai´i 2007); Karin Speedy, “The Sutton Case: the First Franco-​Australian Foray into Blackbirding,” The Journal of Pacific History 50, no. 3 (2015): 344–​364; J. A. Bennet, “Immigration, ‘Blackbirding’, Labour Recruiting? The Hawaiian Experience 1877-​1887,” The Journal of the Pacific History 11, no. 1 (1976): 3–​27; Corris, Peter. “ ‘Blackbirding’ in New Guinea Waters, 1883-​64. An Episode in the Queensland Labour Trade.” The Journal of the Pacific History 3 (1968): 85–​105. 50 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas SDS 4354, 1857–​1879, s 482. Report of the Guam’s governor Luis de Ibáñez y García, 15 June 1872. 51 Don A. Farrell, History of the Mariana Islands to Partition (Saipan, Public School System Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, 1991), 220–​223. 52 Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 331–​ 334; NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4344, 1829–​ 1897, file 7–​ 14, s 117.

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The Spanish source quotes “Alejandro Milne” and The Capelle company’s headquarters are located in Bonham (Marshall Islands). 53 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4360, 1850–​1892, s 148–​186. 54 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, 1842–​1895, file 8, s 206–​235. After finishing the contract on April 29, 1880, the new contract is renewed with an increase of 100 pesos (The original was 320). The lease is for one year and is signed by Mr. Foster. 55 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4337, 1810–​1897, file 18, s 253–​255. Denunciation of the British consul in Manila on February 25, 1892 for the infringement of the rights of María Portusach. 56 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4361, 1855–​1899, file 95. Letter signed in Manila on November 23, 1885. 57 Paul D’Arcy, The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2006), 164; Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 11. 58 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4337, 1810–​ 1897, file 18, s 254. Denunciation of the British consul in Manila on February 25, 1892 for the infringement of the rights of María Portusach. 59 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4337, 1810–​1897, file 80, s 288. Project to populate the northern islands sent by the authorities of Guam to Manila on May 12, 1892. 60 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4359, 1840–​1895, file 45. Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 342. 61 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4359, 1840–​1895, file 14. 62 NAP, Varias Provincias, Carolinas, SDS 4199, 1872–​1898, s 403–​407, section 25 y 26. Belén Pozuelo Mascaraque, Presencia y acción españolas en las Islas Marianas (1828-​1899) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997), 347–​348. 63 NAP, Varias Provincias, Marianas, SDS 4361, 1855–​1899, s 683. The Governor of Guam, Luis Santos, writes to Manila on January 8, 1892. He reports that he has news that the Japanese intend to occupy the islands north of the Marianas. 64 David Manzano Cosano “The imperial enemies of Spain in Spanish Oceania: the case of Japan,” in The Representation of External Threats: From the Modern Ages to the Modern World, ed. E. Craislsheim and M. D. Elizalde (The Netherlands: Brill, 2019), 401–​417.

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INDEX

Note: Endnotes are indicated by the page number followed by “n” and the note number e.g., 62n2 refers to note 2 on page 62. Page locators in italics represents figures. Abásolo, Antonio García 5 Abbey Forest (Hawaiian vessel) 114 Age of Enlightenment 15 Age of Imperialism 72 Águila (Eagle) frigate 61 Amat, Viceroy 58 American colonial network 16 American independence movements 17–​18 American Lake 7 American Methodists 89 Anglo-​Lusitanian alliance 32, 42, 45 Anson, George 38, 51, 102, 104; capture of Tinian 103 Anton, Manuel 89 Aotearoa 1 aquatic wasteland 3 Arabwal 104, 116; Caroline settlement of 105 archival “turn” 49–​50 Archivo de Indias 61 Asiento of Negros (slave trade) 15 Atlantic Ocean 12, 40, 45 Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar project 77, 78 Ayacucho, battle of (Peru, 1824) 17–​18, 74 Banks, Joseph 40, 51 Beatrice (ship) 117

Berlin Conferences (1884–​1885) 20, 111–​13 Bernabéu, Salvador 5 biological racism 82 black isles (Melanesia) 73 Bonaparte, José 17 Bonin-​Volcano Islands 106; representation of 109 Borofsky, Robert 6 Botany Bay, British settlement in 80 Bourbon Family Compact 31 Bratring, Friedrich 57 British Admiralty 2 British colony, in Australia 15 British Crown, declaration restoring the Falkland settlement to 34 British Monarchy 15 Brochero, Francisco 83 Butrón, Emilio 84–​5 Byron, John 33, 38, 40 Caledoña 81 Calvo, Ana 116 Calvo, Félix 114 cannibalism and human sacrifice, issue of 79 Cantova, Jesuit Juan Antonio 69–​70, 85 Capelle, Adolph 116 Capelle Company lease 116 Capriles, Enrique 20

Index  129

Carlist War 18 Carlos I of Spain 12 Caroline archipelago 84 Caroline Islanders 120; immigration to the Marianas 114; Johnston’s import of 115; relocation of 116; settlement of 106 Caroline Islands 67, 70, 83–​9; Easter Caroline Islands 85, 89; embracement of Spanish rule by Indigenous population 89; ethnography and geography of 87; Ibargoitia’s contacts with 72; inter-​island navigation 105; land grab during the New Imperialism 88–​9; maritime expansion from the south 103; Monteverde’s journey to 71–​2; Spanish administration of 20, 85; Spanish occupation of 88; Spanish treachery 104; Tagalog language 77; Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494) 12, 15, 31, 67, 87; Western Caroline Islands 85, 89 Caroline languages 77 Carteret, Philip 34 Centurion 102 Cervantes 84 Chamorro idolatry 75 Chamorros 67, 82; alcoholic beverages, introduction of 76; Christianity, spread of 68; Coello’s rendition of 79; custom of throwing infants into the sea 83; progress toward evangelization 71; rejection of both Spanish religion and colonial incursion 68; religious fanaticism in 68; San Vitores’s vision of 68; Spanish vision of 83; uprising in May of 1829 103 Chamorro Wars 68, 71, 90, 102, 106, 110, 120 Charles (Carlos) II of Spain, King 69 Chickpeas Islands (Islas de los Garbanzos) 69; map of 70 Chincha Islands 18 Choco, Sangley 68 Christianity 68–​9, 71, 104, 115 Christie, James 44 circumnavigation of Earth 12; Cook, James (1768–​1771) 2, 15, 32, 42, 51; de Bougainville, Louis-​Antoine (1766–​1769) 38; Drake, Francis (1577–​1580) 14; Magellan (1519–​1522) 1, 7, 12, 119 Clement XI, Pope 69

Clota, Fr. Gerónimo 53 Coello, Francisco 77–​8; depiction of Spanish Oceania 84; map of 1852 79; rendition of the Chamorro 79 cognitive dissonance 49 Common Era 1 Compact of Free Association (COFA) 7 Cook, James 2, 36, 40–​1, 54, 56; arrived at the mission site in Tautira 57; death at Kealakekua Bay 54; first circumnavigation of Earth (1768–​ 1771) 2, 15, 51; HMS Endeavour 40; second circumnavigation of Earth (1772–​1775) 42 Copra merchants 19, 111, 120 Corean (German ship) 19 Corney, Bolton 54 Court of St. James 4, 30, 32, 39, 42 Danelsberg, F. 114 Darwin, Charles 82 Davis’s Land 51–​2 de Álava, Ignacio María 71 de Amat y Junyent, Viceroy Manuel 51–​2 de Arellanos, Alonso Ramírez 12 de Arriaga, Julian 51 de Balboa, Vasco Nuñez 12 de Borbón, Mª Cristina 18 de Bougainville, Louis-​Antoine: Boudeuse frigate 61; circumnavigation of Earth (1766–​1769) 38 de Brosses, Charles 51 de Fonseca, Joao Felipe 43–​4 de Grimaldi, Marqués 33, 37 de Ibáñez y García, Luis 115 de la Corte, Felipe 81–​4, 112–​14 de Laporte, Joseph 56 de la Riva, Alonso 75–​6 de Legazpi, Miguel López 12, 67 de Melo de Carvalho, Francisco 42 de Melo e Castro, Martinho 38–​9; diplomatic meltdown 42–​4 de Moura, Antônio Rolim 40 de Pajaros, Farallon 106, 112 de Pan, Felipe 81 de Pombal, Marquis 31, 37, 42–​3 de Queirós, Pedro Fernandes (Quirós) 2 de Quesada, Manuel Torres y García 89 De Rienzi, Gregoire Louis Domeny 3, 74 de San Vitores, Diego Luis 14, 67, 102 de Sousa, Luis Pinto 44 de Surville, Jean 51

130 Index

de Triay, Antonio 84 de Urdaneta, Andrés 12 Divine Providence, evocation of 66–​7, 69, 72–​7, 83 Dolores, map of 70 Douglas, Bronwen 58, 73 Drake, Francis: circumnavigation of Earth (1577–​1580) 14 Duke of Richmond 34 D’Urville, Durmount 73 Dutch East India Company 14 Earl of Rochford 42 Early Modern period 5, 11, 22, 67, 90 Easter Island (Rapa Nui) 52, 55 Elizalde, M. Dolores 5 El Océano Pacífico 2 Esmeralda (ship) 117 Estala, Pedro 56–​7; criticism of the northern European encounters 57; rendition of the Spanish Tahitian episode 57 European civilization 78 expedition, to circumnavigate the Earth see circumnavigation of Earth Falkland (Malvinas) Islands 31, 33–​4, 38, 42; map of 39; strategic importance of 51 Federated States of Micronesia 7 female sterilization, issue of 83 Ferdinand VII, King 17–​18 Ferron, Pedro 34 Filippo, Vittorio (Prince of Masserano) 32–​7; description of the former Jesuit 40; failed mission to safeguard the Pacific from British incursions 32; meeting with Earl of Shelburne 32–​3; satirical rendition of 35 Florida 39 Flynn, Dennis 12 Forster, Georg 57 France: Peninsular War with Spanish citizens 17; policy in Tahiti and New Caledonia 19; takeover of New Caledonia 80 Franciscan friars 53, 55, 57–​8 Franciscan missionaries 52 Franciscan padres 60 Franco-​Spanish alliance, against Great Britain 31 Fraytag, Gustav 21 French Abby of La Trappe 44

Gaceta de Madrid (newspaper) 71 Galleon de Manila see Manila Galleon General Exhibition of the Philippines (1887) 86, 90 Germany: colony of New Guinea 23; conflict over the Caroline Islands with Spain 20, 85; loss of Fiji island to Great Britain 19; presence in Micronesia 19; signing of declaration of April 6, 1886 with Great Britain 20 Gil, Juan 5 Giráldez, Arturo 12 globalization, age of 1, 13 Gobernadorcillo 117 Gonzáles, Narciso 53 González, Don Felipe 51 Great Britain: accomplishments in the field of cartography 36; cold war (guerra surda) against Portugal 32; colonization of the Fiji Islands 19; declaration of April 6, 1886 with Germany 20; expansion into Australia and New Zealand 19; Franco-​Spanish alliance against 31; incursion into the Pacific Ocean 32; Nootka Sound Conventions with Spain 16; Pacific voyages 37, 40; Portuguese and Spanish diplomatic posts in 30; Royal Navy 33 Gregorio, Miguel 86 Guam, island of 67, 79–​80, 113–​14; arrival of Jesuit missionaries on 2; Chamorro population on 102; food supply 106; leprosy, problem of 107; as place for exile for people afflicted with contagious diseases 106; Spanish colonial authorities in 117; as a stopover location for the Manila trade 2, 4, 67, 90; US takeover of 7 guerra surda 32, 39 Habsburg monarchy (1516–​1700) 6, 13 Hanlon, David 58 Harrison, George 117–​19; maritime chronometer 36 Hau’ofa, Epeli 4, 103 Hawai`i 1 Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes (Charles de Brosses) 51 Historia de las Islas Mariana (1886) 83 HMS Beagle 54 HMS Dolphin 34, 39 HMS Endeavour 40, 61

Index  131

Ibáñez, Luis 82–​3, 115 Ibargoitia, Juan 71–​2 Iberian colonial nations 18 Iberian consciousness 86 Iberian Empire 16, 45 Iberian patriotism 84 Iberian Peninsula 41–​2; Napoleonic invasion of 54 Iltis (German warship) 20 imperial policy, development of 30, 66 infanticide, custom of 79, 83 inter-​island commerce, importance of 109 inter-​island transport 111 Isidro, Carlos Mª 18, 113 Islands of the Thieves 12, 67; colonization of 102 Islas Marianas (1887) 83 Iwo Jima 109, 118; Japanese annexation of 119 Japan: encroachment on the Marianas 119; expansion into Northern Mariana Islands 110; imperial program toward the South Seas (Nanshin-​ron) and the North Seas (Kokushin-​ ron) 19, 110; islands of Ogasawara 106; Meiji Restoration 110; signing of Bashi treaty with Spain 19 Japanese imperialism 109 Johnston, George 114, 116; actions against the recruits from the Caroline Islanders 115; import of Caroline Islanders 115 King George Island 36 Labé, Guillaume 51 La Concepción 115 Lavalette, Father 39 Lazarin Leper Hospital, Tinian 106 Legazpi’s establishment of Manila 1 Leon XIII, Pope 20 leprosy, problem of 75, 105, 107 Lezcano, Francisco 20, 69 “Lima 1035” 50, 55, 57, 61 Luso-​British alliance 40 Magellan: circumnavigation of the Earth (1519–​1522) 1, 7, 12, 66, 119; contact with the Chamorro people 66;

Magellan-​Elcano expedition (1519–​1522) 67 Magellan’s Strait 34, 38 Malaspina, Alejandro 16; voyage of (1789–​1794) 71 Manila (Spanish ship) 20 Manila Galleon 12–​13, 14, 67, 72, 80; benefits in the Asian markets 14; channel material culture 1; end of 17 Manila Galleon Exchange 4, 72, 90, 102, 106 Mar del Sur 2, 12 mare clausum 15–​16, 32, 45 María (American ship) 104 Maria Cristiana 115 Mariana archipelago 13, 19, 79–​80, 112–​13, 115 Mariana Islands 15, 69, 76, 79–​83; arrival of Caroline Islanders in 69; Chamorro idolatry as the main impediment to the development of 75; colonization of 68; contribution of Chamorro to development of 82; as a convict colony 77; as a defensive wall to safeguard the Philippines (1828–​ 1898) 17–​22; economic exploitation of 116; First Spanish Republic (1873–​1874) 80; under indisputable colonial rule of Spain 112; islands near the Mariana archipelago claimed within the Spanish sphere of influence 112; Japanese encroachment on 119; as largest island of Guam 79; Ministry for Overseas Territories 116; outbreaks of riots on Saipan 80; as Pearl of the Orient 76; prison settlement of 80; renaming in honor of Philip IV’s wife 68; restructuring the colony of 17; Spain’s colonizing project in 71; Spanish leasing contracts in 118; Spanish penal project in 80; stories of piracy 81; Tagalog language 77; see also Northern Mariana Islands Mariana of Austria 14, 68 maritime technologies 2 Marquis of Pombal 30 Marshall Islands 7, 20, 84, 116 Masserano, Prince of see Filippo, Vittorio (Prince of Masserano) Mathematical Tables 59 Matsuda, Matt 66 Maxwell, Kenneth 40

132 Index

Medinilla, José 103, 106, 112 Meiji, Emperor 19 Methuen Treaty (1703) 30 Micronesia 7, 11, 73; Christianity, spread of 115; colonial projects in 78; cultural and geographical realties of 78; division according to time period 11; ethnic and linguistic groups 70; images in the Spanish Pacific 72; incorporation in the Spanish Imperial imagination 77–​89; people as objects of Divine Providence 66; relationship with Spain 77; separation from the Philippines 78; Spanish colonial imagination in 90; Spanish colonies in 22; Spanish’s ethnographic information about 70; stereotypes about the Indigenous inhabitants of 66, 67–​72 Milne, Alexander 116 Monteverde, Juan Bautista 71–​2, 74 Nao of China 12 Napoleonic Wars 17 National Archive of the Philippines 113 National Printing of Madrid 81 naval rivalry, between the European maritime powers 14 New Caledonia, French takeover of 80 new diplomatic history, relevance of 29–​30 New Imperialism 90, 101, 111 New Philippines 69 New Spain (Mexico) 5, 50; connection with the Philippines 12 New World 3 Nootka conflict, on the Northwest Coast 15 Nootka Sound Conventions of 1790s 16 Northern Mariana Islands 7, 101, 107, 112, 117; colonial claim of 115; Japanese expansion into 110; as porous and neglected region 102–​10; rift between the Marianas and Manila authorities over the lease agreement 114; from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries 102–​10; Spanish colonization of 110 Nukuoro Atoll 71 Occidental Islands, chart of 52 Oceania, islands of 4, 16, 50; European power present in 14;

European Romantic focus on 80–​1; romanticized image of 82; stereotyping the Indigenous people of 66; Western perceptions of 11; zone of influence 20 O’Connell, James 59 Ogasawara Islands, representation of 109 Ogasawara-​Jima Islands 110 O’Keefe, David 85 Olive y García, Francisco 82–​3 Opinion de Manila (1888) 88 Pacific: conceptualization of 4; European cultural struggle in 72; Franco-​British vision of 55; free navigation and fishing rights of British 15; French views of 66; Iberian vision of 3; naval rivalry between the European maritime powers 14; power of the Spanish Empire in 12; rich cultural contributions of 4; role in diplomatic tangles 30–​1; Spanish colonial systems in 4, 74; transnational 17 Pacific Islands 54; Manila trade, impact of 2; origin for the settlement of 1 Pacífico 2 Pacific Ocean 51; British incursion into 32; eighteenth-​century exploration of 3 Pacific Rim 4 Padrón, Ricardo 3 Pagan island, lease for 114 Palau 7, 84, 89; King of 84 Palauan Islands 19, 23, 69, 84–​5, 90 Pan, Felipe del 82 Paquette, Gabriel 30 Paris Commune (1871) 80 Paris, Treaty of (1898) 21 Pearl of the Orient 76 Peninsular War, between Napoleonic France and the Spanish citizens 17 Pereiro, Cabeza 87–​8; La isla de Ponapé (1895) 87 Pérez, Francisco 60 Peru: Ayacucho, battle of (1824) 17, 74; Kingdom of 55; victory against Spain in War in the Pacific (1865–​1866) 18 Philip II, King 102 Philip IV, King 67–​8, 102 Philippine exhibition of 1887 87 Philippines 12, 69; connection with New Spain 12; General Exhibition of the

Index  133

Philippines (1887) 86; Marianas as a defensive wall to safeguard 17–​24; Tagalog language 77 Philippine Wall (from 1828 to 1898) 11 Philip V, King 69 Pidal, José 89 Pohnpei, island of (Micronesia) 21, 58, 85; revolt of 1887 88–​9 polygamy 70, 79, 88 Polynesia 16, 73–​4 Polynesian languages, religious aspects of 59 Polynesian triangle 1 Port Egmont 38 Portugal 12; control of Brazil 40; Great Britain cold war (guerra surda) against 32; imperial disintegration in the Atlantic 30; importance of Brazil for 31; independence from Spain 30; maritime and terrestrial conquests 68; Spanish invasion of (1762–​1763) 37; suspicion of British voyages to the Pacific 37–​42; trade routes to Brazil 30 Portuguese Crown 30–​1, 37, 43 Portuguese Oceania 78 Portusach, Joaquín 117 Portusach y Martínez, María 117 Possessing Tahiti (Greg Dening) 58 Possessions of Oceania maps 77 Protestant missionaries 59, 89 Puig y Lucá, Antonio 77 Quantifying the Mariana Islands’ population (2023) 109 Rapa Nui 1, 52 Ricafort, Mariano 17, 74–​5, 105–​6, 110 Ricafort’s Regulation (1828) 76, 105, 109, 119 Rio de Janeiro 41; Endeavour in 40–​2 Robertson, Andrew Gordon 81 Rodao, Florentino 5 Rodríguez, Máximo (Matimo) 53–​4, 60 Roman Catholic faith 62 Roman Catholic rituals 57 Rota, island of 106, 109–​10 Royal Academy of the History, Madrid 55 Royal Geographical Society 54 Roy, Fitz 54

Saipan Island 106, 121; Caroline settlement on 104–​5, 111; Spanish occupation of 102 Samoan Islands 19 San Damián 14, 67 San Isidro de Garapan 116 San Lorenzo (Spanish warship) 51 San Quintín (Spanish ship) 20 Santa Rosalia (frigate) 51, 69 Santos, Luis 118 Sanz, Manual 74 sawei network 103 Schurz, William 13 Serrano, Jesuit Andrés 69 Seven Years’ War (1756–​1763) 15, 31, 32, 37, 39, 44 Shaw, Carlos Martínez 5 Silva, Jose Rodrigues 43 Social Darwinism 66–​7, 82 Society Islands archipelago 52; failure of the Spanish mission in 62 Solander, Daniel 51 Solomon Islands 51 Southern Unknown Continent 2 South Pacific 39; British expeditions to 56; European settlements in 61–​2; Spaniards’ exploration of 50 South Seas: Japanese state imperial program toward 110; rights to 32 “space race” in the Pacific, between French and British 2 Spain: administration of the Caroline Islands 20; Ayacucho, battle of (Peru, 1824) 17, 74; Bashi treaty with Japan 19; civil war from 1833 to 1840 18; colonial holdings in the Americas 16; colonial policies, in the nineteenth century 66; colonizing project in the Mariana Islands and Ulithi 71; conflict over the Caroline Islands with Germany 20, 85; control of the Mariana Islands 13; defeat during the War in the Pacific (1865–​1866) 18; domestic unrest in 17; expeditions from Lima 50–​2; expeditions to Tahiti 4; imperial power of 3; initiation of a political split between Guam and the Northern Marianas 121; invasion of Portugal (1762–​1763) 37; Las Indias del Poniente (the Indies of the West) 3; leasing contracts in the Marianas Islands 118; legal system of 113; Malaspina expedition 16; maritime

134 Index

and terrestrial conquests 68; Nootka Sound Conventions with Great Britain 16; Paris, Treaty of (1898) 21; Peninsular War with Napoleonic France 17; policy in Oceania 6; political power of 14; Portugal’s independence from 30; Prince of Masserano 32–​7; relationship with Micronesia 77; role in the Americas and Asia 6 Spanish American War (1898) 21 Spanish Americas 3, 21 Spanish Bourbon monarchy 15, 69 Spanish colonial network 101 Spanish Crown 31 Spanish Empire 52, 87, 111, 114, 121; dissolution of 3; loss of colonial territory in the Americas 74; Possessions in Oceania 77; power in the Pacific 12; role of the Micronesian colonies in 11 Spanish imperialism 13 Spanish Lake 7, 22, 32; British incursions into 37; concept of 13 Spanish Oceania 6, 18, 78, 86; Coello’s map depicting 84 Spanish outpost, in Southeast Asia 1 Spanish Overseas Ministry 87 Spanish Pacific Empire 101 Spanish patriotism 6, 85 Spanish Puddle (from 1521 to 1828) 11, 12–​17 Spanish Succession, war of 32 Spanish trade, in the Americas 33 St. Jean Baptiste (French vessel) 51 Stoler, Ann 49–​50 Stoler, Ann Laura 62n2 Strait of Magellan 31 Swallow 34 Tagalog language 77 Tahiti 50, 52; advent of Protestant missionaries in 59; conflict between the two Franciscan friars and Matimo 58; Description of the Islands of Tahiti 55; Possessing Tahiti (Greg Dening) 58; resistance against the cultural encroachment 61; resistance to the Spanish venture 57–​61; site of the mission settlement on 53; Spanish

voyage to 52–​3; violations (hara) of ritual prohibitions (tapu) 60 Tahitian culture, understanding of 60 Tahitian marae 60 Tahitian population 60; conversion to the Roman Catholic faith 62; life expectancy 62; teaching of reading and writing through the missionary system 59 Tahitian society 53, 59, 62 Talavan, Miguel Luque 5 Tamar 39 Taviel, Enrique 87 Terra Australis Incognita 2 Thirty Year War 13 Tinian, island of 106, 110 Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494) 12, 15, 31, 67, 87 Trinidad 67 Ulithi (in the Caroline Islands) 69–​70; Spain’s colonizing project in 71 United States of America (USA): Guano Act (1856) 19 Utrecht, Treaty of (1713) 15, 31; Article Eight of 32 Valençay, Treaty of (1813) 17 Vehiatua II 52, 59; death of 61 Vidal, José Montero 87 Villalobos, Francisco 75, 76, 106 Villalobos, Manuel 106 von Humboldt, Alexander 3, 16 Wallis, Samuel 34–​5 War of the Austrian Succession (1742) 102 War of the Pacific in 1860s 72 War of the Spanish Succession (1703) 30 Westphalia, Treaty of (1648) 13 Weyler, Valeriano 88 Xavier, Francis 69 Yap, island of 20, 85, 89 Zaragoza, Treaty of (1529) 12, 15, 31 Zialcita, Fernand 12