By the latter half of the 17th century, the rule of Spain in the New World was reaching 200 years. Times were changing, both in the New World and in Europe, and the leaders of Spain knew it. Their problem was what to do about it. Spain had never had a coherent policy in its imperial rule. Since 1492, Spain was seemingly constantly at war, with an endless series of crises thrown into the mix. Solutions had to be found for the here and now, the future would take care of itself.
In this major series of articles Erick Reddington starts his look at the independence of Spanish America by considering how Spain ruled its vast American territories.
King Felipe V of Spain in the 1720s.
Spain was both blessed and cursed by its enormous New World Empire. Stretching (theoretically) from nearly the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, this was a land mass over 6,000 miles long. Contained within were millions of people, natives, slaves, and colonists. Wealth unimagined in 1491 was under the control of the Spanish. Every year, the West Indies Fleet, also called the Treasure Fleet, would cross the Atlantic and bring gold, silver, and raw materials to Spain. So much gold had crossed the Atlantic that it had caused runaway inflation several times. The Potosi mine in modern day Bolivia produced more silver than any other mine in history. Sugar and tobacco were grown throughout the Spanish Caribbean Basin. These consumer products were then exported for fabulous profits. Wool was grown and shipped to Catalonia for finishing in textile mills there.
These blessings show the problem with the Spanish view of their empire. Despite the incredible wealth and large population base, the empire was seen by Spanish authorities in Madrid as a cow to be milked, not as a flower to cultivate and help blossom. The empire existed to provide the government with mineral wealth and raw materials to fuel strength and power projection for Spain’s many foreign wars and domestic crises. There was little thought given to investing the vast amounts of New World wealth into improving Spanish infrastructure or national wealth. There was even less thought given to improving the empire except where it would lead to immediate increases in wealth extracted. All trade had to flow to Spain. Trade with any other country by the empire directly was forbidden. So many slaves needed to be imported because it was deemed cheaper to work them to death and buy new ones rather than care for them as human beings. Disease was so rampant amongst everyone in the empire that life seemed cheap and transitory; therefore, it was important to get what one could now, and tomorrow could take care of itself.
From Hapsburg to Bourbon
In 1700, the last Hapsburg king of Spain, Charles II, died. He willed his crown to the French Prince Phillippe of Anjou, who became King Filipe V. When Filipe went to Spain, he brought with him several advisors whom, he hoped, would help him make the Spanish Empire more efficient. What they found was appalling. The Spanish government was run by a series of nearly ad hoc committees, rather than government ministries, which was common throughout Western Europe. Tax collection was inefficient and corrupt. Overall corruption was so rampant that it was an expected supplement to meager and irregular salaries. Piracy was rampant. The colonial military was corrupt, untrained, poorly supplied, and totally incapable of all but the most basic of military needs. The French who had followed Filipe V to Spain knew the imperial structure was bad, but they had no idea how bad it really was. Things had to change. Spain’s empire was a giant with feet of clay.
Filipe V was prevented from making many major changes due to the War of Spanish Succession and the need to secure his right to the throne. Once the war was done, he and his successors would embark on a series of reforms lasting several decades with the intent of strengthening the empire before it was too late. Later called the Bourbon reforms, this was a drive to improve infrastructure, agriculture, commerce, and shipping in Spain itself and in the empire. The inefficiencies of the past were to be left behind, and the French mercantilist economic principles of Jean-Baptiste Colbert would strengthen Spain and bring back her glory.
Mercantilism Now!
Mercantilism as an economic theory was all the rage in the 18th century. The idea that national wealth could best be preserved through having a positive balance of foreign trade seemed obvious at the time. Imports were to be discouraged through high tariffs and domestic manufacturing. Exports were encouraged by the state to increase the flow of foreign wealth into the country. Domestic industry was to be encouraged through state subsidies and direct intervention in the economy by the state. Thus, the whole nation would be wealthy. This is an oversimplification, but for our purposes, this is the gist of what these economists wanted.
The wealth of the nation, or economic prosperity in modern parlance, was not the goal of mercantilism, at least for the Bourbon Reformers. National wealth was only a means to an end. Strengthening the state and providing the economic basis for the projection of power, both politically and economically, was the end goal. The reformers of the Bourbon dynasty saw that the Spanish Empire had all the elements needed for massive economic prosperity and national strength. There was little coherence in policy and strategy. Their brand of economic philosophy would change that in their view. It was the rational thing to do.
Rationalizing Government
The rational thing to do. Rationalism was all the rage in France in the 18th century. From society and the structure of the state to individuals and human relationships, everything in life could be reordered based upon the principles of rational thought. This movement was part of the enlightenment. Although many of the enlightenment tenets regarding freedom and secularism did not reach Spain along with the Reformers, many of the ideas of rationalism were imported from France. This is partially why the Reformers were so appalled at the inefficiencies of the Spanish imperial structure. The belief that people respond to logical, rational principles meant that the vast wealth of Spanish America could be harnessed if the right ideas were implemented. The first step was a rationalization of the law.
Law in the Spanish Empire was a dizzying layer upon layer of laws passed by the Cortés, royal decrees, decrees of the Council of the Indies, and local decisions made by administrators over the centuries. Jean de Orry, an advisor brought by Filipe V from France, focused on streamlining the tax collection system to reduce corruption and increase revenues flowing into the treasury. The position of Intendant was created on the French model. Intendants were appointed for every province to have a direct representative of royal power. Cardinal Alberoni, Orry’s successor neutered the Council of the Indies to eliminate a rival power source and reduce that body’s corruption. Within Spain itself, the ancient internal divisions amongst Castile, Aragon, and other sub-regions were eliminated, thereby spreading a financial burden which previously had only fallen on Castile.
One area of primary importance was rationalizing trade. As good mercantilists, increasing the amount of legal trade was of the utmost importance. This meant, of course, eliminating illegal trade. Since regulating hundreds or thousands of small firms was difficult, granting large-scale, sweeping monopolies not only would help streamline regulation, but it would also give the powerful monopoly holders an enormous incentive help the government stamp out illegal trade and endemic piracy. These monopolies would, in time, grow into large corrupt organizations themselves, which would fuel a large amount of colonial dissatisfaction, but this would be in the future.
Military reform was also on the Reformer’s agenda. This would be one of their biggest failures. The military establishments in the colonies were embarrassments. Even in Europe, military service attracted only the most desperate. Few were willing to accept poor pay, brutal discipline, and the prospect of death unless there was no other choice. In the empire, where the lowest classes were tied to the land through slavery or the hacienda system, and other classes had economic opportunities, the talent pool to recruit from was shallow at best. Spanish-born officers sent to the Americas, called Peninsulares, were hostile and dismissive to those born in the New World. The Criollos, those of Spanish descent in the Americas resented the hostility of their social betters. Since Peninsulares made up the highest ranks of the military while Criollos were the junior officers, this was a mix for disaster. This racial tension led to another problem.
Racial Caste System
In Spanish America, race was a much different concept than it is in the 21st century. Within the empire, there was a mix of peoples. Native Americans were the original inhabitants. Thousands of tribes spread over thousands of miles each with their own language and culture. Their numbers were reduced dramatically by the introduction of European diseases after first contact. Population was further reduced by the heavy-handed attempts at enslavement. Throughout the empire, there were constant battles with the natives, with small scale raids common. Tribes from the outskirts of New Spain such as the Pueblo to the Araucanians in the southern Andes provided a source of trade and converts as well as allies against other tribes. Relations with the tribes was complex and difficult at the best of times.
With the failure of attempts to mass enslave the Native Americans, another labor source needed to be found. Sugar, the primary agricultural source of wealth, and mining are very labor intensive. There were not enough colonists to do the work, so the Spanish as well as the other colonial nations, began importing Africans to work the plantations and the mines. Slaves were captured along the coast of Africa from what were called factories or purchased from African tribes willing to work with the colonial powers. After being processed, they were packed aboard ship and sent to the New World in appalling conditions along what was later termed the Middle Passage. Since the cost of slaves was so low, it was in many cases cheaper to import more slaves than provide care to those already purchased. This exploitation of an entire people would have consequences up to the present day. Fears of slave rebellion would influence Spanish law and military policy. The monopoly on the slave trade, the asiento, was a major source of resentment by those who lived in Spanish America and was also a diplomatic chip the Spanish used in influencing foreign policy decisions. No one asked the slaves what their opinion was of the asiento.
Spanish attitudes toward racial mixing were not strict. Since most of the colonists who came to the New World were male, there was a shortage marriage partners for these men. Since nature will always find a way, very quickly a new racial group arose, called mestizos. Mestizos were multi-racial people descended from a mix of Spanish, Native American, and/or African parentage. Existing in a place above Natives and slaves, the Mestizos occupied a strange place in colonial society. They were free people in the legal sense of the term, but they faced a great deal of racial discrimination due to their mixed parentage.
Above the Mestizos were the Criollos. These were people who saw themselves as “pure” Spanish but were born in the Americas. Over time, these people came to accept many of the tenets of the enlightenment and believed that they should have the same rights and privileges as Spanish-born Peninsulares. Although legal restrictions on Criollos were few, the growing resentments of this class caused these few restrictions to be blown up into some of the major issues that would lead to the later revolutions.
At the top of the heap were the Peninsulares. They were Spanish-born and therefore saw themselves as the natural leaders of Spanish America. Usually they were wealthy landowners, military officers, or government officials. Many had no intention of making the New World their permanent home. They were in the Americas to make their mark or build their fortune, then retire back in Spain. The haughty attitudes and entitled place in society caused resentment among all the other classes.
Effects of the Reforms
The Bourbon Reforms were a mixed bag. The mainstream view that the reforms were a direct cause of the later revolutions. The reforms while good intentioned, had the effect of preventing the development of the colonies economically and politically for the benefit of Spain proper. The resentment the reforms engendered, together with the racial resentments against the Peninsulares, led to revolution. This ignores the other social and political events happening in Spanish America and the world as a whole.
By the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution had taken the principles of the Enlightenment and attempted to put them into action. Rhetoric about the freedom of peoples and the rights of man exploded out of France and arrived on the shores of the Spanish Empire. The American Revolution provided inspiration to many in the New World. It also stoked fears in the Spanish colonial authorities that the events of Saratoga and Yorktown could be repeated.
New ideas, wars, revolutions, and economic changes would all combine to make the Spanish colonial situation a volcano ready to explode. To understand fully why, it is important to look at the individual colonies. Next time, as a prelude to the Wars of Independence, we will take a tour of Spanish America and the four Viceroyalties that governed the empire. Each one had their own unique conditions, peoples, cultures, and reasons for discontent.
What do you think of Spanish America? Let us know below.
Now, read about Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan president who brought his country to military catastrophe in the War of the Triple Alliance here.
