by Henry Kamen
Foreign participation was already important in this early phase of settlement. There was no possibility of mounting expeditions without a good dose of investment and a strong measure of risk, and the foreign financiers who had already appeared in Hispaniola were willing to stick their necks out. Their task was made easier by the government's policy of free trade in the New World. Charles V, endemically short of money, was only too glad to receive offers from his German financiers and in 1528 he made an agreement with the Welsers which allowed them to explore, develop and settle in Venezuela on certain conditions. The first colonists sponsored by the Welsers arrived early in 1529, and for the next sixteen years the company remained in full control of developments in the territory, exploiting the local population as slaves and exploring for wealth into the Orinoco valley.88 In the same period the emperor was considering an offer from the Fuggers to enjoy similar rights in Peru.
The goods shipped back to the Caribbean in exchange for gold were, as Ovando informed King Ferdinand in 1504, mostly controlled by Genoese and foreigners. After the initial period of gold production the settlers found that with cheap labour available they could also produce sugar, derived from canes brought in from Africa. As had happened in the Canary Islands, foreign capital played a crucial role. The sugar mills (ingenios or obrajes) in Hispaniola, financed mainly by Genoese,89 came to have profound implications for the New World. Many Genoese went to live in the New World in order to run their businesses directly. The financier Geronimo Grimaldi, who acted on behalf of his colleagues Centurione, Spinola, Doria and Cattaneo, lived in Hispaniola from 1508 to 1515 and directed his firm's business there. Later the Genoese extended their activities to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the mainland.90 Silesian miners emigrated to Hispaniola in the 1520s, and in 1525–6 the Welsers set up a factory on the island, with the financiers Georg Ehinger and Ambrosius Alfinger as their agents.91
Sugar production began in Hispaniola around 1515, and Ovando delivered the first boxes of sugar manufactured in the island to King Ferdinand on his deathbed. The development offered a way out for the foundering economy of the Spaniards in the Caribbean, mainly in Hispaniola and to some extent in Puerto Rico. The ingenios were responsible, however, as the Dominican friars on the island pointed out, for the destruction of the native population through overwork. From 1494 Columbus had begun the enslavement for labour purposes of the Arawaks of the island, with calamitous consequences. There had been at least three hundred thousand of them before the coming of the Spaniards; by 1548 the historian Oviedo doubted whether five hundred remained. This incalculable disaster prompted the first requests for import of substitute labour, namely of African slaves.
While the Spaniards were attempting to develop a viable economy in the Caribbean, a group of dissatisfied adventurers based in Cuba had in 1513 set out and made contact with the coast of Florida. Those who piloted the vessels began to learn how the currents and winds moved in the Caribbean, and how to arrange sailings in the straits and also towards Spain. Others, meanwhile, were pressing inland from the western coast of the Caribbean. Darien (or Santa Mariá la Antigua as the Spaniards at first called it) began in 1510 as a frontier settlement of about three hundred restless (and ruthless) adventurers, led from 1511 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who succeeded remarkably well in controlling the Spaniards as well as living in peace with the surrounding Indians. In the course of searching for a tribe that was reputed to be rich in gold, Balboa gathered enough information to petition the crown in 1513 for further help in the form of men and arms. When the crown refused to help, he set out from Darien on 1 September 1513 with a group of Spaniards and a large number of Indian helpers. The latter guided him through the difficult terrain of mountains, forest and broad rivers, heading always southwards. They never wanted for food, since the friendly native tribes, at each stage of the journey, supplied them with what they wanted. The overland crossing of the isthmus was, moreover, facilitated by the fact that at no stage did they meet with hostility from the peoples living in the area.92 On the morning of the 27th, Balboa with some of his group climbed a ridge and had his first glimpse of a vast sea to the south, of which he formally claimed possession for the crown. Two days later they reached the shores of a gulf that led out into the same sea. Balboa waded into the water and repeated the ceremony of possession. It is ironic that even while he was exulting in claiming that ocean for Spain, unknown to him the Portuguese were already navigating it and had made contact with the Spice Islands of Maluku. On his way back, northward through the gulf and then across the isthmus, Balboa concentrated his energies on the search for gold. During the march he ordered some chiefs to be tortured and murdered because they insisted that they had no gold. The historian Oviedo stated laconically that on the journey ‘the cruelties were not stated, but there were many’.93
In order to press forward with the search for riches on the south coast of the Caribbean, the crown in July 1513 nominated Pedrarias Dávila as governor of the area which then and later was referred to as Tierra Firme but which the order of appointment significantly renamed ‘Castilla de Oro’. The fifteen hundred men who sailed from Seville with Pedrarias were an important departure from previous immigrants. Zuazo subsequently reported to Charles V that ‘all or most of them had been in Italy with the Great Captain’. They were a hardened, ruthless lot; King Ferdinand himself warned Pedrarias that ‘they are accustomed to very great vices, so that you will have difficulties’.94 Possibly half the men died shortly after arriving in Darien, from illnesses contracted on the voyage and from inability to adapt to their new conditions. Serious difficulties soon arose in the new province of Castilla de Oro, not least among them the differences between Pedrarias and Balboa which led to the governor ordering the arrest and execution of the latter in January 1519.
The case of Pedrarias Dávila highlights one of the gravest problems in the early evolution of the empire: the inability of the crown to control events from a distance. By the time of King Ferdinand's death nothing had been done to remedy problems, even though it was in his reign that the Dominicans began their campaign of protest. The regency of Cardinal Cisneros was too short to be able to implement any changes. It was left to Charles V, the friend of Las Casas, to take matters in hand. However, for him as for his son Philip II the attraction of the wealth of the Indies took priority over all other considerations. The excesses and brutalities of the Spaniards in the Caribbean were very many and only too well known to contemporaries both in the Indies and in Spain. Tens of thousands of the natives of the New World perished in the course of a few years, as the strangers brought European ways and European civilization to them. It was the first stage of the contact between the continents of the Atlantic.
The year 1519, which began with the execution of Balboa, was responsible for two historic events that brought about a quantum leap in the development of Spain's world empire. In February eleven small vessels set sail from the western tip of Cuba, under the leadership of Hernando Cortés, and headed for the Yucatan peninsula. In September four ships under the command of the Portuguese sailor Magellan and under contract to the Castilian crown set out from Sanlucar in Spain, with the aim of entering by a southern route the ocean that Balboa had claimed. The year also marked the foundation on the Pacific of the city of Panama, a direct consequence of the expedition of Balboa, the first European to see the shimmering expanse of the new ocean, or ‘South Sea’ as it continued to be called for over two centuries more. Thereafter the expeditions in the New World were continuous, spreading out all over the penetrable territory; some had exploration as their objective, others had conquest, all without exception were looking for wealth and adventure. Those who lived to tell their story never ceased to wonder, like the chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo, at the enormous obstacles of geography and climate that they had encountered and overcome.
Throughout his reign the emperor suffered from a permanent inability to pay his bills. When he could not cover his costs in one kingdom, he sought money in anoth
er. ‘I can barely pay my costs here’, he wrote from Brussels in 1531, ‘without having to look for help from those realms’ of Castile.95 In the early years he relied heavily on Genoese financiers, who financed for example the victory at Pavia. ‘A few days previously’, according to a soldier in the Pavia campaign, ‘His Majesty sent a large amount of money to the Genoese merchants for them to use when dealing with the suppliers of the army.’96 Charles managed to get Castile to play a significant role in covering his costs, but government income, already pledged in part to pay the debts accumulated by Ferdinand and Isabella, was insufficient to meet the needs of international policy.
Fortunately the New World came to his rescue. Gold was the first great lure offered: Columbus, Cortés, Pizarro and every subsequent adventurer placed the search for gold at the head of his priorities. The Caribbean, where Columbus had seen natives eat off plates of gold, was the primary producer; the precious metal was in the early days panned from mountain streams. In the first two decades of the sixteenth century the Spaniards probably collected around fourteen tons of gold (14,118 kilos) from the Caribbean.97 The news of the discovery of gold in Peru led to further exploration, discovery and exploitation. Most of the metal went to Spain, where it excited astonishment. An official of the emperor's treasury wrote from Seville in 1534 that ‘the quantity of gold that arrives every day from the Indies and especially from Peru, is quite incredible; I think that if this torrent of gold lasts even ten years, this city will become the richest in the world’.98 The effects were quickly noticed in the royal treasury of Castile. ‘I am extremely pleased’, Charles V wrote from Italy in 1536, at a moment when war with France was imminent, ‘at the timely arrival of the gold from Peru and other parts, it amounts to nearly eight hundred thousand ducats, a great help for our present needs.’99 From the 1540s the first silver mines were discovered on the mainland, principally Zacatecas and Guanajuato in Mexico and Potosí in Peru. Their output, however, remained low until the development of the use of mercury in mid-century (see Chapter 7).
Charles used the precious metals, or the promise of their arrival, to set up credit for himself with the only bankers who had adequate international connections: those of Augsburg, Genoa and Antwerp.100 The bankers, in turn, set up or expanded their operations in Seville and the rest of Castile, in order to have direct access to their profit. This meant, inevitably, that a high proportion of the gold and silver from America became pledged to foreign bankers, often years in advance. Charles, obviously, used that part of the precious metal he was entitled to, the ‘fifth’ levied as a tax on all mine production in America. But from 1523, and more frequently from 1535, he also began to ‘borrow’ (that is, seize as involuntary loans) shipments that came for the Castilian merchants of Seville. The latter complained bitterly in 1536 that this effectively gave the advantage to foreign merchants: ‘they control all the money’.101
In fact, the foreigners controlled more than money. In order to pay off his debts to foreign bankers, the emperor gave them property rights to key sectors of the Castilian economy. German financiers were permitted to administer institutions and buy property, and were given control of the rich mercury mines at Almadén in southern Spain. The Cortes at Valladolid in 1548 protested that: ‘a consequence of Your Majesty's loans in Germany and Italy is that a great number of foreigners have come here. They are not satisfied just with their profits from banking, nor with obtaining property, bishoprics and estates, but are buying up all the wool, silk, iron, leather and other goods.’102 The foreign bankers’ hold over the emperor, and their clear dominance in international finance, could be seen by the size of their loans. During Charles's reign he made over five hundred contracts (known as asientos) with financiers. In total, he borrowed nearly twenty-nine million ducats from bankers in Western Europe. The Genoese lent 11.6 million and the Germans 10.3 million, accounting between them for three-quarters of all loans.103 Spanish capitalists were able to come forward with only fifteen per cent of the total, even though they had in theory the easiest access to the wealth of the New World.
The picture appears to be one of an empire oppressed and exploited by international finance, but this is not a helpful way to look at what was happening. The bankers literally sustained the existence of Charles's regime through their loans, and the emperor had to do no more than find the money to repay them. At one of the worst moments of his career, in 1552, when the troops of Maurice of Saxony trapped him at the Austrian city of Innsbruck and he was forced to flee through the winter snow to Villach, Charles was saved by his bankers and by American silver. In Villach Charles was able to agree the terms of a vital contract with his banker Anton Fugger, and even as they talked the ships were leaving Spain for Genoa, laden with silver newly arrived from America.104 When failures in the money supply happened, they put in peril the entire network of power. In 1555 Prince Philip, then at Brussels, sent the duke of Alba to Italy to take charge of military affairs. The duke was both grieved and angered to find that there was no money available to help him carry out his job. From April 1555 to May 1556 Spain sent no money at all to Italy, and in Genoa the bankers suspended business for lack of cash. In Naples the German troops in Spain's service had not been paid for months and were mutinying. Alba managed to find some money out of the taxes in Naples, but warned Philip of ‘what is owed to the armies, and the risks that threaten your states if they are not paid, and the cries and clamour of your subjects saying that they have not been paid’.105 An empire could not be run without money.
Ironically, in those months of distress in Germany and shortage of money in Spain the emperor reached out to extend his territories by absorbing England, where Mary Tudor had been proclaimed queen in July 1553 after the collapse of rebellions and plots against her succession. It was the masterstroke of his reign, with incalculable consequences for the future of Spain.
Many years before, Charles had been considered as a husband for Mary Tudor. Now, after consulting with Mary, he wrote to Prince Philip, widower of a recent marriage to Princess Maria of Portugal, asking whether he would care to marry the queen. The wedding of Philip and Mary, celebrated in Winchester in July 1553, followed the pattern of previous Spanish royal matches, such as that between Ferdinand and Isabella. There was to be no union of the realms involved (in this case, England and Spain), and indeed Philip in London took great care not to participate in any decisions of the royal council. Charles and his advisers saw the English alliance as vital, in military and commercial terms, to the defence of the Netherlands against French aggression. As always, the Burgundian inheritance was at the centre of his mind. ‘At all costs’, he wrote to his ambassador in England, the Franche-Comtois Simon Renard, ‘it is our desire that England and the Netherlands be paired off together in order to afford one another mutual aid against their enemies’.106 Charles had already decided over three years before to leave the Burgundian inheritance wholly in the hands of Philip. The addition of England to Philip's possessions meant that he was on his way to being the most powerful ruler in Western Europe.
The possibility kindled profound misgivings among other Europeans. The English themselves feared domination by Spain. Philip during his stay encountered the first signs of English distrust. The reasons were political, based on fear for the future rather than on anything the Spaniards had done, for there had always been good relations between the two peoples. A member of Philip's retinue complained that ‘we are in an excellent land, but among the worst people in the world. These English are very unfriendly to the Spanish nation.’ In London there were several incidents in the street, and Spaniards were frequently set upon and robbed. When the nobles complained, they were told ‘that it is in the interests of His Majesty's service to cover up all this’. As a person, Philip was accepted, but Spanish power in England was not. The Venetian ambassador commented that the prince was not only popular but also well loved, and would be more so if the Spaniards round him could be got rid of.
Once the marriage was achieved, the em
peror felt that he had completed the arrangements for an orderly transfer of power to members of his family. For several years now his problems of health had convinced him that he must give up his extensive responsibilities. Two years before, a confidential report sent to Philip from Brussels described the emperor's condition:
In the opinion of his doctors His Majesty cannot expect to live long, because of the great number of illnesses that afflict him, especially in winter and in times of great cold. He puts on a show of being in better health when he is in fact most lacking in health, since the gout attacks him and frequently racks all his limbs and joints and nerves… and the common cold affects him so much that he sometimes appears to be in his last straits, for when he has it he cannot speak nor when he speaks can he be heard… and his piles put him in such agony that he cannot move without great pain and tears. All these things, together with his very great mental sufferings, have completely altered the good humour and affability he used to have, and turned him into a melancholic… And on many occasions he weeps and sheds tears as copiously as if he were a child.
Aged only just over fifty years but racked by the pain of gout, he prepared his succession with the care that characterized everything he did. On 25 October 1555 in the great City Hall at Brussels, before a packed assembly that included the chief officials of the Netherlands, delegates to the Estates General, members of the Habsburg family, neighbouring princes and the knights of the Golden Fleece, the emperor expressed his decision to abdicate. He summarized his travels on behalf of his realms:
I have been nine times to Germany, six times to Spain, and seven to Italy; I have come here to Flanders ten times, and have been four times to France in war and peace, twice to England, and twice to Africa… without mentioning other lesser journeys. I have made eight voyages in the Mediterranean and three in the seas of Spain, and soon I shall make the fourth voyage when I return there to be buried.107