Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  The apotheosis of Juan and Ulloa was a classic example of the most developed form of the myth cultivated by Spaniards about their empire. Their participation in the French expedition was presented as evidence of the great achievements of Spanish science, and their research was exploited for frankly imperial purposes;79 but inconvenient information, as contained in the Confidential report, was quietly set aside. The official attitude of imperial pride, however, was curiously counterpoised by the tasks that the government shortly entrusted to their two scientific heroes. Juan was sent to England in 1748 to act as a spy in the dockyards and to recruit shipbuilders and sailors for Spain, while Ulloa was sent to France and the United Provinces the following year to carry out a similar mission. The practice of industrial espionage was by then so widely put to use in Europe as to be almost respectable. The United Provinces and England were the chief countries to which experts from all over Europe came, openly or surreptitiously, to gather information about industry and technology.80 Spain had always benefited from foreign technology, especially from the Netherlands, and had consistently since around the year 1600 collected information about Dutch techniques in finance and shipbuilding.81 The government now made available large sums of money for the purchase of the latest foreign warships, and the contracting of technicians from England, France and Holland.

  The policy was a clear recognition of Spain's inferiority in the competition for empire. The foreign contribution to the naval reforms was fundamental; without it little could have been achieved. Impressed by the achievements of the British navy, which had dictated the course of the War of Succession in the peninsula and continued to dominate the western Mediterranean during the century, the Spanish authorities made a special effort to import English naval artisans and imitate English achievements in shipping and navigation.82 The archival records give the names of around one hundred British workers who were contracted secretly by the Spanish government in the mid-eighteenth century,83 evidence that the enterprise was being taken seriously. Spain's inferiority, Jorge Juan explained in 1751 in a revealing report to the prime minister, the marquis de la Ensenada, was patent: its navy ‘has had no armaments, regulations, method or discipline’. But that did not mean that the situation should be accepted.

  It would be madness to propose that Your Majesty have land forces equal to those of France or sea forces equal to those of England, for Spain has neither the population nor the finances to meet such an outlay; but not to propose a bigger army or a decent navy would be to leave Spain subordinate to France by land and to England by sea.84

  One of the most crucial conflicts of European history, the Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763, known in North America as the ‘French and Indian War’, had a decisive impact on the distribution of Spain's territories outside Europe. The primary conflict was between Britain and France, not only for the system of alliances in Europe but also for their colonial interests in India and Canada. France began with successful campaigns in Europe but was then bested by superior British naval power, and effectively lost the initiative in both North America and India. In August 1761 Spain promised to enter the war on France's side before the following spring.85 In reality, the country entered the conflict a bit earlier, in January 1762. It was an unfortunate decision because the war ended with sweeping French losses. The British in North America drove the French back decisively, taking what remained of French Canada (and Quebec, which fell in 1759), and occupying Martinique in 1761. At the peace of Paris of 10 February 1763, France ceded Canada to the British, as well as a number of West Indian islands, but retained Martinique and Guadeloupe.

  The war also exposed the total vulnerability of Spain's possessions, as British forces moved in to occupy Havana and Manila, the two most vital ports in the Spanish imperial system. Havana, the central rendezvous for the New World fleets before they set out across the Atlantic, was protected by a supposedly impregnable fort, the only one that served as protection for all Spain's possessions in North America and the outer Caribbean. Its defences had been improved in the 1720s by Patiño, who sent out French and Italian engineers because he did not consider there were any Spanish engineers capable of doing the job.86 With a garrison of two thousand men, the fort was reasonably well equipped to resist attack. The British fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Pocock, made its rendezvous at Martinique in May 1762, and mustered twenty ships of the line, five frigates and around two hundred support vessels with eleven thousand troops.87 Their arrival off Havana on 6 June startled the Spanish officials, who did not know that a state of war existed, since the British had previously seized their mail ship. The complex layout of the bay made it impossible to carry out a direct attack, and the British were obliged to besiege the city for two months until 11 August, the date on which Havana surrendered. Two days later the Spaniards signed the terms of capitulation. Together with the fort, they handed over a squadron of twelve warships and around one hundred merchant vessels. But the British casualties were very high, virtually all from gastric disorder and an epidemic of yellow fever; the outbreaks accounted for 87 per cent of the 5,366 soldiers who died and 95 per cent of the 1,300 sailors who died.88 On hearing the news in London, Dr Johnson exclaimed, ‘May my country be never cursed with such another conquest!’

  In 1762 a British fleet of eight ships of the line, three frigates and two merchant vessels, under Admiral Cornish as naval commander and General Sir William Draper as head of the troops, left Madras with the specific aim of capturing Manila. The expedition was financed by the East India Company, which had convinced the government in London that the effort was worthwhile. One third of the 1,700 men under Draper consisted of British infantry, the rest were sepoys and (in Draper's own words) ‘such Banditti as were never assembled since the time of Spartacus’.89 The journey from India took eight weeks and the fleet arrived on 23 September in Manila Bay, where it proceeded to disembark just over a thousand men. To defend itself the city had around five hundred soldiers, recruited in Mexico, and an indeterminate number of local volunteers. Resistance was ineffectual, and Manila surrendered on 10 October, after skirmishes in which the attacking force suffered 26 dead and the besieged soldiers 178 dead and wounded. The surrender included ‘all the twenty or so provinces of the islands with their forts and citadels’; and a special condition was attached that the Spaniards should pay four million pesos for the costs incurred by the British.

  This last condition was the crucial one, for the East India Company had to cover the costs of the expedition, which amounted to nearly a quarter of a million pounds. In the event, they managed to put together barely one quarter of the sum, for the Spaniards refused to admit the validity of the ransom demand. The conquerors were sorely disappointed with what they had secured at so much expense. Expecting a rich prize, they found only a drab run-down colony with no resources of its own. General Draper commented: ‘It may appear wonderful that so many islands, so excellent in situation, should yield so little.’ Another Englishman observed the same year, that ‘the British public absurdly imagined that Manila must be a place of great wealth. They were seduced into a belief in this mischievous fantasy, by the millions of dollars sent annually from America.’90 The Philippines did not remain in enemy hands more than a short while, and were returned to Spain a year and ten months later in accordance with the Treaty of Paris. The fleet sailed out on 11 June 1764. British attempts at control had never in reality been effective, and their limited troops barely managed to patrol more than a portion of the 120 miles circumference of Manila Bay.

  Few regretted the return to Spanish rule more than the Filipinos did. The native population had rarely expressed its grievances against the colonial authority, preferring normally to vent its anger on the Sangleys. In the years 1660–1 one of the few major rebellions against Spaniards took place on Luzon, mainly in the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan. There were further agrarian disturbances in 1745 in the Tagalog provinces.91 When the British took control in 1762, the native population rejoiced tha
t there would be ‘no more king, priest or governor’.92 A resident of the city also noted in his diary that ‘the great number of Sangleys resident in the Parian and in the provinces sided with the English’.93 The British invasion provided the occasion for Diego Silang to emerge as the head of a Filipino movement for native autonomy. He set up his own alternative government in 1762 in the nearby town of Vigan, but was assassinated later in the year at the instance of local clergy. The most notable gain made by the British during their short stay was not the city, described by the triumphant General Draper as ‘one of the richest in the world’, but the famous Manila galleon, which had shortly before set sail for Mexico.94

  The Santísima Trinidad, the largest recorded galleon in the long history of the Manila run, with cargo worth three million pesos in her hold, was captured off the islands in October 1762. ‘She lay like a mountain in the water’, reported an admiring English observer, and in two hours' fierce resistance cost the British seventy-two killed to her own losses of twenty-eight men. But she had already been severely damaged by a tropical storm shortly after leaving Manila, and was forced to yield. The mighty galleon was taken back to Manila for refitting, and then to Madras. When it transpired that she had little future there, in 1764 she was taken back round the Cape to England, where she ended her days, captive but still tall and proud, as a tourist attraction in Plymouth harbour.95

  For Spain the most significant consequence of the Peace of Paris was an obligation to abandon all American territory east of the Mississippi. To sweeten the pill, France agreed to cede to Spain the colony of Louisiana, which Charles III and his ministers insisted they must have as a barrier against British expansionism. The Treaty accordingly arrived, with British approval, at a historic division of the French territories in North America. All the lands to the west of the Mississippi, down to and including the mouth of that river and the town of New Orleans, passed to Spain, which conserved for them the name of Louisiana. The preliminary act of cession of Louisiana was made at Fontainebleau on 3 November 1762, and confirmed at the final Peace in February 1763.96

  The lands to the east of the Mississippi were conceded to Great Britain, automatically giving the British unimpeded access to all the territory between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The Treaty also gave Britain possession of the whole of Florida, in exchange for returning Havana to Spain. The entire Spanish colony in St Augustine, some three thousand people, and the colony in Pensacola, some seven hundred, emigrated to Cuba and to Mexico respectively. Confident that they had the right to determine the ownership of distant lands that had barely been explored or settled by the white man, European diplomats achieved a revolutionary change in the political map. Britain was confirmed in possession of the territories of Grenada, Dominica, St Vincent and Tobago. In possession of Canada, half of what would be the United States, as well as the Florida peninsula, together with key islands in the Caribbean, Great Britain for the next generation dominated the northern half of the American continent.

  The new Spanish governor in the capital of Spanish Louisiana, New Orleans, arrived in March 1766. He was Antonio de Ulloa, who after his pioneering research days with Jorge Juan had become a colonial administrator and been governor in Peru. His immediate problem was trying to coexist with the resident French population, who did not emigrate at the change of masters and instead maintained their homes, culture and trading habits. He had strict instructions to respect existing French laws, and did so even to the extent of not raising the Spanish flag over the town. It proved impossible, however, to reconcile the Spanish trading system with the free trade that the French merchants had maintained. In 1768 the French traders provoked riots against Ulloa, taking as their theme the good wine of their home country. They ranged through the streets shouting ‘Vive le roi, vive le bon vin de Bordeaux’, protesting that they would never ‘subject themselves to drinking the wretched wine of Catalonia’.97 Ulloa was forced to abandon the city rapidly; since no seaworthy Spanish vessel was available, he was escorted to Cuba on a French ship. The Spaniards eventually asserted themselves in Louisiana, but never succeeded in altering the French character and language of the settlers.

  The North American empire remained thereafter a frail possession in Spanish hands. Louisiana was subsequently in 1801 returned to France, which two years later sold it to the United States for the sum of fifteen million dollars. Perhaps the most fragile part of what remained of Spanish North America was the Pacific coast and California, where, as we have seen, the threat of Russian expansion began to seem very real. An optimistic committee presided over by the viceroy in Mexico City in 1768 suggested that if adequate measures were taken to protect the northern Pacific, the result might ‘in a few years constitute a new empire equal to or better than this one of Mexico’.98 The proposal was the beginning of a new dream and a new frontier, that took the Spaniards north towards Monterey and up to Vancouver Island, where the Spanish flag was planted at Nootka Sound. It proved to be the last great challenge faced by a universal empire on which for over two centuries the sun had never ceased to shine and which now, appropriately, faced a reckoning in the lands of the setting sun.99

  11

  Conclusion: The Silence of Pizarro

  None of us understands the words they speak.

  Christopher Columbus, 1492

  One of the most genial commentators of the Europe of 1600 was Pierre de Bourdeille, lord of Brantôme, a French noble who had travelled around the Mediterranean, including Spain, and was willing to recognize the impressive achievements of Spaniards.

  They have conquered the Indies, East and West, a whole New World. They have beaten us and chased us out of Naples and Milan. They have passed to Flanders and to France itself, taken our towns and beaten us in battle. They have beaten the Germans, which no Roman emperor could do since Julius Caesar. They have crossed the seas and taken Africa. Through little groups of men in citadels, rocks and castles, they have given laws to the rulers of Italy and the estates of Flanders.

  But the achievement, as his own experience showed, was not exclusively Spanish. He had served under the Spanish, and taken part in the capture of the Peñón de Vélez in 1564. On retiring to the lands of the countryside abbey from which he derived his title, like other Renaissance gentlemen of France he put to paper his reflections on the great persons of his time. The elegant lords and ladies of Western Europe live on through his memorable pages, as he recalled the great Flemish, Italian, Castilian, German and even French commanders who established the power of Spain in Europe.

  The Spanish world empire described by Brantôme was evidently one of the greatest known to history. Yet it is no accident that some recent studies of global powers virtually ignore its existence.1 Its capacity as a naval force has been seriously called in question.2 Spanish power was never at any time based exclusively on its own resources or its own contribution, nor did Spain ever possess an ‘innovational advantage’3 that gave it the edge over other nations. The Castilians, like all peoples throughout history, were eager to affirm their own merits and prowess. Through enthusiasm, courage and perseverance they and other peoples of Spain took part in an extraordinary enterprise that pushed the nation to the forefront of world attention. But their successes were wholly dependent on the collaboration of others, and without it they were vulnerable.

  They were reluctant imperialists, disinclined to expand their territorial or cultural horizons. Almost from the beginning there were Castilians who suggested that the imperial role was not one that Spain should have taken on. The expeditions to the Canaries and North Africa were limited ones with no ambitious horizon in sight, and the Spanish presence in Naples arose out of dynastic interest rather than expansionism. Under King Ferdinand there were many fantasies about power, but neither the means nor the money to convert them into reality. Thereafter a series of small but, in the long run, earth-shaking events took place. A Genoese sailor announced in Barcelona that he had discovered China and Japan by sailing westward; a Flemish prin
ce with a fallen jaw arrived in Valladolid and was acclaimed as king, then left the peninsula hurriedly because a group of German princes wished to make him their emperor; and even before he left a Portuguese sea-captain set out from Cadiz with three ships and headed southwards across the Atlantic. What did all this activity on the part of all these foreigners really mean? The Castilian Comuneros in 1520 were among those, along with the emperor Montezuma in faraway Mexico at the same date, who did not understand what was going on and tried to call a halt to it. But the making of empire was a vast process that transcended the boundaries of Castile or the federation of the Mexicas. It was not the consequence of any deliberate will-to-power on the part of Spaniards, who were – to their great surprise – pushed into the role of empire-makers.

  Spain's power was created not by force of arms alone but by profound changes in the technology, biology, demography and economy of the territories drawn into the process. The small handfuls of Castilian adventurers who braved the tropical jungles with the desperate illusion that they could survive and become rich, became mere instruments in the hands of those who followed and laid the foundations of a more permanent enterprise. Their efforts were the catalyst that enabled other interests to contribute to the creation of empire. Without the help of allies, the Spaniards would have had neither the soldiers nor the ships nor the money to achieve what they did. In that sense, it is meaningless to imagine Spain alone as a great power, for its power was neither more nor less than the sum of the capacities of its collaborators. For a brief century, from 1660 when it cut free of the Vienna Habsburgs to about 1660 when England, France and the Dutch marshalled greater resources, Spain had the satisfaction of believing that it had reached the peak of success. When the period passed, Castilian writers (and subsequent historians) lamented that the empire was now in decline.