Spanish Empire

Spain was the center of one of the first Global Empires. During the 16th century and the next one, Spain established itself as a superpower with globe-spanning reach. Castille, along with Portugal, was in the vanguard of European global exploration and colonial expansion and the opening of trade routes across the oceans, with trade across the Atlantic between Spain and the Americas and across the Pacific between

The Bourbon Spanish Empire: Reform and Recovery (1713 – 1806)

Under the Treaties of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), the European powers decided what the fate of Spain would be, in terms of the continental balance of power. the new Bourbon king Philip V retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria; Sicily and parts of the Milanese to Savoy; and Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain. Thus the Empire decisively turned its back on European territories. Moreover, he granted the British the exclusive right to slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so-called asiento, as well as licensed voyages to ports in Spanish colonial dominions, openings, as Fernand Braudel, remarked for both licit and illicit smuggling (Brudel 1984 p 418).

Related Topics:
Treaties of Utrecht - April 11 - 1713 - Philip V - Spanish Netherlands - Sardinia - Sicily - Gibraltar - Minorca - Slave trading - Asiento - Fernand Braudel

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With a Bourbon monarch came a repertory of Bourbon mercantilist ideas based on a centralized monarchy, put into effect in America slowly at first but with increasing momentum during the century. The Spanish Bourbons broadest intentions were to break the power of the entrenched creole aristocracies, and, eventually, loosen the territorial control of the Society of Jesus too: the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767. In addition to the established consulados of Mexico City and Lima, firmly in the control of local landowners, a new rival consulado was set up at Vera Cruz.

Related Topics:
Creole - Society of Jesus - Jesuits were expelled - Mexico City - Lima - Vera Cruz

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Immediately Philip's government set up a ministry of the Navy and the Indies (1714) and created first a Honduras Company (1714), a Caracas Company (1728),—the only one destined to thrive— a Havana Company (1740). In 1717–1718 the structures for governing the Indies, the Consejo de Indias and the Casa dela contrataciòn that governed investments in the cumbersome escorted fleets were transferred from Seville to Cadiz, which became the one port for all Indies trading. Individual sailings at regular intervals were slow to displace the old habit of armed convoys, but by the 1760s there were regular packet ships plying the Atlantic between Cadiz Havana and Puerto Rico, and at longer intervals to the Rio de la Plata, where an additional viceroyalty was created in 1776. The contraband trade that was the lifeblood of the Habsburg empire declined in proportion to registered shipping (a shipping registry having been ewstablished in 1735).

Related Topics:
Honduras Company - Caracas Company - Havana Company - Consejo de Indias - Cadiz - Rio de la Plata - Viceroy

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Two upheavals registered unease within Spanish America and at the same time demonstrated the renewed resiliency of the reformed system: the Tupac Amaru uprising in Peru in 1780 and the rebellion of the communidades of Venezuela, both in part reactions to tighter, more efficient control.

Related Topics:
Tupac Amaru - Venezuela

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As a result, in the 18th century Spain was basically a client state of France, and hardly a superpower. Its vast empire in the Americas made it relevant, but it is difficult - even in light of Floridablanca's reforms - to say that it was anywhere near the ranks of Austria or Russia, let alone France or England. Spain failed to recover Gibraltar. However the 18th century was a century of prosperity for the overseas Spanish Empire as trade within grew steadily, particularly in the second half of the century, under the Bourbon reforms. Rapid shipping growth from the mid 1740s was disrupted by a rampantly successful British navy during the Seven Years War(1756-1763). A gradual recovery from the wars end in 1763 was again interrupted by British attacks during Spain's involvement in the American Revolutionary War(1779-1783). But with the last flota sailing in 1778, effectively bringing about free trade within the empire, shipping trade once again began growing, but this time at an extraordinary rate, expanding in size many times over in the 1780s. The ending of Cadiz's trade monopoly with America brought about a rebirth of Spanish manufactures. Most notable was the rapidly growing textile industry of Catalonia which by the mid-1780s saw the first signs of industrialisation with a surprisingly fast adoption of mechanically powered spinning machines, with locals being quick to make their own improvements, becoming the largest textile industry in the Mediterranean, and which saw the emergence of a small, but vibrant and polically active commercial class in Barcelona - though the scale of such industry was still tiny compared to what was occurring in Lancashire and the Midlands generally. One must not exagerate such scattered examples of local modernity, though they disprove the notion of economic stasis. Most of the improvement was in and around some major coastal cities and the major islands such as Cuba, with its plantations, and a renewed growth of precious metals mining in the Americas. On the other hand most of rural Spain and its empire, where the great bulk of the population lived, many in remote communities served by poor roads over often extremely rugged terrain, lived in backward conditions that were reinforced by intransigent age old customs. Agricultural productivity remained low despite efforts to introduce new techniques to an uninterested, exploited peasant and landless labouring class. Governments were inconsistent in their policies. Nevertheless a quickening tempo of life in the latter part of the century, however patchy, is discernible.

Related Topics:
Floridablanca - Seven Years War - American Revolutionary War - Flota - Lancashire - Midlands

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These modernizing economic and institutional reforms were to bear some fruit militarily when a British attempt to sieze the strategic city of Cartagena de Indias was defeated during the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1742), and though Spain lost territories to the emerging British superpower in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), it was to recover its losses and the British naval base in the Bahamas in its efforts along the Gulf Coast during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), thus playing a not insignificant role in hampering British efforts in recovering their rebellious colonies.

Related Topics:
Cartagena de Indias - War of Jenkins' Ear - Superpower - Seven Years War - American Revolutionary War

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The California mission planning was begun in 1769. The Nootka Convention (1791) resolved the dispute between Spain and Great Britain about the British settlement in Oregon to British Columbia. In 1791 the king of Spain gave Alessandro Malaspina an order to search for Northwest Passage.

Related Topics:
California mission - 1769 - Nootka Convention - 1791 - Alessandro Malaspina - Northwest Passage

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The Spanish empire had still not returned to first rate power status, but it had recovered considerably from the dark days at the beginning of the eighteenth century when it was totally at the mercy of other powers' political deals. The mainly peaceful century under the new monarchy had allowed it to rebuild and start the long process of modernizing its institutions and economy. The demographic decline of the seventeenth century had been reversed. It was now a strong middle ranking power with great power pretensions that could not be ignored. But time was to be against it. All was to be swept away by the tumult that was to overtake Europe at the turn of the century with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

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