The Temptations of Trade. Adrian Finucane

dismiss him or them from our service.”¹⁰⁹ In 1723 the factory at Cuba had just such a case, and the court of directors instructed the other factors to relieve a Mr. Walsh of his duties, as he “is married to a native of that Island, and is a Roman Catholick himself.”¹¹⁰

      The instructions provided to the factors of the South Sea Company, and the dismay of the court of directors on discovering a Roman Catholic in their employ, reveal the simultaneous desire for positive relationships between the British and Spanish for trading purposes and the fear of contamination and blurring of identities that might occur in such close contact with the opposing empire. While interactions had long happened between British merchants and the residents of Spanish port cities such as Seville and later Cádiz, in the Americas this contact could be particularly damaging, as it occurred geographically far from the center of the empire and could lead to the transfer of critical knowledge about an empire’s resources and defenses to a potential future enemy. Factors could expect to interact with the Spanish, but the court of directors cautioned them not to become too close. The very proximity required to create long-term, profitable trade endangered both sides of the commerce; as individuals became closer, and trade relationships intensified, the opportunity for fractures in these relationships to disrupt international relations grew. This in turn endangered those individuals and interest groups most deeply involved in the interimperial trade.

      While the instructions sent to the South Sea Company’s factors said a great deal about the Spanish, and contained detailed explanations of how they were to proceed with the importation and trading of slaves as merchandise, they said almost nothing about the interaction that factors were to have with slaves as human individuals. These documents do not reflect on the shared experience of mastery common to the British and Spanish, which shaped the development of their empires. Despite this omission in the official correspondence, the constant presence of African slaves and their interactions with British and Spanish colonists at both the individual and imperial levels could not fail to influence the formation of Anglo-Spanish relationships and the situation in the West Indies. As slave populations grew in both empires, the threat of slave insurrection, together with smaller-scale and more individual acts of resistance, would repeatedly challenge European hegemony in the Americas. This, together with external troubles, would shake the British and Spanish empires throughout the course of the trade.

      Trouble Begins

      Very early during the asiento period, the South Sea Company encountered problems with the complexities of the logistics of a massive interimperial organization such as that authorized by the asiento. Finding and organizing factors to travel abroad took the Court of Directors a significant amount of time. Though the trade was scheduled to begin immediately in 1713, the Court sent factors to Panama and Cartagena only by late 1714.¹¹¹ Factors were not dispatched for Veracruz until months later.¹¹² Once they arrived in the New World, some encountered further problems with local officials. When the British factors arrived at Portobello, the Royal Hacienda ministers objected that, because the peace was not yet proclaimed in the area, the contract was not valid. Only the president of Panama’s insistence that the factors be allowed to enter and begin their business kept them from being stranded outside of Portobello until the arrival of a ship with royal orders.¹¹³ In April 1715 the Spanish king issued official commands that allowed the assigned factors to enter his kingdoms in order to conduct their business.¹¹⁴

      As these factors set out on their assignments, the first of many British ships sailed to bring supplies and slaves to their new bases of operation in Spanish American ports. The Bedford and the Elizabeth, British men of war on loan from the crown to the company, sailed in 1715 for Cartagena and Portobello, carrying both legal and excess goods. The Spanish king sent word not to hinder the ships in their business and to allow them to freely leave the ports, though he prohibited them from selling more than the treaty-allotted five to six hundred tons of merchandise.¹¹⁵ The annual permission ships did not depart as quickly, as problems within the company led to a delay of the first of these until late in 1716. This, at least, did not improve much as trade continued. That ship, the Royal Prince, was one of only seven annual permission ships to travel between Great Britain and the shores of Spanish America during the course of the asiento.¹¹⁶ This was only the beginning of the troubles Britain would face in implementing the contract, including both internal problems within the company and international conflicts that delayed ships and interrupted trade often during the asiento period.

      British traders, both those working for the South Sea Company and for private interests trading in the West Indies, immediately began overstepping the bounds of the trade outlined in the treaty. The asiento contract prohibited British ships from trading any goods to the Spanish Americas except in the case of the annual permission ship. The factors quickly found ways to circumvent these rules. Ships traveling to the ports of Spanish America with slaves would also bring flour and other goods, ostensibly as supplies for the factories, but in fact in such large quantities that they were actually intended for sale. The South Sea Company managed to supply the substantial flour market in Cartagena and elsewhere, to the detriment of merchants from inside the Spanish empire.¹¹⁷ In 1715, James Pym, a Cartagena factor, shipped illegal goods on the permission ship the Bedford on his own account, bribing local officials to allow him to land his cargo. While initially the Spanish government seized the majority of merchandise from the ship, noting that its weight far exceeded the five hundred tons allowed in the treaty, over a year later a Madrid court ruled in the company’s favor.¹¹⁸ Individual traders unaffiliated with the Company also continued to sail illegally to the Spanish coast.

      In order to guarantee adherence to the restrictions established in the asiento treaty, Spanish vessels began stopping British ships in the area, to search them and at times seize crews and merchandise, regardless of the actual contents of the ships. In addition, the Spanish king sent officers to the Americas that he hoped would be particularly harsh on contrabandists.¹¹⁹ As early as 1715 the governor of Jamaica, Archibald Hamilton, wrote to Secretary of State James Stanhope of the disheartening situation for Jamaican merchants, that “Many of our trading vessels have of late been attacked & taken by Spaniards, pretending to have commissions for guarding the coast, whereby our merchants are so discouraged that I look on our trade to Cartagena and Porto Bello to be now entirely over.”¹²⁰ Some confusion existed as to which of the Spanish ships were guardacostas authorized by the government and which were simply pirates claiming that name without any governmental permission. Only a few months after the first complaint, Hamilton was compelled to write again, alerting the secretary to the “frequent … robberys & hostilitys committed on the subjects of his Britanick Majesty … by Spanish Vessels said to have commissions for guarding their coasts.”¹²¹ The British government replied by authorizing Jamaican settlers to launch their own ships in order to capture the pirates. Shares of the vessels captured by these British ships or recaptured from the Spanish would be divided among the owners of the ship and those that captured it.¹²²

      The illegal detention and seizure of ships was not a Spanish project alone. The Spanish in the Caribbean complained of both the British ships authorized by the king to sail from Jamaica in order to recapture goods and ships taken by the Spanish, and the many unauthorized British vessels that continued to attack Spanish ships unprovoked long after the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht.¹²³ Even Hamilton, in his letter complaining about the depredations of the Spanish, conceded that “restitution ought to be made to the subjects of his Catholick Majesty, for their losses sustained by hostilities committed on them by the subjects of his Brittanick Majesty since the first suspension of arms.”¹²⁴ British ships could not continue to pursue unauthorized Spanish prizes if the peace and the valuable asiento treaty were to be maintained between the kings of Spain and Britain. Both British and Spanish empires were finding it difficult to curb the actions of subjects who were for so long accustomed to disliking and doing damage to those affiliated with the opposing empire.

      Those living in the area found the striking contrast between the legal peace and the situation on the ground (and on the water) in the West Indies quite evident. Colonel Peter Heywood of the British forces wrote to the governor of Havana in 1716, noting the gap between official policy and enactment. Both sides, he observed, acted unjustly and contrary to the orders of their respective crowns.