The Temptations of Trade. Adrian Finucane

Company acquired the asiento contract from Spain, guaranteeing them a right to transport a predetermined number of enslaved African laborers into Spanish American territories for a thirty-year period and to bring a limited amount of goods to the annual Portobello trade fair. This contract brought with it a guarantee of residency in Spanish America for a small group of Britons, despite earlier restrictions on their travel. The opportunity for a degree of legal trade and residency in Spain’s territories also allowed the British to explore other avenues for profit, through expansion of their legal trade, contraband, and possible annexation of Spanish American land to the British Empire. The early, illegal explorations of men like Wafer convinced many among the British that moving into areas held by the Spanish would be both possible and profitable, and influenced the development of the British Empire for years to come.

      Wafer began his American adventures in Jamaica, through this was far from the first voyage he had made in the wider world. By the 1670s, when he arrived on the island, he had already traveled extensively in the South Seas and in Southeast Asia. In Jamaica, which England finally wrested from the Spanish in 1655, settlers like his brother, unnamed in Wafer’s account of his life, were in the process of transferring the lessons of the tiny but economically successful island of Barbados onto more plentiful fertile soil. Jamaica provided the growing English empire a key entry point into the still strong Spanish Americas through trade and piracy.⁷ As steward general of the island Cornelius Burroughs wrote only a few years after the English conquest of Jamaica, the major attractive traits of the island were that “it is a very flourishing Island, and lyes very opportunely to annoy the Spaniard, both upon the Maine, and also in his trade by Sea.”⁸ During and after the seizure of Jamaica, buccaneers enjoyed English approval, sometimes tacit and sometimes official, to harass the Spanish on surrounding islands and the mainland.⁹ Success did not depend only on the opportunities for trade and cultivation enjoyed by the English. Because English presence of most kinds in the area was banned by Spanish law, English gains depended also on the failure of the Spanish, in both legal enforcement and colonization, as well as the limitation of the extensive seventeenth-century French trade to the Spanish empire.

      After a short time in Jamaica, Wafer took to sea again, this time on what he described as a privateering vessel, to harass the settlements along the Spanish American coast. He provided little justification for becoming a buccaneer surgeon in his Voyage and Description, perhaps because of the shifting legality of the undertaking. Whatever his motivations, the decision brought him both pain and success. Wafer took advantage of the incomplete control of the Spanish empire over its claimed lands and waterways, traveling through the “Isthmus of America” and adjacent lands for much of the 1680s, collecting information about the area and constructing a “Secret Report” in order to inform English officials of the state of the Spanish empire.¹⁰ Wafer was not an official representative of England.¹¹ But as a buccaneer surgeon, he collected information that no English official could have through legal channels. Wafer traveled to the Spanish shores at a fortuitous time for the English. Their forces had recently sacked Portobello, and some of the English had made the trek across the Isthmus of Panama to attack the Spanish in their richest and usually unchallenged settlements along the Pacific Ocean.¹² Wafer’s own crossing was the source of both the information he collected in his book and a significant wound, which he suffered in a powder accident and which forced him to live among the native Kuna people for months while he healed.¹³

      During his time among the Kuna, Wafer reported that he developed friendly relationships in the area and learned about his surroundings. The local peoples had previously encountered Spanish settlers, and a number were enslaved. Because of these contacts, some spoke Spanish, which made communication with Wafer’s group possible. Wafer made a great deal in his writings of his success among these indigenous groups, bragging that the “Indians … in a manner ador’d me,” and even that their leader had insisted that Wafer promise to marry his daughter when she was of age. Wafer suggested that his integration into the native groups of the area was nearly complete, noting that upon reconnecting with the expedition’s English sloop after a period of months, he was barely recognized by his friends. Sitting among the Indians, “‘twas the better part of an Hour before one of the Crew, looking more narrowly upon me, cry’d out, Here’s our Doctor; and immediately they all congratulated my Arrival among them.”¹⁴ While it is impossible to determine the truth of Wafer’s claims about his time among the natives of the isthmus, his positioning of himself as an ally of these groups and of the Spanish as their tyrannical enslavers suggests to the reader that the native peoples would welcome an alternative European imperial group, and that they were in no way under the control of or in alliance with the Spanish. The way was then open for the English, if they wished to move into the area.

      Following his time among the natives, Wafer continued upon various buccaneers’ sloops for several years, visiting parts of the Americas and harassing Spanish ships. These Englishmen found that the Spanish had taken steps to discourage settlement by other European groups in the area. They culled the animals on several islands near their own settlements, particularly on the Pacific islands of Santa Maria and Juan Fernandez. On the latter island, Wafer reported, “the Spaniards had set Dogs ashore … to destroy the Goats there, that we might fail of Provision.”¹⁵ The local Spanish settlers were clearly aware of the danger posed by the possibility of English settlement near their vulnerable colonies.

      Perhaps tiring of the wanderer’s life, in 1688 Wafer arranged passage to Virginia, where he reported he “thought to settle.” Instead, he was imprisoned in the Jamestown jail, his goods were seized, and he was accused of piracy along with two accomplices. The men denied acting illegally, but eventually petitioned to be pardoned under the royal proclamation offering amnesty to former pirates. Though their goods remained in custody for significantly longer than they were, they were eventually released, and Wafer made his way to England in 1690.¹⁶

      In England, Wafer turned his attentions to encouraging the expansion of the English empire into the Spanish territories. He was in good company. While in the Caribbean, he had sailed with the famed circumnavigator William Dampier, whose Voyage Round the World brought news of Spanish wealth to English-speaking readers. During his travels, Dampier managed to consult people with extensive knowledge of the areas in which he sailed, including “Spanish Pilots, and Indians bred under the Spaniards.”¹⁷ Working with these informants, Dampier determined that there were many rivers and tributaries on the Isthmus of Panama that had not yet been navigated by the Spanish, suggesting that they might be open to claims by the English. His writings stressed that Spanish lands were desirable, necessary, and even pragmatically possible to take over. This sort of information was critical to the expanding English empire.

      In their books, both Wafer and Dampier described their travels through the Bay of Panama and detailed the flora, fauna, and trade of the area, as well as the local method of government. Dampier observed also that the city had been reconstructed with stronger buildings since it was burned by Sir Henry Morgan decades before. Providing English readers with this information, Dampier simultaneously suggested the gains that were to be reaped by controlling this area and warned of the difficulties that a military attack on the area would face. He made clear the attractive possibilities present in the area for foreign trade, citing the success of the French, who “at present make very great and profitable Voyages; and now that they find the sweet of it, they will be sure, if they can, to settle a firm and lasting Trade here.”¹⁸ Diplomacy leading to peaceful commerce could help the English against their French enemies at the same time that they gained access to Spanish lands. If the English could intervene and become the primary suppliers of European goods to the Spanish empire, this suggests, they might both deal a blow to French profits and enjoy their own rewards.

      If this opportunity did not by itself convince the English to move into the area, the mistreatment of their own subjects might do so. While Dampier appears to have had extensive contact with subjects of the Spanish empire during his time along the coasts, and this seems to have been for the most part friendly and productive for him, other Englishmen did not fare as well. Dampier brought aboard a man named William Wooders, for example, a sailor from Jamaica who was captured by the Spanish and lived as a prisoner in Mexico City for many months.¹⁹ Wooders, whose knowledge of the area and its waters kept Dampier’s