The Temptations of Trade. Adrian Finucane

Britons’ engaging in this type of trade with Spain, to the positioning of British factors in Spanish American ports, and to the amount that engagement with this trade would cost the British government and private individuals alike. These objections indicate not only the fears that Britons had about the Spanish empire and its potential powers in the Old and New Worlds, but also the fears they had of their own abilities to spend themselves into debt, and to embarrass the nation by being unable to control British subjects’ conduct or contraband trade abroad. Significantly, Britons, particularly those in the colonies, leveled objections not to the trade in human beings, but rather to the potential damage that any kind of trade would do to the nation.

      The objections began while the War of the Spanish Succession was still raging. In a 1711 letter to the earl of Oxford, the future governor of Bermuda, John Pullen, warned that “if it ever comes to that length, that the South Sea Company shall have occasion to send their Servants to reside amongst the Spaniards in America, the utmost Care and Prudence must be employ’d in procuring able Men to send in the beginning, for if the Spaniards should have reason to entertain a despicable Opinion of them, it would be the work of an Age to retrieve it.” The close interaction that the asiento would facilitate between British subjects and individuals and officials in the Spanish empire would leave the British Empire particularly vulnerable to international embarrassments should their representatives fall short in performance or manner. Pullen had very little faith in the proposed British factors, and put forth two further examples of ways in which the nation might suffer in deciding to pursue this trade. First, the merchants would need to provide “exorbitant Bribes” to Spanish officers, “who are true sons of the Horse-Leech.” Second, the arrangement ensured little accountability, and was vulnerable to any dishonesty on the part of factors; the contract gave the company “a great Opportunity to your servants to abuse you,” charging with impunity larger amounts than were actually needed to carry on the trade.⁴⁰

      The people of Jamaica immediately resented the possibility of formalizing and monopolizing trade to the Spanish Americas, for a variety of reasons. Some had long been resistant to the idea of peaceful trade with the Spanish; Thomas Modyford, governor of Jamaica from 1664 to 1671, aggressively supported the large buccaneer population based on the island.⁴¹ These pirates, along with the guardacostas, employed by the Spanish to retaliate, made shipping to and from the island more dangerous, but did enrich those who seized cargo and specie from Spanish crews.⁴² Some continued to support the quasi-military seizure of Spanish goods, rather than direct trade.

      From another perspective, Jamaica’s merchants, many already engaged in a longstanding, albeit often illegal, trade with the Spanish colonies, expected that the South Sea Company would cut off an important source of profit for the island. Trade to the Spanish had long been significant to the island’s commerce. Commercial activity with Spanish territories constituted a considerable amount of Jamaica’s economic development in the late seventeenth century, even before the robust growth of agriculture. The traffic in slaves made up a lot of this trade; the Royal African Company seems to have sold large proportions of its imports of enslaved African laborers to the Spanish during the 1680s.⁴³ In an effort to limit French trade and aid English commerce, after 1704 the English government condoned trade from Jamaica to the Spanish Americas in wartime, provided they did not ship materials meant to support the Spanish war effort, though once the war ended this was no longer permitted due to the South Sea Company’s monopoly.⁴⁴ Despite the dangers of trading to the coast during the contract, ships from Jamaica continued to smuggle slaves into the Spanish coasts through peace and war, some colluding with company agents and some independently. Early in the contract, the Vera Cruz factory complained that a Jamaica sloop had landed on the coast with seventy-three African slaves on board, violating their monopoly.⁴⁵ Decades later, Captain Fayrer Hall explained that the South Sea Company’s activities had damaged the Jamaican merchants’ business.⁴⁶ Throughout the asiento period, antimonopolistic interests in Jamaica and the metropole continued to decry the limitations the contract placed on trade, considering the informal trade that had long flourished between the island and the Spanish colonies.⁴⁷

      At the beginning of the asiento trade, the vast majority of British objections focused on economic troubles. Some objected that engaging in this trade would be too expensive to justify the profits. An anonymous pamphlet by a Jamaica resident, published in London in 1714, advised the company to reduce its costs by cutting the number of factors to just two at each port, with the majority of the business and organization handled in Jamaica, where the company would set up a large factory in any case.⁴⁸ Jamaica’s William Wood warned in 1714 that the asiento could in no way be more profitable than the trade that was already being carried on—illegally—between Jamaica and Spanish America.⁴⁹ Given the commercial duties that the company would owe, the restrictions placed upon the trade by the Spanish crown, and the possibility for treachery on the part of Spanish officials, it would actually weaken the strategically valuable island of Jamaica and make it more vulnerable to capture by foreign powers, particularly the French.⁵⁰

      Further on in the asiento period, others objected to the South Sea trade because of the financial issues that it would eventually create. One aspect of the company that was particularly attractive for the British crown was that it took on and restructured a portion of the massive national debt that had accrued as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession. In order to reduce this debt, South Sea Company stock was both sold and exchanged for securities that had previously been issued by the government. The stock became incredibly popular, and rose astronomically in price through early 1720. As with all speculative crazes of this sort, the South Sea bubble eventually burst early in the decade, bankrupting many and turning much public opinion against the company.⁵¹

      Other celebrations and rejections of the treaty moved beyond the issue of economics, to the very ideology of empire. The early eighteenth-century British government was deeply divided over the benefits of this project. While the supporters of the Tory government rallied around the idea of expansion in trade and land made possible by the South Sea Company’s asiento, many Whig thinkers balked at the plan, privileging the added value of people and labor over territorial gains in building the empire. They preferred the Dutch model of extensive trade but minimal settlement, and rejected the idea of taking land by force. Rather than marveling at the mines they might control if only British forces could seize Potosí and Zacatecas, they feared that such riches would stifle their own empire’s productivity and create distinctively Spanish moral dissipation among the people.⁵² At the same time, the South Sea Company might be a particularly easy way to access some Spanish silver through trade, which both sides agreed would benefit the nation.⁵³ This conflict between a model of imperial expansion and national success based on land and one based on trade was not necessarily so dichotomous for some in Britain and particularly on the ground in the Americas; the agents of the South Sea Company would often end up taking the most pragmatic approach to profit, personal, and if convenient, national, rather than considering the ideals being argued in London. While some of those who lived in the West Indies would in later years champion the idea of expanding the British Empire into territories held at the time by the Spanish and even provide crucial strategic information about Spanish lands, those trading to the West Indies before the South Sea Company’s monopoly resisted these changes in policy, which would inevitably damage the legal and illegal trade they were already conducting in the region.⁵⁴

      Arguments for the trade largely focused on the opportunities it might present, rather than the guaranteed profits. Other European nations had considerable success in the Spanish American trade. One pamphleteer reminded readers of the French accomplishments in the area, which included ships “loaden with the Riches of America, but principally with Gold and Silver.”⁵⁵ Undertaking this trade themselves, the author urged, would allow Britain to enrich not only its merchants, but also its manufacturers and farmers. Given the possibilities, and the opportunity to seize this trade from their French rivals, the contract seemed a clear benefit to the nation at many levels.

      Among those engaged in the arguments surrounding the South Sea Company, Daniel Defoe wrote particularly passionately, and in addition to encouraging Harley in establishing the company, he acted as a prolific propagandist for the trade. He noted the advantages that commerce with the Spanish Americas provided