The Extension of the Spanish Empire and Dominion in the South Atlantic and Pacific
It is somewhat paradoxical that the empire, which since the times of Locke and Montesquieu had been described as a rigid mercantilist structure anchored to the past, not only maintained its outer limits but notably expanded them until 1824.
Well into the eighteenth century, the South Atlantic was Iberian and the Pacific was a Spanish lake, to use the expression adopted long ago by O. H. K. Spate. This was not by chance, or merely the continuation of what had come before. On the contrary, the viability of an empire of those dimensions depended on internal and external causes that merit explanation. Three will be discussed here. First, the empire was able to extend the bases for its sustenance to tribal peoples in marginal areas; such was the case in the tropical borders of the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada (present-day Colombia), and among the Mapuches (Araucanians) in present-day Chile and Argentina, the Comanches in northern Mexico and the southwest United States, and the Seminole and other American Indians in Spanish Florida and Louisiana in the early nineteenth century. In order to establish these negotiated or forced jurisdictions, the Spanish Bourbon bureaucracy expanded its powers, consolidating an empire based on sophisticated practices of ethnic distinction that arose just after the conquest itself.[2284] In this manner, the imperial frontier extended toward the Amazon jungle, Guarani areas previously occupied by Jesuit missionaries were “nationalized," and Spaniards also moved directly north and south. The chain of missions and forts in California is an example of the former. Some of those impulses even survived the breakdown of the Greater Empire, for instance in parts of Luzon and the Visayan Islands in the Philippines and in continental Africa and Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea.Second, contrary to the predictions of the wise writers of the Enlightenment, the Spanish Empire developed efficient and functional defense strategies.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the principal objective was to ensure control over transatlantic trade, minimizing the sort of destruction and piracy among rival nations that had emerged during the War of the Spanish Succession. These efforts included reducing the undesirable effects of the asiento de negros, whereby England's South Sea Company was permitted to traffic black slaves as one of the outcomes of the Utrecht Treaty (1713). The agreement inevitably led to smuggling on the American continent and to a weak Spanish presence on slave-trafficking routes. After 1762 the Crown undertook major defensive reforms, especially once the Seven Years' War was under way and the British seized Havana and Manila for a year. Fortifications were strengthened, the army was reorganized, and the new orientation allowed the Crown to raise militias. The free mixed-blood (or free colored) troops, in particular, were crucial in Spain's defense of the Caribbean, the site of greatest struggle among European rivals, but they also were used elsewhere.[2285] After the definitive collapse of the Continental wars in the early 1820s, Spanish enclaves in the Antilles and the Sea of China were protected by an effective combination of military force, internal repression, and protection of resident minority interests, be they Creole or peninsular. This was particularly true of the fierce campaign to defend chattel labor in the Antilles.[2286]The third reason for the great white whale's long life has to do with the failures of Spain's imperial rivals. This is another paradox. The Spanish empire, long depicted as an uneconomical and inefficient machine, and characterized by systematic violence against native populations and objectives that had nothing to do with freedom and trade, remained intact until the Napoleonic wars. This was due in part to circumstances arising from its economic features and its place in the international economy of the time.
Competition was thus relative; it was not only the Spaniards who were interested in stability. The late emergence of an export sector devoted to tropical agricultural products and raw materials (e.g., dyes and cotton) did not alter the essential nature of the empire. Right up to the end of Spanish sovereignty, European economies continued to send their products to Spain's principal Atlantic port, Cadiz, or directly to American consumers as contraband. Together, these reasons explain why the only losses to Spain were a few enclaves used as military bases (the Malvinas/Falklands) and other outposts used for contraband such as Jamaica, the Guayanas, Darien, Trinidad, Belize, and some frontier towns on the Brazilian border. At the same time, efforts such as that of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon in Cartagena de Indias in 1741, or Admiral George Anson's capture of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Covadonga two years later in the Pacific, were complete failures both economically and in terms of the capture of foreign territory. The threat posed by a permanent base in the form of the Australian penal colony materialized only after British imperial authorities had lost the Thirteen Colonies. Even then, the empire did not shrink until later. When this happened it was mainly as a result of treaties: the granting of Louisiana to France in 1802 and of Florida to the United States in 1819. In other words, the collapse of the Greater Empire was mainly due to the Napoleonic takeover of the peninsula and internal stress, rather than to external threats.
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