Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (27 page)

Compared with the Spaniards, the British state was slow in developing a coherent approach to the exploitation of American resources, and in seeking to impose its own regulatory control over the movements of transatlantic trade. The creation of the Casa de la Contratacion came only a decade after Columbus's return from his first voyage, while almost half a century elapsed between the founding of Jamestown and the first effective measures taken by the British crown to ensure that overseas trade was directly regulated by state power. Partly this was a reflection of the nature of the resources themselves. The early discovery of gold in the Spanish Caribbean introduced an urgency into the establishment of some form of state control which was not felt in a British Atlantic world that seemed to offer little more than fish, furs, timber and a few bales of tobacco. Partly, too, it was a reflection of the inability of the English crown under the Tudors and early Stuarts to develop a significant bureaucratic apparatus - something that would have been much more feasible if a regular supply of New World bullion had been flowing into its coffers. Private initiatives, reinforced by charters and monopoly grants, therefore became the order of the day in the development of England's overseas possessions. As the state grew stronger in the middle years of the seventeenth century, it could begin to challenge these monopolies, whereas the Seville monopoly, dependent on a complicated collusion of mutually reinforcing state and mercantile interests, proved impervious to reform.

Both imperial powers, however, were operating over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the same set of assumptions about the proper relationship of overseas settlements to the mother country. This was to be a relationship in which the interests of the settlements were ruthlessly subordinated to those of an imperial metropolis bent on identifying and developing in its transatlantic possessions those economic assets that most nearly complemented its needs. The supply of those assets would then be controlled and regulated in ways that would bring fiscal benefits to the state and maximize national power in a world of bitter international rivalries - rivalries that already, from the mid-sixteenth century, were extending to the Americas as the Atlantic was transformed into a European lake.

Certainly there might well be disagreements about which assets were most greatly to be prized. By the mid-seventeenth century silver was becoming more than a little tarnished. Observers noted how all the silver of America had failed to bring prosperity to Spain, although there were still bullionists, like George Gardyner, who saw the principal aim of English commerce as to bring as much silver and gold into the country as possible, while carrying as little as possible out. For him, `the trade of America is prejudicial, very dishonest, and highly dishonourable to our Nation.' 144 By 1651, however, such views were becoming more than a little eccentric, and overseas empire, even if it lacked gold and silver, was coming to be seen as an indispensable appendage to every self-respecting state. The problem, as perceived from the centre of empire, was how best to manage overseas possessions in such a way as to yield the maximum benefits to the mother country. The challenge of constructing an effective imperial framework had long exercised Spanish minds. In the age of Cromwell and the restored Stuarts it would also begin to exercise the minds of those who cherished the vision of an empowered British state.

On 13 May 1625, following the dissolution of the Virginia Company in the previous year and the imposition of direct royal rule on the struggling colony, Charles I issued a proclamation stating that Virginia, the Somers Islands and New England formed of right a part of `Our Royall Empire, descended upon Us and undoubtedly belonging and pertaining unto Us'. `Our full resolution', the proclamation continued, `is to the end that there may be one uniforme course of Government, in, and through, our whole Monarchic. ..'i

`Our Royall Empire' . . . These were high-sounding words, with a portentous, if somewhat ambiguous, ancestry. In 1533 Henry VIII had proclaimed the Realm of England to be an `Empire', a term which seems to have been intended as an assertion not only of national sovereignty but also of claims to territorial authority over England's neighbours, most immediately the Irish and the Scots.2 The first known use of the term `British Empire' dates from 1572, and evoked a historic empire of the British Isles lost in the mists of antiquity; but it was a notion that could be expanded without excessive difficulty to embrace overseas settlements in America.3 When Charles I spoke of `Our Royall Empire' he would seem to have had in mind his own benign government over an empire of British communities, consisting primarily of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, Ireland and the principality of Wales, but now stretching across the Atlantic to include the new American plantations. Between them these constituted `our whole Monarchic', which he envisaged as being ruled by `one uniforme course of Government'.

This was more a matter of aspiration than of fact. Like Habsburg Spain, Great Britain, as united under the rule of James VI and I, was a composite monarchy. In common with its continental counterparts the British composite monarchy of the early Stuarts - `our whole Monarchic' - consisted of different realms and territories with their own distinctive traditions and forms of government, although subject to one and the same monarch. But an overseas settlement governed not by the crown but by a chartered company, even if its charter had been granted by the crown, was an anomaly among such territories; and for a monarch who cherished the vision of `one uniforme course of government' and had a passion for tidying up loose ends, the subjection of Virginia to direct royal rule in the year before his accession no doubt represented a source of considerable satisfaction. Yet although Charles's assertion of a direct interest in overseas settlements clearly showed that he regarded them as something more than mere commercial ventures, his reign did not see much progress in the matter of bringing the American territories under `one uniforme course of government'. The crown did, however, insist that investors and potential colonizers must first secure royal authorization for their projects, and made clear its intention to maintain a general oversight over their activities, which, if properly regulated, could add substantially to national power and prosperity.

While the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 suggested that, in spite of its failure in Virginia, the chartered company might still have an American future, the trend was towards the establishment not of royal, but proprietary, governments - a system under which land grants and rights of jurisdiction were made to well-connected patron proprietors who possessed privileged access to the monarch and were well placed to mobilize capital and potential settlers. Barbados became a proprietary colony in 1629 as one of a number of West Indies islands that fell within the patent of the Earl of Carlisle,' while George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was granted the proprietorship of the proposed new settlement of Maryland, with a royal charter being issued to his son, Cecilius Calvert, in 1632, conferring on him powers of government similar to those traditionally exercised by the prince bishops of Durham. With almost regal powers vested in the proprietors, the medieval model of palatinates in the marchlands bordering Scotland and Wales seemed at first sight a promising model for the frontier societies springing up in British America.' Experience, however, was soon to suggest otherwise.

With the British colonizing enterprise still at an experimental stage, and little prospect of rapid returns from investments, it is not surprising that colonial ventures under the early Stuarts should have assumed a variety of forms, resulting in a patchwork of different styles of government and jurisdiction. Although a Commission for Regulating Plantations was set up under the chairmanship of Archbishop Laud in 1634,' the crown was not strong enough, and the colonial economies themselves not developed enough, to allow the imposition of any significant degree of uniformity, or even of central direction. Survival was the first priority, and it was only in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, as the colonies took firm root and the Britain of the Commonwealth and the Restoration established itself as a major maritime and commercial power among European states, that it became possible to think in practical terms of developing a genuinely imperial policy and a more systematic framework for the government of overseas empire. Significantly, it was in this period that the terms `the British [or English] Empire in America' or `o f America' came into use. The more general term `British Empire', used to designate a unitary political body of England, Ireland, Scotland and the colonies, does not seem to have made an appearance before the second quarter of the eighteenth century, following belatedly in the wake of the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. Even then, however, the term was slow to make its way into print. Before 1763 it appeared in only sixteen titles, with a further 108 added between then and 1800. `Colonies' and `plantations' remained overwhelmingly the terms of first choice.'

The relatively slow and haphazard British moves towards the imposition of empire stood in marked contrast to the speed with which Spain's American territories were formally incorporated within an effective imperial framework. Again, however, the terminology proved ambiguous. When their monarch was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, under the name of Charles V, the Castilians made it clear that for them he was, and remained, primarily King Charles I of Castile.' Castile had no intention of being submerged within a universal empire, a concept towards which it was traditionally hostile. Its king, however, was now not only the Emperor, but also the ruler of a vast composite monarchy, of which Castile was one member, although increasingly Primus inter pares, in a complex of kingdoms and territories that included the Crown of Aragon, the Netherlands and Spain's Italian possessions. On Charles's abdication in 1556, his son Philip II of Spain was left with the bulk of his composite monarchy, but not the imperial title, which went to Charles's brother Ferdinand.

Eventually a name would emerge for the collectivity of lands owing allegiance to Philip and his descendants - the monarquia espanola, the Spanish Monarchy. But along the way various suggestions were made to endow Philip with a title which would give him clear precedence over his closest European competitor, the King of France. In 1564, for instance, he received suggestions that he should style himself Emperor of the Indies, or of the New World.1° This was in line with the argument originally put forward by Hernan Cortes that Charles could legitimately style himself `emperor' of New Spain1' - an argument which he ignored, probably on the grounds that Christendom traditionally knew only one Emperor, the titular head of the Holy Roman Empire. In rejecting the new suggestion, Philip was presumably moved by the same considerations as his father, and especially by the desire not to give unnecessary offence to the Austrian branch of his family. But as early as 1527 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo had written of `this occidental empire of these Indies''12 and Philip's seventeenth-century successors on the Spanish throne would be dignified in various publications with the title of `Emperor of the Indies' or `Emperor of America'. Neither the title, however, nor the term `empire of the Indies' ever quite attained official status during the two centuries of Spanish Habsburg rule.13

While not formally constituting an empire, the transatlantic territories of Spanish settlement were early endowed with their own distinctive juridical status within the Spanish composite monarchy. Nominally, this monarchy consisted of realms and dominions of two types, those acquired by inheritance and dynastic union, and those acquired by conquest. The first type, which were joined in partnership on an equal footing (aeque principaliter in the juridical terminology), would continue to be ruled in accordance with the laws and customs which prevailed at the moment of union. The second, as conquered territories, became subject to the laws of the conqueror. This, at least, was the theory, although in practice even kingdoms like Naples and Navarre which could be classified as 'conquered', tended to retain in large measure their customary forms of government.14

The Indies were indisputably conquered territory, and Alexander VI, in his bull of 1493, specifically stated that they were henceforth to be `united with, and incorporated into, the crown of Castile and Leon'.15 Faced with the options of maintaining the newly acquired transatlantic possessions - still only a few islands - as a separate entity or incorporating them into one or other of the crowns of the recently united Castile and Aragon, Ferdinand and Isabella chose the second option. There is no indication that they ever considered incorporating them into the crown of a now united Spain, of which they were joint monarchs. Their further decision to incorporate the Indies into the Crown of Castile rather than that of Aragon had an obvious logic. Andalusia, from which Columbus's expedition had set sail, formed part of the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and the recently reconquered kingdom of Granada had been incorporated into the Castilian crown. So, too, had the Canary Islands. Any further conquests among the islands of the Atlantic could therefore naturally be conceived of as an extension of Castilian and Andalusian space.

The papal bull of 1493 was addressed to both Ferdinand and Isabella, as joint rulers. On her death in 1504 Isabella bequeathed to her husband the lifetime usufruct of half the crown's revenues from the Indies and certain other dues, on condition that on his death all such revenues should revert to the heirs and successors of the couple on the throne of Castile and Leon. Ferdinand duly complied with this condition in the will drawn up before his death in 1516. Full rights over the Indies then devolved upon their daughter Juana, as Queen of Castile, and - in view of her mental incapacity - on her son Charles, the future emperor.16 The juridical status of the new transatlantic possessions was spelt out in a decree issued by Charles V in Barcelona on 14 September 1519, which began: 'By donation of the Holy Apostolic See and other just and legitimate titles [a clear attempt to avoid exclusive dependence on papal donation as the legitimation of the royal title, by evoking claims based on conquest or first discovery], we are Lord (Senor) of the West Indies, Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, both discovered and to be discovered, and they are incorporated into our Royal Crown of Castile.' The decree went on to state that the union with the Castilian crown was to be perpetual, and to prohibit any alienation or division of the territories in favour of another party.17