Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830
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Map 6. British America, 1763.
Based on The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. XIV, Atlas (1970), pp. 197 and 198; Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country. A Native History of Early America (2001), p. 212.
By establishing British naval superiority in the Atlantic, and making North America the principal focus of Britain's military effort, Pitt was able to turn the war around. During the course of 1758 General Amherst captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, commanding the mouth of the St Lawrence,' and AngloAmerican forces took and destroyed the strategically commanding Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio. The year 1759 was to be the annus mirabilis of British arms. A naval force in the West Indies seized the immensely profitable sugar island of Guadeloupe; a campaign fought with the help of the Iroquois, who realized that the time had come to switch their support to the English, captured the French forts in the Lake Ontario region; and Quebec capitulated to the troops of General Wolfe. When the last effective French Atlantic squadron was defeated two months later at Quiberon Bay, the chances of French recovery in North America were gone, and with the surrender of Montreal in the summer of 1760 the conquest of Canada was complete. The young George III, ascending the British throne in October of that year, had entered into a rich and vastly expanded imperial inheritance. On both sides of the Atlantic his triumphant peoples could celebrate an unprecedented succession of victories around the world; and there were more to come, both in India and America, where the remaining islands of the French West Indies, including Martinique, fell to British attacks in 1761-2.6
When Charles III succeeded his half-brother Ferdinand VI on the Spanish throne in 1759, the year before the accession of George III, it was already obvious that the balance of global power had tilted decisively in favour of Great Britain. Although courted by both sides, Spain had remained neutral during the opening years of the Anglo-French conflict, but the run of British victories was cause for growing concern to Madrid, and in 1761 the French and Spanish Bourbons renewed their Family Compact. Although this was nominally a defensive alliance, the British government got wind of a secret convention promising Spanish intervention in the conflict after the safe arrival of the treasure fleet, and in January 1762 Britain pre-emptively declared war on Spain.7
Spain's ill-judged intervention was to prove a disaster. In a pair of audacious military and naval operations that testified to the new global dimensions of eighteenth-century warfare, a British expeditionary force sailing from Portsmouth, and joined in the West Indies by regular and provincial troops from North America, besieged and took Havana, the pearl of the Antilles, while another expeditionary force, despatched from Madras to the Philippines, seized Manila, the trading entrepot where Asia and the viceroyalty of New Spain touched hands.'
The almost simultaneous fall of these two port cities - one the key to the Gulf of Mexico and the other to the trans-Pacific trade - was a devastating blow to Spanish prestige and morale. No peace settlement would be possible without the return of Havana to Spain, but the security of Florida and central America was now endangered, and the French minister, Choiseul, was keen for negotiations to begin. Although Britain had achieved a crushing naval superiority, its finances were stretched, and Choiseul found a war-weary British government willing to respond. The Treaty of Paris, which came into effect in February 1763, involved a complex series of territorial exchanges and adjustments that, while recognizing the extent of the British victory, would, it was hoped, give reasonable satisfaction to all three powers involved. Britain retained Canada but restored Guadeloupe and Martinique to France; Spain, in exchange for the return of Cuba, ceded Florida - the entire region east of the Mississippi - to Britain, abandoned its claims to the Newfoundland fisheries, and made concessions on logwood cutting along the central American coast; and the French, to sweeten the pill for their Spanish allies, transferred to Spain their colony of Louisiana, which they themselves were no longer in a position to defend. With France now effectively expelled from North America, Britain and Spain were left to face each other across thinly colonized border regions and the vast expanses of the Indian interior.9
For both these imperial powers, the war itself had exposed major structural weaknesses, which the acquisition of new territories under the terms of the peace settlement would only compound. In London and Madrid alike, reform had become the order of the day. Britain might be basking in the euphoria of victory, but, as ministers in London were painfully aware, its power was now so great that it could only be a question of time before France and Spain again joined forces to challenge its supremacy. How long that time would be depended on the speed with which Charles III's secretaries of state could implement a programme of fiscal and commercial reforms that had been the subject of constant discussion in official circles, and which the government of Ferdinand VI had taken the first steps to introducing in the 1750s. The failure of the defending forces at Havana and Manila brought a new urgency to their task. `The secretaries', it was reported, `... are working like dogs. They are doing more in a week than they previously did in six months."° The long siesta was drawing to a close.
The most pressing problem for both the British and Spanish governments was the improvement of measures for imperial defence. For the victors as for the vanquished, the strains and stresses of war had thrown the inadequacies of the existing system into sharp relief. The central issue for both London and Madrid was how to achieve a fair distribution of defence costs and obligations between the metropolis and the overseas territories in ways that would produce the most effective results. Both empires had traditionally relied heavily on colonial militias for the protection of their American possessions against either Indian or European attack, but as frontiers expanded during the first half of the eighteenth century, and European rivalries on the American continent intensified, the drawbacks of the militia system became glaringly apparent."
The Spanish authorities already made use of regular or veteran troops to man the expanding network of presidios or frontier garrisons, finally numbering 22, along the vast northern frontier of the viceroyalty of New Spain. They also turned to regulars for the protection of the vital harbour of Vera Cruz on the coast of Mexico, raising an infantry battalion in 1740 to reinforce its defences. Over the middle decades of the eighteenth century in the viceroyalty of New Spain, therefore, a small number of regular troops - perhaps 2,600 in all, and widely dispersed on garrison duty - came to supplement the urban and provincial militias on which the viceroyalty's defence had traditionally depended. In spite of an attempt at reform in the 1730s, these militias, which were open to all classes except for Indians, and included companies of pardos (all or part black) '12 were neither organized nor disciplined, and could offer little effective resistance in the event of attack.13 The story was similar in other parts of Spanish America. It was true that over vast areas of the interior of the continent, far removed from the dangers posed by hostile Indians or European rivals, there was little cause for concern. The disasters of 1762, however, exposed the hollowness of a defence system ill prepared either for serious frontier warfare or for amphibious attack.
In the British colonies, with their long frontiers bordering on potentially hostile French, Spanish or Indian territory, and their own growing populations in expansionist mode, the militias were more likely to be put to the test than their Spanish American counterparts. By the eighteenth century, however, their military effectiveness had taken second place to social respectability. Not only Indians, as in New Spain, but also blacks and mulattoes were excluded from the mainland militia companies, and the citizens who manned them were naturally reluctant to commit themselves to the lengthy periods of service demanded by a frontier war that grew dramatically in scale in the 1740s. As a result, the militias had increasingly to be supplemented by volunteer units, drawn from among the poorer whites, and unwillingly paid for by colonial assemblies which had a visceral dislike of voting taxes.14
Although the colonies made an intensive effort in th
e 1740s to get their militias and volunteer units out on campaign, their military record was mixed, and looked even less satisfactory when subjected to the cold critical scrutiny of British professional soldiers and government officials. Where the viceroys of New Spain and Peru, although with limited financial resources at their disposal, could make, in their capacity as captains-general, such provisions for defence as they considered necessary, the thirteen governors of the mainland colonies of British North America had the difficult preliminary task of negotiating with assemblies that were all too likely to be truculent. The Board of Trade was growing increasingly concerned that Britain's American empire was in no position to repulse a sustained onslaught from New France. Provincial politicking and the ineptitude of military amateurs were putting Britain's valuable North American empire at risk. In deciding in the 1750s, therefore, to commit regular troops to the defence of its transatlantic possessions the British government embarked on a major change of policy. By the end of the decade twenty regiments from the home country were to be stationed in America."
In spite of the growing British commitment to the defence of North America, there was a not unreasonable expectation that the king's American subjects should do more to defend themselves. This involved a much greater degree of mutual co-operation than they usually managed to achieve. While in the northern colonies the danger from the French and the Indians had fostered a tradition of mutual assistance in emergencies, the intensity of inter-colonial jealousies and rivalries made it difficult, if not impossible, for all thirteen colonies to act in unison. Even before the formal outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1756, however, the urgency of the need for common defence measures was becoming apparent to observers on both sides of the Atlantic. In June 1754 the Board of Trade was informed that the king thought it highly expedient that `a plan for a general concert be entered into by the colonies for their mutual and common defence', and ordered the Board to prepare such a plan.16 In America itself, Benjamin Franklin, who had become the eager apostle of a great British empire in America, drafted a `Plan of Union' for submission to a congress convened in Albany in 1754 on the instructions of the Board of Trade for the co-ordination of the Indian policies of the different colonies. Franklin's plan was ambitious - too ambitious for colonies historically jealous of their own rights and traditions, and deeply suspicious of any scheme involving the surrender of some of the most cherished of those rights to a `Grand Council' of the colonies, meeting annually and empowered not only to negotiate on their behalf with the Indians, but also to levy taxes and raise troops for colonial defence. When the plan was brought before the colonial legislatures, most of them rejected it out of hand, and some did not even consider it.'7 The idea of unity was not one that came instinctively to societies born and bred in diversity.
Exasperation in London went hand in hand with relief at the inability of increasingly prosperous and independent-minded colonies to join together in a common endeavour that might conceivably be one day directed against the mother country itself. At present, the very danger posed by the French and the Indians was an inducement for them to stay in line. But at the same time the inability of the colonists to set aside their differences in the face of this danger persuaded the Duke of Newcastle of the need for more direct and consistent intervention from London. Already he had decided to appoint a commander-inchief for North America, and this was to be followed by the appointment of two superintendents for Indian affairs, for the northern and southern colonies respectively, to bring some order and uniformity to the anarchic American scene.18 The failure of the Albany congress was confirmation, if any were still needed, that colonial defence was too serious a matter to be left to mere colonials.
First-hand experience during the course of the war did not enhance the admiration of British officials and military commanders for the attitude and behaviour of these provincial Americans. `The delays we meet with in carrying on the Service, from every parts [sic] of this Country, are immense', wrote the commander-in-chief, the Earl of Loudon, in August 1756. `They have assumed to themselves, what they call Rights and Priviledges, totally unknown in the Mother Country, and [these] are made use of, for no purpose, but to screen them, from giving any Aid, of any sort, for carrying on, the Service, and refusing us Quarters.'19
Collaboration would improve considerably as Pitt took over the direction of the war and introduced a system of reimbursement for the military expenses of the colonies. But the haggling and procrastination of the colonial assemblies, and the indiscipline of provincial troops who had little use or respect for the rigidities of European military professionalism and hierarchies of rank, gave rise to constant complaint. The exasperation of the British authorities was further compounded by the systematic disregard shown by colonial merchants for the regulations prohibiting trade in Dutch, French and French-Caribbean commodi- ties.20 `It is not easy to imagine', wrote Governor Clinton of New York in 1752, ,to what an enormous hight [sic] this transgression of the Laws of Trade goes in North America. 121 The inhabitants of the British colonies displayed a positively Spanish American enthusiasm for the smuggling of enemy goods.
The conquest of Canada added further complications to the logistical and practical problems of defending the British empire of America. A vast new area of territory had been added to the king's dominions, and more would be added with the transfer of Spanish Florida to British rule by the peace settlement of 1763. The French threat might for the moment have been eliminated, but France would certainly be seeking revenge. The Spain of Charles III, too, was a far from friendly power, and the Indian nations along the borderlands were a continuing preoccupation. By the later stages of the war 32 regiments containing over 30,000 British regular soldiers were serving in the Americas, at enormous expense to the British tax-payer, who was paying 26 shillings a head for imperial defence, as against a shilling a head paid by the colonists.22 If some of these regiments were to remain on American soil after the return of peace, it would be necessary to devise ways of financing them.
George III, guided by the Earl of Bute and imbued with all the enthusiasm of a novice king, took a direct personal interest in the question. By the end of 1762 he had reached the conclusion that a large British army would have to remain in the colonies. His ministers endorsed what they called `his majesty's plan', and prepared to present it to the House of Commons. Under the plan, as outlined to the House in March 1763, 21 battalions, totalling some 10,000 men, were to be permanently stationed in North America in order to maintain authority over the Indians of Canada, `not familiaris'd to civil government', as well as over `90 thousand Canadians'. The American colonists were to assist with the upkeep of these troops, although the method and quantity of their contribution was, for the time being, left open.23 When the great Indian rebellion, led by the Ottawa war leader, Pontiac, broke out in the spring of 1763, and one after another of the British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio valley fell to Indian attack, the wisdom of `his majesty's plan' could hardly be contested.
While George III and his ministers were grappling with the consequences of victory, Charles III and his ministers were grappling with the implications of defeat. The naval construction programme undertaken by his predecessor had given Charles III a relatively strong fleet, and his government, dominated at this early stage of the reign by two Italians, the marquises of Esquilache and Grimaldi, pressed ahead with the shipbuilding programme on both sides of the Atlantic, turning to the French for technical expertise.24 But the most urgent task facing the administration was a radical overhaul of the whole system for defence of the Spanish Indies. A secret junta, consisting of Grimaldi, Esquilache and the secretary for the Indies and the navy, Julian de Arriaga, was set up late in 1763 to consider not only questions of defence, but also of government and revenue in the American viceroyalties, and the Indies trade. By early 1764 the junta was ready with its proposals for the improvement of American defences, while another junta was entrusted with the task of preparing proposal
s for increasing trade and revenue.25
The fortifications of the American Atlantic ports - Vera Cruz, Havana, Campeche and Cartagena - were to be massively strengthened, at great expense. But, as with George III's plan, the principal recommendation was for the sending of metropolitan forces to improve the security of the American territories. The existing permanent garrisons and the urban and provincial militias had both proved themselves largely useless. The solution appeared to lie in the professionalization of the military in America, with the formation of well-trained and wellequipped regiments, established on a permanent footing. If only on grounds of cost, the new field army, however, would be much more dependent on colonial participation than the British army in America. It was to consist in large part of units of volunteers, recruited in the Indies, but commanded and trained by Spanish officers. These `fixed' units, as they were called, would be reinforced by peninsular regiments sent out to the Indies for a maximum of four years' service. Their presence would provide, or so it was hoped, a model of modern military methods in time of peace, and the nucleus of a professional army in time of war. At the same time, the old colonial militias would be augmented, reorganized and professionally trained by a cadre of Spanish officers, to furnish an auxiliary force for use in emergencies.26
The captain-general of Andalusia, Lieutenant-General Juan de Villalba, arrived in New Spain in November 1764 at the head of two regiments, carrying with him instructions to implement the programme of military reforms. Predictably he soon found himself in conflict with the viceroy, jealous of his own prerogatives as captain-general of New Spain. Moreover, as in the British colonies, differences of attitude and approach created endless possibilities for misunderstanding and antagonism between professional soldiers sent out from the metropolis and the colonial population. The Spanish officers, like their British counterparts, looked down on the creoles and were frustrated by the inadequacies of the militias they had been sent to reorganize. Their presence, therefore, increased the already existing tensions between creoles and peninsulares. Although the Spanish authorities were haunted by fears of a rebellion supported by the militiamen, just as the British authorities were perturbed during the Seven Years War by manifestations of `a general disposition to independence''27 the creoles in fact showed very little inclination for military activities and resisted calls to enlist. Villalba's high-handed approach did not help his cause. He affronted creole sensibilities by mixing whites and castas in the infantry companies, and found that members of the creole elite were unwilling to apply for commissions.