Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

by John H. Elliott

  The Stamp Act crisis exposed, as never before, the fragility of the imperial hold over North America in the face of violent and more or less co-ordinated resistance throughout the colonies to measures deemed unacceptable by their populations. But beyond this it also exposed fundamental ambiguities in the constitutional ordering of the empire itself. As a result of these ambiguities the metropolis and the colonies had come to view their relationship through very different lenses. The same was true of Spain and its American empire, but the ambiguities were not the same, and the problems they created, although severe, were not so immediately intractable.

  The crisis that overtook the Anglo-American community in the 1760s can be seen in constitutional terms as the crisis of the British composite monarchy in the form it had come to assume by the middle of the eighteenth century.105 Where Bourbon Spain had turned its back on the idea of composite monarchy and was moving firmly in the direction of an authoritarian monarchy based on a vertical articulation of power,106 Hanoverian Britain was set on a course that had led to a partially composite parliamentary state. The events of 1688 had established the sovereignty of king in parliament, and the incorporating union of Scotland with England in 1707 had given the Scots parliamentary representation at Westminster in compensation for the loss of their own parliament in Edinburgh. Both Ireland and the colonies, however, remained outside this incorporating parliamentary union, and retained elected assemblies of their own.

  This left open the question of the relationship between these assemblies and the Westminster parliament, at least until 1720, when it passed a Declaratory Act asserting its authority over the Irish parliament. But the Westminster parliament refrained from exercising tax-raising powers over the Irish, and was careful to obtain the agreement of the Irish parliament before legislating on Irish matters.107 Until the 1760s it was similarly circumspect in questions relating to the internal affairs of the American colonies, although it showed no such scruples where the regulation of trade was concerned. But if the question of the ultimate location of sovereignty were to be directly put, there was no doubt at Westminster what the answer should be. Sovereignty was indivisible, and it lay with the English parliament. While rejoicing in American resistance in his famous speech on the Stamp Act of 14 January 1766, William Pitt described the constitutional position with brutal clarity: `When two countries are connected together, like England and her colonies, without being incorporated, the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less .. '108

  For a parliament, rather than the monarch, to assert sovereignty over the component parts of a composite monarchy, all of which had their own representative assemblies, constituted a novelty in the history of composite monarchies. Pitt and his fellow parliamentarians therefore found themselves navigating in uncharted waters. But the very notion of the indivisibility of sovereignty left them with little room for manoeuvre. The dominant interpretation of the status of colonies in terms of the historical example of the Romans, who (it was incorrectly believed) considered their colonies to be imperial dependencies, in contrast to the Greeks, merely strengthened their conviction of the correctness of their course.109 As Charles Townshend observed in replying to Grenville, if parliament were ever to give up the right of taxing America, then `he must give up the word "colony" - for that implies subordination."10 `Subordination' was automatically taken to mean subordination to the English legislature.

  An incorporating union between Britain and the colonies on the Scottish model would have brought American representatives to the Westminster parliament. This was an idea that Benjamin Franklin, as Pennsylvania's agent in London, toyed with at the height of the Stamp Act crisis, but soon abandoned on hearing the latest news from America. `The Time has been', he wrote, `when the Colonies, would have esteem'd it a great Advantage as well as Honour to them to be permitted to send Members to Parliament; and would have ask'd for that Privilege if they could have had the least hopes of obtaining it. The Time is now come when they are indifferent about it, and will probably not ask it ...'i'i They would have no truck, either, with the argument devised by Thomas Whately during the course of the crisis, that the colonists, like those residents of Britain who did not possess the vote, nevertheless enjoyed `virtual representation' in parliament, a notion described by a Maryland lawyer as `a mere cob-web, spread to catch the unwary, and intangle the weak'."2 They had been endowed with their own representative assemblies, modelled on the English House of Commons, and the copies should surely replicate the original, not only in its workings but also in its pow- ers.113 Their assemblies provided not only a guarantee of the right they enjoyed by virtue of their English descent to reject all taxation to which they had not given their prior consent, but also the only proper forum for consent to new taxes when new taxes were required.

  Loyalty to the person of the British monarch remained unshaken, and the colonists continued to take pride in their participation in a British Empire that was an empire of the free. But the incompatibility between their perception of their British rights and the British parliament's perception of its own uncontested sovereignty as the necessary condition for the effective running of that empire created a constitutional impasse. This impasse was, if anything, made all the more difficult to negotiate by the sense of shared identity and shared ideals. Occasional references might be made in England to Americans as foreigners '114 but many would have agreed with William Strahan, a London printer, when he wrote: `I consider British Subjects in America as only living in a different Country, having the selfsame Interests, and entituled to the self-same Liberties."" `Every drop of blood in my heart is British', wrote the Pennsylvania attorney, John Dickinson, in 1766, as if in confirmation. 116 It was precisely because they saw themselves as British that the Americans would stand up for their rights. This left little room for compromise in a constitutional framework which entrenched in representative institutions rights regarded as fundamental on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The effective absence of such institutions in Spain's Monarchy and empire inevitably created a different dynamic from that which determined relationships in the British Atlantic community. But in the Spanish Atlantic community also there was a growing divergence in assumptions and perceptions on the two sides of the Atlantic that similarly presaged major troubles ahead. Spain's American territories, like the British colonies, continued to see themselves as members of a composite monarchy at a time when Madrid's terms of reference had changed. But where the British colonies now found themselves confronting a parliamentary regime that - even as it proclaimed its own absolute authority - still half spoke the language of composite monarchy, of liberty and rights, Spain's American dominions were faced with a monarch and ministers for whom the very notion of composite monarchy had become anathema. As a result, the two sides of the Spanish Atlantic were speaking different languages, whereas the languages spoken by Britain and British America were confusingly, and dangerously, the same.

  The language spoken in official circles in Spain was now that of the unitary nation-state with an absolutist monarch at its head - a monarch who received his power directly from God without any mediation by the community."? This was the language used by the viceroy of New Spain, the Marquis of Croix, in his 1767 viceregal proclamation ordering absolute submission by all classes and conditions of Mexican society to the royal decree for the expulsion of the Jesuits: `... the subjects of the great monarch who occupies the throne of Spain should know once and for all that they were born to keep silent and obey, and not to discuss or express opinions on high matters of government."

  In the authoritarian centralized monarchy of Charles III's ministers and viceroys there was no room for the semi-autonomous kingdoms and provinces of which a composite monarchy was traditionally composed, nor for the compacts that guaranteed the preservation of their distinctive identities. Instead, they must be integrated into the unitary state. But the creole elites of the kingdoms of Peru and New Spain, of Quito and New Granada naturally clung to the histor
ic privileges and traditions of the lands that had become their patrias. These privileges and traditions, as they saw it, were now under growing threat from the interference of meddling reformers, and they expected their protests to be heard, and their grievances to be addressed, in the ways they always had been - through petitioning and bargaining, until an acceptable compromise was reached.

  The reformers, however, showed alarming signs of being unwilling to play the old game, as the intransigent reaction of the New Granada authorities to the Quito riots made all too clear. In the more politically sophisticated creole community of New Spain, Jose de Galvez's visitation between 1765 and 1771 provoked similar alarm. Taken in conjunction with the expulsion of the Jesuits, his attitudes and behaviour provided eloquent evidence of the new spirit that prevailed in Madrid. He had come with a clear mandate for reform, and the reform included plans for sweeping administrative changes, that would effectively put an end to the management by creoles of their own affairs. In 1768, in line with the experiment introduced in Cuba four years earlier, he proposed a new system of government for the Mexican viceroyalty, which would be divided into eleven intendancies, thus bringing it into uniformity with the administrative system established by the Bourbons in Spain. The plan envisaged the disappearance of the 150 district magistracies - the alcaldes mayores - which had allowed creoles to gain control of large areas of local government, with consequent opportunities for the exploitation of the Indian population.119

  At the same time as Galvez was drawing up his scheme for the undercutting of local interests through the professionalization of the American bureaucracy, ministers in Madrid were considering the government of the Indies in the light of reactions in the Indies to the expulsion of the Jesuits. On 5 March 1768 an extraordinary council, presided over by the Count of Aranda, president of the Council of Castile, met to discuss ways of strengthening the ties between Spain and its American possessions at a time when the expulsion had subjected them to heavy strain. The Council of Castile's two attorneys, Campomanes and Jose Morino, the future Count of Floridablanca, drew up the report.120 The tenor of their proposals was reminiscent of those put forward in the 1620s by the countduke of Olivares for the closer integration of the Spanish Monarchy,121 but while it still carried overtones of the age of composite monarchy, the temper of the document belonged to the new age of the unitary state.

  Where Olivares had written of the need to end `the separation of hearts' between the various kingdoms of the Monarchy,'22 the committee was concerned with the problem of how to induce the king's vassals in the Indies to `love their mother, who is Spain', when they lived at such a distance from her. Nothing was being done to make them `desire or love the nation', and there was little chance of this happening as long as they saw the peninsulares crossing the Atlantic to enrich themselves at creole expense. `Those countries', said the report, `should no longer be regarded as simple colonies (pura colonia) but as powerful and considerable provinces of the Spanish Empire.' One way to treat them as such was to bring over young creoles to study in Spain, reserve places in the Spanish administration for them, and establish a native American regiment in the peninsula. At the same time the policy should be maintained of

  always sending Spaniards to fill the principal posts, bishoprics and prebends in the Indies, but appointing creoles to equivalent offices in Spain. This is what would strengthen friendship and union [the words might have come straight from the Count-Duke's pen] and [an eighteenth-century touch] would create a single national body (un solo cuerpo de nacion), with the creoles over here as so many hostages for the retention of those lands under the gentle dominion of His Majesty123

  This and the other proposals in the report were approved by the council, which saw them as a device for binding the Indies to the mother country with ties of mutual interest `in order to make this union indissoluble'. The Indies were, in effect, to become provinces of Spain, and, as a further measure of integration, it was proposed that each of the three American viceroyalties, together with the Philippines, should be allowed to appoint a deputy to join those of Castile, Aragon and Catalonia in the standing body, or diputacion, which had taken the place of Cortes now defunct. The object would be for them `to confer and humbly represent suitable measures for the utility of those dominions'. This was the nearest that an absolute monarchy could permit itself to come to the suggestions being entertained in London for the inclusion of American representatives in the House of Commons.

  Impelling the 1768 report was the fear, always latent in Madrid as in London, that the American territories might at some moment attempt to break loose. A few months earlier the fiscal attorney of the Council of the Indies had remarked that `although they have been the most peaceful of our dominions since their discovery, it is never wise to assume that they are entirely safe from the danger of rebellion. 12' But could the plans for closer integration now being discussed in Madrid quieten the unrest of the creoles by addressing their complaints? It soon became apparent that they could not.

  With Galvez missing no opportunity to display his contempt for the creoles, there was a growing suspicion in New Spain that Madrid had embarked on a systematic policy of filling the higher judicial and administrative offices in the viceroyalty with peninsular Spaniards. At present, six of the seven judges of the Mexican Audiencia were creoles.125 Were those born and bred in New Spain no longer to hold positions of trust in their own land? In 1771 the Mexico City council commissioned one of the creole judges, Antonio Joaquin de Rivadaneira y Barrientos, to draw up an official protest for submission to the crown.126 Rivadaneira responded with an eloquent statement of the creole case for preferential treatment in appointment to office - a statement that moved beyond the standard argument, endlessly repeated since the sixteenth century, that such treatment was owed them by virtue of their descent from the conquerors and first settlers of New Spain.

  Any attempt, Rivadaneira warned, to exclude `American Spaniards' from high office `is to seek to overturn the law of peoples. It will lead not only to the loss of America but to the ruin of the state.' `Natural reason', he argued, and `the laws of all kingdoms' dictated that `foreigners' should not hold offices to the exclusion of natives. `European Spaniards', even if sharing the same sovereign, should be considered foreigners `by nature, if not by law' - a prudent qualification in view of the fact that the Indies had been constitutionally incorporated into the Crown of Castile by right of conquest. `The truth is that while these people may not be considered foreigners in the Indies from a constitutional point of view, in fact they do not derive their identity from the Indies. They have their homes, their parents, their brothers and sisters, and all their ties in Old Spain, not in New Spain.' As a result, `they regard themselves as transients in America whose prime purpose is to return wealthy to their own home and their native land.'

  An awareness of the constitutional objections to his case had driven Rivadaneira to resort to the argument from `nature' - an argument couched in terms of incipient national identity, and in this respect more radical than any yet advanced by the North American colonists. He had in effect turned Spaniards' criticisms of creoles against themselves. It was not the creoles but the Spaniards who were the `foreigners', ignorant of the land they had been sent out to rule and stayed to exploit. Innate loyalty and political prudence, however, made him also well aware of the need to avoid any suggestion that Spanish Americans were determined to split the Hispanic community in two. `We cannot cut out the Europeans altogether. This would mean seeking to maintain two separate and independent bodies under one head, something of a political monstrosity.' But there was an element of bathos when he went on to ask: `do they have to receive all the higher appointments?'

  Rivadaneira was engaged in a difficult balancing act. On the one hand he had to affirm the essentially Spanish character of the creoles, while at the same time he had to establish their right as natives of their patria to be the real masters in their own land. By placing so much emphasis on the patria, however, i
n an attempt to counter the relative weakness of their constitutional case, the creoles ran into problems that could be at least temporarily evaded by the North American colonists, who were similarly wrestling with the implications of a dual identity. British Americans could dwell on the constitutional rights to which they considered themselves entitled as Britons, while turning a blind eye to the presence of Indians and black slaves in their midst. But the presence of other races, and especially of large indigenous or mixed populations, was less easily ignored by Spanish creoles intent on defending their patrias against metropolitan attack. Metropolitan Spaniards had persistently flung at the creoles the charge that they had not only degenerated in an American environment but had also been contaminated by continuous miscegenation. Rivadaneira therefore had to protect his flank by preserving a sharp differentiation between creoles and Indians, `born to poverty, bred in destitution, and controlled through punishment'.

  His words only serve to underline how the creole patria had been constructed as essentially the preserve of those who had conquered and settled it, men and women of incontestable Spanish lineage. `We have to make it clear', he wrote, ,that America consists of a large number of Spaniards whose blood is as pure as that of Spaniards from Old Spain.' In the face of Spanish disparagement of all things American, the creole claim to purity of blood (limpieza de sangre), with all the resonance those words enjoyed in the Hispanic world, carried a heavy weight of psychological baggage. It might be deployed in support of the same underlying argument about the fundamental unity and equality of metropolitans and colonials, but it went well beyond the purely symbolic character of John Dickinson's proud boast that `every drop of blood in my heart is British."27 For the creoles of Spanish America, blood, in the most literal sense of the word, was the source of rights.