Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-pwrkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-24T19:00:42.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘A Very Profitable and Advantageous Trade’: British Smuggling in the Iberian Americas circa 1500–1750

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

G.V. Scammell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Hardly had the Spaniards and Portuguese established their first footholds in the newly discovered Americas they claimed as their exclusive preserves than their European rivals and enemies were on the scene. In what came to be known as the Spanish Indies they endeavoured to obtain some of the continent's staggering wealth in precious metals. In Brazil they were after the logwood that could be more or less had for the taking. It produced dyes far superior to those then in use in Europe and in great demand in an expanding textile industry, of which that of England was a considerable part. Besides which there was the pleasing prospect that Brazil's great rivers might give access to the silver mining regions of Spanish South America. Such predatory urges were sharpened as Protestantism took root in Western Europe. Convinced that the military strength of Spain, the continent's leading Catholic power, stemmed from American bullion, zealous Protestants believed that could this wealth only be diverted into the right hands the true faith would be saved, its adherents duly rewarded and Spain, deprived of its lifeblood, ruined. But the implementation of this godly strategy was no obstacle to conducting a lucrative commerce with the arch-enemy. Sugar and tobacco, of which the Iberian Americas were soon substantial producers, could be purchased for sale in a growing European market. Equally appealing was the opportunity to sell to Portuguese and Spanish colonists the African slaves their plantation economies demanded. And no less attractive or rewarding was the chance to supply them with those European goods, both luxuries and necessities, which they were forbidden to produce for themselves and which Iberian industries were increasingly unable to provide, or which, through the inadequacies of the Spanish and Portuguese imperial commercial monopoly, were usually in short supply and invariably grossly over-priced.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 24 , Issue 3-4 , November 2000 , pp. 135 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 For good surveys of recent scholarship see Engerman, Stanley L., Gallman, Robert E. eds, The Cambridge Economic History of the United States I: The Colonial Era (Cambridge 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, John R., The Economic Aspects of Spanish Imperialism in America, 1492–1810 (Liverpool 1997)Google Scholar; Canny, Nicholas ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire I (Oxford 1998)Google Scholar; Marshall, P.J. ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire II (Oxford 1998)Google Scholar.

2 Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations I–XII (Glasgow 1903–1905)Google Scholar(hereafter Hakluyt) XI, 23-25; Andrews, Kenneth R., Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge 1984) 59–60Google Scholar.

3 Public Record Office, London (PRO), High Court of Admiralty (HCA), 13/4, fos. 274v–276v.

4 PRO, Gairdner, James, Brodie, R.H. eds, Texts and Calendars, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, Addendal-II (London 1929–1932) no. 1430Google Scholar.

5 Marsden, R.G. ed., ‘Voyage of the Barbara to Brazil, anno 1540’ in: Laughton, Sirjohn Knox ed., The Naval Miscellany II (London 1912) 31, 51Google Scholar.

6 Marsden ed., ‘Voyage of the Barbara’, passim; Scammell, G.V., ‘Shipowning in England c. 1450–1550’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 [5th series] (1962) 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Hakluyt, , Navigations XI, 23–25;Google Scholar PRO, Bergenroth, G.A. et al. eds, Calendar of Letters, Des-patches and State Papers, Relating to Negotiations between England and Spain (hereafter Cal. Sp.) 1538–1542 (London 1868) no. 148Google Scholar; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 59–60Google Scholar.

8 Hakluyt XI, 25; Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 302, 357; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 137Google Scholar.

9 Hakluyt XI, 26ff; Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 64; Taylor, E.G.R. ed., The Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton: Narratives and Documents (Cambridge 1959)Google Scholar L and notes; Freyre, Gilberto, The Masters and the Slaves (London 1956) 198Google Scholar; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 160Google Scholar.

10 Hakluyt XI, 26ff; Cal. Sp. 1587–1603, 186–187; Andrews, Kenneth R., Elizabethan Privateering (Cambridge 1964) chapter 10Google Scholar.

11 HCA 13/24, 16 January 1581/2; Andrews, , Elizabethan Privateering, chapter 10Google Scholar.

12 Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 160Google Scholar.

13 Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 55, 64.

14 Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 3, 64, 302; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 161Google Scholar.

15 Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 20Google Scholar.

16 Hakluyt XI, 33; Taylor, E.G.R. ed., The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts I (London 1935) 18Google Scholar.

17 HCA 13/24, fo. 218; Hakluyt, XI, 295; Marsden, , ‘Voyage of the Barbara’, 8Google Scholar.

18 HCA 13/24, ult. February 1581/1582, 8 December 1582; Hakluyt, XI, 162; Taylor, ed., Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts I, 18 and note, 146Google Scholar; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 161Google Scholar.

19 HCA 13/24, ult. February 1581/1582 at fo. 226; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 164–165Google Scholar.

20 HCA 13/24, ult. February 1581/1582, 2 November 1582, 24 November 1582, 8 December 1582; Hakluyt XI, 34–35; Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 302, 356–357; Andrews, , Elizabethan Privateering, 201–202Google Scholar; Idem, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 164–165.

21 Hakluyt XI, 38; Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 356–357.

22 Taylor, ed., Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts I, 18Google Scholar; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 138, 160–161Google Scholar.

23 Taylor, ed., Troublesome Voyage of Edward Fenton, L, 126, 128, 195Google Scholar; idem, Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts I, 18; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 164–165Google Scholar.

24 Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 385, 413–414; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 162–163Google Scholar.

25 HCA 13/32, 22 November 1595; Hakluyt VI, 411; Taylor, ed., Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts I, 18Google Scholar; Quinn, David Beers ed., The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Humphrey Gilbert II (London 1940) 426–427;Google ScholarDonno, Elizabeth Story ed., An Elizabethan in 1582: The Diary of Richard Madox, Fellow of All Souls (London 1976) 109Google Scholar.

26 HCA 13/25, 4 September 1585, 6 and 7 December 1585; PRO, Lemon, Robert et al. eds, Texts and Calendars, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Maty 170Google Scholar G.V. Scammell Elizabeth and James I, 1547–1625 (hereafter CSPD) 1601–1603, with Additions 1547–1565, 102–103; Andrews, , Elizabethan Privateering, 205–206Google Scholar.

27 HCA 13/25, 4 September 1585, 6 and 7 December 1585; Purchas, Samuel, Hakluyl Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes I–XX (Glasgow 1905–1907)Google Scholar(hereafter Purchas) XVI, 145. Hakluyt XI, 43, 53, 208.

28 CSPD 1581–1590, 640, no. 97; CSPD 1595–1597, 77, no. 32; Cal. Sp. 1587–1603, 572, no. 582; Purchas XVI, 243, 417ff.

29 Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 610; Hakluyt XI, 295.

30 Scammell, G.V., ‘The English in the Atlantic Islands, c. 1450–1650’ The Mariner's Mirror LXXII (1986) 310Google Scholar.

31 HCA 13/25,6 December 1585; Cal. Sp. 1587–1603, 222; Scammell, G.V., ‘England, Portugal and the Estado da India c. 1500–1635’ Modern Asian Studies 16/2 (1982) 182–185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Hitchcock, R.F., ‘Cavendish's Last Voyage: The Charges against Davis’ The Mariner's Mirror 80 (1994) 265–266CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Taylor, ed., Troublesome Voyage of Edward Fenton, xxxviiiGoogle Scholar; Quinn, ed., Voyages of Sir Humphrey Gilbert II, 415Google Scholar.

34 Hakluyt XI, 208. For Abraham Cocke see: Andrews, , Elizabethan Privateering, 88Google Scholar.

35 Purchas XVI, 144; Quinn, D.B. ed., The Hakluyt Handbook I (London 1974) 123–124Google Scholar.

36 Purchas XVI, 244, 290; Pennington, L.E. ed., The Purchas Handbook; Studies of the Life, Times and Writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–16261 (London 1997) 337–339Google Scholar.

37 Purchas XVI, 182, 232, 243–244, 290; Freyre, , The Masters and the Slaves, 199Google Scholar.

38 Rego, A. da Silva, Sanceau, Elaine eds, Documentacdo Ultramarina Portuguesa I (Lisbon 1960) 62Google Scholar; Mauro, Frederic, Le Portugal el L'Allantique au XVIIe Siecle, 1570–1670 (Paris 1960) 140Google Scholar; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 299Google Scholar.

39 HCA 13/51, 5 March, 11 and 18June 1634.

40 HCA 13/45, 8 June 1626; HCA 13/51, 11 and 18 June 1634; HCA 13/56, 1 May 1640.

41 Andrews, Kenneth R., Ships, Money Politics: Seafaring and Naval Enterprise in the Reign of Charles I (Cambridge 1991) 89–90Google Scholar.

42 HCA 13/56, 1 May 1640; Boxer, C.R., ‘English Shipping in the Brazil Trade, 1640–1665’The Mariner's Mirrorsai (1951) 199ff.Google Scholar; Andrews, , Ships, Money & Politics, 22Google Scholar; Shaw, L.M.E., The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal, 1654–1810 (Aldershot 1998) chapter 9Google Scholar.

43 Boxer, , ‘English Shipping in the Brazil Trade’ 214–215;Google ScholarMauro, , Le Portugal, 459–460Google Scholar.

44 HCA 13/65, 23 March 1651/1652; Andrews, , Ships, Money Politics, 59–61;Google ScholarAppleby, John C., ‘A Guinea Venture c. 1657: A Note on the Early English Slave Trade’ The Mariner's Mirror 79 (1993) 85Google Scholar.

45 HCA 13/65, 11 March 1651/1652; Anderson, R.C. ed., The Journals of Sir Thomas Allin, 1660–1678 1 (London 1939–1940) 53Google Scholar; Boxer, , ‘English Shipping in the Brazil Trade’ 204Google Scholar; Powell, J.R., Robert Blake, General-at-Sea (London 1972) 319Google Scholar.

46 Boxer, C.R., Descriptive List of the State Papers, Portugal, 1661–1780 in the Public Record Office, London I: 1661–1723 (Lisbon 1979) 20, nos.Google Scholar 45, 47, 48; Boxer, , ‘English Shipping in the Brazil Trade’ 219–220;Google ScholarShaw, , The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, 117Google Scholar.

47 HCA 13/51, 11, 18 and 20June 1634, 6 July 1634; Exwood, Maurice, Lehmann, H.L. eds, The Journal of William Schellinks Travels in England 1661–1663 [Camden Society, 5th series, volume 1] (London 1993) 9fFGoogle Scholar; Andrews, , Ships, Money Politics, 52Google Scholar.

48 HCA 13/65, 25 August 1651; 23 March 1651/1652; 20 May, 2July, 15July, 20July 1652; Whitebrook, J.C., Edward andfohn Bushell, Puritans and Merchants (London 1915)Google Scholar passim; Appleby, , ‘A Guinea Venture’ 85Google Scholar; Andrews, , Ships, Money Politics, 59–61Google Scholar.

49 Anderson, ed., Journals of Sir Thomas Allin I, 99Google Scholar; Kepler, J.S., ‘Fiscal Aspects of the English Carrying Trade during the Thirty Years War’ The Economic History Review XXV [2nd series] (1972) 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boxer, C.R., The English and the Portuguese Brazil Trade, 1660–1780: Some Problems and Personalities (Bundoora 1981) 5Google Scholar.

50 Arruda, José Jobson de Andrade, ‘Colonies as Mercantile Investments; The Luso-Brazilian Empire, 1500–1808’ in: Tracy, James D. ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750 (Cambridge 1991) 388Google Scholar.

51 Rego, A. da Silva ed., As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo I (Lisbon 1960) 550–551;Google ScholarArruda, Andrade, ‘Colonies as Mercantile Investments’ 393Google Scholar; Boxer, , The English and the Portuguese Brazil Trade, 5–6;Google ScholarShaw, , Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, 118Google Scholar.

52 Boxer, , Stale Papers, Portugal I, 250, no. 138Google Scholar; idem, The English and the Portuguese Brazil Trade, 3–4.

53 HCA 13/85, fos. 279, 283.

54 Fisher, H.E.S., The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700–1770 (London 1971) 33Google Scholar; Coleman, D.C., The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (Oxford 1977) 133Google Scholar; Boxer, , The English and the Portuguese Brazil Trade, 5Google Scholar; Liss, Peggy K., Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713–1826 (Baltimore/London 1983) 83Google Scholar.

55 Cal. Sp. 1568–1579, 242–243, 264; Cal. Sp. 1580–1586, 585–586; Andrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 140, 161Google Scholar.

56 Oppenheim, M., A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Merchant Shipping in Relation to the Navy I (London 1896) 398–399. For the privateering war see Andrews, Elizabethan PrivateeringGoogle Scholar.

57 Glasgow, Tom Jr., ‘The Mystery of Juan de Rute of Asuncion, Paraguay’ The Mariner's Mirror 52 (1966) 78–79Google Scholar.

58 Hakluyt IX, 347, 421; Cal. Sp. 1568–1579, 526.

59 Hakluyt IX, 360ff; Hakluyt XI, 208; Purchas XVI, 6, 324ff; Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, Providence Island, 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge 1993) 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Purchas XVI, 309ff; Scammell, G.V., The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires, c. 800–1650 (London 1981) 484, 492Google Scholar.

61 Appleby, J.C., ‘An Association for the West Indies? English Plans for a West India Company, 1621–1629’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History XV (1987) 213–241;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAndrews, , Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 325Google Scholar; Kupperman, , Providence Island, 109Google Scholar.

62 Kupperman, , Providence Island, 97–99, 167-169, 280, 335-339, 346Google Scholar.

63 Purchas XVI, 134.

64 Dewar, Alfred ed., The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring (London 1928) xxiv, 125, 240–246;Google ScholarWilson, Arthur M., ‘The Logwood Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in: Socolow, Susan ed., The Atlantic Staple Trade II; The Economics of Trade (Aldershot 1996) 477–491Google Scholar.

65 Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round the World [ed. Gray, Sir Albert] (London 1927) 7Google Scholar.

66 Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 26Google Scholar; Wilson, , ‘Logwood Trade’ 480–481Google Scholar.

67 HCA 13/85, 13 July 1714; Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, xxiii, 165, 169, 246Google Scholar.

68 HCA 13/85, 13 October 1716; 13/88, 26 October 1728, 18 November 1728, 28 March 1729; Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, xxiv–xxv, 179Google Scholar; Tattersfield, Nigel, The Forgotten Trade: Accounts of the Slave Trade from the Minor Ports of England, 1698–1725 (London 1991) 8Google Scholar.

69 Cf. Wilson, ‘Logwood Trade’

70 Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, 167, 171, 241–242, 246Google Scholar; Wilson, , ‘Logwood Trade’ 482, 487, 490Google Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 28–29Google Scholar.

71 HCA 13/85, 13 July 1714; Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, xxiiGoogle Scholar; Reports and Calendars Issued by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. New series vol. VII, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, 1706–1708 (London 1921) no. 2402, 316Google Scholar; McNeill, John Robert, ‘American Ports and Imperial Trade’ in: Socolow, ed., The Atlantic Staple Trade II, 683Google Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 75Google Scholar; Fisher, , Economic Aspects of Spanish Imperialism, 120–121Google Scholar.

72 Boxer, , State Papers, Portugal I, 41,Google Scholar no. 220; Wilson, , ‘Logwood Trade’ 483Google Scholar; The Oxford History of the British Empire II, 22.

73 Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, xix–xxiiGoogle Scholar.

74 HCA 13/75, fos. 388ff.

75 Rogers, Woodes, A Cruising Voyage Round the World [ed. Manwaring, G.E.] (London 1928) 187Google Scholar; Steele, Ian K., The English Atlantic 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford 1986) 176–177Google Scholar.

76 Dewar, ed., Voyages of Captain Uring, 165Google Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 76Google Scholar; Israel, Jonathan I., Dutch Primacy in World Trade 1585–1740 (Oxford 1989) 325, 369–370, 374Google Scholar; Scammell, G.V., The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400–1715 (London 1989) 440CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 HCA 13/56, 6 August 1640; 13/65, 15 January 1651/1652.

78 Reports and Calendars Issued by the Royal Commission: On Historical Manuscripts. New series vol. II, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, 1695–1697 (London 1903) 440Google Scholar.

79 HCA 13/85, 4 June 1714.

80 Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 26, 28, 257; Cambridge Economic History of the United States I, 234Google Scholar.

81 Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 28; Cambridge Economic History of the United States I, 351Google Scholar.

82 Manuscripts of the House of Lords, 1695–1697, no. 1115, 440fff; Manuscript of the House of Lords, 1699–1702 (London 1908) no. 1634Google Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 30Google Scholar.

83 Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 28–30Google Scholar.

84 Taylor, ed., Troublesome Voyage of Edward Fenton, 286–287;Google Scholar Hakluyt XI, 39ff, 208; Purchas VI, 367; XVI, 231.

85 Cal. Sp. 1568–1579, 242–243, 264; Quinn, , Voyages of Sir Humphrey Gilbert I, 29Google Scholar.

86 Dampier, , A New Voyage, 100Google Scholar.

87 Black, Jeremy, ‘Anglo-Spanish Naval Relations in the Eighteenth Century’ The Mariner's Mirror 77 (1991) 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 32, 53Google Scholar; Williams, Glyndwr, The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters, 1570–1750 (New Haven/London 1997) 202Google Scholar.

88 HCA 13/88, 18 November 1728, 21 May 1729; McLachlan, Jean O., Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667–1750 (Cambridge 1940) 122Google Scholar; Liss, , Atlantic Empires, 31, 75–76Google Scholar.

89 Oxford History of the British Empire II, 459.

90 Wilson, , ‘Logwood Trade’ 488Google Scholar; McNeill, , ‘American Ports and Imperial Trade’ 685–686;Google ScholarLiss, , Atlantic Empires, 40Google Scholar.

91 Williams, , The Great South Sea, 118, 202Google Scholar.