Although the Utrecht Treaties confirmed his Spanish inheritance, Philip V entered the postwar years of his reign a troubled monarch, ruling a divided and exhausted nation. The settlement denied him his rights to Spanish possessions in the Netherlands and Italy, and it recognized the British conquests of Gibraltar and Menorca. While his claim to the American empire was affirmed, Spain had to concede to the British demand for legal entry into colonial commerce through the slave trade monopoly, with damaging attendant codicils. And in February 1714, Philip lost his beloved Savoyard queen, Marie Louise, to tuberculosis. While he soon found solace in an Italian bride, Elizabeth Farnese, the king was plagued by chronic emotional instability, leading him to rely heavily on his wives.

Abad Julio Alberoni, the favorite of the new queen, emerged as the unlikely strong man of Madrid, although he held no public office and relied solely on his connections to the monarchs to maintain power. Neither contemporaries nor later historians have been kind to Alberoni, regarding him as a political neophyte who dazzled both young Italian queens with his mastery of their country’s cooking, a welcome alternative to the uninspiring Spanish fare served at court previously. Although in his portrait, shown in Figure 1.1, the cardinal strikes a very dignified pose, Alberoni was actually a diminutive and rotund man, perhaps too fond of his own cooking. One contemporary observer dismissively described Alberoni as a mere “pygmy whom fortune made a colossus.” His protégé, José Patiño, was probably closer to understanding the Italian cardinal when he remarked that Alberoni “turned impossibilities into mere difficulties.” Alberoni recognized that that the keys to reviving Spain and restoring it to greatness were improving royal finances, rebuilding the navy, and reviving trade with the Indies. Although his economic policies resembled those of Colbert and his financial innovations drew some inspiration from Jean Orry, Alberoni was essentially a political pragmatist, not an intellectual. Despite the adversity confronting Spain, in the postwar years, the Italian would oversee a time of impressive innovation in the administration of Spain and the American empire, although accomplishments arrived piecemeal, unevenly, and often painfully.

Following the collapse of Alberoni’s attempt to recapture control of Spanish ports and the colonial trade, his successors worked to revive transatlantic commerce through the legal system of fleets, but this effort faced enormous obstacles and would enjoy only limited success. Spain’s ministers had to hinder the South Sea Company’s commercial activities – legal and illegal – while also limiting the smuggling of Dutch, French, and British traders working independently of the South Sea Company. Foreign traders, particularly in Britain, had long sought direct trade with the Spanish empire, and they viewed the Spanish crown’s attempts to regulate commerce with the Indies as an unfair restriction of free trade. The Spanish regarded commerce in the Spanish Atlantic as a closed metropolitan monopoly, and they wanted to shut out all foreign intruders. This involved gaining control of sea lanes in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the South Atlantic without provoking war with foreign rivals, particularly Great Britain, the premier naval power in the world. It also meant mediating among colonial and Spanish interest groups opposed to change, while dramatically curtailing the culture of political corruption in colonial bureaucracies in New Spain and Peru. It was a daunting task that fell to one of Spain’s most experienced ministers of the period, José Patiño. In his portrait (shown in Figure 3.1), Patiño appears every bit the proud, self-confident public servant, and his decade in power would be a time of real accomplishment.

Patiño’s ten years in power (1726–1736) saw none of the tumultuous political divisions in Spain and violent conflicts in the Indies that helped to discredit Alberoni’s reforms after the disastrous War of the Quadruple Alliance. The great minister’s background combined both Spanish and Italian credentials, allowing him to sustain a stable relationship with the royal family, especially the queen. Coming from a Galician family, he also reassured political elites and the mass of Spaniards who much preferred to be governed by one of their own. His stable, confident method of governance also contrasted with the volatile character of the leadership that preceded him, from Orry to Alberoni to Riperdá.

War and reform evolved into central, interconnected themes of the Spanish Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. War influenced the direction and outcome of Bourbon reforms, and policy innovations periodically sparked military conflicts with Spain’s rivals. Spain’s competition with France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, more specifically, led to frequent hostilities, sometimes over European affairs and other times over colonial rivalries. The Spanish crown viewed commerce with the Indies as a closed metropolitan monopoly, guaranteed by the papal donation of 1493. As a result, the Spanish claimed complete sovereignty over the lands in the Indies and the surrounding sea lanes, and they wanted to shut out all foreign intruders. For their part, other European powers, particularly the British, had long sought direct access to Spanish American markets, and they viewed Spain’s monopolistic policy as an unfair restriction of trade. The recurrent outbreaks of war that resulted from disputes over access to Spain’s colonial markets in the Atlantic, often complicated by conflicting dynastic ambitions in Europe, sometimes derailed reform and interrupted policy designs in its empire, and they frequently led to the abandonment or discrediting of reformist objectives. On other occasions, however, war could impel reform, as Bourbon ministers enacted policies to prepare Spain for looming conflicts with her enemies. From the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, reformers repeatedly promoted a series of innovations to modernize the Spanish Atlantic world, at least until the outbreak of war with Great Britain in 1796. In that conflict, the British navy cut the sea lanes between Spain and America, leading to a precipitous decline in tax remittances and trade from the Indies and ultimately to the slow strangulation of the eighteenth-century reforming impulse.

The period following Spain’s victory in the War of the American Revolution allowed Madrid to consolidate and to refine gains made in its reformist agenda by advancing additional administrative, fiscal, military, and commercial innovations. Underlying tensions arose from problems with finance, however, particularly owing to mushrooming military expenditures for both land forces and the armada. Although humbled and stripped of its North American colonies, Great Britain still possessed a superior navy, which posed a continuing military threat in the Atlantic world, but new thinking was in order. In confronting the challenges that faced it, Spain enjoyed capable leadership from the Conde de Floridablanca and his ally in the royal cabinet, Pedro López de Lerena. Skillfully working its way through the incredibly complex issues that it faced, the Madrid government would push reform of the imperial system to its pinnacle. Bolstered by a highly productive empire, Spain once again would stand among the great powers of the western world. While the crown used the American revenues to advance Spain’s military standing, however, little was invested to develop the economic infrastructure of the metropolis or the Indies. As a result, Madrid’s successes in reorganizing its empire over the eighteenth century would ultimately fall victim to international conflict, first to the wars of the French Revolution and ultimately to two disastrous conflicts with the British beginning in 1796, which would put a definitive end to the reforming impulse in the Spanish Atlantic world.

After acceding to the throne in 1759, King Charles III indicated his intention to revive and extend reforms in the Spanish Atlantic world begun by his half-brother Ferdinand and the Marqués de la Ensenada. While king of Naples (1734–1759), Charles had worked closely with his chief minister, Bernardo Tanucci, to make a series of ecclesiastical, fiscal, administrative, and economic reforms designed to centralize state power, and he was inclined to pursue a similar regalist agenda in his new kingdoms. Soon after taking the Spanish throne, Charles recalled Ensenada from exile and made him a councilor of State, indicating that he intended to shake Madrid from the political somnolence of the last years of Ferdinand’s reign. Although Charles and his ministers began planning key reforms, the Seven Years’ War intervened, leading to defeat and humiliation at the hands of Great Britain. The loss of Havana posed a great danger to the empire, since that Caribbean fortress protected the sea lanes to New Spain, the wealthiest Spanish possession in the Indies. Although Spain regained the key Caribbean stronghold in the Treaty of Paris ending the war, the king and his ministers recognized the need to shore up defenses in the Indies. Building on the achievements of Ensenada, they also planned a wide range of fiscal, administrative, commercial, and religious innovations aimed at strengthening Spain’s control over its Atlantic empire. The visita general of José de Gálvez to New Spain (1764–1772) implemented important new fiscal and administrative initiatives, but the first phase of reform under Charles III culminated with the extension of imperial free trade to Spain’s Caribbean Islands (1765) and the expulsion of the Jesuits (1767). Past wartime defeats had interrupted or reversed reform, but the threat of Britain’s unrivaled power spurred the king and his ministers to support widespread modernization throughout the Spanish Atlantic world.

Following Patiño’s decade in power, the outbreak of war with Great Britain and new attitudes about imperial reform in Madrid opened the door to fundamental changes in the Spanish Atlantic empire. The customary harmony between royal administration and the Consulado of Cádiz abruptly collapsed, leading to reform initiatives that reduced the privileged position of the Andalusian elite. Most of this tumultuous period found Spain engulfed in the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1748), a dangerous struggle in the American theater where Spanish arms competed successfully with the aggressive and powerful forces of an expansionist British foe. This first war fought exclusively over colonial issues later merged with dynastic conflicts in Europe producing the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). The pressures imposed on the transatlantic trade during this international conflict led the Madrid government to abandon temporarily the traditional system of Flotas and Galeones in favor of using individual register ships, a transformation bearing profound implications for the future.

Strong ministerial leaders pushed forward these important changes, particularly with the emergence of José del Campillo y Cossío, who championed a wide range of reforms, most notably free trade within the empire. Campillo’s ideas about imperial reform marked a major change from the more narrowly pragmatic policies of Alberoni and Patiño, which emphasized gaining control over Spain’s port cities, attacking foreign contraband commerce in the Caribbean, South Atlantic, and Pacific, and reestablishing a strong convoy system in the transatlantic trade. After Campillo’s premature death, power passed to Zenón de Somodevilla, the Marqués de la Ensenada, one of the Bourbon century’s most impressive and successful leaders. During this second era of reform, however, Ensenada would advance well beyond the pragmatism of Alberoni and Patiño, ending the sale of bureaucratic appointments, modernizing state finances, liberalizing trade with South America, and curtailing the power of the church. The death of Philip V in 1746 and the succession of his son, Ferdinand VI, also removed Elizabeth Farnese from the court, and an Atlantic agenda quickly replaced her narrowly focused Italian dynastic priorities, which had so often led to conflict in the past. After the war ended in 1748, a new era of reform and renovation produced profound changes in the Spanish Atlantic world and laid the foundation for many others.

Despite suffering setbacks with the loss of Havana and the motín of Esquilache, the reign of Charles III would mark the pinnacle of colonial reorganization and the resurgence of Spanish military power in the Atlantic world. The pace and character of reform varied during Charles’s rule, influenced by the nature of the challenges Spain faced, the opportunities for change, the power of vested interests in Spain and the Indies, pressures from rival powers, the character of the king’s ministers, and the level of commitment and enthusiasm of Charles himself. Following the Seven Years’ War, the king and his Sicilian de facto prime minister, the Marqués de Esquilache, pushed a reformist agenda aggressively, but the pace faded after the popular unrest in March 1766, which led to the Italian’s ouster. The opportunity for revenge offered by the colonial rebellion against Great Britain in North America opened the door to a renewal of a reformist agenda under José de Gálvez. Despite the uneven results of the Gálvez reforms, Spain would register military advances both on land and at sea, scoring a telling series of victories against Great Britain in the War of the American Revolution.

Charles was the most ambitious and capable of the Bourbon monarchs. A proponent of the liberating ideals of the Enlightenment, he brought a freshness of mind to the throne, enabling him to challenge entrenched partisan groups and experiment boldly in search of realistic alternatives to modernize Spain and its empire. The policies he pursued were typical of the European enlightened absolutism of his time, which championed both reform from above and the use of human reason to attain progress. Charles sought to curtail the power of a conservative aristocracy and of the various privileged groups opposed to reform in both Spain and the Indies. Although a pious man, he also curbed the temporal power of a reactionary clergy and expelled the ultramontane Jesuit order. Championing efficient government, Charles centralized and rationalized royal administration, codified laws, and tightened tax collection. To promote economic development, he constructed roads, colonized frontiers, and fostered native industry, principally through state enterprise. He supported science, built a reservoir, and created a modern banking system. He also beautified Madrid, embracing architectural good sense and elegant interior design. Most importantly, he infused new energy into the challenge of colonial reform, which the crown had addressed so unevenly over the preceding decades.

The Contested Bourbon Inheritance

War and reform developed a symbiotic relationship in the Spanish Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. The series of eighteenth-century military conflicts began with the War of the Spanish Succession, fought between 1702 and 1713 over disputed claims to the Spanish throne. When the childless king of Spain, Charles II, lay on his deathbed, he bequeathed his throne to the French Bourbon claimant Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. The British, Dutch, and later Portuguese allied to support the rival claim of the Hapsburg, Archduke Charles of Austria, fearing the prospect of a powerful Bourbon family dynasty ruling over both France and Spain. Hostilities began in 1702 with an unsuccessful allied attack on Cádiz; but Philip, with a bankrupt treasury and his armed forces in shambles, relied largely on French troops and money to defend his inheritance. The anti-Bourbon alliance attacked next in the Mediterranean theater, seizing Gibraltar in 1704, with Barcelona, Valencia, and Zaragosa falling to the allies in 1706. Once in possession of the whole of the Kingdom of Aragon, Archduke Charles established his court in Barcelona. The next year, an allied force invading from Portugal captured Madrid, but a Bourbon victory at Almansa in 1707 rescued Philip’s cause. The war continued badly for Philip in Iberia, and French defeats in Italy and the Netherlands led Louis XIV to remove his troops from Spain in 1709 as a prelude to opening peace negotiations with the allies.

Following the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1748, the new Bourbon monarch, Ferdinand VI (1746–1759) presided over a full-fledged reforming impulse to strengthen the state apparatus, to build a stronger military (particularly the navy), to control political and commercial ties with the empire, and to curb the power of Rome over the Spanish church. While earlier Bourbon efforts to reform the imperial system focused largely on the transatlantic trade, these new initiatives would involve a fundamental reexamination of the role of important interest groups within the empire, including the traditionally close relationship between church and state in the Spanish Atlantic world. The power of the more independent religious orders – such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans, Mercedarians, and Jesuits – came under particularly close scrutiny. Indeed, clerical reforms begun by King Ferdinand’s regalist ministers set the agenda for relations between church and state, which his successor, Charles III (1759–1788), later advanced with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. These Bourbon reforms of the church merged Enlightenment ideas from Europe with a variety of discourses of reform from the Indies about local political, social, and economic ills. Regalist policy makers in Madrid drew on all this information to fashion pragmatic imperial reforms using the most up-to-date ideas available to them. At the same time, Bourbon clerical reforms emerged in a highly contested political arena with many competing ideological agendas, which shaped its contours over the course of the eighteenth century.

The Treaty of Madrid in 1750 finally liberated Spain from all the constraints imposed at Utrecht, which allowed reformers to seize the opportunity for a long-awaited modernization of the commercial system and for undermining powerful vested interests opposed to reform. The secularization of the doctrinas de indios attacked the economic power and social prestige of the religious orders, and the use of register ships undercut the historic privileges of the powerful Consulados of Cádiz, Mexico City, and Lima. These bold policy changes went well beyond the earlier initiatives in defense, finance, and administration undertaken by Alberoni and sustained by Patiño. Madrid’s priorities had clearly become imperial, not just national or dynastic, and the government’s focus had shifted decisively from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. With the end of war in Europe and the Indies, revenues from America rose to unprecedented levels as Ensenada’s men in the New World – the Conde de Revillagigedo, the Conde de Superunda, and Sebastián de Eslava – clamped down on contraband, bureaucratic corruption, and government inefficiencies. The Marqués de la Ensenada could now use these revenues to replace losses sustained by the armada during the war and expand the number of warships in the fleet. It was a time of widespread change and innovation throughout the Spanish Atlantic system.

Such fundamental shifts in royal policy would not come easily. Powerful interests vehemently opposed commercial modernization, and tradition-bound forces within the royal administration and without sought to impede change. Although the Marqués de la Ensenada had dominated the political arena in Spain for over a decade, his policies always had powerful opponents, who contributed to his fall from power in 1754. The departure of Rávago from Madrid followed the exile of Ensenada by months. The conservative backlash was reminiscent of the events following the destitution of Alberoni. Political drift at the top reached its nadir with the mental breakdown of King Ferdinand VI followed by his untimely death. The new king, Charles III appeared to energize Madrid when he acceded to the throne, but when English invaders appeared off Havana in 1762, the strongpoint of the American empire fell after a two-month siege. After the loss of Havana, the consequences of the failed colonial policy of neutrality and the opportunities lost became alarmingly apparent.

While Alberoni’s ambitious attempts to regain control over Spain’s ports contributed to the outbreak of the disastrous War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720), he also promoted other serious reforms within the Spanish Atlantic world. The Italian knew that Spain controlled an Atlantic empire, and any attempts to renovate the metropolis and restore Spanish prestige and power in Europe must rely on tax revenues and trade from the Indies. Interest groups in Spain and the Americas, however, stood ready to oppose changes that might undermine their own partisan interests. The wealth of the Indies also drew the attention of Spain’s rivals, who wanted unrestricted access to American markets, and they were even prepared to go to war to control the wealth of the Spanish Indies. A serious reform of Spain’s transatlantic trade would have consequences felt throughout the Atlantic world. Fraud, unregistered cargoes, and corrupt local officials in the Indies had always plagued Spain’s transatlantic trade to some degree, but in the years following the War of Succession, contraband trade controlled by English, French, and Dutch traders escalated to alarming levels. This illicit commerce led to disappointing commercial profits for Spanish and colonial merchants and to diminished tax returns on trade fairs in Veracruz and Portobelo. Moreover, from their foreign bases in the Caribbean, Spain’s enemies preyed on the Flotas and Galeones returning to Spain. Within this context, the concessions at Utrecht to the British – Europe’s emerging commercial leader in the early eighteenth century – were potentially even more damaging. In short, widespread contraband in the Pacific and the Caribbean threatened the very commercial lifeline of the monarchy. It is no small wonder that the ambitious Alberoni made reform on both sides of the Atlantic a major priority.