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The Sharing of the Profits of the Carrera de Indias: The Actors of the Hispanic Colonial Trade and Their Monopolistic Practices in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2024

Arnaud Bartolomei Open the ORCID record for Arnaud Bartolomei [Opens in a new window]
Arnaud Bartolomei*
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Université Côte d'Azur, CMMC/Casa de Velázquez Arnaud.BARTOLOMEI@univ-cotedazur.fr
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Abstract

The Carrera de Indias, considered as a set of circuits connecting Hispanic America to world markets, does not appear as a “monopoly” reserved solely for the Spanish merchants of Cadiz, but rather as a complex commercial system, structured into three autonomous segments, each of them dominated by a mercantile corporation, more or less formalized. In the central part, which linked the two shores of the Atlantic, the merchants registered in the Consulado of the Indies of Cadiz (cargadores) obviously dominated the market. However, these were in turn dominated by the merchants from the consulates of Mexico and Lima in the inland trade (comercio de tierra adentro), which linked the great American ports and fairs with the markets of the interior of the continent, and by the foreign merchants of Cadiz, structured into “nations,” in the exchanges that linked the Andalusian port with the rest of Europe and the world. Thus, the beneficiaries of the Spanish colonial trade in the second half of the eighteenth century were neither only cargadores, nor foreign “smugglers” enjoying the weakness of the Spanish empire as the historiography of the Carrera de Indias has traditionally postulated, but those three groups of traders.

After highlighting this singular structure of colonial trade in the Spanish Atlantic, we will consider the different institutional and relational factors that could explain it. Obviously, it is because the different groups of actors involved in these exchanges had a specific social, relational, cultural, and institutional capital that they had a comparative advantage over their rivals in certain segments of the Carrera de Indias circuits, and that they were able to obtain the dominant position that we observe.

Keywords

Carrera de IndiasAtlantic tradeeighteenth centuryinstitutionsmerchants’ networkscommercial monopolies
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 39 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

Although it deals with the whole of the Carrera de Indias, this article is mainly based on observations made about the trade of New Spain, and to a lesser extent Peru. This is the reason why it does not address the question of the Atlantic slave trade, which was little practiced in these two spaces (even at a time when it reached its peak in the Atlantic world). This article is part of research that was carried out mainly with the support of the Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine (CMMC, Université Côte d'Azur), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), and the Casa de Velázquez (Madrid). It was first presented and discussed at the seminars of the UMR FRAMESPA and TELEMMe (Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, 2018, and Aix-Marseille Université, 2019), the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study (Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, 2020), the panel “The great intermediation” organized during the last WEHC by Alejandra Irigoin and Catia Brilli (Paris, 2022), and in the Comparative Regional History Seminar of the University of Costa Rica (2022). I sincerely thank all the participants in these meetings for their constructive comments and, more precisely, Xabier Lamikiz for a first reading of this text. I also thank the two anonymous peer-reviewers for their very stimulating suggestions as well as Luis González Fernández, the current director of studies for Modern and Contemporary times of the Écoles des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques (Casa de Velázquez) for the revision of the English translation of this text.

References

1. This idea was first set out formally in Clarence Henry Haring's classic Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1918)Google Scholar, but has been reformulated, with nuances, in several works since that pioneering study. See, for example, the classics by Lynch, John (The Hispanic world in crisis and change: 1598-1700 [Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar, Elliot, John H. (Empires of the Atlantic world: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 [New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006]Google Scholar), and Stanley J. and Stein, Barbara H. (Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759-1789 [Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University, 2003]Google Scholar). In recent Spanish historiography, the following two important syntheses can be highlighted: Bernal, Antonio Miguel, España, proyecto inacabado. Los costes-beneficios del imperio (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2005)Google Scholar, José María Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales (1650-1796): España, América y Europa en el cambio institucional del sistema colonial español (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2007).

2. This article presents part of the results of the unpublished habilitation à diriger des recherches that I completed in 2022 at the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and which is entitled “Après l'Empire. Les reconfigurations du commerce atlantique du Mexique (vers 1750-vers 1840)” (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, 2022; HAL Id : tel-04058778). For a recent critical discussion of the notion of monopoly, see Baskes, Jeremy, Staying Afloat: Trade and Uncertainty in the Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760-1820 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. Lamikiz, Xabier, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Word. Spanish Merchants and their Overseas Network (Woodbridge, United Kingdom: Boydell Press, 2010)Google Scholar. Instead of denouncing, as was traditionally done, the “voracity” of the cargadores registered in the Consulado, Baskes insists on the uncertainty that characterized the commercial framework of the Carrera de Indias and on the necessary nature of legal protections to make profits in that context. Lamikiz, for his part, stresses the importance of informal institutions—such as personal ties and diasporas—in the construction of the mercantile networks that dominated transatlantic exchanges.

3. Huguette and Chaunu, Pierre, Séville et l'Atlantique (1504-1650) (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1955–1960)Google Scholar. Lutgardo García Fuentes, El comercio español con América: 1650-1700 (Seville: Diputación provincial de Sevilla, 1980). Antonio García-Baquero Gónzalez, Cádiz y el Atlántico (1717-1778) (Cadiz: Diputación Provincial de Cádiz, 1988). Fisher, John R., Commercial Relations between Spanish and Spanish America in the Era of Free Trade, 1778-1796 (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1985)Google Scholar.

4. Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, ed., Commodity chains and global capitalism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994).

5. Michel Morineau, Incroyables gazettes et fabuleux métaux: les retours des trésors américains d'après les gazettes hollandaises : XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris, Éd. de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1985), 653.

6. Brading, David A., Miners and merchants in Bourbon Mexico: 1763-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Guillermina del Valle Pavón, ed., Mercaderes, comercio y consulados de Nueva España en el siglo XVIII (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2003); Guillermina del Valle Pavón and Antonio Ibarra, ed., Redes, corporaciones comerciales y mercados hispanoamericanos en la economía global, siglos XVII-XIX (Mexico: Instituto Mora, Consejo Nacional de ciencia y tecnologia, 2017).

7. About these three merchant groups, see Shaw, Carlos Martínez, Cataluña en la Carrera de Indias (1680-1756) (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1981)Google Scholar. Weber, Klaus, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel, 1680-1830: Unternehmen und Familien in Hamburg, Cádiz und Bordeaux (München: C.H. Beck, 2004)Google Scholar. Olivier Le Gouic, Lyon et la mer au XVIIIe siècle: connexions atlantiques et commerce colonial (Rennes: PUR, 2011).

8. Barbier, Jacques, “Silver, North Americain penetration, and the Spanish imperial economy, 1760-1800,” in The North American role in the Spanish imperial exconomy, 1760-1819, edited by Jacques Barbier and Allan J. Kuethe (London: Manchester University Press, 1984), 6–12Google Scholar. Carlos Alvárez Nogal, “Instituciones y desarollo económico: la Casa de la Contratación y la Carrera de Indias (1503-1790),” in La Casa de la Contratación y la navegación entre España y las Indias, edited by Antonio Acosta Rodríguez, Adolfo González Rodríguez, and Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2003), 21–51. Guillermina del Valle Pavón, Donativos, préstamos y privilegios. Los mercaderes y mineros de la ciudad de México durante la guerra anglo-española de 1779-1783 (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 2016). The idea of a decentralized and cooperative Bourbon imperial practice with the mercantile corporations is also convincingly defended by Irigoin, Alejandra and Grafe, Regina, “Bargaining for Absolutism: A Spanish Path to Nation-State and Empire Building,” Hispanic American Historical Review 88, no. 2 (2007): 173–209Google Scholar.

9. This is also the conclusion highlighted by Jeremy Baskes in his indispensable study Staying Afloat, 43sq.

10. In an immense literature, we will only highlight some of our most important readings: Greif, Avner, Institutions and the path to the modern economy: lessons from medieval trade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trivellato, Francesca, The familiarity of strangers: the Sephardic diaspora, Livorno and cross-cultural trade in the early modern period (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. See also, from a more general perspective, Guinnane, Timothy W., “Trust: a Concept too many,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1, no. 1 (2005): 77–92Google Scholar.

11. Victoria E. Martínez del Cerro González, Una comunidad de comerciantes: navarros y vascos en Cádiz (segunda mitad del siglo XVIII) (Seville: Junta de Andalucía, 2006), 252–54.

12. “Parientes o paisanos,” Martínez del Cerro González, Una comunidad de comerciantes, 248.

13. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Cádiz (AHPC), Archivo Marqués de Purullena, cajas 60–63, “Correspondencia de Amigos y negocios.”

14. Things changed during the 1790s, however, when Miguel de Iribarren established an ongoing correspondence with Arnaldo Moller, a Hamburg merchant he had met earlier in Cadiz (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 61, expediente 19, “Correspondencia de Armaldo Christian Moller,” 1789–1804). At the same time, he formed, in Cadiz, the company Iribarren y Schondhal, which maintained an intense activity with the European provinces interested in the Carrera de Indias, the Silesia before all (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 22, expediente 16, “Inventario de los libros, paquetes y cartas y demás papeles relativos a la compañía que se tituló I y S”, 1795–1806). But this occurred precisely within the framework of the new rules in force in the Carrera de Indias after 1796, which had opened direct trade with the Americas to neutral ports and flags.

15. We speak of “American” or “Creole” merchants to designate the merchants registered in the consulados of Mexico or Lima, but it is now well known that the great majority of them were born in Spain and arrived in America in their youth (Brading, Miners and Merchants). See also, Renate Borchart de Moreno, Los mercaderes y el capitalismo en México (1759-1778) (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), 31, and, more recently, Xabier Lamikiz, “Transatlantic Networks and Merchant Guild Rivalry in Colonial Trade with Peru, 1729-1780: a New Interpretation,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91, no. 2 (2011): 315.

16. Acervo Histórico de la Universidad Iberoamericana (AHUI), Fondo Compañía de Francisco Ignacio de Yratea, libros 2.1.2, “Copiador de cartas del Reyno y Europa” (1769–1774), 2.1.15, “Libro Borrador de cartas de los Reynos de España, Lima, Guayaquil y la Gran China” (1789–1792) y 2.1.16–18 “Libro Borrador de cartas del Reyno” (1790–1792).

17. See Table 1, in annex.

18. AHUI, Fondo Compañía de Francisco Ignacio de Yratea, libro 2.1.2, “Copiador de cartas del Reyno y Europa,” (1769–1774), fol. 27, letter to don Fausto Gutiérrez Cayón (Cadiz), April 18, 1769.

19. Bartolomei, Arnaud, Les marchands français de Cadix et la crise de la Carrera de Indias (1778-1828) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2017), 79CrossRefGoogle Scholarsq.

20. It is, for example, the case of the “Huguenot” houses Rivet and Jugla Solier that maintained privileged relations with the Protestant South of France. On the other hand, the house of Delaville, which was from Nantes and Catholic, maintained an important trade with Brittany.

21. Robert Chamboredon, Fils de soie sur le théâtre des prodiges du commerce. La maison Gilly-Fornier à Cadix au XVIIIe siècle (1748-1786) (PhD diss., Université de Toulouse, 1995).

22. In 1772, Jacques-Arnail Fornier complained that “the Indies have always ruined the foreigners and enriched the Spaniards” (Chamboredon, Fils de soie, 332). In fact, after having systematically reviewed the company's accounts, Robert Chamboredon locates its gradual withdrawal from direct trade in the Indies in the 1760s, with an acceleration after the free trade reforms of 1778 (Chamboredon, Fils de soie, 436). For a more in-depth analysis of this process, see Bartolomei, Les marchands français de Cadix, 95sq.

23. Bartolomei, Les marchands français de Cadix, 95sq.

24. Bartolomei, Les marchands français de Cadix, 311.

25. Le Gouic, Lyon et la mer, annexes.

26. Three quarters of the letters detained in the Perla were destined for Madrid or Cadiz and less than 1 percent for a city outside the Spanish empire (Lamikiz, Trade and trust, 103). In Cadiz, 246 of the 292 addressees were Spanish (Lamikiz, Trade and trust, 117).

27. Guadalupe Carrasco González, Corredores y Comercio. La Correduría de Lonja gaditana entre 1573 y 1805, (Cadiz: Consejo Superior de Corredores de Comercio de España, 1999), 132–44.

28. José Joaquín Real Díaz, “Las ferias de Jalapa,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, no. XVI, 1959, 167–281, Pedro Pérez Herrero, Plata y libranzas, la articulación comercial del México borbónico (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1989).

29. Carmen Yuste López, Emporios transpacíficos: comerciantes mexicanos en Manila, 1710-1815 (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2007); Luisa Consuelo Soler Lizarazo, Tráfico mercantil entre Nueva España y Guayaquil, 1767-1797: Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta y sus corresponsales tesis de doctorado (Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2010). More generally, see Marianio Bonialian, El Pacífico Hispanoamericano. Política y comercio asiatico en el imperio español, 1680-1784. La centralidad de lo marginal (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2012).

30. Pearce, Adrian J., British Trade with Spanish America, 1763-1808 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

31. Rodríguez, Manuel Bustos, Los comerciantes de la Carrera de Indias en el Cádiz del siglo XVIII (1717-1775) (Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 1995), 152Google Scholar.

32. Chamboredon, Fils de soie, 250–51. In 1789, it was sufficiently introduced into the Parisian banking networks to obtain a credit opening from the firm Greffulhe Montz et Cie, a very rare privilege among the few Spanish correspondents of that important Protestant bank in Paris (Archives nationales, fonds Greffulhe, 61 AQ 103, letter from Aguado y Guruceta hermanos to Greffulhe Montz et Cie, November 27, 1789).

33. Baskes, Staying Afloat, 20.

34. Lamikiz, Trade and trust, 45–50.

35. Solana, Ana Crespo, Entre Cádiz y los Países Bajos. Una comunidad mercantil en la ciudad de la Ilustración, (Cadiz: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz, 2001)Google Scholar; Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel, Brilli, Catia, Genoese Trade and Migration in the Spanish Atlantic (1700-1830) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bartolomei, Les marchands français de Cadix.

36. Real Díaz, “Las ferias de Jalapa,” 258.

37. On the adaptation of American merchants to the free trade reforms, see Pérez Herrero, Plata y libranzas and Lamikiz, Trade and trust. We have a good example of the fragmented nature of the trade of the “goods of Castile” in America in the report that was formed about the commercial dispute that arose in 1784 between two cargadores, Pedro Martínez and Josef Roura, and their flotista, Juan Antonio Ucelay. This report contains a list of the 300 customers in Guatemala who purchased the 460,360 reales of goods included in the litigious: thus, the 255 “tercios de bramantes” were sold among 109 customers between November 1784 and August 1786, the 91 “marquetas” of wax among 24 buyers and the 50 boxes of knives resulted in 86 transactions (Archivo Histórico Nacional, now AHN, Consejos, leg. 20237, exp. 5).

38. The correspondence sent to Miguel de Iribarren by his agent is full of allusions to the negotiation of the amount of the alcabala that the flotistas had to pay to introduce their unsold merchandise (the famous “rezagos”) into the interior of New Spain. Thus, in 1780, Pedro Daza y Guzmán, who was detained in Veracruz, hoped that the Viceroy would let the flotistas “leave this port for Jalapa or Mexico without making us pay another alcabala” (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 60, letter from Veracruz, December 6, 1780).

39. In 1776, another correspondent of Miguel de Iribarren wrote him about the death of his supercargo, requesting that he be named as his successor. He reminded Iribarren that “by virtue of the Order of the year 1750, neighbors domiciled in America cannot receive consignments that are not of their own effects” (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 63, letter from José Santiago Ynciarte, Jalapa, December 28, 1776). Antonio García-Baquero González confirms that the right to receive the consignment of goods belonging to third parties was discussed during the second half of the eighteenth century and was not recognized for American merchants before the Royal Decree of July 15, 1780 (Cádiz y el Atlántico, 129). But it is possible that the situation remained confused after that date. Other argues that the prohibition was reiterated in 1788, again suspended by a Royal Order on August 23,1796, and again enforced between 1805 and 1808, with a final reiteration in 1809, see Marina Alfonso Mola, “El tráfico marítimo de la Carrera de Indias en las agitadas aguas de las independencies,” in Historia económica del cono sur de América. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. La era de las revoluciones y la independencia, edited by Hernán Asdrúbal Silva (Mexico: Insitution Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, 2010), 149.

40. Fisher, Commercial Relations between Spanish and Spanish America. Arnaud Bartolomei, “Nueva España, el último bastión del comercio imperial español en el proceso de apertura de la Carrera de Indias (1815-1825),” Illes e Imperis 23 (2021): 99–126.

41. Pérez Herrero, Plata y libranzas, Lamikiz, Trade and trust.

42. Fisher, Commercial Relations between Spanish and Spanish America.

43. Jean Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l'Ancien Régime. L'évolution du régime de l’“Exclusif” de 1763 à 1789 (Paris: PUF, 1972).

44. García-Baquero González, Cádiz y el Atlántico, 507.

45. Pacheco, Maria Cristina Torales, La compañia de comercio de Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta (1767-1797) (México: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior, 1985), 152Google Scholar.

46. For example, the oldest printed circular letter found in a corpus of 2019 circulars received from all over Europe by four French trading houses is dated 1739 and comes from Cadiz. Such circular letters appeared in the eighteenth century and were increasingly used by merchants to introduce themselves to their peers and offer their commercial services (circular letter from Robiou frères et Cie à Roux frères, Cadiz, April 7, 1739, consulted in Base Circulaires Fiduciae, July 7, 2022, https://fiduciae.huma-num.fr/document/fiduciae_roux_965).

47. Bartolomei, Les marchands français de Cadix.

48. Smith, Robert S., “The institution of the Consulado in New Spain,” Hispanic American History Review 24, no. 1 (1944): 66Google Scholar.

49. For example, in commercial matters, the Consulado obtained, from the seventeenth century onward, the exorbitant privilege of establishing the periodicity of the fleets. On this subject, see Alvárez Nogal, “Instituciones y desarollo económico,” Valle Pavón, Donativos, préstamos y privilegios, and, more recently, Negociación, lágrimas y maldiciones: la fiscalidad extraordinaria en la monarquía hispánica, edited by Guillermina del Valle Pavón (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis de Mora, 2020).

50. Rivera, Julián Bautista Ruiz, El Consulado de Cádiz. Matrícula de comerciantes, 1730-1823 (Cadiz: Diputación provincial de Cádiz, 1988)Google Scholar. Mundi, María García-Mauriño, La pugna entre el Consulado de Cádiz y los jenízaros por las exportaciones a Indias (1720-1765) (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1999)Google Scholar.

51. In fact, despite being born in Spain, neither Domingo nor Juan José Béhic appear in the matricula of the Consulado of Cádiz (Ruiz Rivera, El Consulado de Cádiz, 142). On this case, see also Herzog, Tamar, Defining nations: immigrants and citizens in early modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, CT: Yale University press, 2003), 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another similar case is that of Josef Eugenio Lassaleta, who had to wait until his father dissolved his commercial association with a foreign partner to obtain his registration on the matricula of the Consulado (Archivo General de Indias, sección Indiferente General, leg. 1537, “Expediente sobre concesión de carta de naturaleza a Don Josef Eugenio Lassaleta del comercio de Cádiz”, 1790). This confirms that, at the end of the eighteenth century, the authorization to trade with the Indies was not yet automatically attributed to the naturalized.

52. See Lamikiz, Xabier, “Préstamos a riesgo de mar y redes transatlánticas en el comercio entre Cádiz y la costa del Pacífico sudamericano, 1760-1825,” América Latina en la Historia Económica 30, no. 2 (2023): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. AHN, Consejos, leg. 3169. Our analysis of the matter underlines that the proportion of merchants registered in the Consulado is much lower in the lawsuits that gave rise to an appeal procedure before the Council of Indies than it was in the reality of Spanish colonial trade (and higher, on the contrary, the part of outsiders, as merchants from other cities, foreigners, or nobles). This suggests that many of the conflicts between merchants of the Consulado were resolved without recourse to the costly appeals procedure. See Bartolomei, “Après l'empire,” 154.

54. AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 56, expediente 25, “Informe dado por don Miguel de Iribarren a solicitud del Consulado de Cádiz sobre el comercio libre de los frutos del Reino del Perú con el de Nueva España,” 1791.

55. Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish politics and imperial trade, 1700-1789 (London-Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979). Ivan Escamilla González, Los intereses malentendidos. El consulado de Comerciantes de México y la monarquía española, 1700-1739 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2011).

56. Valle Pavón, Donativos, préstamos y privilegios.

57. Économie et négoce des Français dans l'Espagne de l’époque moderne. Instructions et mémoires officiels relatifs au commerce en Espagne de la gestion de Colbert (1669) au Pacte de Famille (1761), edited by Didier Ozanam and Anne Mézin (Paris: Archives nationales, 2011).

58. AHN, Estado, leg. 4008, letter from Pierre Lenormand (Cadiz) to Edouard Boyetet (Madrid), November 5, 1779.

59. This work showed, for example, that sharing a common commercial “language” and operating within a standardized and integrated legal framework allowed European traders to establish very direct commercial relations, including with peers they had never met and with whom they had never had any recommendations. (Arnaud Bartolomei, Claire Lemercier, Viera Rebolledo-Dhuin et Nadège Sougy, “Becoming a correspondent: The foundations of new merchant relationships in early modern French trade [1730-1820],” Enterprise & Society 20, no. 3 [2019]: 533–74).

60. AHPC, Fondo Marqués de Purullena, caja 25, expediente 15, “Libro primero copiador de correspondencia a distintos corresponsales, 1798-1806,” fol. 115, letter to Pedro Juan de Erice (Habana), April 16, 1802.

61. AHPC, Fondo Marqués de Purullena, caja 25, expediente 15, “Libro primero copiador de correspondencia a distintos corresponsales, 1798-1806,” fol. 117, letter to Pedro Juan de Erice (Habana), May14, 1802: “The foregoing is a copy of the one I addressed to you on its date; I ratify its contents and include the second with a duplicate of the letter of advice, repeating myself at your obedience.” On the circulation of information in the Hispanic Atlantic, see Baskes, Staying Afloat, 17.

62. Bachet, Bruno Aguilera, Historia de la letra de cambio en España (Madrid: Tecnos, 1988)Google Scholar. Carlos Petit, Historia del derecho mercantile (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2016).

63. AHPC, Fondo Marqués de Purullena, caja 25, expediente 15, “Libro primero copiador de correspondencia a distintos corresponsales, 1798-1806,” fol. 241, letter at Pedro Montalvo (Habana), June 14, 1805.

64. “Although the registration and bills of lading did not include Don Cayetano Dufresne as consignee, few difficulties would have been encountered to give him possession of your effects, if an invoice (factura) capable of making force had named him as a third party; but as the [invoice] was unfinished, lacking date and signature, it was not a document that could justify its legitimacy anywhere,” AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 63, expediente 30, letter from José Santiago Ynciarte, December 28, 1776.

65. The following extract, for example, is very typical of the codified language that flotistas used to describe the market situation in America (capital letters to distinguish any terms, expressions, nomenclature used): “Alternatively, the three registers are being unloaded, and so far the only thing left to tell you is that Aguardiente runs at 53 ps, Crudos at 5 ½ rs, Fierro Planchuela from 18 to 20 ps and Canela at 7 ps, in the other commodities still no concept can yet be formed that the buyers here walk with a lead foot [pie de plomo[, no sale having been verified either” (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 61, expediente 1, letter from Tomás de Ciganda, March 15, 1782).

66. Thus, in 1789, his agent Rafael de Orozco wrote to him: “I do not know if the news given to me by Rodriguez's son that Don Nicolas de la Torre, his father's proxy in Veracruz, had made some sales of more than 50,000 pesos, at 28–30%, and within 8 months, is true, and if this is true, it is very different from what Don Domingo Salgueiro has written me lately, since he says that the Ancheta that he has in his possession containing the 3000 pesos of yours will not come out of it except with a considerable loss, […]. I believe, my friend, that they do little or no diligence for its sale, and that in other hands we would have already left this small dependency” (AHPC, Archivo Marqués de Purullena, caja 63, expediente 6, letter from Rafael de Orozco, February 6, 1789).

67. See table 1, in annex.

68. To give an idea of the importance of this legal framework in the management of personal relationships, we have underlined in the following passage, extracted from a letter of Juan Francisco de Yraeta, all the terms that had a legal definition (which, as can be seen, were often written with a capital letter): “Very dear sir and of my highest esteem, I reply to your letter of November 6 of last year which I received in Duplicate, saying that in effect your Proxy in Madrid Don Francisco Galo Carrasco also informed me of the favorable Decision that had been obtained in the Lawsuit subscribed on the Expedition of the Ship San Juan Nepomuceno belonging to you and, by the last notice, I have received the Real Cedula that sends me the same one, and de facto it is ordered to lift the collaterals that I have granted here, and reserves your rights to repeat against whoever it concerns for the damages and prejudices that were originated; And in its virtue I am already prevented in this Supreme Government requesting cancellation of said collaterals and for not having not yet been evacuated and not knowing the costs that this demands, I cannot form the account that you order me until after completion of these procedures, but when the case comes I will make the liquidation punctually and I will proceed to remit the rest if there is any to our Lady Doña Magadalena Helme, neighbor of Puerto de Santa Maria, registering it in her name, and at her risk, and to her power I will give notice to you with the respective account and to the said Lady for its receipt” (AHUI, Fondo Compañía de Francisco Ignacio de Yratea, libro 2.1.15., letter to Antonio Helme, March 17, 1790).

69. See table 2, in annex. About the correspondents of Roux house in the Levant, see Sébastien Lupo, “Révolution(s) d’échelles: Le marché levantin et la crise du commerce marseillais au miroir des maisons Roux et de leurs relais à Smyrne (1740-1787)” (PhD diss., Aix-Marseille Université, 2015).

70. “Marseilles, Mrs JB honorato roux and co., Cadiz the 8ber 23, 1731

Sirs,

In compliance with the orders of Monsieur françois magon said La Lande Magon of St Malo, I have loaded for his account and risk at your address six thousand white grains [limons blancs] as follows, 2000 on the ship named la félicité capitan andre courtes, 2000 on the ship le Lazare capitan sabatier, 2000 on the vessel le Phenix Capitan Duqué le Fer, making together the above number which you will be pleased to withdraw on arrival of the said vessels by virtue of the bills of lading which [ill] blank at the same time as the present and following the orders of sieur Magon.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to offer you my services and assure you that I am truly, Gentlemen, your most humble and ob[edient] ser[vant], Joseph Coig” (Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Marseille-Provence, now ACCIM, Fonds Roux, LIX, liasse 855, letter from Joseph Coig, October 23, 1731).

71. Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes, Cadix, 136PO, caisse 398, dossier 981, “Ordonnance du cónsul au sujet de la requête du sieur Julien Jean Cosse, du commerce de Lyon, à l'encontre du sieur François Maguet, négociant français de cette ville” (October 18, 1763).

72. Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France. Paris, Robert, Histoire du commerce de Marseille. Tome V, de 1660 à 1789. Le Levant (Marseille: Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Marseille-Provence, 1957)Google Scholar. Armytage, Frances, The free port system in the British West Indies: a study in commercial policy, 1766-1822 (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1963)Google Scholar.