Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T06:25:12.592Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Atlantic In The Eighteenth Century: A Southern Perspective On the Need to Return to the ‘Big Picture’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Kenneth Maxwell
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool

Extract

Looking at the Atlantic in the eighteenth century, it seems to me that we still lack a comprehensive view of what changed during this period, where we should set its boundaries, and how we might interpret the salient characteristics of the century. Perhaps, we have been both too general and too specific, simultaneously seeking with the synthesisers to explain too much and with the more specialised monographic literature to explain too little.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1993

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

1 Latin America and the Enlightenment, ed. Whitaker, A. P. (Ithaca, 1961)Google Scholar; I am drawing in this section on my chapter, ‘The Impact of the American Revolution on Spain and Portugal and Their Empires,’ in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, ed. Greene, Jack P. and Pole, J. R. (Oxford, 1991), 528–43Google Scholar. Since my lecture at the Liverpool seminar was intended as an interpretive essay I have kept footnotes to a minimum. When I have based my arguments on my own work the full documentation can be found in the sources cited. In other cases I have indicated the principal contributions by other scholars rather than provide a comprehensive bibliography in each case.

2 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System, 2 vols. (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

3 Palmer, R. R., The Age of Democratic Revolutions, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1959 and 1964)Google Scholar; Godechot, Jacques, Les revolutions, 1770–1799 (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar and L'europe et l'Amerique a l'époque napolienne, 1800–1819 (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 Novais, Fernando, Portugal e Brasil na crise do antigo sistema colonial, 1777–1808 (São Paulo, 1978)Google Scholar. Also see da Costa, Emilia Viotti, ‘Introdução ao estudo da emancipaçao política do Brasil’, in Brasil em perspectiva, ed. Mota, Carlos (São Paulo, 1969)Google Scholar.

5 Farris, Nancy, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar.

6 Boxer, C. R., Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1680 (1952)Google Scholar.

7 Schwartz, Stuart B., Sugar Plantations and the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550—1835 (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

8 Wood, A. J. R. Russell, Fidalgos and Philanthropists: The Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550–1755 (Berkeley, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hansen, Carl, Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal (Minneapolis, 1981)Google Scholar; also the classic works by Boxer, C. R., The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (1969)Google Scholar and The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750 (Berkeley, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Davidson, David, ‘How the Brazilian West Was Won,’ in Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil, ed. Alden, D. (Berkeley, 1971)Google Scholar; Lapa, J. R. Amaral, Economia Coloniol (São Paulo, 1973)Google Scholar.

11 Maxwell, K. R., Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750–1808 (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar [hereafter Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies].

12 Fisher, H. E. S., The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce, 1700–1770 (1971)Google Scholar. Also, Pinto, Virgilio Noya, Ouro Brasileiro e o comércio Anglo-português (São Paulo, 1979)Google Scholar.

13 Maxwell, Pombal: A Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, forthcoming) [hereafter Maxwell, Pombal]; and Falcón, Francisco José C., A época Pombalina: político, económica e monarquia ilustrada (São Paulo, 1982)Google Scholar.

14 There had, of course, been clandestine direct trade between British merchants and Brazil, especially involving the slave trade. The rolled tobacco of Bahia, most of it from the Cachoeira and Mantiba regions, was the basic commodity of exchange on the African coast, as necessary to other European slavers as to the Portuguese. [Lisboa, José da Silva to Vandelli, Domingos, Bahia, , 19 Oct. 1781, Anais da Biblioteca National, Rio de Janeiro (ABNRJ), XXXII (1920), 505Google Scholar; Rodrigues, J. H., Brazil and Africa (Berkeley, 1965)Google Scholar and Verger, Pierre, Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le golfe de Bènin et Bahia de todos os santos du dixseptième au dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar.] Some fifty vessels a year, corvettes and smaller vessels, left Bahia for Africa, four-fifths of them for the Guiné Coast and the remainder for Angola. [Vilhena, Luís dos Santos, Recopilação de noticias soteropolitanas e brasilicas (1802), 3 vols. (Bahia, 19221935)Google Scholar.] European goods and gold dust came back to Bahia with the cargoes of slaves. This clandestine commerce had outraged the secretary of state for overseas dominions, Melo e Castro, as had the degree of control that the merchants of Bahia exercised over the African commerce to the exclusion of metropolitan merchants. [‘Instrucção paro o marquêde Valença’, Queluz, Martinho de Melo e Castro, 10 09 1779, ABNRJ, XXXII (1910), 442Google Scholar.] The Bahians always pleaded that they were forced into accepting European goods by the other slavers who needed their tobacco. [‘Officio do Desembargador Gervasio de Almeida Paes para o Governador Marquês de Valença, no qual informa a respeito da referida devassa …’, Bahia, 4 Feb. 1783, ibid., 529.] The contraband manufactures, however, did underprice those imported from the metropolis, and restricted the market for metropolitan goods. [José da Silva Lisboa to Domingos Vandelli, Bahia, 19 Oct. 1781, ibid., 505.] The profitable subsidiary trade which accompanied the slave and tobacco commerce contributed to the favourable balance Bahia enjoyed with the metropolis. Most of the capital obtained was sunk into the purchase of more slaves. Martinho de Melo e Castro held that the working of the Bahian-African trade was the same as ‘according to the English, French and Dutch a free trade by the ports of Africa between those nations and the Portuguese dominions in Brazil without the intervention of the merchants of the metropolis.’ [‘Instrucção para o marquêz de Valença’, Castro, Martinho de Melo e, Queluz, 10 Sept. 1779, ABNRJ, XXXII (1910), 444Google Scholar.

15 Arruda, José Jobson de Andrade, O Brasil no comércio colonial (São Paulo, 1980)Google Scholar; Miller, Joseph, The Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, 1988)Google Scholar.

16 I am drawing here on the work of Stein, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara in ‘Concept and Realities of Spanish Economic Growth, 1759–1789’, in Historia Ibérica, I (1973), 103119Google Scholar. Also see Noel, Carlos C., ‘Charles III of Spain’, in Enlightened Absolutism, ed. Scott, H. (1990), 119–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Fisher, John, Commercial Relations Between Spain and Spanish America in the Era of Free Trade, 1778–1796) (Liverpool, 1985)Google Scholar; and González, António Garcia-Baquero, Cádiz y el Atlántico, 1717–1778, 2 vols. (Seville, 1976)Google Scholar.

18 Ribiera, Fernando Murillo, L'Amerique et le changement economique de l'espagna du XVIII siècle: administration et commerce, 1126Google Scholar; Fuentes, Lutgardo Garcia, El comércio español en America, 1650–1700 (Seville, 1980)Google Scholar; Artola, Miguel, ‘América en el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII’, Revista de indias XXIX (1969)Google Scholar; and Sutherland, N. M., ‘The Origins of the 30 Years War and the Structure of European Polities’, English Historical Review, CVII (07 1992), 586625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Malamud, Carlos D., ‘España, Francia y el comércio directo com el espacio peruano, 1695–1730’; ‘Cádiz y Saint Mario’, in La economia española al final del antiquo regime: comércio y colonias, III (Madrid, 1982)Google Scholar. Also, Girard, Albert, Le commerce français à Seville et Cadix au temps de Habsbourgs: contribution à l'étude du commerce étranges en Espagna aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1932)Google Scholar.

20 L'Amerique espagnole a l'epoque des lumieres: Tradition – innovation – représentation, XV (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar. Also the excellent overview by Brading, D. A., ‘Bourbon Spain and its American Empire’, in Cambridge History of Latin America, I, ed. Bethel, L. (Cambridge, 1984), 389439CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Goebel, Dorothy, ‘British Trade to the Spanish Colonies, 1796–1823’, American Historical Review, XLIII (1938), 288320CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Inglis, Allan Kuethe and Douglas, ‘Absolution and Enlightened Reform Charles III and the Establishment of the Alcabala’, Past and Present, CIX (1985), 118143Google Scholar; and Barbier, Jacques, ‘Indies Revenues and Naval Spending: The Cost of Colonialism for the Spanish Bourbons, 1763–1805’, Jahrbüch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gessellschat Latinamerikas, XXI (1984)Google Scholar.

23 Barbier, Jacques, ‘Peninsula Finance and Colonial Trade: The Dilemma of Charles IV's Spain’, Journal of Latin American Studies, XII (1980), 2137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, John, ‘The Imperial Response to “Free Trade”: Spanish Imports from Spanish America, 1778–1796’, Journal of Latin American Studies, XVII (1985), 3578CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and González, A. Garcí-Baquero, ‘Comércio colonial y producción industrial en Cataloñia a fines del siglo XVIII’, Actas del I Coloquio de história economica de España (Barcelona, 1975), 268–94Google Scholar.

24 Edwards, Michael M., The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, 1780–1815 (Manchester, 1967)Google Scholar; Redford, Arthur, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, 1794–1858 (Manchester 1934)Google Scholar; and [Robert Walpole] to [Lord Granville] Lisbon, 12 Oct. 1791, PRO: FO 6/14.

25 ‘Minute of Propositions Impeding the Treaty with Portugal’, Sept. 1786, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/342 (2) f. 59; Office of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, 25 June 1787, PRO, BT 3/1, 102; [W. Fawkener] to [Borough Reeve] and [constable of Manchester], Office of Privy Council for Trade, 23 August 1788, PRO, BT, 3/1, 290.

26 D. José de Almeida de Melo e Castro to Dom João, 1 Sept. 1801, Arquivo Institute Historico e Geografico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, Lata 58, doc. 17.

27 [Robert Fitzgerald] to [Lord Hawkesbury], Lisbon, 21 Oct. 1803, PRO, FO, 63/42.

28 Maxwell, , Conflicts and Conspiracies, especially 115–40Google Scholar.

29 Phelan, John Laddy, The People and the King: The Communero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison, 1978)Google Scholar.

30 Liss, Peggy K., Atlantic Empires: the Networks of Trade and Revolution, 1713–1826 (Baltimore: 1983)Google Scholar.

31 Lynch, John, The Spanish American Revolution, 1808–1826 (1973)Google Scholar. The North American Role in the Spanish Imperial Economy, 1760–1819, ed. Barbier, Jacques and Kuethe, Allan (Manchester, 1984)Google Scholar; also The Economics of Mexico and Peru During the Late Colonial Period, 1700–1810, eds. Jacobson, Nils and Puhle, Hans-Jürgen (Berlin, 1986)Google Scholar.

32 Barrow, John, A Voyage to Cochinchina in the Years 1792 and 1793 (1806), 133–4Google Scholar; Also see Lynch, John, ‘British Policies and Spanish America’, Journal of Latin American Studies, I (1969), 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saint Dominique had been producing about 40% of the world's sugar and over half of the world's coffee, according to David Geggus, when the 1791 slave revolt occurred. The government of William Pitt and Henry Dundas sent some 15,000 soldiers to their deaths in Saint Dominique and spent some £10 m trying to conquer it. Geggus calls this 'among the greatest disasters in British Imperial History. Geggus, D., ‘The British Government and the Saint Dominique slave revolt 1791–1793,’ EHR, XCVI (1981), 285305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin American Nations, ed. Manning, William R., 3 vols. (New York, 1925), I, 72Google Scholar.

34 Britain and the Independence of Latin America, 1812–1830’, in Selected Documents from the Foreign Office Archives, ed. SirWebster, Charles, 2 vols. (1938), I, 190–3Google Scholar.