This is a very clearly argued and readable study of the asiento, an agreement signed in 1713 by Britain and Spain that granted the British South Sea Company (SSC) a monopoly on the slave trade in the Spanish Atlantic for a 30-year period, the right to a limited legal trade, and long-term residency to a small number of British subjects in Spanish American trading posts. Adrian Finucane, a historian who specializes in the early modern Atlantic World and teaches early American history at Florida Atlantic University, focuses not on the familiar topics of the economic importance of the asiento, or the policies emanated from London or Madrid, but on the relationships between agents of the SSC and subjects of the Spanish empire and the effects of these interactions on the formation of empires. Finucane sees the asiento trade as a unique period of intense and multifaceted Anglo-Spanish cooperation that ultimately collapsed in the late 1740s under the weight of religious tensions, conflict over contraband trade and piracy, and war.
The book follows a chronological structure and is organized into four chapters, a prologue that deals with the period before the asiento, and an epilogue. In the first chapter, “Britain Hopes for the ‘Riches of America,’ 1713–1716,” Finucane dwells on the debates unleashed in Great Britain and Jamaica about the convenience of engaging in this type of trade with Spain. In Chapter 2, “The Stuttering Success of the Early Trade, 1717–1728,” the author describes how contraband trade, piracy, and war tested the fragile agreement. Particularly interesting in this chapter is the attention given to the curiosity of SSC factors and their friendships with the Spanish residents near the asiento's trading posts (factories), which led to an increased circulation of knowledge about Spanish American natural history, lands, and resources. Important here is that the information that could support illegal trade and fuel British hopes for further overseas expansion. Chapter 3, “Unjust Depredations and Growing Tensions, 1729–1738,” revolves around three threats to Anglo-Spanish cooperation in the 1730s: fear of religious contamination and blurring of identities, illegal trade and the retaliation of Spanish coastguard ships against SSC vessels, and the pressures of Maroon communities on plantations and British settlements in Jamaica. In Chapter 4, “The End of the British Asiento, 1739–1748,” Finucane's analysis of British pamphlets that openly supported war against Spain and the termination of the asiento effectively demonstrates that the opportunities for direct interaction of the British and Spanish in Spain's American empire were hopelessly dwindling. The author's strategy of framing each chapter around the concrete experiences of SSC employees who spent several years in company factories (Thomas Dover, John Burnet, Jonathan Dennis, and James Houstoun) successfully brings us understanding of the imperial projects at the level of individual actors.
Finucane's premise that the decisions of individuals living at the edges of empire—be they colonizers or colonized—had an impact on the definition of broader imperial designs begets a very refreshing look into the British and Spanish empires. With a close-to-the-ground approach, the author reveals the agendas and interests of a variety of historical actors touched by the business of the asiento: the SCC employees, the crowns of Britain and Spain, the directors of the SSC, settlers in Jamaica, merchants in Liverpool, Bristol and London, local Spanish officials, and seamen. Finucane concludes that the imperial agents' desire for personal enrichment often led to the dilution of national loyalties and conflict with larger imperial hopes for expansion in trade, land, and population. Finucane also recognizes that African slaves and Native Americans had their own ideas about their position in the American colonies and how to use the British and Spanish imperial projects to their own ends.
The author calls readers to consider the early modern Americas “as a site of interaction and overlap” (17) and stresses the intertwined nature of the British and Spanish colonial projects, especially in peripheral areas. As he explains, the asiento led to new interactions in British factories in the greater West Indies, the Spanish Main, South America, and even parts of the Pacific coast.
Nonetheless, Latin American historians and historians of the Spanish empire will find that the book heavily privileges Jamaica over other locations. For example, the book could have better contextualized the asiento factories in Buenos Aires, Cartagena, Portobello, and Panama, places where Dover, Burnet, Dennis, and Houstoun lived for prolonged periods of time. A more detailed social, ethnic and demographic background of these locations, as well as information on their role within the Spanish empire, economic activities of the region, and local political authorities would shed light on how local circumstances and relationships with the various groups within the Spanish colonial population might have determined SSC employees’ actions and the nature and importance of the information they gathered.
Overall, this is a stimulating contribution to the field of Atlantic World history studies and as such, it will be of interest to not only historians of the British and Spanish empires, but also specialists in Caribbean history, international economic history, and the slave trade.
