This book addresses a central issue in the history of Spain and its empire: namely, the question of why and how Bourbon governments tried to revive Spanish power during the eighteenth century, and to what effect. It is, of course, now an historiographical commonplace that the Bourbon succession in 1700 was an important benchmark in the history of Spain and its empire, when Spanish governments set about reversing the profound decline which contemporaries acknowledged to have been the fate of the Habsburg monarchy. With the loss of Spain's major outworks in Europe, its alliance with France, and its pressing need to confront British aggression, Bourbon kings faced challenges that demanded adjustments to the structures and policies of the state which they had inherited from the Habsburgs. Foremost among these was the intensifying European rivalry over colonial trade and territory, a competition primarily between Britain and France that threatened to loosen, if not dislodge, Spain's hold over the American colonies that were its most vital source of wealth and power. Unsurprisingly, then, the empire in the New World came to occupy an increasingly central role in contemporary Spanish discourse about Spain and its future. Formulating schemes for change was not the same as creating and implementing policies that would achieve significant change, however. Although Philip V and Fernando VI tried to improve Spanish administration and commerce both at home and in the Indies, the Spanish state was militarily weak and financially unstable when Charles III inherited the throne in 1759. Indeed, its fragility was dramatically exposed shortly after his accession when, in 1762, Spain lost Havana and Manila to British attacks. This shock to the imperial system was to mark the most important turning point in Spain's history since the Bourbon accession. Now, after prolonged and largely ineffectual discussions, the king and his policy-makers began to frame potentially far-reaching reforms of Spanish colonial policy, designed to enlarge state income and to stimulate Spain's economy by harnessing the resources of the empire. These reforms are the subject of this book.
The genesis and implementation of reforming policies under Charles III have already been widely studied, resulting in a considerable body of work analysing their repercussions on major regions on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic. The Steins' study, however, makes an impressive new contribution to our understanding. It focuses on two poles of empire, Spain and New Spain, and traces the process of reform from its genesis in Madrid through to its eventual implementation in Mexico. This is in itself a valuable contribution to our understanding of the workings of comercio libre, the lynchpin of Bourbon economic reform. Even more interesting, however, is the authors' detailed investigation and acute exposition of the ways in which the new commercial policy was conceived, launched, shaped and re-shaped in the thirty years of Charles III's rule. Here we are given a fascinating, detailed and ultimately persuasive account of policy-making, seen through the activities, interactions, and conflicts of bureaucratic, commercial and regional elites with distinctive interests and scant allegiance to a national interest that might take precedence over their inherited privileges.
Part One – ‘Stalemate in the Metropole’ – is taken up with the question of how the major reforms of Charles III were started and carried forward in their first phase, up to 1766. We are shown how Charles' determination to confront Spain's basic problems stemmed from his record of reform in Italy, and how the definition and pursuit of reform hinged on his choice of a small cadre of like-minded ministers and bureaucrats. By focusing on the formation and activities of this group, led by the king's Italian advisor Esquilache, the authors throw a fresh and vivid light on the politics of reform in the opening phase of Caroline government. We see the crucial importance of bringing in new men to implement new policies, the meaning that these men attached to ‘reform’ and the directions in which they were taken by their urgent need to increase the state's tax revenue. We also gain some valuable new insights into the environment in which new policies were planned and launched, particularly after Spain's humiliating defeats in the Seven Years' War. Of particular value is the close analysis of Esquilache's ‘special junta’ of 1763–65 and the first Reglamento de comercio libre, a set of commercial reforms which were a vital building-block for the second, more extensive, Reglamento of 1778. The question of whether this first Reglamento was simply a reaction to the traumatic loss of Havana in 1762, or the first step in a broader, still covert programme of reform remains difficult to determine, as the authors admit, but they leave us with the strong suspicion that Esquilache envisaged a larger plan for regenerating Spain by overhauling its economic relationship with the American colonies.
As well as tracing new directions in policy, this book takes us further than any previous study into the political world in which policy was made. It shows the emergence of a species of parallel bureaucracy, whose key men were drawn from the Spanish military (many of them Aragonese officers linked to Aranda) and whose purpose was to drive reform forward in the colonies. This study also shows how, by propelling reform, these new men engendered opposition within the apparatus of Spanish government. Indeed, one of the best features of this book is its fine analysis of the conflicts which new men and new policies raised at the very heart of government, where the colegiales of Salamanca and Valladolid who had long held sway over the bureaucratic establishment resisted encroachments on their position and power.
The broader significance of this conflict is brilliantly explained in Chapter 4, in a novel deconstruction of the 1766 riot in Madrid which led to the overthrow of Esquilache. Through careful detective work and deft analysis, the authors piece together a highly plausible account of the riot and its significance, showing the pressures which lay behind the popular tumult, the plans which brought it to fruition, the men who manipulated it, and the motives for their opposition to Esquilache and reforms to which the king was deeply committed. Here, for once, is a conspiracy theory that works. The authors reveal the powerful capacity of elements in the old bureaucracy and nobility to obstruct policies that the king regarded as essential and urgent. Privileged groups asserted their right to consultation and bureaucratic representation in important decisions, and, when thwarted, had recourse to a manipulated, theatrical violence to express their criticism. More could, perhaps, be said of other manifestations of such political behaviour, notably the parallels found in the riots and rebellions of Quito in 1765 and in New Granada and Peru in 1780–81; indeed, there is scope here for seeing all these moments of rebellion as elements in the defence of that ‘unwritten constitution’ that John Phelan saw at the heart of the Comunero Rebellion of 1781. Nonetheless, the authors make a striking case for seeing the motín de Esquilache as an event of great significance in itself, tantamount to a coup d'état, and, in its implications for Spanish policy, arguably the key political event of eighteenth-century Spanish history. For, although the insult to the monarchy was covered up by scapegoating the Jesuits, Esquilache's ejection reminded Charles of the limits of his power and persuaded his reform-minded officials to proceed with greater caution, looking to the colonies rather than Spain as the theatre of reform.
The implications of this political upheaval are worked through in the second section of this book – ‘The Colonial Option’ – which traces the formulation and implementation of new policies designed to renovate Spain's transatlantic trading system through comercio libre (the removal of the accretion of restrictions on Spanish trade with the colonies). The focus is again on the making of policy, and the authors provide an intriguing account of policy discussions and actions, contemporary appraisals of the reforms seen from various vantage points, and the increasingly consultative process through which policy was hammered out. Several important themes are explored: the use of the ‘American option’ as a means of solving the crown's fiscal problems without antagonising its vital alliances with the Spanish political classes; the ways in which this option was engaged; and the forces which shaped policy in the years after Esquilache. Successive chapters, often drawing on previously unused contemporary sources, provide detailed analyses of conditions in the commercial circuits linking Spain and its colonies, the pressures to modify them, and the obstacles which stood in the way of modification. These include a very valuable discussion of the genesis of the second Reglamento de comercio libre (1778), explaining the decision-making process and incrementalist strategy that underpinned it, together with an equally valuable account of contemporary assessments of the reform, seen from the seat of government, the principal Spanish ports, and from Mexico. This discussion of commercial reform in the late 1770s and early 1780s then leads into an explanation of how and why comercio libre was eventually extended to New Spain, despite its initial exemption and strong opposition from Cádiz and Mexico City, still great bastions of commercial privilege. Here, in the best account of Mexico's mercantile communities and their practices since David Brading's Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico (Cambridge, 1971), there is a great deal to interest students of the economic and political history of late colonial Mexico. In drawing this study to a close, the authors also provide an illuminating account of the part played by the French in Spanish colonial trade and their responses to reform. This shows that French merchants and diplomats had deep misgivings about reforms which, although they might strengthen their ally, threatened to undercut the privileged position of French merchants and to damage French textile production. It also shows, however, that by 1789 the achievements of comercio libre looked insufficient to sustain the Spanish developmentalist model and that the real threat to French textile manufactures came not from Spanish manufactures or proto-industrialisation, but from Britain, whose burgeoning industries were beginning to produce goods of such quality and quantity as to overcome any protective tariff barrier.
On the whole, this study clarifies rather than alters our broad picture of the conundrums and consequences of Spanish reform in the eighteenth century. But it is no less valuable for that. It is difficult in a short review to do justice to a book such as this, which deals with large historical themes, draws on a rich array of primary and secondary sources, and provides closely textured, nuanced analyses of a variety of subjects. It is not difficult, however, to give it an unqualified recommendation. Anyone interested in fundamental themes of eighteenth-century Spanish history – namely, how new economic policy was made, how it was implemented, and why it failed to bring about the economic transformation needed to revive Spain's declining imperial power – will find much that is new and stimulating in this book. It is a rich compendium of information, argument and interpretation, and through the prism of policy makers and their lobbyists takes us to the heart of Spain's great dilemma: how to modernise its economy without destabilising its polity or jeopardising its fiscal base. It will therefore be essential reading not only for students of the Bourbon monarchy, but for all those interested in understanding the great shifts in economic, political and international power that were taking place as the eighteenth century approached its end.
