CHAPTER 4

The End of the British Asiento, 1739–1748

In the years leading up to the War of Jenkins’s Ear, the situation in the West Indies between Britain and Spain steadily deteriorated. Even as they lined their pockets through the contraband trade and by navigating the ambiguous edges of empire, agents of interimperial trade corroded cooperation by exploiting the contact between empires, along with pirates, guardacostas, and others. The South Sea Company employees who lived in the Spanish Americas certainly felt this shift, but the crumbling of the official trade did not mean an end to contact or commerce with the Spanish for all involved. Some company employees continued to take advantage of their Spanish American contacts long into and even after the war, though with more difficulty than under the asiento. Despite the conflict between the empires, Spanish trade and society retained some allure for these British traders, continuing to complicate imperial loyalties. During the asiento period, the people of both empires experienced an official and legal trade between the empires that offered new opportunities for individual profit, in ways that at times conflicted with supporting the policies of their empires. Even as some Britons were able to briefly continue to make use of their Spanish American contacts and imperial knowledge, connections with the enemy and presence on Spanish American shores became more dangerous in wartime. Those who represented the hopes for the British Empire on the ground would find their positions precarious as official cooperation broke down.

One of the most active agents in creating and maintaining contact with the Spanish was company factor James Houstoun, born in Scotland around 1690. Houstoun, like so many of his countrymen, pursued medicine at Edinburgh before leaving Scotland to pursue his fortune. He traveled widely in order to complete his education, including to Holland and France, where he indulged his tendencies toward drunkenness and licentiousness and demonstrated his ability to make both fast friends and sworn enemies.¹ After his training, Houstoun joined the Royal African Company on the West African Coast, monitoring the health of the slaves purchased there for sale to the American colonies. The company found him particularly valuable because of his knowledge of smallpox, which could be quite destructive to slave cargoes. By 1724 Houstoun, having “suffered very grievous Hardships” under one of the Royal African Company agents in Whydah, decided to try his luck in the Americas.² Having been introduced to company officials by the duke of Chandos, an influential figure in the Royal African Company, he accepted the position of surgeon in the South Sea Company’s factory at Cartagena.³ Houstoun spent most of the next fifteen years in the West Indies, where he pursued his fortune, forged close relationships with friends from many nations and walks of life, and continued to ensure the health of the slaves who were transferred from Africa into the Spanish empire. The record of his exploits in the West Indies, preserved in multiple memoirs, provides a strikingly full picture of the asiento trade and the Spanish Americas from the perspective of a man with a long experience of travel.⁴ Houstoun’s publications are part travel writing, part self-aggrandizement, and part encouragement to the British Empire to reinitiate trade with the Spanish, support the slave trade, and continue to expand geographically.

Houstoun’s memoirs describe a life of travel and observation, one that allows any reader of his works access to his own opinions and memories of the South Sea Company’s factories and Spanish American ports, a very different sort of history than is preserved in the official records and correspondence. Houstoun’s relationships with individual subjects of both the British and Spanish empires allowed him to play a part in local diplomacy as an agent of transcultural and transimperial interpretation. While many of the claims Houstoun made in his writings cannot be verified by other historical sources, and some of his descriptions of his role in the West Indies are doubtless inflated or skewed to serve his own ego or political purposes, his explanations of his life in the Spanish Americas give readers an unusually comprehensive view of the experiences possible for South Sea Company agents in the Spanish empire’s ports.

Perhaps in defense of Houstoun’s Scottish birth in the difficult political climate after the 1745 Jacobite uprising, he expressed a fierce loyalty to the British crown. He praised the Act of Union that joined Scotland and England at some length in his Memoirs, writing, “I thank God I was a free-born subject of the Island of Great Britain, the two nations now united in one monarchy, limited by our constitutional laws, under one parliament … the distinction and names of English and Scots quite obliterated.”⁵ He found the possibilities for trade to the growing American colonies encouraging for Scotland as well as for England, arguing that “the advantages accruing to Scotland from the liberty and freedom of trade … since the union … might have amounted to a greater sum than the value of the whole property of the kingdom of Scotland.”⁶ Indeed, many Scots, especially Scottish physicians, flocked to the British West Indian colonies to hold positions of authority in cities and on plantations.⁷ Houstoun’s attitudes echoed those of other Scottish individuals who were enthusiastic trumpeters of English political ideals; he wrote that “ever since I have been capable of knowing and distinguishing what Government was, I have been fixt in my Opinion, that mixt Government, as now established by the British Constitution, is the best.”⁸ Even before his time in the West Indies complicated his loyalties, Houstoun faced a dual national and imperial set of obligations: to his Scottish heritage and to the British Empire that allowed him to travel so widely and participate in the gains available to a large political, military, and economic force. Multiple, sometimes competing, national and imperial identities were the norm for many in the West Indies.

Houstoun’s own lack of religious enthusiasm did not translate to an agnostic view toward the Protestant-Catholic conflict. While he formed close relationships with Spanish individuals and even officials during his time in the West Indies, Houstoun retained at least an outward disdain for the Spanish political and religious systems and the contrast they provided to English forms of government. Though not particularly religious himself, to the dismay of his Presbyterian parents, he joined his fellow Protestants in roundly denouncing the Catholic Church and the dangers it posed for Britain.⁹ He celebrated the happiness of his countrymen, in contrast to “the Misery of those, who are subjected by Birth to the Tyranny of an absolute civil Power, and the Slavery of an Ecclesiastic Yoke.”¹⁰ In Houstoun’s view, the failures of the Spanish empire lay both in a lack of political freedom and in a dangerous attachment to Roman Catholicism and its rigid tenets.

Houstoun had long been enthusiastic about the possibilities for the West Indies, regretting the failure of the Darien colony and supporting the union of crown and trade. Indeed, the travel that Houstoun could engage in within the British Empire fed a deep need in him; he explained to readers that from his “very Infancy, [he] had a strange itch and curiosity for rambling and seeing the world, which continued with me all my lifetime.” Having worked both in Africa and the Americas, Houstoun praised the company’s slaving activities as “one of the best Branches of our national Trade,” one to be promoted.¹¹ His time in the West Indies cemented for him the importance of Spanish American interests to the prosperity of Britain, though as with many factors he was quick to ignore these interests when it would not benefit him personally. Happy to support the empire in his writings and when he found it useful, Houstoun engaged in an active contraband trade that he did not find necessary to hide from readers. In the employ of the South Sea Company, Houstoun could support the interests of his empire, but on the ground in the Americas the attractions of forming closer connections to the Spanish empire for personal gain, regardless of the impact on the company’s trade, would become clear.

Life in the Cartagena Factory

Houstoun’s early experiences with the South Sea Company in the Spanish Americas were crucial to forming his opinions of his own empire and shaping the relationships that he would continue to draw on even in wartime. Houstoun sailed for Cartagena in 1724, and began his travels with very high hopes.¹² He later reported that he wanted to like his colleagues at the Cartagena factory, “expecting to meet with abroad a set of gentlemen of good education, thinking they could be nothing less who were distinguished with such honorable and profitable employments.” He ended up quite disappointed, as none of the factors he encountered had, in his opinion, “the least tincture of a gentleman in him.” They were even cruder than the factors he lived with on the coast of Africa, engaging in indecent and “shocking” conversation that Houstoun disdained.¹³ This is particularly striking when considering that Royal African Company factors were notoriously low in origin and deportment. One historian has described them as middling “young, ambitious, and often scurrilous” men, or “the dregs of society,” and the factory there as seeming like “more a reformatory than a warehouse.”¹⁴ While some of the South Sea Company factors held a slightly higher social position than their counterparts on the African coast, they lacked refinement, business sense, and social graces. Despite sharing their obligations and loyalties to the British crown, their common language, and Protestantism, Houstoun and these factors immediately found themselves disliking one another.

While some historians have documented an increasing national self-identification and unity among Britons in the metropole in the century after the Act of Union, Houstoun’s experiences and observations suggest a very different picture in the far reaches of the empire.¹⁵ His memoirs explained what he described as a common problem among the British: “if you find five, six, or more people in a factory, you’ll certainly see them pulling so many different ways.”¹⁶ The factors he worked alongside could not agree among themselves, and were generally rough and quarrelsome. Though at the national level Houstoun made a great deal of the unity of Great Britain, celebrating the breakdown of Scottish and English distinctions on the island such that “all the inhabitants thereof, by one common name, [were] re-assuming the name of the antient primitive natives, Britons,” in colonial outposts, interpersonal conflict could easily undermine that national unity where it might have mattered most: in front of foreigners.¹⁷

By Houstoun’s account, the South Sea Company was plagued by poor decision making in all its endeavors, from the infamous stock fiasco that created the bubble of the early 1720s to the choice of which men to send into the company’s service in the Spanish Americas. As detractors warned at the signing of the treaty, if Britain meant for the company to increase wealth and power in the Americas, the improper choice of the men who would actually carry out their business on the ground posed a threat to the formation of a trade-based empire on the edges of Spanish territories. There was neither rhyme nor reason to the choice of factors, it seemed; rather, patronage and arbitrary luck determined who would represent the court of directors’ interests abroad. Houstoun grumbled that “You’ll find a Bacallao [salt-fish] Merchant amongst the principal factors, because he can talk a little Spanish; a mere Tarr, bred before the mast, because he has a friend in the Court of Directors, that makes a bawling noise in it, and will be heard;—a broken tradesman, because he is represented as an object of charity, and must be provided for out of compassion;—a young gentleman, who has been at the Academy, and learnt to ride the Great-Horse, dance, &c. because he is recommended from the Court; with et-ceteras in abundance!”¹⁸ Houstoun here criticizes the factors regardless of their class status. While he might appreciate the company of the gentleman, that gentleman was considered as unsuited to the trade as was the “mere Tarr,” and the presence of either of these incompetent types would do damage to both the factory and the trading interests of the nation. The factors were uncouth and embarrassing, as far as Houstoun represented them to his readers.¹⁹ In addition to being ill-suited to international trade, these men were not trained in any meaningful sense for their duties abroad.

Houstoun disdained the residents of the British colonies as much as his fellow factors; his criticisms were by no means limited to the agents of the South Sea Company. The problem he saw with Britons was not unique to or sparked by the mismanagement of the court of directors. Rather, he characterized it as “the old Foible, division among ourselves, [which is] peculiar to the British nation, as I have frequently mentioned, and always observed, [and which] appears in lively Colours in our factories abroad.”²⁰ Certainly, as a long-time resident of the Spanish Americas he surely must have witnessed the deep divisions within that empire as well, between crown and local interests, secular and religious authorities, and others. These issues inhered in the nations, only becoming more pronounced and problematic on the edges of empire. The people who lived in Jamaica were, in Houstoun’s opinion, “the refuse of the British nation, intermixed with some Irish, and they, for the most part, Roman Catholicks in disguise.” They were unpleasant to be around, and vicious in their businesses, “living almost like a parcel of men-eaters devouring one another; the greater eating up the lesser.”²¹ Houstoun’s marked distaste for some of his fellow Britons and the affinity he demonstrated for the Spanish individuals he encountered suggests a tension in the connection between interpersonal relationships and national identification or loyalty in this area. Houstoun, and others like him, were being offered in the Caribbean close contact with a technically oppositional but actually quite pleasant group among the Spanish, and they were drawn to them. In the absence of real coherence in the British community in the Caribbean, the draw of the Spaniards proved strong in different ways for company agents such as Houstoun and John Burnet. These internal conflicts, and the trouble they caused for the company and the nation, demonstrate the difficulty of constructing empires that were, after all, made up of people with their own very definite agendas.

Houstoun’s observations about the particular disunity among Britons on the edges of the empire were reinforced in the records of the South Sea Company, which confirm that conflict was often a problem in foreign ports. The Buenos Aires factory proved to be a site of particular contentiousness. The fighting began on the ship from England, with the chief factor John Brown keeping his colleagues out of his private cabin while allowing his own servants to sleep there, and continued right through their time in the city. They fought about business, including who would bring a group of slaves to Chile for sale. They fought about the price of slaves. They fought over who had access to what documents and who held what kind of authority.²² They even, perhaps most viciously, fought over who could have dinner with whom.

The Spanish American residents of Buenos Aires noticed the divisions within the factory, and particularly Brown’s hostile attitude. The factory’s bookkeeper, Francis Humphreys, bemoaned the “scandalous circumstance” in which company servants found themselves “forced to sue, and glad to accept of Defence and protection from the Spaniards themselves, against the very person whom they have invested with superior trust and power.” Humphreys appears less enthusiastic than Houstoun about seeking comfort and social contact among the Spanish. Still, this sort of contact was necessary, especially given the tenuous position of the Buenos Aires factory, far from British settlements and at the mercy of local Spanish subjects for support. This was distressing to the factors individually, but it was also potentially damaging to the company. The Spanish subjects living in Buenos Aires certainly recognized that the resident Britons could not abide each other, which lowered local opinions of the men and their business. If things were to continue as they had been and Brown’s attitude affected the Spanish traders, Humphreys feared, there was no telling “how lessening and prejudicial this may prove in its consequence to the credit and service of the Honble Court in this place.”²³ The directors could do little to influence the opinions of Spaniards several thousand miles distant.

Though this is one of the most colorful incidents of strife within South Sea Company factories preserved in the records of the court of directors, it is far from the only time that these Britons clashed. In 1723, the court of directors wrote to the Panama factory in order to “rectify their conduct” there, admonishing them that any further differences among the factors should be reported directly to the company’s men at Jamaica, who would settle the matter impartially.²⁴ Being British, perhaps even patriots, did not make the men at these South Sea Company factories into personal friends or even reliable colleagues. The disunity evident among Britons here caused significant problems within the South Sea Company, which was already facing financial difficulties in the early 1720s. The company intervened from time to time by removing factors from their ports, but this created difficulties in continuing the trade and forming lasting relationships with trading partners.²⁵

As much as he disliked his British companions, Houstoun could not do without social and trading partners. His gregarious nature made his entry into the Spanish society of Cartagena both logical and fairly easy. He reports to his readers that he “had a large field for conversation among the Spaniards … who have the best and strongest Genius of all nations for intrigues.” In the time that he did not spend providing medical care to the slaves moving through the factory, he socialized heavily with the Spanish subjects of the city, “especially the ladies.” Among the Spanish men and women of Cartagena, Houstoun undertook the twin projects of learning the Spanish language and making fun of the British factors he so disliked.²⁶ He made close friends among the Spanish, and appears to have had in-depth discussions with either his social circle or trading partners regarding the workings of the Spanish empire and its financial problems. He writes that “all the time I lived amongst them at Cartagena, near ten years, there was never one piece of eight, in the Royal Chests of the King’s revenues … to my certain knowledge.”²⁷ Someone felt Houstoun was a close enough friend, or an unthreatening enough member of the British Empire, to confess the economic shortfalls experienced by the Kingdom of New Granada.

In addition to capturing a particularly detailed set of reactions to Britons and Spaniards in the Americas, Houstoun’s memoir provides a rare opportunity to reconstruct the feelings of one slave-trading agent toward the African individuals who made up his cargo. The vast majority of the surviving documents produced by the company’s employees abroad say very little about their experiences with or attitudes toward the slaves they traded. Houstoun’s writings reflecting on his time with the Royal African Company portray Africans in an almost unrelentingly negative light. While he lived in Sierra Leone, Houstoun encountered many Africans, both as enslaved labor to be exported and as individuals living and working within the company’s factory. He observed their habits and their foods, and spoke with them. When it came time to report his observations on the people of Sierra Leone to the company, he revealed his disdain, writing, “their natural Temper is barbarously cruel, selfish, and deceitful, and their Government equally barbarous and uncivil.” While these are in some ways similar to the criticisms that Houstoun leveled against his British compatriots, he goes on to describe the Africans even more harshly, saying that “as for their customs, they exactly resemble their fellow Creatures and Natives, the Monkeys.”²⁸ Perhaps unsurprising because of his role in the slave trade, to Houstoun, most Africans were only marginally distinguishable from animals, suggesting a significant difference between the way that he evaluated competing Europeans and African “outsiders.” South Sea Company employees, as slave merchants, could have much more positive opinions and friendly relations with formerly enemy Europeans than with the enslaved Africans both European groups joined to exploit.

Houstoun traveled in the area around Cartagena during his time there, and he made friends widely. Despite his initial denigration of the inhabitants of the Cartagena factory, he did encounter some Britons with whom he was willing to spend time. During the first years of his tenure with the South Sea Company he formed a friendship with an unnamed supercargo for one of the annual ships that visited the port. While he gently chided this man in his memoirs for his vanity, he appeared to be the best British company available in the area, and the two men traveled to Portobello together, intending to go to the annual trading fair. While there they were caught up in one of the periodic conflicts between the British and Spanish. This was the Anglo-Spanish War. As far as Houstoun was concerned, it was less a war, and “more like a Sham, than anything else,” though it temporarily halted the trade and resulted in the seizure of company goods.²⁹ Here the close relationships and trust that Houstoun forged with the Spanish officials in the area became useful.

In 1726, the increasing tensions between the empires brought a British admiral and his fleet to Cartagena. Admiral Francis Hosier was involved in a great deal of smuggling in Cuba and Hispañola, and he was sent to interfere with Spanish shipping in the West Indies and protect the company permission ship the Royal George. This had the effect of protecting British shipping, both legal and contraband, while limiting the Spanish response and hindering their own shipping.³⁰ Houstoun, positioning himself at the side of Don Francisco Cornejo, the commander of the Spanish galleons, reported that he assisted with the translations of the official correspondence that passed between Cornejo and Hosier. Houstoun was not the only non-Spaniard to mediate between the empires in this way; on the Spanish side the job of translation was done by an Irishman, Father Daniel O’Hony, who had been aboard with the admiral for some time.³¹ Houstoun chided the priest for his poor translations of the letters that were exchanged. This came in the form of a barb specifically about O’Hony’s rejection of loyalty to his imperial obligations: “I told Don Daniel, that he had forgot his English.”³²

Considering the long history of conflict between the British and Spanish at the national and imperial levels, Houstoun’s attitude toward, and indeed, assistance to, the Spanish admiral seems striking. In his memoirs, his affinity for a gentlemanly manner seems more relevant to his feelings toward individuals than their national origin. This is particularly stark in his comparison of the two admirals: “Don Fransisco was a polite gentleman, a good officer, one of strong natural understanding, and a man of honour and integrity; but our Admiral, was a mere rough, vulgar Tarr.”³³ While he did not know Hosier personally, Houstoun had many occasions to read the man’s correspondence to the Spanish general, and snidely informed the readers of his memoir that “had a School-boy under my Care wrote such Letters, I would have ordered him to be whipt.” The man’s uncouth nature did not challenge Houstoun’s own national identification or loyalty—he was still “our” Admiral—but neither did Houstoun gloss over his faults in consideration of the man’s station. In contrast, Houstoun lavished praise on the governor of Cartagena, Don Luis Aponte, who, he insisted, “had more understanding in his little finger, than all our factory put together had in their whole body.”³⁴ The act of translating in itself does not necessarily imply that Houstoun was allying with the Spanish against his own empire—rather, it is most usefully understood as an act of transcultural and transimperial interpretation by someone who was in a particular position to grasp the nuances of both languages and cultural systems. As a liminal figure, Houstoun could engage both sides of the conflict, and his knowledge of the personalities of these men allowed him to provide service to both empires while potentially benefiting and enriching himself as a cosmopolitan operator not only between but above the divisions of empire.³⁵ While transimperial connections like Burnet’s might hurt the British Empire, other South Sea Company employees, like Houstoun, used their connections to try to broker peace when it suited them.

The profits that could accrue to an unscrupulous Briton from unauthorized trade to the Spanish empire were appealing, but the willingness of these men to ally themselves with the Spanish had some limits. The Spanish, Houstoun said, gave him opportunities to renounce his British attachments altogether, but he declined. After the 1728 Anglo-Spanish conflict forced him to retreat to Jamaica for a brief time, Houstoun returned to Cartagena and remained there for several more years as a surgeon, socializing freely and recording botanical observations that he thought might be of interest to the fellows of the Royal Society of London.³⁶ He appears to have made a significant impression upon the Spanish officials at Cartagena. When the court of directors again disbanded the factory in the middle of the 1730s and appointed new factors, Houstoun hesitated to leave. He related in his memoirs that the governor of Cartagena summoned him and offered him a chance to stay, with a salary paid by “the inhabitants of Cartagena.” Whether he actually received this offer or just found it convenient for his readers to believe that he did, his description of the situation is telling. He wished his readers to understand the deep connections he developed in Spanish America, and the ways in which he profited from his time in the area. Houstoun may well have benefited from staying, as he had a considerable amount of money invested in trade in the city, but he ultimately declined for reasons he described as national loyalty: “if I stay, I must shake off my Country’s protection, and put on the Spanish yoke.”³⁷ This was an unacceptable compromise, and Houstoun moved to Jamaica to continue his West Indies trade as a subject of the British crown.

The intelligence Houstoun observed in the Spanish officials apparently extended to matters of diplomacy; despite the poor conduct of the British factors they were generally well-treated, and a few months into the conflict they were sent to Jamaica for the duration of the war.³⁸ Following the resolution of the war, in 1729, Houstoun petitioned the court to return him to the reestablished factory at Cartagena, and the committee agreed that he should be recommended for this.³⁹ By 1733, however, Houstoun fell out of favor with the company. The records are not specific regarding the accusations, but note that the concern was about Houstoun’s “character.” Cartagena factors Crowe and Ord gave reports to the Committee that “they were unanimous in their opinion that it might tend to the Companys prejudice to continue him,” and the company agreed to send Thomas Hope to the Cartagena factory in his place.⁴⁰ Houstoun left the city grudgingly. He lost a great deal of the trade he had established with the College of Jesuits, a group notorious for smuggling.⁴¹ He continued to visit the Spanish American coast throughout the decade that followed. His experience of armed Anglo-Spanish conflict had not dampened his enthusiasm for life within the Spanish empire and the opportunities for trade and socialization that life offered.

While wars like that in 1727 interrupted the Anglo-Spanish cooperation made possible by the South Sea Company, Houstoun firmly believed that the British Empire could only benefit from maintaining the asiento trade to the Spanish Americas. The Spanish West Indian trade allowed Great Britain to dispose of many of its manufactured goods, and to acquire Spanish specie in return. On the other hand, Houstoun observed long after this conflict, “it is very natural and reasonable for a Spaniard, in the Commerce of Spain, to complain of the Trade of the annual Ship, as it affects and prejudices their Trade; for there’s never any Thing bought of the Spaniards till the annual Ship’s Cargo is sold off.”⁴² Outside the official concerns of London and Madrid, the South Sea Company trade was causing disruptions for both Spanish traders and Englishmen working through Old Spain. The company’s monopoly, and its success in bringing goods to the ostensibly annual fair, had long meant reduced profits for others supplying the empire. As the final and conclusive war of the British asiento period erupted in 1739, however, what kind of trade relationship was possible or desirable between the nations was once again thrown into question for many on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Push for War

The War of Jenkins’s Ear marked the end of an era in the West Indies, bringing the contact allowed by the asiento to a conclusion and eventually leading to further conflict between the British and Spanish empires. The war had a variety of causes. As several historians have outlined, the diplomatic history of the countries in question and the personalities of the various ministers involved deeply influenced the development of the war.⁴³ It is of directly related and at least equal significance that the War of Jenkins’ Ear came as the result of poor decision making on the part of the South Sea Company and the insistence of the British public on retribution for the Spanish treatment of British merchants and sailors abroad.⁴⁴

Spanish imperial plans had long been at odds with British desire for expansion in land and trade. The Bourbons hoped for a complete monopoly in their own lands, a way to prevent valuable specie from flowing out of the empire. Granting the asiento to Britain was troubling in itself for those who supported these visions of Spanish imperial exclusivity, even as the arrangement benefited many on the ground in the Spanish Americas. Through the 1730s, the Spanish crown and some local officials complained bitterly of smuggling on British ships, which from their perspective necessitated the use of the guardacostas. While some Spanish Americans were eager to participate in the contraband trade, and some South Sea Company employees were happy to supply these markets, this illegal commerce caused tensions between official Spanish policy and activities in the colonies. In addition to these issues of trade and smuggling, the Spanish crown and nervous local officials complained of the British push for rights and territory in previously Spanish claims such as Campeche and Georgia.⁴⁵ These divisions between and among those living in the empire and the metropole influenced both British and Spanish imperial practices, and had long complicated the process of making and enforcing trade agreements.

By the late 1730s, complaints that were leveled during the treaty negotiations reemerged strongly in British national discourse, from both imperial and personal standpoints.⁴⁶ Some argued that the asiento contract could never have brought Great Britain wealth, as those Europeans who had previously held the treaty “were always considerable losers thereby.” Even if the trade had potentially great profits, the company “have been yearly deficient some Thousands in the Number of Negroes which by the Contract they were obliged to furnish the Spaniards withal.”⁴⁷ Though incomplete company records and the extensive contraband trade make the actual numbers of enslaved laborers brought into the Spanish empire difficult to determine, the available numbers do appear to fall beneath the guidelines set by the asiento, and surely the company collected payments that did not reach expected levels.⁴⁸ In part, this may have been the fault of the men employed in the factories: one pamphleteer observed that “their Agents do not always make the Interest of the Company the absolute Standard of their Actions,” despite the company’s hopes when selecting them. The attention that men like James Houstoun paid to their own private trade, the author suggested, may have significantly damaged the company’s profits.⁴⁹ Given this failure of publicly acknowledged profits, the asiento seemed to be useless to some in Britain. If the agreement that kept Britain and Spain cooperating was ineffectual, there appeared to be little reason not to go to war.

Many participants in the lively print culture in Great Britain largely championed the British cause against Spain and supported military action in the West Indies. Indeed, fueled by outrage over Spanish depredations, the 1739 war was quite popular among Britons.⁵⁰ Mercantile interests throughout Britain’s empire were extremely vocal in protesting the nation’s policies toward the Spanish, pushing for immediate and significant action to defend their interests abroad.⁵¹ Numerous pamphlets published in the period surrounding the outbreak of the war echo the complaint that the Spanish were not only preventing Britain from enjoying its proper rights to lands and trade, but were overtly contemptuous toward the British in the West Indies; one pamphleteer went so far as to claim that the Spanish “have always upon the slightest Occasions, took every Opportunity of shewing themselves our enemies.”⁵² While the kinds of diplomatic and economic concerns that had been behind the 1718 and 1727 wars were also factors in the War of Jenkins’s Ear, here American threats loomed the largest.⁵³ British pamphleteer Micaiah Towgood encouraged his countrymen’s support for the war on the basis of the long-standing Black Legend of Spanish cruelty, combined with more recent complaints about Spanish religious intolerance and violence. Appealing to a long history of negative beliefs about the Spanish, Towgood directed his readers’ concerns across the Atlantic, writing that “the blood this cruel Nation hath split in Europe, is but a Rivulet, to the Ocean, with which it has deluged the American Lands” in the early days of conquest.⁵⁴ That Towgood was referencing the excesses of Spanish American conquistadors over two hundred years after the fact, in 1741, suggested some connections between the violence of the past and more recent damages. British blood was the ultimate impetus for interimperial rupture, as the eponymous Captain Jenkins’s ear, severed as he claimed by Spanish ruffians, stirred martial feelings on the floor of Parliament.⁵⁵

By the later part of the 1730s, merchants regularly complained to the British government about the seizures the Spanish committed against their shipping. Some, driven by a growing interest in the empire among the British public, advocated immediate war as the only possible remedy to these insults to British power.⁵⁶ Though the government made numerous complaints to the court at Madrid, the responses were insufficient in the eyes of the merchants. Further, some Britons expressed concerns about the consolidation of Spanish power in the economically vital area of the West Indies: “we have the strongest Motives to think every Year will augment her Revenues, her Alliances, or Territories.”⁵⁷ This certainly reflected Spanish hopes, as the Bourbons reformed the empire to increase their strength and modernize their fleet under Joseph Patiño, Spain’s chief minister.⁵⁸ These expansions in the Spanish empire had already worn away at the holdings of others in Europe, and their growing strength in the Caribbean might lead to incursions onto British-held soil, in which the Spanish could “deprive us of our two favourite Colonies, which have already cost us Millions of Money to bring to Perfection.”⁵⁹ Though war would inevitably interrupt the trade to the Americas, the gains were expected to make up for the losses. Britain was felt to be at a military, and especially naval, advantage: “as we must be ruin’d without a War, surely, it will be but common Prudence to attempt it against an Enemy so contemptible upon that Element, which is to be the Theatre.”⁶⁰ Profit could only be secured, some Britons felt, through swift and violent military action.

As some clamored for war, many British pamphleteers continued to insist that their nation was in no way responsible for the tensions that had developed between the two empires. Echoing disclaimers made by the British during earlier piracy trials, an anonymous pamphleteer in 1739 insisted that the guilt of the two governments in the matter of piracy was in no way equivalent. On the British side, those who committed piracy received no crown protection, whereas “the Crown of Spain avows, aids, and abets her Pirates, promotes them, and imputes the most cruel Excesses they can be guilty of towards the British Subjects to them as a Merit.”⁶¹ The British, this suggested, had tried reason and tact; now there was little option left but to go to war.

Many Britons seemed to believe that the Spanish were not only guilty of horrific violence against Britons and Native Americans, but that they celebrated the terrible insults made against their British counterparts. For instance, an anonymous pamphleteer took the opportunity in 1739 to “advance Facts upon Hear-say,” promoting a rumor that “the very Man who cut off Capt. Jenkins’s Ear was afterwards promoted from being a simple boatswain to the Command of a considerable ship” as a reward for perpetrating this “inhumane Cruelty.”⁶² In the writer’s estimation, these Spanish pirates were not fellow, reasonable Europeans to be negotiated with, but “inhuman,” and the only response that could be effective would be military.

In the late 1730s, British writers made a variety of arguments for significant changes to the way Britain’s affairs were being conducted in the West Indies, some suggesting strongly that the harm the Spanish brought to British shipping could only rightly be answered with violence. One 1739 pamphlet in particular, The British Sailor’s Discovery, contained many of the threads of discontent woven through other works. The unnamed author begins with an account of the Americas from the earliest European discovery, challenging Spain’s rights to its dominions. Coming to a more contemporary period, he details the well-known attacks of the Spanish on English shipping and trade, complaining that “without any Declaration of War being made between the two Nations in Europe, the Spaniards always behaved in a hostile Manner towards such of the English Subjects as came in their Way in the West-Indies.”⁶³ Those sailors seized by the Spanish, the author contended, were often victims of the Court of Inquisition, which could keep them captive or sentence them to death at its own whim. Beyond pointing out that Spain held areas that might, given the basis of Spanish claims in a fifteenth-century papal bull, rightfully be open to British settlement, and that Spanish subjects attacked British sailors, the author argues for a British takeover of more of Spain’s American lands. This call for British geographical expansion, present throughout the period and especially in times of Anglo-Spanish war, had a major resurgence in the 1730s. The present situation, in which British factors and traders entered Spanish-held territories to conduct their business, posed too many potential problems—indeed, the author noted, it created “the utmost Danger, [for] the Souls of many young Traders” as well as threatening the “Lives and Fortunes of many Christian Brethren in America.”⁶⁴

Even those Britons captured by the Spanish who did not face the Inquisitional courts suffered unduly, as their countrymen saw it. The highly active British print culture produced dozens of books and pamphlets decrying the British merchant’s situation in the West Indies, particularly from the perspective of those concerned with the empire’s trade.⁶⁵ These publications called for action against the guardacostas and championing the cause of those merchants and sailors who failed to secure reparations, or who were held “in a worse than Turkish Slavery” by the Spanish. Though many of these Britons were seized while engaging in illegal contraband trade in Spanish waters, those who wrote on their behalf were more likely to attribute these Spanish detentions to “the natural Innate Hatred they bear us” than to any legitimate grievances on the part of the Spanish empire.⁶⁶ Despite early hopes about cooperation that might benefit both nations, by this period it appeared that peaceful trade and cooperation across clear imperial borders was not really possible.

Though the Spanish monarchy did not permit the sort of robust print culture that the British enjoyed in the eighteenth century, some arguments from the Spanish perspective did make it into publications. A variety of complaints about the British appeared in the anonymous pamphlet, His Catholick Majesty’s Conduct Compared with that of His Britannick Majesty, reportedly a reprint from a Spanish-language source and reproduced in both languages in 1739. The pamphlet noted naval aggression against the Spanish, as early in the war, King George II authorized British privateers to sail against the Spanish from Jamaica and seize any goods aboard their ships.⁶⁷ It also gave an account of the nongovernmental actions taken by British subjects against Spanish victims.

Just as stories about the violence and depredations of the Spanish caught British imaginations, so Spanish subjects alerted each other to the unusual violence and unchristian behavior of Britons in earlier conflicts. His Catholic Majesty’s Conduct countered tales of Spanish depredations with the story of a British subject who, before the 1727 war, boarded a South Sea Company ship in order to incite the enslaved Africans on board to insurrection against the Spanish, “offering them Liberty for a Reward, in case they, being united for that execrable Perfidy he exhorted them to, should plunder the Place and put to Sword the Inhabitants.” This alliance with the slaves against fellow Europeans was motivated, the pamphlet reported, by “that Spirit of Hatred and Rancour, which is predominant in the English nation against Spain, especially in America.”⁶⁸ If one Briton could take such extreme action against the Spanish, surely the widespread dislike for the Spanish could lead to similar transgressions that would irrevocably damage interimperial interactions. As with the British stories of Spanish sins, the truth of this report is somewhat in doubt, and cannot be verified. Whatever the actual actions of this British subject, the fact that this sort of behavior toward the rival empire was thinkable indicates the danger that some Spanish subjects imagined the British posed to their presence in the Americas.

The attack on the morality of the British was almost identical to attacks being made on that of the Spanish. The pamphleteer lamented that “this barbarous example, to treat the Spaniards, during the Time of Peace, in such a Colony as Jamaica, with more inhumanity than the most detestable enemies, was follow’d by an English Captain, of those that infest our Coasts, no less by an illicite Trade than by their Wickedness.” In a chilling parallel to the Jenkins incident, the pamphleteer claimed that the English captain took two Spanish men on board his ship in order to ransom them. Failing at this, he took out his anger on his prisoners, as he “cut off the Ears and Nose of one of them, and putting a Dagger to his Breast, forc’d him to eat the same.”⁶⁹ If the Black Legend primed Britons to believe the worst of Spanish guardacostas and pirates roaming the West Indies, it is clear that the Spanish could and did expect comparable treatment.

Given the two imperial peoples’ opinions of one another, and knowing of past failures to achieve acceptable reparations from the Spanish, many Britons pushed for war. For years, British ministers turned to diplomatic channels to address problems in the West Indies. Negotiation seemed to have solved little over the two and a half decades of the asiento; one pamphleteer complained that those treaties “cost us six times as much as a Naval war would have done,” yet without solving the problems addressed.⁷⁰ Some in Britain focused more on principle than cost, objecting to treaty-making because they felt that asking for cedulas or signing agreements to end depredations and gain compensation for past seizures required an unacceptable official recognition of Spain’s claims to their rights to seize British ships.⁷¹ Because the Spanish were being unreasonable, from the perspective of many British merchants, treaties did more to restrict British action than to gain justice in disputes against guardacostas and pirates. In part, these merchants perceived the disadvantage to the British to arise from the weakness of the ministers. One pamphleteer complained that “it unfortunately happened, that those who ought to have defended our Rights, rather gave them up, from not understanding them.”⁷² These merchants felt that any further treaties aimed at solving the problem would only result in more concessions to the Spanish on points that could not rightfully be conceded. Increased contact between the empires could only lead to trouble. The time for treaties, they argued, had passed: “A Commanding Force in those Seas alone can secure us.”⁷³

The British expected at least a partial advantage: the Spanish court and navy could not hope to stand up to British might, many claimed. This was likely true at sea because, despite a growth in Spanish military power, their navy still remained far les developed than Britain’s. An anonymous 1736 pamphlet framed this as a question not just of military advantage, but of moral superiority: “We wisely let Spain by their wilde and extravagant Politicks sufficiently reduce and impoverish themselves, while we, by our pacifick Forebearance, reap’d all the Benefits” of peace and trade with them.⁷⁴ Spain was weak, this suggested, while the British were strong, a view encouraging to the British even as they worried about Spanish power growing under the Bourbons. Some Britons were encouraged by the view of the Spanish empire as in decline after its initial success in taking over large areas of the Americas, and of the British Empire as an ever-growing power, with its mighty navy and even a divine right behind it.

The war did not reflect problems around trade disagreements alone, however. These armies and navies clashed too over the growing British settlements in North America, especially in Georgia and the Carolinas. In the 1730s British settlers established these colonies quite close to existing Spanish American settlements in violation of the 1670 treaty, causing distress on both sides.⁷⁵ The Spanish were concerned about encroachments onto lands to which they had legal claim, and accused the British of mistreating local native groups allied with the Spanish.⁷⁶ The Spanish had also been trying to expand their European holdings in Italy and elsewhere, suggesting to one pamphleteer that Spain aspired to “a universal Empire and Conquest,” though this was a far more prevalent aspiration in an earlier age.⁷⁷ If Spain was successful in building their inferior military and naval capabilities, this might threaten British trade and settlement. Fears continued to circulate about the growth of the Spanish empire and its potential for taking over British lands in the future. Some felt that the asiento and related treaties were directly responsible for the difficulties faced in the late 1730s: “Spain is now more formidable than at the Time of signing the Treaty [of Seville], and that the Trade and Affairs of Great Britain are in a more languishing State.”⁷⁸ Even as it threatened Spain’s power over its possessions in the Americas, Britain remained extremely concerned about the possibility of a resurgence.⁷⁹

With the coming of the War of Jenkins’s Ear, a number of Britons took the opportunity to push for a reinvigoration of the earlier interest in taking over land, rather than just trade, from the Spanish in order to enlarge their empire. The knowledge they gleaned during the asiento period, while Britons were allowed to live and travel in the Spanish Americas, meant that they were particularly well equipped to make these plans. While war halted the official asiento trade, several writers publicized their suggestions for taking over the Spanish empire’s territories. Several thought it likely they could do so with the help of both friendly native groups and Spanish creoles.⁸⁰ One scheme suggested that the creoles “are quite tired of the Government of the Spaniards” and might welcome a liberating influence. If the British did not succeed in shaking the tenuous loyalty of the creoles, the society could easily be destabilized in a different way; in that case, “it is propos’d, that a publication of freedom, should be made to all mullatoes, and negroes.”⁸¹ Here, as in the First Maroon War and the concerns about runaway and revolting slaves throughout the British and Spanish empires, the presence of the very enslaved individuals that were brought to the Americas by the South Sea Company could be used as a threat against imperial power. The British hoped to use a common Spanish tactic, offering freedom to slaves that would both boost their own military power and damage the productive capacities of the enemy.⁸² By taking away local support for Spanish government, it was hoped, the British might absorb Spanish lands and subjects into their own growing empire, and with them the natural resources that attracted the British to the Americas for centuries.

Having reported his affection for the Darien scheme in his youth, Houstoun reiterated the possible benefits of a British settlement or wartime occupation of the Isthmus of Panama in his 1747 and 1753 memoirs.⁸³ Houstoun was not alone in his enthusiasm for reinvigorating the Darien project as the conflict with Spain grew. In November of 1739, Robert Knight wrote to Newcastle to propose a reattempted settlement of Darien, in order to obstruct the existing Spanish trade and to oversee the route from North to South America, with the help of the local Indians. In addition to controlling shipping and creating new markets for “woolen and other manufactures,” they could secure access to rumored gold mines in the lands controlled by the native peoples.⁸⁴ Another letter-writer suggested that the company or its agents might “make a good settlement at Darien,” from which they could access the South Seas and the trade to Asia beyond, opening up a long-sought British route to the Pacific. Though some, including the celebrated Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon, considered the isthmus to be too unhealthy a climate for Britons to survive long, others eyed the natural and mineral resources in the area jealously.⁸⁵

Figure 4. A New Map of the Isthmus of Darian in America, published by John Mackie and James Wardlaw, 1699. Maps and accounts of the Scottish colonization attempt at Darien piqued British interest in the area long after the settlement failed. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Several authors and letter-writers provided specific suggestions for the most strategic cities or regions that might be seized in a British attack. It would be unnecessary to take over the entire American empire at once, especially if trade was a major component of Britain’s goals. One pamphleteer echoed preasiento suggestions to focus on the main ports of trade to Europe; “if we can settle ourselves at Buenos Ayres, the Spaniards will be under an absolute necessity to open a Trade with us.”⁸⁶ Another British subject, David Campbell, suggested that Havana was a perfect place to seize, arguing that “the people in general here & over the whole Island, love & esteem the English above any other nation … they have a great opinion of our integrity, & honour, & regret our being hereticks.” Here a disagreement among the British as to the basic nature of the Spanish arose. While some Britons rejected the Spanish entirely and blamed the animosity between the empires for violence against Britons, Campbell presented the Spanish subjects as an asset of the area, suggesting that their natural affection for the British would make conquest easy and pleasant. In addition, Cuba had “great numbers of slaves which perhaps with good management might be properly employed & directed in facilitating a conquest.”⁸⁷ Leeward Islands governor John Hart argued for a British presence in Puerto Rico as early as 1729, with an eye to dislodging the pirates who moored there and taking advantage of the mines, “rich in gold,” and fertile land wasted by the Spanish.⁸⁸ Seizing a geographically strategic West Indian island during the war would allow the British to expand their own power as well as deny the Spanish an important site for refueling and launching attacks on British holdings.⁸⁹ Captain Fayrer Hall suggested a seizure of Spanish Florida in 1731, though he acknowledged that the British would likely not be as successful at converting native groups to Christianity as the Spanish had been.⁹⁰ For many of these writers, the goal was to seize pieces of Spain’s empire as a launch pad for trade and additional expansion, rather than to attempt to oust Spain from the Americas immediately and entirely.

Even at the close of the war, Britons were circulating reports and observations suggesting the most viable site for a takeover of Spanish holdings. One Briton, who was a prisoner of war for the final three years of the conflict, notified his countrymen that the island of Puerto Rico was particularly likely for British colonization. He explained the richness of the island and the reasons he had gleaned that it was not presently of a particularly high profile in the West Indies; “It might in the hands of the English or Dutch be rendered a paradise on earth but the present inhabitants are mere devils.” The author assured Britons that the island was surprisingly healthy, considering its situation, and that it could be greatly improved by a diligent application of British ingenuity. Seizing this part of the Spanish empire would not only enrich the British by increasing their holdings, but also by removing the island as a potential threat to British peace and growth, as “this town is a nest of pirates in time of peace, and an asylum for runaway negroes from our islands.”⁹¹ By possessing a site from which they might otherwise be attacked at sea or which might harbor the runaway slaves that so recently signed a treaty of peace at Jamaica, Britons could hope to continue their growth in the West Indies and protect imperial profits.

In a last effort to settle the conflict peacefully, the British and Spanish attempted to come to an agreement at the Convention of El Pardo in early 1739. The British demanded £95,000 as restitution for the ships and cargoes seized by overzealous guardacostas, but could not collect on this demand.⁹² The Spanish king issued a manifesto that year explaining why he refused to pay the stipulated amount and enumerating various complaints against the British crown. The Spanish cited lawbreaking by the South Sea Company, smuggling, religious damages, and the carrying away of Spanish subjects on British ships as reasons for anger against Britain.⁹³ King Philip V expressed dismay that, while he ostensibly immediately sent dispatches to his lands abroad calling for conformity to the stipulations of the treaty, the British king failed to do the same.⁹⁴ Unable to compel the cooperation of the British and concerned about the presence of British vessels near Gibraltar, Philip ordered reprisals against their ships in August.⁹⁵ Just as the British claimed the moral high ground in their own pamphlets, the Spanish insisted that they were the wronged party, and that while England’s main goal was a military defense of “the unjust usurpations of the Islands and Territories she has invaded, in breach of the Treaty of Utrecht, and to maintain herself in the clandestine Trade it practices, to the prejudice of the lawful Trade of the allies of Spain,” Spain “seeks no other thing than to defend its Honour against the Calumnies whereby she is attack’d”⁹⁶

Tensions between the Spanish and British in the Americas had been rising for the better part of the decade, and with the failure of the Convention of El Pardo, little stood between the uneasy peace and outright war. Urged on by his country’s merchants and provoked by perceived insults springing from Spanish refusals to compensate his subjects for unlawful seizures, King George II declared war on the Spanish empire on October 19, 1739. In the formal declaration, he listed the “depredations” his subjects had suffered, complained of repeated breaches of long-standing treaties, and authorized British ships to take Spanish warships as prizes wherever they could. Both sides hoped the war would help to preserve their trade and possessions in the Americas.⁹⁷

Prosecuting the War: 1739–1748

The War of Jenkins’s Ear was marked by early British victories, followed by a long series of defeats. By the time the war broke out, Britons were well aware of the best locations on the Spanish American shores to attack, based on their growing knowledge of Spain’s empire.⁹⁸ Vernon’s immensely popular capture of Portobello in November of 1739, which sparked celebrations throughout Great Britain, started the war off for Britons on an optimistic note.⁹⁹ Portobello’s location on the Isthmus of Panama made it a particularly important prize geographically.¹⁰⁰ Vernon’s apparently easy triumph over the local Spanish forces greatly bolstered Britain’s hopes for success in the conflict.

Unfortunately for Great Britain, this first significant triumph over the Spanish was not followed by the quick capitulation of other Spanish port cities. A later attack against Cartagena met with effective Spanish resistance, and as more nations joined the war in the mid-1740s the possibilities for any sort of spectacular British success in the Americas waned, and along with it British fervor.¹⁰¹ While the British government pushed Vernon to seize and occupy Spanish lands, and sent him the troops to do so, he was ultimately unable to deliver.¹⁰² Commodore George Anson, given specific orders “to distress and annoy the King of Spain” with his Pacific-bound fleet and despite popular hopes for his project, ultimately failed to make much of a dent in the Spanish control of the area either.¹⁰³ At the same time, in the mid-1740s, the British encountered significant problems at home with what the merchants characterized in a letter as “the late most horrid and unnatural rebellion” of the Pretender.¹⁰⁴ Great Britain faced threats from all sides.

While the British developed a formidable naval force in the preceding century, officials found it a challenge to compel service from British subjects. A year into the war, Admiral Charles Wager wrote to Vernon to inform him “that though we are very strong by Sea in Ships, we have no Power to make our Seamen go on board of them … and I hope this Session the Parliament will think it necessary to compel them to come in.”¹⁰⁵ Once they arrived in the West Indies, soldiers and sailors might abandon their posts for opportunities to serve their own interests smuggling or living in the colonies. It was difficult to keep soldiers from leaving if they chose to do so; it was even more difficult to keep them healthy enough to even consider leaving.¹⁰⁶

Figure 5. “Carthagene,” from Nouvelle relation, contenant les Voyages de Thomas Gage dans la Nouvelle Espagne, published by Paul Marret, 1720. The failed attack on Cartagena during the War of Jenkins’s Ear was a blow against British hopes for seizing Spanish American lands. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Both the Spanish and the British faced difficulties in conducting the war, in part because of the distance from Europe and in part because of the insalubrious nature of the tropical West Indian climate. While individual South Sea Company employees learned to deal with the heat and disease in Spanish American cities (or died quickly), shipping large numbers of often poorly provisioned soldiers to these areas was quite dangerous.¹⁰⁷ Throughout the West Indies, the armies and navies of both empires faced problems with the corrosive effects of the tropical waters, as well as provisioning their ships.¹⁰⁸

While the British held fears about the growing Spanish navy, their troubles in conducting the war were much more attributable to the environment of the West Indies. The siege of Cartagena, in particular, failed in large part because of the differential immunity between the Spanish soldiers, who had lived in the area for some time, and the British soldiers who, coming from the metropole, fell in large numbers to the yellow fever and dysentery spread by swarms of mosquitoes and tainted drinking water. After only little more than a month, the British commanders called off the siege because of the large numbers of soldiers they were losing. The horrors of the West Indies were, for British soldiers and sailors, much more a product of disease than of war: one calculation suggests that seventy-four percent of the 10,000 British soldiers in the West Indies during the first three years of the war died, overwhelmingly as the result of illness rather than combat.¹⁰⁹ Neither side found the war easy, and troops sent from Europe succumbed to the harsh disease environment of the Caribbean in large numbers throughout the war.

Neither Britons nor Spaniards could rely solely on their own troops if they hoped to be successful in the war. In times of war as in peace, identities and alliances in the West Indies blurred. In addition to employing liminal figures such as Irish sailors, as they had in other wars, both the British and Spanish turned to both native and African allies, groups that could not remain outside of the sphere of influence created by these Europeans in the new world. In this hostile environment, empires relied on multiple sources of military power, even sources that had once caused them significant trouble. At the same time, these groups had different and sometimes conflicting agendas, just as the various factions within the British and Spanish empires. As did Jamaica residents, British sailors, or Spanish American governors, Native Americans and Africans used the British and Spanish imperial projects to their own ends.

In Jamaica, letters from Governor Edward Trelawny to then Paymaster of the Forces Henry Pelham reveal the difficulties that the island faced in defending itself and launching attacks against Spanish holdings in the area. In a 1741 letter, Trelawny expressed his relief and pride over “the good luck I have had to have the wild negroes brought to terms in my administration at a most critical time.”¹¹⁰ The end of the First Maroon War in 1739 had the double effect of removing a possible distraction for the armed forces of the island and increasing the island’s possible defenses, as it lessened the dangers of arming slaves to fight against the Spanish. Due to the continuing problems with what the Jamaican government saw as an underpopulation of Europeans on the island, this was a particularly attractive option for the colony.¹¹¹ Though the government in London attempted to support the island by sending troops, it was of little use; “the number of officers & men that have died is incredible,” Trelawny reported.¹¹² Arming slaves would mean a greater defense force for the island; at the same time, though, arms might allow enslaved groups to revolt and side with the Spanish against Jamaicans.

The fear that African slaves from the British Empire might desert to or work for the enemy was not unfounded, and was in fact an important part of the Spanish strategy. In 1742, the Spanish determined to attempt to oust the British from their new colony in Georgia. Though the Spanish had not settled the area themselves and had no plans to do so during the war, they did consider it to be rightfully theirs based on prior claims.¹¹³ Hoping to remove the British from the colony, the Spanish amassed forces off the coast. The plan called for both regular troops and a militia that included “whites, mulattoes and negroes.” Upon seizing the British American port, the governor of Cuba ordered, “negroes of all languages” were to be sent out “to convoke the slaves of the English in the plantations round about, and offer them, in the name of our King, liberty, if they will deliver themselves up of their own accord.”¹¹⁴ Slaves willing to ally with the Spanish would be given land in Florida for their own use, among the already significant population of free Africans who had been British slaves.¹¹⁵ Indeed, this extraimperial incentive for revolt was a motivation for the decision to ban slavery in the new Georgia colony, high-lighting British fears of having African slaves in areas anywhere near the Spanish viceregal borders.¹¹⁶ As with the Maroon War in Jamaica and the rebellions in Cuba and elsewhere, the presence of the slaves, whose transport to the Americas was the impetus behind the cooperation between the British and Spanish, once again created problems for the empires. These enslaved actors, though unable to participate in the project of empire in ways similar to merchants, were nonetheless able to make use in their own ways of the empires’ ambitions in cases in which the Spanish or British turned to them for assistance. Though the Spanish did not succeed in ousting the Georgia colonists, the potential for the involvement of current or former slaves in the interimperial conflict caused worry on both sides.

Among the British, Governor Trelawny also embraced the possible assistance of Indian soldiers, both before and during the war with Spain. Native soldiers had been recruited during the conflicts with the Maroon communities in Jamaica under Nicholas Lawes.¹¹⁷ As the war in the West Indies heated up, Trelawny encouraged the leveraging of the Miskito Indians against the Spanish troops on the Spanish Main, despite the difficulty of working with the group.¹¹⁸ He reported that intervention in the Miskito territories of what is now Nicaragua would benefit the British, as the local groups were inclined to ally with them, and could be a useful force if closely guided by European soldiers. Trade to the area would undoubtedly be profitable, he promised, as even the Spanish living in the area would prefer to trade with the British over their previous trading partners, the Dutch.¹¹⁹ If the Miskito Indians had not yet proven useful allies in the current military conflict, in Trelawny’s estimation they certainly would soon. Native allies were key to both sides in the war; once again, a group formally outside the core of either empire became important to imperial success. Though the use of native allies such as the Miskito Indians did not ultimately win the war for the British, acting as informants for and allies with one or another European group could allow Native Americans to influence the outcome of individual campaigns and angle for a certain amount of power and protection for their own communities. Here again, individuals and interest groups were simultaneously being used to build empire and using the empire to their own advantages.

Most Europeans struggled through the war. Despite native assistance, the British had few successes after Vernon’s early seizure of Portobello. This was not like the previous two brief ruptures; Jenkins’s Ear transitioned into the War of the Austrian Succession, and raged on for nearly a decade. During the extended fighting, some Britons continued to trade to the Spanish coast, though at a significant danger to themselves. The opportunity for cooperative and friendly trade of the type engaged in by the South Sea Company declined, and finally vanished, as the war continued. With the loss of the company’s power in the area, however, independent traders and Spanish smugglers once again found markets sorely in need of their goods. As the official imperial projects in the area faltered, individual Europeans found new possibilities for profit in the West Indies in ways that once again put the peace of empires in second place to individual interests.

Interruptions and Continuities of Trade

Individuals who lived in the West Indies felt the impact of the imperial conflict immediately. As the war developed and the nation rallied for anti-Spanish military action, subjects of both empires who had previously been traveling or trading, legally or illegally, in the opposing empire’s territories suddenly faced possible military detention. Even before the official beginning of the war, Trelawny wrote to the duke of Newcastle to ask what was to be done with the Spanish subjects who had already been taken, given the expense the island was incurring in feeding them.¹²⁰ On both sides, subjects caught behind the lines of the opposing empire suddenly found themselves at the mercy of their new enemies.

Spanish subjects moving through British-held lands or traveling near their shores could easily be caught up in the conflict. In 1741, after the unsuccessful siege, the viceroy of New Granada, Don Sebastian de Eslava, wrote to Vernon begging his help in releasing four high-profile prisoners in Jamaica. These men, the Spanish viceroy explained, were civilians bound for Peru. They had no military position, but were simply passengers aboard a seized ship. Eslava suggested organizing an exchange for the British prisoners in Cuba immediately.¹²¹ The possibility of capture and detention loomed large on both sides of the imperial divide.

South Sea Company factors who were until then living peacefully in the Spanish port cities suddenly found themselves in a dangerous and inhospitable environment. In past conflicts, factors were sent to Jamaica for their own safety until the conclusion of hostilities, but in 1739 many faced a new reality. Some factors were refused passage out of the Spanish empire and held essentially as prisoners of war in their adopted cities until their freedom could be secured by British forces. Though those who had gotten out of the Spanish Americas before the war began might continue, as Houstoun did, to socialize and trade with the Spanish, the war made this much more logistically difficult, and made staying in the Spanish empire for any length of time a gamble with one’s freedom.

From the beginning, the war caused immediate problems for the factors in Cartagena, where in late September a British ship headed by a Captain Stapylton came to give the factors notice of the impending break with Spain. The British ship anchored off shore, insisting it meant only to deliver its message, and Don Blas de Lezo, a Spanish admiral famous for his military skill and extensive battle injuries, sent out a small crew to pilot the ship into harbor, thinking it was there to trade.¹²² In the confusion, Captain Stapylton ended up seizing the Spanish pilot boat and its crew. Because of this infraction, the local company factors reported, there was “an alarum here that the factory, company’s effects & our own were forthwith embargoed, & we confined prisoners to the city & we fear the same will be practice at Panama & Portobelo where we believe the effects are very considerable.” Among the factors, James Ord and John Gray wrote to Governor Trelawny begging him to return the Spanish boat and crew, in order to “protect us in this emergency.” Though it is impossible to say whether these men were exaggerating, or even bending the truth to appease the Spanish, as they were writing from captivity, their letter does contain some striking praise for Spanish admiral. Blas de Lezo, they wrote, was “the only person we could depend upon for the protection” and he “has given us so many instances of his good will that we could not doubt not in our publick but in our private capacity.”¹²³ It appears the Spanish admiral had extensive contact with the British factors in the years before the 1739 war, and that some of those relations were friendly. This did not, however, keep Blas de Lezo from holding them captive in the city until his men and ship were returned.

A similar situation unfolded at Portobello before Vernon took control of the city. On the vice-admiral’s insistence, the president of Panama sent him South Sea Company factor Francis Humphreys and the factory surgeon, a Dr. Wright, both of whom were imprisoned at the beginning of the war.¹²⁴ More than half a year after these agents were returned to their countrymen, Trelawny wrote to the governor of Santiago de Cuba, inquiring after the company’s factors there, as he had heard that “the servants to the Assiento Company are detained as prisoners of War in your city.”¹²⁵ Trelawny cited article 40 of the asiento treaty, which would require the release of the factors, but also appealed to the Spanish governor’s sense of humanity and decency. He explained that “compassion made me comply with the request of some unfortunate Spaniards belonging to Cuba who were taken immediately upon the rupture,” and that he allowed them to return to their island, “not doubting but you would think yourself obliged to have sent me all the subjects belonging to the king that might at that time have been within your jurisdiction.”¹²⁶ A trade of Spanish for British prisoners also occurred in the same year in order for the company to retrieve the factors living in the Veracruz factory.¹²⁷

Some South Sea Company employees took the opportunity of the war to share their intimate knowledge of Spanish American territories with British military officials. One such man, a Captain Lee, came to Admiral Wager to offer his expertise on the Spanish lands, which he had amassed from his years as a South Sea Company factor in Guatemala, in his time as captain of ships sailing throughout the West Indies and the mainland North American colonies, and in the illegal logwood trade on the Spanish Main. Lee assured the admiral that the Spanish creoles and the local native groups around Guatemala would welcome a British presence, as they “are as much Enemies to the Governors and European Spaniards, as we are.”¹²⁸

Despite the dangers of capture and detention he faced when traveling to an empire with which his country was at war, Houstoun engaged in trade, both legal and illegal, with the Spanish throughout his decade-plus tenure in the empire. Immediately before the War of Jenkins’s Ear, he bought a ship that was to sail between Veracruz and Jamaica for the South Sea Company, hoping that the convention would allow at least a brief period of continued cooperation. As he reported, the court of directors chose him to be surgeon at that place, although the factory was seized at the start of the war, almost immediately after his arrival in the West Indies.¹²⁹ He returned to Jamaica from a voyage to England in May of 1739, but soon found himself in trouble with the factors who were to transport him to Veracruz. He reported to the court of directors that some mysterious associates of these men had insulted and assaulted him, attempting to destroy his reputation and keep him from his journey so another could take his place. Having the support of Merewether and Manning, the company’s senior agents in Jamaica, he accused the other factors of plotting to damage him as a part of their efforts to protect their own improper financial maneuvering.¹³⁰ The declaration of war soon rendered the question of Houstoun’s position in the Veracruz factory moot. He quickly lost the ship to the difficulties arising from the war and because of what he characterized as the unscrupulousness of the captain, who defected to the Spanish. (Houstoun explains that “he was an Irishman, which to my Sorrow I knew when too late.”¹³¹) This did not discourage Houstoun from his dreams of profit. Following his early disappointment in 1739, he reports, “I turned my Thoughts intirely to try if any thing could be done in private Trade upon the Spanish Coast, where I was perfectly well-acquainted.”¹³² The war kept Houstoun from living among his Spanish American friends and acquaintances, but did not keep him from interacting with the Spanish and profiting from his willingness to act against the trade policies of the British Empire.

Houstoun took advantage of his experiences with the South Sea Company to retain his Spanish contacts. He continued his trading efforts in the Caribbean, including to the major fair at Portobello. In fact, Houstoun noted that during Vernon’s assault on Portobello, his general trade in the area flourished.¹³³ As war drove the empires apart, contraband grew between them, as did the dangers of this trade. He purchased two vessels’ worth of cargo, and accompanied them to the Spanish American coast himself. He explained that these sloops traveled in small groups of five or six along with a man-of-war for protection. Houstoun did profit from this trade, but he found it much less lucrative than it was before the war. He complained that prices were reduced to about a third of what they had been earlier, and were driven down by the large commission drawn by the captain of the man-of-war; “the cunning Spaniard all this while flips no opportunity to improve that strife to his own Advantage.”¹³⁴ Houstoun’s affection did not extend to all Spanish subjects, as this statement makes clear. He remained pragmatic, willing nonetheless to engage in trade with these individuals in the interest of his own purse.

These were not short or superficial contacts with Spanish subjects. Houstoun developed close relationships with many in Cartagena and throughout the Spanish American coast, and these continued after the outbreak of war. Given the dangers of the trade, Houstoun reported, Spanish merchants would not go out to engage in contraband trade themselves, but send an agent, who would often deliver his master’s opinions along with his money. As Vernon laid siege to the empire’s major ports, Houstoun spoke to his Spanish correspondents about the “sentiments” of the Spanish merchants. They shared Houstoun’s distress at the war, “lamenting the Destruction of Commerce, which they were very sensible must end in the intire Ruin of their Country.”¹³⁵ The battles that erupted around the Caribbean meant that Houstoun sometimes came into contact again with Spanish American officials; as Vernon moved through Cuba, a magistrate of Santiago de Cuba met with Houstoun on one of his trading ships, and informed him that the city would be wholly unable to defend itself. While his inclusion of this anecdote might be less a recounting of strict fact and more a subtle encouragement to attempt to retake the area, his Memoirs make very clear Houstoun’s disdain for Vernon when the admiral failed to seize Cuba.¹³⁶

Frustration pervaded the war years for the Spanish Americans as well. Houstoun noted that local Spanish subjects “were at a very great Expence, and run much risk in buying goods in that clandestine, contraband way.” If the ships carrying illegally traded goods were detected at sea, they could be seized by the Spanish government. On land, the contraband was no safer; “for they had no less than twelve different guards to pass from Porto-bello to Panama, and every one must be paid in passing; and perhaps, after they had passed and paid eleven, the twelfth seizes upon all, or makes them pay through the Nose for it.”¹³⁷ Although Houstoun gives no account of the cargoes he shipped to the Spanish Americas during the war, it is clear that goods, likely manufactures, coming from the British Empire were highly coveted among the Spanish subjects in the Caribbean and inland. One historian’s study of contraband during the asiento trade lists “flour, pitch, tar, beef, pork, mercury, brass, iron ware of several kinds, woolens, cottons, canvas, mules’ shoes, and nails” as popular goods on Spanish America’s black market. It is likely that Houstoun traded these varied goods, as well as slaves, on his own account during the long war, though he would never be able to return to the area with the kind of semipermanence of the asiento period.¹³⁸

As in any war, those caught behind enemy lines, or in enemy cities, faced hardship among those with whom they had previously been in business relationships, and even friendships. Those not redeemed during the war could hope that the end of hostilities would mean a return to their country, but not to the individual prosperity (or potential for prosperity) they had during the asiento. Houstoun and his fellow British traders lamented the end of the asiento, and with it the possibility for success in Spanish lands. As the true scope of the South Sea Company’s failure became clear, the options for trade to Spanish America would never again reach the heights enjoyed during the course of the treaty.

Ultimately, cooperation collapsed under the weight of religious and other tensions, conflict over contraband trade and piracy, and internal disruptions within each empire related to the difficulties of the slave trade, bringing war to the West Indies. With this, the opportunity for sustained and officially sanctioned interpersonal Anglo-Spanish interaction in the Americas came to an effective end, even though some, less concerned with imperial policy than with practicalities, were able to readjust their expectations and continue to reap some profit throughout the war. The chance for these nations to pursue mutual profit, to form friendly relationships, and to angle for geographic control of portions of one another’s empires in close proximity would not be re-created at such a scale before the disintegration of these empires in the later part of the century. The end of the British asiento period came not after a long, profitable cooperation between the company and the Spanish, as intended. Rather, it was the result of significant breakdowns in the interimperial alliance that could not be counteracted sufficiently by the cooperation that still persisted between individual members of each empire. The closeness had, in fact, been one of the factors driving the breakdown of the peace.