El Niño, environmental crisis, and the emergence of alternative markets in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1760s-70s

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 365-407

  Johnson, Sherry ^a  

^a FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33645355241     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491529     Document Type: Review

References (109)

1. William Pollard to Peter Holme, Philadelphia, Sept. 23, 1773, William Pollard Letterbook, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. This archival collection was originally cited in Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 112-13. Doerflinger also suggested that Philadelphia's trade to foreign markets deserved further scholarly attention
2. For the Puerto Rico market, see Gerónimo Enrile to Miguel Eduardo, Havana, May 2, 1776, legajo 1227, Papeles de Cuba, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain; José de Gálvez to Juan Ignacio de Urriza, intendant of Havana, Aranjuéz, Apr. 20, 1781, legajo 3, Asuntos Políticos, Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Havana, Cuba. Though dealing with the best way to obtain provisions in 1781, Gálvez told Urriza that "the honorable Robert Morris" had always come to the aid of the Spanish colonies in times of need (Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 [Oxford, Eng., 1936], 120-23
3. Levi Marrero, Cuba: economía y sociedad [Madrid, Spain, 1978], 7: 102-64
4. John Robert McNeill, Atlantic Empires of France and Spain: Louisbourg and Havana, 1700-1763 [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985], 154-62). The British South Sea Company finally lost its de jure privilege in the Treaty of Madrid in 1750 (Pares, War and Trade, 532), though for the previous ten years it was prohibited from carrying out the terms of the original agreement
5. See also Vera Lee Brown, "The South Sea Company and Contraband Trade," American Historical Review 31, no. 4 (July 1926): 662-78
6. Juan F. Yela Utrilla, España ante la independencia de los Estados Unidos, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Lérida, Spain, 1925)
7. Kathryn Abbey Hanna, "Efforts of Spain to Maintain Sources of Information in the British Colonies before 1779," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 15, no. 1 (June 1928): 56-68
8. Mark F. Boyd and José Navarro Latorre, "Spanish Interest in British Florida and in the Progress of the American Revolution," Florida Historical Quarterly 32, no. 1 (July 1953): 95-121
9. Light Townsend Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (Baton Rouge, La., 1991)
10. César N. Caviedes, El Niño in History: Storming through the Ages (Gainesville, Fla., 2001), 146-50. Caviedes's chapter, "Altered States: From El Niño to La Niña" (146-71), describes the correlation between El Niño and La Niña, originally termed an "anti-niño." Caviedes explains: "In consonance with the seesaw interactions between the tropical Pacific and the tropical Atlantic, which are especially active during the warm and low phases of ENSO [El Niño Southern Oscillation, another name for the El Niño-La Niña], La Niña episodes in the tropical Atlantic are characterized by ocean warming. This condition is favorable for the generation of cyclonic depressions, which are likely to develop into major hurricanes when they move into the western tropical Atlantic. This realization has led climatologists to expect increased hurricane activity in the Caribbean region, along the west coast of Central America, and in the Gulf region of North America during La Niña years" (150)
11. Scholarship on the effect of hurricanes includes Stuart B. Schwartz, "The Hurricane of San Ciriaco: Disaster, Politics, and Society in Puerto Rico, 1899-1901," Hispanic American Historical Review 72, no. 3 (August 1992): 303-34
12. Sherry Johnson, "The Rise and Fall of Creole Participation in the Cuban Slave Trade, 1789-1796," Cuban Studies 30 (1999): 52-75
13. Ted Steinberg, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford, Eng., 2000)
14. Louis A. Perez Jr., Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001)
15. Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-178} (Baltimore, 2005)
16. Caviedes, El Niño in History, 206 ("spasmodic climate interludes"), 167-68, esp. the graph and accompanying explanation on 168 that illustrates the upsurge in hurricane activity after ca. 1750 running through ca. 1804
17. See also César N. Caviedes, "Five Hundred Years of Hurricanes in the Caribbean: Their Relationship with Global Climatic Variabilities," GeoJournal 23, no. 4 (April 1991): 301-10
18. Climatologists have verified the minute upward spike in the earth's temperature in scientific sources such as deep-core samples of glaciers, soil samples, and dendrochronology; see S. Huang, "Integrated Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstruction" (2004)
19. W. H. Quinn and V. T. Neal, "The Historical Record of El Niño Events in Climate since AD 1500," in Climate Since AD 1500 Database (1992), ed. Robert S. Bradley and Philip D. Jones, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climate Data Center (NOAA/NCDC) Paleoclimatology Program, World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, Boulder, Colo., both available on NOAA's Paleoclimatology Web site, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo. There are historians that establish the chronology of historic hurricanes (see studies by, for instance, José Carlos Millas, David M. Ludlum, and José Hernández Partagás). See also NOAA's National Hurricane Center Web site on historic hurricanes based on Partagás's lifelong dedication to collecting such data (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov). Scientists at the National Hurricane Center Tropical Prediction Center in Miami are certain that weather and climate go through cycles - witness summer 2004 in Florida as evidence
20. My thoughts have benefited from the generosity of Professor Robert H. Claxton, who, on learning of my study, graciously shared some of his many publications (see Claxton and Alan D. Hecht, "Climatic and Human History in Europe and Latin America: An Opportunity for Comparative Study," Climatic Change 1 [1978]: 195-203
21. Claxton, "Climate and History: From Speculation to Systematic Study," Historian 45, no. 2 [February 1983]: 220-36
22. Claxton, "The Record of Drought and Its Impact in Colonial Spanish America," in Themes in Rural History of the Western World, ed. Richard Herr [Ames, Iowa, 1993], 194-226)
23. For connections among cities, see Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: The Trade between North America and the West Indies before the American Revolution (Cambridge, 1956)
24. Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713-1826 (Baltimore, 1983)
25. Jacques A. Barbier and Allan J. Kuethe, eds., The North American Role in the Spanish Imperial Economy, 1760-1819 (Manchester, Eng., 1984)
26. Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss, eds., Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1991)
27. Susan Socolow, ed., The Atlantic Staple Trade (Aldershot, Eng., 1996), esp. pts. 1, 2
28. For the importance of foreign aid, see Yela Utrilla, España ante la independencia; María Encarnación Rodríguez Vincente, "El comercio cubano y la guerra de emancipación norteamericana, " Anuario de Estudios Americanos 11 (1954): 61-106
29. Francisco Morales Padrón, Spanish Help in American Independence (Madrid, Spain, 1966)
30. James A. Lewis, "Las Damas de la Havana, el Precursor, and Francisco de Saavedra: A Note on Spanish Participation in the Battle of Yorktown," Americas 37, no. 1 (July 1980): 83-99
31. Cummins, Spanish Observers. Another interpretation is by Thomas E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift (Albuquerque, N.M., 2002)
32. For trade between Spain and its colonies and the British North American colonies, see C. H. Van Tyne, "French Aid before the Alliance of 1778," American Historical Review 31, no. 1 (October 1925): 20-40
33. Pares, War and Trade, 406, 492, 532-33
34. Rodríguez Vincente, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 11: 69, 94-101
35. John H. Coatsworth, "American Trade with European Colonies in the Caribbean and South America, 1790-1812," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 24, no. 2 (April 1967): 243-66
36. James A. Lewis, "Nueva España y los esfuerzos para abastecer la Habana, 1779-1783,quot; Anuario de Estudios Americanos 33 (1977): 501-26
37. Marrero, Cuba, 7: 159-63
38. Neil L. York, "Clandestine Aid and the American Revolutionary War Effort: A Re-Examination," Military Affairs 43, no. 1 (February 1979): 26-30
39. Linda K. Salvucci, "Anglo American Merchants and Stratagems for Success in Spanish Imperial Markets, 1783-1807," in Barbier and Kuethe, North American Role, 127-33
40. Lewis, "Anglo-American Entrepreneurs in Havana: The Background and Significance of the Expulsion of 1784-1785," ibid., 113-14
41. Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise
42. Salvucci, "Supply, Demand, and the Making of a Market: Philadelphia and Havana at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century," in Knight and Liss, Atlantic Port Cities, 40-57
43. Cummins, Spanish Observers, 115-27
44. Richard Stuart Olson and Vincent T. Gawronski, "Disasters as Critical Junctures? Managua, Nicaragua 1972 and Mexico City 1985," International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 21, no. 1 (March 2003): 5-35
45. Stuart B. Schwartz, "Hurricanes and the Shaping of Circum-Caribbean Cultures" (keynote address, Third Biennial Allen Morris Conference on the History of Florida and the Atlantic World, Tallahassee, Fla., Feb. 13, 2004)
46. Similar caution was voiced nearly two decades ago regarding the rush to adopt then-fashionable theories from sociology or anthropology (Darrett B. Rutman, "Assessing the Little Communities of Early America," WMQ 43, no. 2 [April 1986]: 163-78)
47. On the six major storms, see Pares, War and Trade, 390-93
48. David M. Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870 (Boston, 1963), 62
49. José Carlos Millás, Hurricanes of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions, 1492-1800 (Miami, Fla., 1968), 219-25
50. J. H. Parry, Philip Sherlock, and Anthony Maingot, A Short History of the West Indies, 4th ed. (London, 1987), 93-106
51. On Canada's agricultural production, see McNeill, Atlantic Empires of France and Spain, 107-14, 137-54
52. For Martinique's importation, see Dorothy Burne Goebel, "The 'New England Trade' and the French West Indies, 1763-1774: A Study in Trade Policies," WMQ 20, no. 3 (July 1963): 352 n. 57
53. The trade liberalization in the French colonies was consonant with similar con-cessions in the British colonies (see Goebel, "British Trade to the Spanish Colonies, 1796-1823," American Historical Review 43, no. 3 [January 1938]: 289-91)
54. Admiral George B. Rodney sarcastically described Louisiana as "'another desert' for her [Spain's] empire" (Robert R. Rea, "A Distant Thunder: Anglo-Spanish Conflict and the Americas in the Eighteenth Century," in Cardenales de dos independencias [Mexico City, 1978], 178)
55. Jack D. L. Holmes, "Some Economic Problems of Spanish Governors of Louisiana," Hispanic American Historical Review 42, no. 4 (November 1962): 521-24
56. John Preston Moore, "Antonio de Ulloa: A Profile of the First Spanish Governor of Louisiana," Louisiana History 8, no. 3 (Summer 1967): 189-218
57. Moore, "Revolt in Louisiana: A Threat to Franco-Spanish Amistad," in Spain and her Rivals on the Gulf Coast, ed. Ernest F. Dibble and Earle W. Newton (Pensacola, Fla., 1971), 40-55
58. Antonio Acosta, "Las bases económicas de los primeros anõs de la Luisiana española (1763-1778)," in La influencia de España en el Caribe, la Florida, y la Luisiana, 1500-1800, ed. Antonio Acosta and Juan Marchena (Madrid, Spain, 1983), 331-75
59. Gilbert C. Din, Francisco Bottligny: A Bourbon Soldier in Spanish Louisiana (Baton Rouge, La., 1993), 31-35
60. Robert S. Weddle, Changing Tides: Twilight and Dawn in the Spanish Sea, 1763-1803 (College Station, Tex., 1995), 10-23
61. Francisco de Solano Pérez-Lila, La pasióan de reformar: Antonio de Ulloa, marino y cientifico, 1716-1795 (Seville, Spain, 1999), 220
62. For storm damage, see Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, 62-63
63. For French and Spanish government approval, see, respectively, Goebel, WMQ 20: 352
64. Roy F. Nichols, "Trade Relations and the Establishment of the United States Consulates in Spanish America, 1779-1809," Hispanic American Historical Review 13, no. 3 (August 1933): 293. For policies during the 1740s and 1750s, see Governor of Santiago de Cuba to Captain General of Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Apr. 1, 1751, expediente 39, legajo 5, Correspondence of the Captain General, Archivo Nacional de Cuba; Governor of Santiago de Cuba to Martin Estéban de Aróstegui, lieutenant governor of Puerto Príncipe, Santiago de Cuba, Apr. 8, 1755 expediente 284, legajo 7, ibid
65. For the opening of ports, see Goebel, American Historical Review 43: 290-91
66. A corrective to such a pessimistic view of Spain's economic system is Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759-1789 (Baltimore, 2003)
67. For the reforms of 1765-78, see J. Muñoz Perez, "La publicación del reglamento de comercio libre de Indias, de 1778," Anuario de Estudios Americanos 4 (1947): 615-21, 638-43
68. Antonio García-Baquero Gonzalez, Cádiz y el atlántico (1717-1778): (El comercio colonial español bajo el monopolio gaditano) (Seville, Spain, 1976), 1: 208-15
69. John Fisher, "Imperial 'Free Trade' and the Hispanic Economy, 1778-1796," Journal of Latin American Studies 13, no. 1 (May 1981): 21-23
70. Allan J. Kuethe and G. Douglas Inglis, "Absolutism and Enlightened Reform: Charles III, the Establishment of the Alcabala, and Commercial Reorganization in Cuba," Past & Present, no. 109 (November 1985): 118-43
71. Allan J. Kuethe, "The Early Reforms of Charles III in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, 1759-1776," in Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru, ed. John R. Fisher, Allan J. Kuethe, and Anthony McFarlane (Baton Rouge, La., 1990), 21-29
72. Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700-1789 (Bloomington, Ind., 1979)
73. David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish miracle," 1700-1900 (Cambridge, 1996)
74. Antonio J. Valdés, Historia de la Isla de Cuba y en especial de la Habana (1813; repr., Havana, Cuba, 1964), devotes nearly half his work to detailing the most traumatic event that, until that time, had taken place in Cuba's history
75. See also Francis Russell Hart, The Siege of Havana, 1762 (Boston, 1931)
76. Archivo Nacional de Cuba, ed., Papeles sobre la toma de la Habana por los ingleses en 1762 (Havana, Cuba, 1948)
77. Pedro J. Guiteras, Historia de la conquista de la Habana por los ingleses (1856; repr., Havana, Cuba, 1962)
78. Amalia A. Rodríguez, ed., Cinco diarios del sitio de la Habana (Havana, Cuba, 1963)
79. David Syrett, ed., The Siege and Capture of Havana, 1762 (London, 1970)
80. Celia María Parcero Torre, La pérdida de la Habana y las reformas Borbónicas en Cuba (1760-1773 (Castile-Leon, Spain, 1998)
81. Pablo José Hernández Gonzáles, "Más allá de una capitulación" (Ph.D. diss., University of Seville, Spain, 2001)
82. For the influx of troops, workers, and slaves, see Sherry Johnson, The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba (Gainesville, Fla., 2001), 39-70, 84-87
83. Evelyn Powell Jennings, "Slaves of State: Urban Slavery, Imperial Defense and Public Works in Colonial Havana, 1763-1840" (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, New York, 2002)
84. Jennings, "War as the 'Forcing House of Change': State Slavery in Late-Eighteenth-Century Cuba," WMQ 62, no. 3 (July 2005): 411-40
85. For the free-colored community in Cuba, see Herbert S. Klein Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1989), 193-227
86. Montserrat Gárate Ojanguren, Comercio ultramarino e ilustración: La Real Compañía de la Habana, vol. 6, Colección Ilustración Vasca (San Sebastián, Spain, 1993). 170-72, concludes: "In 1765, the Real Compañía de La Habana had ceased to be a privileged company." Among the privileges that the Havana company lost were the exclusive rights to trade with Cuba, the responsibility to administer the tobacco monopoly, the privilege of running the Havana shipyard, the authority to issue permission to cut timber, and the privilege to contract with New York merchants to bring food into Spanish Florida
87. For the monopoly est. in Cadiz, see Bibiano Torres Ramírez, La compañía gaditana de negros (Seville, Spain, 1973), esp. 19-41, 108
88. For past reliance, see José Osorio to George Paplay, Havana, July 1764 to February 1765, legajo 1212, Santo Domingo, AGI; Jennings, WMQ 62
89. For the focus on slaving activities, see Torres Ramírez, La compañía gaditana, 19-41, 53-77
90. Pablo Tornero Tinajero, Crecimiento económico y transformaciones sociales: Esclaves, hacendados y comerciantes en la Cuba colonial (1760-1840) (Madrid, Spain, 1996), 34-44
91. Moore, "Revolt in Louisiana," 40-55; Din, Francisco Bouligny, 31-35
92. For O'Reilly's expedition and special permission, see Bibiano Torres Ramírez, Alejandro O'Reilly en las Indias (Seville, Spain, 1969), 97-127
93. Acosta, "Las bases económicas," 364, 349
94. As early as 1768, Oliver Pollock, friend and factor for the Philadelphia firm, resided in New Orleans (James Alton James, "Oliver Pollock, Financier of the Revolution in the West," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16, no. 1 [June 1929]: 69 see also Oliver Pollock Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Important figures in this trade were two brothers, merchant Jacques (Santiago) and ship's captain Bartolomé Toutant Beauregard
95. Jacques's progeny are more famous for their activities in the Civil War, for example, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (see Julia Carpenter Frederick, "Luis de Unzaga and Bourbon Reform in Spanish Louisiana, 1770-1776" [Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 2000], 90-93)
96. For O'Reilly's economic problems, see Acosta, "Las bases económicas," 363-65. Acosta maintains that O'Reilly had to "cediera a la realidad (resign [himself] to the reality)" of the situation in New Orleans (364)
97. Millás, Hurricanes of the Caribbean, 229-39
98. Caviedes, GeoJournal 23: 304
99. For drought in Mexico, see Enrique Florescano, Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en México (1708-1810) (Mexico City, 1969), 60, 72-75
100. Claxton, "Record of Drought," 216-22
101. Caviedes, El Niño in History, 104-5. For loss of emergency supplies, see Unzaga to de la Torre, New Orleans, Sept. 9, 1772, Dispatches of Spanish Governors, typescript and translation in Manuscripts Department, Tulane University Libraries
102. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish miracle," 107-10
103. [John Joachim Zubly], John Adams' Notes of Debates, Oct. 12, 1775, in Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, D.C., 1977), 2: 165-66
104. Robert C. Alberts, The Golden Voyage: The Life and Times of William Bingham, 1752-1804 (Boston, 1969), 25-73
105. Cummins, Spanish Observers, 39-42, 44
106. The specific responsibilities of each man are clear in Ortíz de Landázuri and Lanz de Casafonda to the Council of the Indies, San Lorenzo, July 12, 1772, legajo 2820A, Indiferente General, AGI; "Instrucción para el nuevo Giro y Govierno ...," San Lorenzo, Nov. 13, 1772, ibid
107. Hanna, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 15: 56-68
108. Alberts, Golden Voyage, 25-73
109. The amount of money that Spain lent to the patriots is verified in Diego de Gardoqui to Duque de Alcudia, Oct. 26, 1794, in Yela Utrilla, España ante la independence, 2: 373-74