EMPIRES: CONCEPTS AND NEW RESEARCH ON THE HISPANIC WORLD, 16TH - 18TH CENTURIES-IMPERIOS: CONCEPTOS Y NUEVAS INVESTIGACIONES EN EL MUNDO HISPÁNICO, SIGLOS XVI AL XVIII.

Regina Grafe; Ana Crespo Solana

In the closing chapter of this collection of case studies, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla asks, “Do cultures dialogue only through oral and written words or also through the exchange of material goods?” (277). The answer to Yun-Casalilla’s question provided in the 15 essays gathered in this anthology is a nuanced yes. The exchange of material goods sets up the framework in which intercultural dialogue occurs, it prompts conversations that would have otherwise not taken place and it determines the scope and aim of cultural exchanges. This anthology, edited by Bethany Aram and Yun-Casalilla, continues the efforts of Iberian Atlantic studies to describe this Atlantic network while avoiding the Eurocentric pitfall of the model developed by Fernand Braudel as well as the North-American-centric model that characterized early configurations of the field.

Historians have regarded the breakdown of the crown’s control of trade as crucial to the collapse of the Spanish colonial system.1 However, analysis of commercial and administrative records produced by local authorities in R´ıo de la Plata and Rio de Janeiro reveals that direct trade between Spanish Americans and merchants of foreign countries did not mean the interruption of established trade routes with Spain. Actually, trade with foreign nations, especially between Spanish territories in R´ıo de la Plata and Luso-Brazilians, allowed Spanish American merchants not only to maintain regional commercial activity, but also to use foreign vessels and ports to maintain the flow of goods, capital, and information between Spain and its American territories during periods of war.

On the basis of recent research the article discusses the last years of the Spanish imperial transport system to the Indies sending year by year two fleets to each one of the viceroyaltas and its consequences in transatlantic communications as new informations on smuggling, even by high authorities, the increased power and earnings of the viceroys, disposing of much more Moneys than European kings combined with the poor results of the defensive Systems and the "flota de Barlovento", projects of reform

CULTURE & HISTORY DIGITAL JOURNAL Volume 3 Issue 1 January-June 2014 Madrid (Spain) eISSN: 2253-797X INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS Volume 3 Issue 1 January-June 2014 Madrid (Spain) eISSN: 2253-797X CULTURE & HISTORY DIGITAL JOURNAL Journal published by the Institut of History of the CCHS (CSIC) Culture & History Digital Journal features original scientiic articles and review articles, aimed to contribute to the methodological debate among historians and other scholars specialized in the ields of Human and Social Sciences, at an international level. Using an interdisciplinary and transversal approach, this Journal poses a renovation of the studies on the past, relating them and dialoguing with the present, breaking the traditional forms of thinking based on chronology, diachronic analysis, and the classical facts and forms of thinking based exclusively on textual and documental analysis. 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El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas no se hace responsable, en ningún caso, de la credibilidad y autenticidad de los trabajos. Los originales publicados en la revista Culture & History. Digital Journal son propiedad del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas, siendo necesaria citar la procedencia de cualquier reproducción parcial o total. eISSN: 2253-797X NIPO (on line-en línea): 723-14-098-9 Volume 3 Issue 1 January-June 2014 Madrid (Spain) eISSN: 2253-797X CULTURE & HISTORY DIGITAL JOURNAL Table of contents-Sumario EMPIRES: CONCEPTS AND NEW RESEARCH ON THE HISPANIC WORLD, 16TH - 18TH CENTURIES-IMPERIOS: CONCEPTOS Y NUEVAS INVESTIGACIONES EN EL MUNDO HISPÁNICO, SIGLOS XVI AL XVIII. AnA Crespo solAnA (coord.) EDITORIAL Empires: Concepts and New Research on the Hispanic world, 16th - 18th centuries Imperios: Conceptos y nuevas investigaciones en el mundo Hispánico, siglos XVI al XVIII ...................... e001 AnA Crespo solAnA (coord.) Pág. 5 DOSSIER Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age Imperio. El concepto y sus problemas en la historiografía sobre los imperios ibéricos en la Edad Moderna ...................................................................................................................................e002 ChristiAn hAusser And horst pietsChmAnn Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World Entre la India y las Indias: redes mercantiles alemanas, la lucha por la corona imperial y el nombramiento del Nuevo Mundo .........................................................................................................e003 renAte pieper The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period Las Islas Filipinas: un cruce vital en la era de la primera globalización .....................................................e004 CArlos mArtínez shAw And mArinA Alfonso molA ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) «No hay más que un mundo»: Globalización y conexiones en los territorios ultramarinos de los Hasburgos españoles (1581-1640)..................................................................................................e005 José Antonio mArtínez torres On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic Sobre la naturaleza espacial de las instituciones y la naturaleza institucional de las redes personales en el Atlántico Español ............................................................................................................e006 reginA grAfe The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht La formación del espacio social hispano-atlántico y la integración de las comunidades mercantiles después de los tratados de Utrecht ........................................................................................e007 AnA Crespo solAnA 7 17 27 43 59 71 ARTICLES Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra Mobilizations and divisions of the scientiic community in wartime ............................................................e008 leonCio lópez-oCón CAbrerA 83 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project Discursos sagrados, seculares, y ecológicos: el Proyecto de Sethusamudram ........................................e009 CArl t. feAgAns 93 3(1) June 2014, e001 eISSN 2253-797X http://cultureandhistory.revistas.csic.es In the context of Global History, the discovery and opening of new maritime trade routes has been an important topic for research when revealing and analysing the main factors which contributed to the impact which certain trade routes came to have in terms of the processes of regional and global interaction. Research into the Iberian empires (Spain and Portugal) has highlighted that, although these empires have been regarded as secondary in relation to the attention other merchant nations have attracted, their Atlantic expansion was one of the most important achievements in world history. As for the Spanish empire, the study of its Atlantic commercial system has only been addressed recently from an Atlantic Historiography perspective (Martínez Shaw and Oliva Melgar, 2005; Bustos Rodríguez, 2005). However, new research lines are being opened into the Hispanic presence in the Atlantic world which are oriented chiefly towards an analysis of the transnational flow of ideas coming from Spain to France and England, albeit from an American perspective. But there are still a number of questions that remain to be answered in relation to how the Spanish Atlantic system worked and what was its real influence, if any, on the progressintheregionalintegrationoftheAtlanticeconomies, spatial networks, maritime routes and institutions, and if it really had an impact on how the spatial logistics in the other Merchant Empires were organised. The Hispanic expansion developed and was built around a licence-based trading system which was overseen and inspected by the Crown of Castile although privately run, and which delimited a number of production areas and markets in Spain as well as in the Spanish overseas territories. And this spatial structure thus created was, perhaps, what mostly inluenced the logistics that the other mercantile empires established when it came to developing their own respective expansions. What was described as Hispanic Monarchy was in fact a combined empire that became the major actor in the first global, maritime expansion together with the kingdom of Portugal, with which it was politically united between 1580 and 1640. Before and during this period, both political entities enriched one another, and the Hispano-Portuguese cooperative networks expanded all over the planet. New research has recently been conducted into the impact of the maritime routes opened by both empires, both from a spatial dimension perspective and from the density reached by the transnational merchant networks operating around these trading routes and in which a number of mercantile colonies from many nationalities were involved (Crespo Solana, 2010; Crespo Solana & Alonso García, 2012; Mukherjee, 2011 and 2013; Crespo Solana, 2014). In fact, these research works are beginning to produce, owing to their innovative character, important results even though new visions are still to be cast on what globality meant to Hispano-Portuguese expansion. This piece of work is yet another result of cooperation among experts on this matter with the objective of offering a much more coherent vision of the institutional and socioeconomic entity called the Hispanic World in the Early Modern Era. Far from a nationalist perspective, this approach is intent on analysing the impact of this expansion. To that effect, purely conceptual issues are being studied, such as social and economic ones, with an emphasis on the analysis of spatial networks in maritime trade. One of the most important chapters to read when trying to understand the complexity of the connections makes reference to the role played by the trade communities of differentnationalitiesbasedinvariousurbancentreslinked to the Atlantic economy, both in Europe and in America, along with large trading companies in Asia and Africa. Historiography has also highlighted the importance and features of these merchant communities and how they worked and were structured around this system of global interactions, by establishing a close relationship between the phenomena of migration, the formation of trading companies and the evolution and integration of the various socio-cultural and economic areas. Furthermore, it has been possible to create a theoretical model for the study of trade communities and their impact on the evolution of these companies, as well as their influence on political and diplomatic relations between modern states. These studies have evolved from traditional macro-economic works (Chaunu, 1955-60; García-Baquero, 1976) to analyses of European trading companies in the colonial world or the Spanish trade with America (Bustos Rodríguez, 2005; Crespo Solana, 2010). The aim of this set of papers is to offer the reader a first approach to the impact of the Iberian empires at various levels. This is a first volume that will be complemented with a second set of essays which will be featured in a future volume of this journal. Two central issues are being analysed. On the one hand, emphasis is laid on the conceptual aspects related to the empire’s implicit nature as applied to the Hispanic case. This is, undoubtedly, a major advance since the Iberian empires have been sidelined historiographically in their conceptualisation within the framework of the Atlantic and Global History-save very few exceptions (Pagden, 1995; Cardim et al, 2012; Pietschmann, 2013). On the other hand, most of these articles analyse issues related to the creation of space through social and economic networks. These texts study, from various perspectives, how networks are created as well as their impact on the social, cultural and economic, 5 2 • Editorial in various periods marked by “events” that determined the construction of the Ibero-Atlantic space. The first paper, by Horst Pietschmann and Christian Hausser, provides a very much needed historiographical reflexion on the concept of empire as applied to Portugal and Spain and introduces a comparative vision between them. The article studies the more recent historiography about the Spanish and Portuguese empires. It identifies several types of interpretations and the use of ‘empire’ as a concept in different contexts, academic traditions and epochs. In doing so, it points to the achievements made and to the gaps that still exist, especially in the context of Renaissance Humanism. It is the article’s goal to facilitate a dialogue between academics about a topic that in the last decade or so has revealed crucial for the study of Ibero-American as well as for European history. A new challenge is ahead of us: to set out new research initiatives applied to a parallel, comparative study of merchant networks as actors in a) the processes of spatial-geographic integration; b) the social and economic relation among the various interconnected areas; and c) the evolution and function of those areas in relation to each speciic spatiotemporal delimitation. The “World Connected History” is rising to face up to these new conceptual and methodological challenges, and this requires the use of new communication technologies in the new age of “Digital Humanities” (Owens, 2007; Crespo Solana, 2013). This approach focuses on the study of problems deriving from spatiotemporal representation and the analysis of networks and routes of great geographical, historical and cartographical importance, as previously claimed by Fernand Braudel, but it would not be possible to carry this out without the help of new technologies which will doubtlessly complement and enrich the work of specialists in European expansion and global trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. Renate Pieper follows with an essay on the relations between the name “America” and the German commercial networks involved in Portuguese trade, and offers very valuable information on the extent of the exchange of geographic and cartographic knowledge as it boosted since its inception the interests of the political elites in the empires’ maritime expansion. The following essay, by Marina Alfonso Mola and Carlos Martínez Shaw, offers an extraordinary narrative of the processes describing the Iberian expansion in the South Pacific as early as the 16th century when globalisation grew, thanks to the “discovery” of America, from an already existing process into an oceanic expansion as it had never been seen before. This paper deals with the analysis of the globalisation of a route spanning between three continents. The axis running from Seville (later Cadiz) to Veracruz, Mexico City and Acapulco to Manila, as it flowed both ways, served as a permanent route for the exchange of precious metals and exotic products. This was the first global route ever in History. To a large extent, theexpansionintothePacificwasencouragedbyHispanoPortuguesecooperationandcompetitionintheirterritories. In relation to this, the paper written by José Antonio Martínez Torres delivers a perspective on the connections in the colonial territories in Asia during the Iberian Union. The piece of work by Regina Grafe offers an important approach to interconnection and the always difficult to discern thin line between institutions and networks. Finally, Ana Crespo Solana, this volume’s coordinator, offers a historiographical reflexion on how networks and institutions evolved as a result of the Treaties of Utrecht. Networks fuelled interconnection systems and also fashioned institutions. This is but one more contribution from the writer of these pages, as she conducts a complementary study of the recent works delving into the evolution and impact of these networks from a perspective based on the Complex Systems Theory (Crespo Solana & Alonso García, 2012; Crespo Solana, 2014). Bustos Rodríguez, Manuel (2005) Cádiz en el sistema atlántico: La ciudad, sus comerciantes y su actividad mercantil (1650-1832). Sílex Universidad, Madrid. Cardim, Pedro, Herzog; Tamar, Ruiz Ibáñez; J. J. and Sabatini, Gaetano (coordinators), (2012) Polycentric Monarchies: how did Early Modern Spain and Portugal achieve and maintain a global economy? Sussex Academic Press, Portland. Crespo Solana, Ana (editor), (2010) Comunidades Transnacionales. Colonias de mercaderes extranjeros en el mundo atlántico. Doce Calles, Madrid. Crespo Solana, Ana (2013) “La Historia Geográicamente Integrada y los Sistemas de Información Geográica (SIG): concepto y retos metodológicos”. Tiempos Modernos: Revista Electrónica de Historia Moderna, vol 7, No. 26: 33. Crespo Solana, Ana (editor), (2014) Spatio-Temporal Narratives: Historical GIS and the Study of Global Trading Networks (1500-1800). Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle. Crespo Solana, Ana and Alonso García, David (2012) “Self-Organizing Networks and GIS Tools. Case of Use for the Study of Trading Cooperation (1400-1800)”. Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology (JKMEIT), Scientiic Papers, June volume. Special issue. Chaunu, Pierre (1955-60) Séville et l’Atlantique (1504-1650). 12 vols. SEVPEN, Paris. García-Baquero González, Antonio (1976) Cádiz y el Atlántico: 1717-1778. Diputación Provincial, Cádiz. Martínez Shaw, Carlos and Oliva Melgar, José M. (2005) El sistema atlántico español (siglos XVII-XIX). Marcial Pons, Madrid. Mukherjee, Rila (2013) Oceans Connect: Relections on Water World across Time and Space (Issues in History). Primus Book, Delhi. Mukherjee, Rila (2012) Networks in the First Global Age, 1400-1800. Primus Book, Indian Council of Historical Research, Delhi. Owens, J. B. “Jack” (2007) “Towards a Geographically-Integrated, Connected World History: Employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS)”. History Compass, 5, No. 6: 2014-2040; doi: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00476.x. Pagden, Anthony P. (1995) Lords of all the worlds: ideologies of empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-1850. Yale University Press, New York. Pietschmann, Horst (2013) “Imperio y comercio en la formación del Atlántico español”. In El sistema comercial español en la economía mundial (siglos XVII-XVIII). Coordinated by Lobato Franco, Mª Isabel and Oliva Melgar, José M. Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Huelva, Huelva: 71-95. Ana Crespo Solana Instituto de Historia, CSIC This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e001. eISSN 2253-797X, http://cultureandhistory.revistas.csic.es 6 3(1) June 2014, e002 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age1 Christian Hausser1 and Horst Pietschmann2 1 Assistant Professor in Latinoamerican History, Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos ‘Juan Ignacio Molina’, Universidad de Talca, Chile, 2 Emeritus Professor of Latin American History, Universität Hamburg, Germany e-mail: chhausser@icloud.com, hpietschmann@t-online.de Submitted: 1 January 2014. Accepted: 15 May 2014 ABSTRACT: The article studies the more recent historiography about the Spanish and Portuguese empires. It identiies several types of interpretations and the use of ‘empire’ as a concept in different contexts, academic traditions and epochs. In doing so, it points to the achievements made and to the gaps that still exist, especially in the context of Renaissance humanism. It is the article‘s goal to facilitate a dialogue between academics about a topic that in the last decade or so has revealed crucial for the study of Ibero-American as well as for European history. KEYWORDS: Spain; Portugal; empire; Early Modern History; concept; historiography Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Hausser, Christian and Pietschmann, Horst (2014). “Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e002. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 RESUMEN: Imperio. El concepto y sus problemas en la historiografía sobre los imperios ibéricos en la Edad Moderna.- El trabajo analiza la historiografía más reciente acerca de los imperios español y portugués. Identiica líneas de interpretación y el uso del concepto de ‘imperio’ en contextos, tradiciones académicas y épocas distintas. De esa manera apunta a los logros alcanzados y a las lagunas existentes, particularmente en el marco del humanismo renacentista. El objetivo es contribuir a facilitar el diálogo dentro la investigación acerca de un tema que en los últimos años ha sido uno de los más estudiados en el marco de la historia ibero-americana y europea. PALABRAS CLAVE: España; Portugal; imperio; Edad Moderna; conceptos; historiografía Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. INTRODUCTION The concept of “empire” has been applied over the past 15 years or so to all kinds of extended political formations, past and present, whether they were called “empire” or were governed by an “emperor,” or were only notable for their great political, economic-inancial, military or religious-ideological power. Despite the widespread use of the term, however, the cases of Spain and Portugal are particularly problematic to deine, as they cover different timeframes and regions and encompass virtually all possible deining criteria, spread out over different times. In introducing the problem, it therefore seems advisable to critically review the devel- opment of the concept in historiography, given that rather disparate historiographic traditions have played a part in this trajectory, and, above all, because these were preceded by a humanist debate in the 15th century referring to the Holy Roman Empire that could have been relected in the expansion and coniguration of the Iberian trans-Atlantic empires. DEBATES SURROUNDING THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE The concept of ‘Spanish empire’ was introduced in the 1960s by the British historiographer J. H. Parry (1940: 75ff., 1966) shortly after Helmuth G. Koenigs- 7 2 • Christian Hausser and Horst Pietschmann berger had afirmed categorically that the concept of ‘empire’ should be limited in the Spanish case to the time of Charles V, as Philip II did not know how to redeine ‘empire’ after the title had fallen into the hands of the Austrian Habsburgs (Koenigsberger 1958, Koenigsberger 1968). ‘Empire’ was at irst reduced to a debate within historiography written in English, through which it was disseminated later, though more quickly, in the English-speaking world than in continental Europe and Latin America. One reason for its reduction to the English-speaking world was that the French Braudelian historiographic tradition became dominant in European and Latin American areas, as was indicated by authors such as Pierre Chaunu, Bartolomé Bennassar and Joseph Pérez, who, among others, employed structural analyses to establish a continuity between the lower middle ages and the modern age, delineating a line of continuity between ‘reconquest’ and ‘conquest,’ with respect to ‘expansion’, and strictly avoided the concept of ‘empire’ because it was not in keeping with the school’s historiographic method (Chaunu 1955). In the early 1950s, a third line, this one truly Latin American–it was promoted by the OAS PanAmerican Institute of Geography and History and the journal “Revista de Historia de América”, under the directorship of Silvio Zavala of Mexico–developed a ‘Program of American History. For inter-American political reasons, this program was reduced to a series of historiographic summaries for each Latin American country, and ultimately to a synthesis authored by Zavala himself (1967) that contributed much to ‘North–South’ comparisons in the Americas and to the dissemination of the common denominator ‘colonial era’. In 1985, from this genuinely American tradition, through Mexico and through the OAS the then-much-debated concept of ‘encuentro de dos mundos’ was launched. This concept was founded upon pre-Hispanic indigenous history and colonial history and sought to address Eurocentric viewpoints on the eve of the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ landing and to highlight the active role of the indigenous population in history. Following this line, as a result of the intense exploration of Mexican archives, from 2000 onward some essential contributions on indigenous municipalities, indigenous art and ‘Indian conquistadors’ emerged that recently gave rise to the well founded hypothesis that in the 16th century the Spaniards only exercised an ‘informal governance’ comparable to the role played by the English in 18th century India (Cuadriello 2004, Tanck de Estrada 2005, Matthew et a 2007, Semboloni 2007, Owensby 2008, Castro 2010, García 2011, Sembolini 2011). Following this line, for the irst time ‘imperial’ structures were deined, derived from the concept of ‘the two republics’ (Spanish and indigenous), which had been conceived of long before in the ield of legal history. More or less in parallel to the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ landing, Anthony Pagden – who had studied under J. H. Elliott at Cambridge University and was influenced by the Pocock and Skinner school of discourse, also based in Cambridge – published a series of books on empire and imperialism in the modern age (Pagden 1990, Pagden 1993, Pagden 1994, Pagden 1995). These books were quickly translated into German and Spanish and distributed widely, and they mark, up to a point, the beginning of a truly imperial conjuncture. It is important to recall that David Brading, another great Americanist at Cambridge who had focused his studies primarily on Mexican archival sources, published what was at the time a monumental book, in which he firmly avoided the concept of ‘empire’ (Brading 1991). Nevertheless, that marked the beginning of the proliferation of ‘imperial’ books, accompanied by the most varied adjectives, not only in reference to Spain and Portugal and their overseas territories, but to virtually all pluriethnic historic formations. For the two cases under study here, the fusion of the concept of ‘empire(s)’ with that of ‘Atlantic history’ was particularly important, and that combination was promoted in an extensive series of annual seminars delivered specially by historian Bernard Bailyn at Harvard University (Bailyn 2005). Inspired by this fusion of concepts, in the past decade a plethora of studies on ‘Atlantic empires’ have been published, first in English and later in other languages as well. In France, after an attempt at summary in Bordeaux (Bennassar et al 1989, Acerra et al 1990, Bertrand et al 2011), discussions centred on the one hand on the problem of Empire in the Americas (Gruzinski et al 1996), but the works of Serge Gruzinski became increasingly important for the problematic of ‘empire’. Gruzinski’s work was based on early “novohispanic” pictorial testimonials, paintings created primarily by indigenous painters under the impact of the mendicant mission, and this despite not using the concept of ‘empire’ in the interpretation of testimonials that offered a perspective on the impact of the ‘encuentro de culturas’ (Gruzinski 1994, Cuadriello 2004, Vargaslugo 2006). After making a similar point by highlighting the importance of ‘musical conquest’ (Turrent 1993), researchers such as Brading launched into the study of religious imaginary, especially that surrounding the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, nevertheless failing to relate the topic to the problematic of ‘Empire’ despite the obvious thematic linkages. Thus, for example, parallel to the development of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the imperial discourse developed in Mexico, transforming ‘king’ Moctezuma into ‘emperor’, designating the Spanish kings as ‘Emperors of the Indies’ and situating them in a line of continuity with the ‘Aztec emperors’, a matter that Pagden does not expand upon (Pietschmann 2006, Pietschmann 2008, Pietschmann 2011). At the end of the century, humanist-centred studies emerged that concerned themselves with the traditions of antiquity and with Roman imperial traditions and their study in the period of Renaissance humanism. These new studies sought to reformulate and/or update Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 8 Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age • 3 the idea of empire, too, in architecture and painting, as well as reformulate political aspirations. Studies along these lines tend to draw the dividing line between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era at the beginning of the 15th century. In this way, not only the Mediterranean ‘Aragonese empire’ enters into the debate, but also the medieval Leonese-Castillian imperial tradition and even the medieval Holy Roman Empire with its apostille of ‘Germanic Nation’ added by Maximilian I, evidently already under the inluence of Tacitus. This, and the inluence of the traditions of Burgundy, the founders of the ‘Order of the Golden Fleece’ as the entity that grouped together the high nobility of Europe (De Jong et alii 2010), are tremendously signiicant for interpreting Charles V. To avoid overextending ourselves here, we shall also mention some German contributions to the problematic, disregarding the works of Alfred Kohler, widely known for their Spanish translation and focused on Charles V and his brother and successor in the empire, Ferdinand, and thus on the truly ‘imperial’ period. Peer Schmidt (✝) (2008) relates the Americas to the ‹universal Spanish monarchy› in the 17th century. Damler (2008), a legal historian, published a history of the treaties of the empire. The function of geographic knowledge in governing the empire – its American part – is analyzed by Arndt Brendecke (2009), while Thomas Duve (2008) analyzes a lengthy conlict between church and state regarding their jurisdiction over marginalized social groups, also of crucial importance in deining the concept of ‘empire’. For his part, Alfredo Pérez-Amador Adam (2011), in his thesis in the ield of literature presented at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, addresses the juridicaltheological issues of the legitimization of the ‘American enterprise.’ This list covers only the most recent books referring to Spain and omits an immense general bibliography on empires, rituals, ceremonies, imagology, and more. Among these it is necessary to mention political scientist and historian Herfried Münkler (2005), who in his review of empires from antiquity to the present day develops elements to distinguish ‘empires’ from kingdoms and other state forms. In Spain, the adoption of the concept of ‘empire’ came rather late and was limited to the period of Charles V (Rodríguez-Salgado 1992) or to studies of legal history and the history of ideas. The anniversaries of Philip II and Charles V in 1998 and 2000, in addition to producing leading-edge exhibitions in art and history, prompted an important series of monographic studies, the most outstanding examples of which include the works undertaken or directed by J. Martínez Millán and González Cuerva (2011) on the composition of the imperial and royal court(s) from Charles V to Philip III, which illuminated for the irst time the central governing mechanisms beyond the classic institutional approaches focused on supreme councils. Some innovative contributions were also made through the study of chronicles, including, for example, the discovery that López de Gómara was not primarily the chronicler of Hernán Cortés but was preparing a ‘parallel life’ in the style of Plutarch, comparing Hernán Cortés to the corsair Barbarossa. In 2002, Manuel Lucena Giraldo coordinated a volume of essays in a new journal on empires that is intended to be comparative. For the past eight years or so, studies have been emerging that address the generalization of the concept of empire in the English literature by authors such as Antonio Miguel Bernal (2005), Carlos Martínez Shaw and José María Oliva Melgar (2005), José Manuel Díaz Blanco (2008) and José Luis Villacañas (2008), among others. Some of these raise Anglicised concepts for discussion, others accept the Atlantic as the framework, but substitute ‘empire’ with ‘system’ or adopt empire and explain it in a German, Italian, Aragonese-Castilian line, broadly inluenced by the Emperor Maximilian I, in an attempt to newly legitimize the holy empire, linking it for the irst time to the complement ‘of the German Nation’. This concept–supported by the rediscovery, in the 15th century, of the text by Tacitus on ‘Germania’ –inspired not only the humanist–merchants of Nuremberg and Augsburg, who were very close to the Emperor Maximilian, but also Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller, who disseminated in Lorraine the concept of ‘America’, aware of the formers’ participation in the early Atlantic enterprises, even Luther himself. And in many aspects the concept also inluenced Maximilian’s grandson, the equally humanist Charles V, as Larry Silver (2008) and Guiseppe Galasso (2011) noted recently. These approaches are lanked by another line from literature written in English that links empire and the Americas with the idea of ‘Rome’ and the Spanish policy in Rome (Dandelet 2001, Lupher 2003, MacCormack 2007, Valdés Garcia et al 2011). More generally, it is necessary to add an entire series of histories of historic ‘frontiers’ that, while they do not refer directly to the Spanish or Portuguese empires, deine them indirectly as spaces that are more or less expansive and open, spaces in which cultural, political, commercial, military, social and other contacts and interactions occur among representatives of widely different cultures. These frontiers indirectly deine empires precisely in those places where they do not have clearly deined borders. This phenomenon is found across virtually the entire Portuguese empire, while in the case of the Spanish empire it is also found in Europe and in North Africa, in relation to the Mediterranean (Bertrand et alii 2011) and sometimes leads to a confusion with Christian missionary zones (Castelnau–Estoile et alii 2011). To summarise provisionally, it is evident that the concept of ‘empire’ has been increasingly generalized, both as a unique concept to designate the Spanish monarchy in general and as a concept used for its overseas possessions. The term is also generally used in combination with adjectives, such as ‘Spanish’, ‘French’, ‘English’, or ‘Dutch’, with a more or less national delimitation, as well as with dynastic adjectives or ones related to special characteristics, such as ‘Habsburg’, ‘Bourbon’, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 9 4 • Christian Hausser and Horst Pietschmann ‘commercial’, ‘imaginary’, ‘maritime’, ‘tropical’ etc. The chronology (middle and modern ages/ modern only), the geographic sphere (Mediterranean and/or Atlantic/Paciic), the conceptualization (political / structural / discursive / imaginary / ceremonial / institutional), the different national historiographic lenses, and the preferred use of sources (preferably metropolitan / metropolitan–peripheral / peripheral only) produced quite varied collective visions, often contradictory at irst glance and only later, in light of studies, showing themselves to be complementary; but in general these criteria do not amount to anything like a deinition (for example, Fernández 2009). And the problem is exempliied by authors as renowned as J. H. Elliott, who uses ‘empire’ as well as ‘Hispanic monarchy’ and ‘composite monarchy’, as well as titles regarding the ‘Hispanic world’ for his more general works, usually without clarifying why the concepts he uses vary so much (Elliott 2008, Elliott 2006, Elliott 1992, Elliott 1989). In regard to humanism, two recent books are worth noting that concern themselves with the history of the recovery of texts from Roman antiquity of the 15th century and later. Two of these texts, by Tacitus and Lucretius, were discovered by Italian humanists in German monastic libraries and quickly engendered intense debates that extended across many parts of Europe. While Lucretius’ De rerum natura disseminated Epicurian philosophy with its atomism and the absence of a God and was attacked by Christians in antiquity for undermining the philosophical and especially theological foundations of the Christian religion, the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Germania positioned him as the ‘inventor’ of the Germans, the indigenous people ‘since time immemorial’, unvanquished by the Romans, and gave reason to cast doubt on the common Roman tradition of Christianity, the native Germans were seen as ‘good barbarians’, calling into question the canon of the historic vision of the Bible and the New Testament. Thus did a segment of elite humanists undermine the authority of the two universal powers – the papacy and the holy empire – with a view to rebuilding their own, reduced by political realities since the 14th century, precisely by recurring to antiquity. And modern science and historic biblical revisions were the intellectual weapons in this process. Turning to the ‘imperial’ works and the closest schools of reference, these provided–on the basis of both empirical and methodological-conceptual knowledge–important contributions that could tentatively be summarised as follows: 1. The concept of empire is more generally accepted for Portugal because of the continuity of the European monarchy, from which the expansion arose, and because historic changes are generally limited to its overseas possessions, and even dynastic change over time and the attendant personal union with Spain did not substantially alter the coniguration of the Portuguese empire. In Spain, in contrast, after a medieval Leonese and Castillian imperial experience, the monarchies of Leon and Castile united their dynasties after having developed in very different ways and, above all, were both already pursuing expansionist aims when the matrimonial and then personal union was forged between Joanna of Castile (known as Joanna the Mad) and Charles V. First the eastern and then the western Mediterranean formed an ‘Aragonese empire’ and Castile vied with Portugal as early as the late 14th century in the Atlantic and African expansion. 2. On the other hand, the Castillian expansion under the Catholic Kings followed late medieval Iberian traditions. With Charles V, who ascended to the throne at the same time as the conquest of Mexico, ‘Spain’ – really ‘an uninished project’ – became part of an ‘empire’ of universal aspirations to prolong the Holy Roman Empire, secular and humanist-inspired with many Roman adaptations that left its structural, institutional and humanist mark on “New Spain”. At the same time, the conlicts with the Rome of the Curia continued, inherited partly from the Catholic Kings. Owing to the civil conlicts in Peru, only New Spain emerged organized according to the Roman model adopted by Charles V: The kingdoms lend themselves to comparison with Roman-like senatorial provinces, with cities, villas, and indigenous municipalities under separate military jurisdiction (in the hands of the Captain General) and the royal ambit under the purview of the Viceroy and the Audience (court of justice) and the ecclesiastic ambit in the hands of a bishop with a rank similar to the Viceroy. At the same time, the provinces were similar to the imperial provinces of a Roman-style military government, without cities or indigenous villages, and the governance of the Spanish cities was also in military hands, in both cases with a different governing regime for each of the ‘two republics’. The system, which limited itself to mining operations and extracting indigenous tribute and lacked a mercantile ideology, resembled the imperial Roman colonization more than the modern concept of a colonial empire (Cañal 2012, Neira 2012). And neither should Spain’s North African possessions be forgotten in this context—zones which Charles V even called on personally as the last Spanish king, and among which many—such as Orán, for example—were left under Spanish control until well into the 17th century (Bunes et alii 2011). Indeed, Orán was recently described as a ‘little court’, while current studies on the Viceroys avoid the ‘imperial’ concept and speak again of ‘monarchy’; the conceptual confusions appear to be increasing still. After Charles V, many aspects of the crown’s policy changed, and further study is required to determine precisely to what extent things changed in the hybrid Roman imperial model adopted by Carols, and moreover, to what extent they gave rise to different realities in both Europe and the Americas, making it crucial to re-study the signiicance Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 10 Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age • 5 for the ‘empire-monarchy-kingdoms’ problem. To avoid overextending the subject, the following are just some of the most relevant factors applicable to the case: 3. With Phillip II and the end of the Council of Trent, the model of Charles V did not continue in the Americas, though it did in Europe until 1588. Inside Spain there was a policy of forced assimilation of the Moors, descriptions of the monarchy, the codiication of laws and measures to protect the coasts. There were also measures from Flanders to promote the counter-reformation in the Holy Empire, the payment of pensions to Catholic princes in Germany, a growing dependency on Italian and German bankers (Fugger, repairing the mines of Almadén), and military protection for the ‘Spanish road’ between Italy and Flanders in the western sectors of the Holy Empire. These were all rather imperial tendencies, after all, although they must be distinguished from simple ‘hegemonic predominance’. In Toledo’s initial organization of Peru, Charles’ concessions to the indigenous peoples were omitted (they were not allowed to establish villages or cities, and the Inca capital of Cuzco appears to have been divided in half through the central plaza, with one part indigenous and the other Spanish). More generally, there was an observable reduction in the role of the mendicant orders that sought to limit them to a monastic life, a phenomenon that was more accentuated in New Spain, while in Peru a ban on idolatry was instituted. In both viceroyalties, military conquest was prohibited and the missionary expansion was placed in the hands of the Jesuits, a new religious order with clear imperial leanings that had been richly endowed in Spain by the daughter of Charles V. Also beginning at that time was the militarization of borders and ports through the construction of defensive fortiications, to repel foreign invaders, pirates and corsairs both on the Iberian Peninsula and in the Americas. At the same time, the expansion into Asia continued from Acapulco, the port exclusively licensed for such enterprises, and the Philippines were subjugated by the Viceroy of Mexico. Also at this time, greater autonomy was granted to the viceroys after the disaster of the Armada in 1588. In the Paciic and the Philippines, the Manila-Acapulco axis was connected to that of Veracruz-Havana-Seville, forming the fastest route between Asia and Europe until the opening of the Suez Canal. Furthermore, imperial control over the north of Mexico was consolidated by the settlement of Tlaxcalteca indigenous people sent to cultivate grapevines, among other things. 4. Under Phillip III, the Moors were expelled and peace had to be made with the Dutch and German Lutherans from the north to consolidate the power of the peninsular state, while in both viceroyalties the power of the elite was consolidated through measures to extend ‘imperial control’, especially of the re- sources of subjugated provinces. The notion of the ‘King of the Spains and Emperor of the Indies’ began to be disseminated, while in Europe the beginning of a deep crisis became apparent. These tendencies continued under Phillip IV, while in the time of Charles II changes began to be apparent. Notable above all is the enactment of the Compilation of the Laws of the Indies in 1680-1, giving the Spanish Indies its irst legal code, which increasingly took the place of the complex system of more limited royal norms, norms issued by American civil and ecclesiastical governors, and customs and practices legitimized by tradition and time alone, all of which had together helped to strengthen the authority of the viceroyalty capitals. Even with the mere mention of political events that either issue from or affect the political royal and viceroyal political centres of this empire (which displays different nuances over time), at each stage it is always necessary both to trace demographic movements and the transfer of personnel within this very dificult-to-deine collective, and to observe the effects/impacts that the developments mentioned had on peripheral and even border areas, whether in relation to un-integrated ethnic groups or vis-à-vis the growing interference of other European powers. PORTUGUESE HISTORIOGRAPHY FROM ‘DISCOVERY’ TO ‘EXPANSION’ AND ‘EMPIRE’ In Portugal, the expansion and occupation of territories in Africa, Asia and the Americas was and is generally understood to be a process of empire formation. This point of view, marked by the imperialism of the 19th century among others, and adopted and advanced in the 20th century by the Portuguese ‘Estado Novo’ (New State), was however always a controversial issue and often was eclipsed by other concepts and/or coexisted simultaneously with them. Once decolonization occurred and interest in historic investigations to evoke the greatness of the nation waned, Portuguese dominion of the high seas earned critical attention, interpreted in relation to the concept of ‘empire’. This rebirth of the concept of ‘empire’ as a category of investigation is valid especially for Brazil, whose economic and political prominence gave it a prominent role within the imperial structure. Given this role, it is necessary to clarify to what extent the above mentioned term ‘empire’ is applicable here, or to ask whether it should be changed or at least expanded—a hegemonic Portugal with a subordinated empire, with Lisbon at the centre, relegating its domain to a periphery distributed over four continents, appears to be an increasingly questionable scenario. On the other hand, a debate has recently emerged, also inluenced by the latest studies (Coates 2006), that questions the extent to which the political structure that kept Portugal and its overseas possessions united could be considered an empire, and what this term can contribute in this context. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 11 6 • Christian Hausser and Horst Pietschmann The term ‘empire’ has long been accepted in research into the Portuguese world, which also demonstrates how fuzzy the concept behind the term itself is. In the classic four-volume work by Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, L’économie de l’empire portugais aux XV et XVI siècle (The economy of the Portuguese Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries) (1981-1983), the term appears in the original French title but not in its Portuguese translation. Godinho’s work is thus situated historically between an older tradition marked by names, such as Jaime Cortesão, that labelled the Portuguese expansion overseas as ‘discovery’ and ‘expansion’, and more recent trends that at least insinuate a larger imperial political structure. The term ‘empire’ had already been adopted previously by researchers outside of Portugal. From early on, literature in English-speaking countries referred to Portugal’s overseas ‘empire’. Seminal scholars of Portugal such as Bailey W. Difie (1960) and George D. Winius (1977) had no qualms using the term. Their book also is the irst of a ten-volume series by Shafer (1974-1977) through which the concept of ‘empire’ began to come into general usage in the literature in English; indeed, almost all volumes in the series bear the term ‘empire’ in their titles. Charles Boxer himself, the most renowned member of the irst generation of English-speaking ‘imperial’ historiographers, has written seminal works on the topic. As the European colonial empires were crumbling in the 1960s and ‘70s, interest increased in studying their formation, and, just four years after a work on the Dutch empire was published in 1965, – even before publication of Parrys’ work on Spain that quickly became a classic – the several-times published and translated book, ‘The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415-1825’ appeared. Once the trail was blazed, another generation of authors emerged that included Anthony Disney (2009) and Malyn Newitt (2005 and 2009), who in their overall presentation of the recent era also afirmed Portuguese history as a process of empire building. This not only applies to works that are universal and therefore tend to prioritize historical-political aspects, but also to those with an expressly social and cultural historical orientation, and even works such as those by Russell-Wood (1998), which include infrastructural aspects. The imperial interpretation has been promoted at the same time in monographs, backed by a greater understanding of empire and the role corresponding in this context to proselytizing work aimed at transmitting the Christian faith and its economic facets (Alden 1996, Ames 2000). Authors in the Englishspeaking sphere, above all, haphazardly refer to a rather vague concept of ‘empire’ to refer to both the Portuguese’s initial presence in Asia and their decline overseas beginning in the 19th century (Clarence-Smith 1985, Wheeler 2009, Subrahmanyam 2012). As is the case with research that focuses on the Hispanic-American world, it has not been and is not easy to implant the term used to characterize the beginnings of empire formation in studies focusing on Portugal. The causes are essentially the same. Furthermore, in this case the Annales School exerts a great deal of inluence on research of the post-WWII Portuguese empire by contemplating, from a long term perspective, the structural continuities beyond the practiced political censure of the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Contrary to the 1957 doctoral thesis of Frédéric Mauro, the abovementioned work by Godinho, also presented at the Sorbonne as a doctoral thesis two years before Mauro’s (1957), already bore the word ‘empire’ in the title. These texts, however, did not manage to establish a Portuguese imperial tradition in historiography, but at least the term was introduced, and along with it the reality that, compared to its Spanish counterpart, the term could coexist more peacefully with other concepts, above all when interest went beyond the initial stage of Portuguese expansion. This fact is conirmed in the wide-ranging eight-volume work published by António Henrique de Oliveira Marques and Joel Serrão ‘Nova história da expansão portuguesa’ (New History of Portuguese Expansion) (1986–2006). Although here, too, exactly like Jaime Cortesão’s ‘História da expansão portuguesa’ (History of Portuguese Expansion) (1993), the leitmotif is the word ‘expansion’; the irst two volumes deal with the Portuguese expansion and the colonization of the Atlantic, while the subsequent volumes focus on Asia, Brazil and Africa, which are divided into regions via terms such as the ‘eastern empire’, ‘PortugueseBrazilian empire’ and ‘African empire’. More than anyone, Valentim Alexandre (1993) has driven the research in this direction and has studied, from a metropolitan perspective, the empire and the threat of its breakdown after the loss of its principal colony – Brazil. This tendency has been strengthened by Paquette (2013), who does not start with the formal rupture between the two parties but, on the contrary, emphasizes the longevity of the empire in the evolution of both. In general, in the most recent publications on the topic, the parallel use of the established term of expansion and the more modern term ‘empire’ has been maintained, one case in point being Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri’s work, ‘História da expansão portuguesa’ (History of Portuguese Expansion) (1998–2000). Unlike in the works of Marques and Serrão, here the authors describe the beginning of the overseas advancement as ‘A formação do imperio (1415–1570)’ (The formation of empire) and the volumes on Brazil and the 20th century also come under the imperial signiier (Bethencourt et alii 2008). By 2008 one could interpret Portuguese history by contrasting it with that of other empires, while just one year before the editor himself had published the latest version of his study on the topic under the title ‘Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400–1800’ (Bethencourt et alii 2007), to which one of the book’s editors added the ‘imperial’ attribute of his own volition to the title of an historical-cultural description (Curto 2009). It remains to be seen if these occurrences indicate a trend to give the term ‘empire’, previously loaded with the ideological rules of the ‘Estado Novo’, its own category Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 12 Empire. The concept and its problems in the historiography on the iberian empires in the Early Modern Age • 7 of investigation, substituting for older categories that are increasingly loaded themselves because of their unilateral European orientation. When all is said and done, whether this happens or not will depend not only on the degree to which an imperial concept such as this one can take hold as an analytical concept, contrasting it in a considered manner and differentiating it clearly from other concepts. In this same regard, there have been some recent attempts that seek to integrate, above all, the so-called second Portuguese-Brazilian empire and the Portuguese metropolis. From the outset, the main focus has been on the transfer of the economic centre of the Portuguese empire to the Atlantic in the 17th century. Special attention has also been paid to the administrative structures that regulated the existing relationship between the American and European territories, as well as the respective development of new policy areas (Fragoso et alii 2001, Bicalho et al 2005, Mello and Souza et al 2009, Schwartz et al 2009, Fragoso et al 2010). This occurred against the backdrop of the displacement of power relations that preigured the shift of the court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1807/08, after Napoleonic troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula (Lyra 1994, Schultz 2001). These developments – which are only summarized here but nonetheless continue to be vital and are reinforced in several works published in recent years – deserve to be credited (as in the Spanish case), if not with joining together European and American lines of investigation, as in the Brazilian case, then at least with bringing them closer. The focus on bringing closer together not only very distant areas but the very research of these areas using ‘empire’ as an investigative concept – which in the case of Brazil also includes several foreign researchers, mostly from the US – has helped the investigation not only to achieve important individual results in the ield of political history but also to broaden the historiographic scope of research beyond national borders. Nevertheless, this has not helped clarify the concept itself as an analytical research category to any large degree. Meanwhile, the latest works continue to be based above all on the most recent conjuncture of ‘empire’ and as such follow the same lines as the usual fuzzy concepts – a political structure of immense scale, often transcontinental, oriented politically, economically and also in part culturally toward a centre that itself radiates out towards the periphery. In other words, as long as commentators do not expressly identify ‘empire’ as a speciic concept within the notion of political orders of the Modern Age, opportunities for knowledge will continue to be missed. And in response to the increase in research on empire, Antonio Manuel Hespanha (2001 and 2010) has only recently inquired into the term’s effectiveness and limitations, questioning the political structure of the Portuguese empire against the backdrop of the state formation process in the Modern Age and advocating, with a view to the overseas territories, for their separation. Arguing for the need to recognize that it is not possible to adequately describe the overseas empire through the processes of centralizing bureaucratization or social discipline backed by the European model, he proposes that ‘empire’ in all forms could be recognized as a separate category of investigation. These problems of deinition relect to a certain extent the wide variety of expansion programs and enterprises that characterized precisely the early 15th and 16th century stage and the literature on the topic in question. With regard to Portugal, it is worth mentioning a recent collection on the linkages and relations between Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire, a connection that already existed early in the 15th century when a substantial number of Portuguese knights under the command of Infante Don Pedro, brother of Henry the Navigator, fought the Turks in the Balkans in the 1420s beside the Emperor Sigismund, while German musketeers fought on the Portuguese side in North Africa. From the dynastic union of Frederick III of Habsburg and Eleanor of Avis, sister of Alphonse VI, the future Emperor Maximilian I was born, just a few years before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans (Pohle 2000, Ramalheira 2002, Curvelo et al 2011). Along with the political aspects of the expansion went other motives. During the reign of John II (1481–1495) particularly, the conquest of the African coast was advanced signiicantly: In 1482 the Portuguese reached the mouth of the Congo River, in 1486 they reached what is today Namibia, and in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope to arrive at the Indian Ocean. At the same time, John continued his plan to cross Africa over land to ind the kingdom of the legendary Prester John and ight with him against the Muslims (Curto 2008). It is possible that both ‘reconquests’ – in the sense of the orbis christiani and the expansion of trade through the conquest of the transoceanic sphere – constituted an imperial project on John’s part (Thomaz 1994). For its part, Portugal’s decided advancement to the south reveals the driving force behind the empire – to reach India and in doing so enter the pepper and spice trade without the need for Arabic, Venetian, Turkish or Genovese intermediaries. We come up against a similar problem in the case of the so-called ‘State of India’. Once the Portuguese quickly got a irm foothold in Asia, these possessions were joined together under the title of the ‘State of India’ and ruled by a governor or viceroy. However, not even a construct such as this could hide the fact that the ‘State of India’ was a series of fortiied trading posts that extended from the southern East African coast to the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East and the Bay of Bengal, then to Malaysia, China and beyond Southeast Asia to the Paciic Ocean, and the vast majority of them owed their existence to the tolerance or even support of local authorities. In the legal debate around the principle of mare liberum put forward by Hugo Grotius in 1609, the Portuguese Crown responded by emphasizing, last but not least, the ‘empire’ that it was supporting in Asia (Saldanha 1997). But the relatively quick invasion of that space, irst by the Dutch and then by the British, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 13 8 • Christian Hausser and Horst Pietschmann demonstrates precisely that the right to a potential imperial domain of whatever kind, though perhaps desired, was not sustainable (Veen 2000). Although afterward the Portuguese never completely renounced their imperial rights, they remained far from being realized despite the union of the two Iberian crowns from 1580 to 1640 (Cardim 2010). Since the late Middle Ages when Portuguese expansion started in the Atlantic, Portuguese incorporated the overseas experience in their mental horizon, creating thereby in the following two centuries a lasting “consciousness of empire” (Marcocci 2012). Imperial thinking also boosted when the overseas trade shifted to the Atlantic, particularly Brazil. Brazil was also the setting, at the end of the colonial era, for a kind of renovatio imperii, before it, too, separated from Lisbon once and for all to form its own empire in the early 19th century. At a higher level of abstraction, despite studies such as those undertaken by Pagden, it can also be said that there are still many aspects of the debate that require clariication. Questions that could be asked include: What is the inluence of humanism and what contribution did it make to the erosion of the traditional parameters that postulated the unity of the western Christian world up to the beginning of the 15th century, with a pope and an emperor as the supreme ecclesiastical and secular authorities (Greenblatt 2011, Krebs 2011)? To what extent did the critique of the Roman curia’s immorality in the Renaissance and the Lutheran reform on the one hand, and the advance of the Ottomans and the impossibility of organizing a common resistance against them because of the successive urban uprisings of the late 15th and early 16th centuries on the other, enable the kings and princes to consolidate their power, weakening the popes and emperors of the Holy Empire? To what extent did the Atlantic expansion impact the encounter with other ‘barbarian men’ who it even less into the framework of knowledge that was just then being recovered from classical antiquity, and it in no way within the historic vision of the Bible, not to mention with the advancements in modern science driven by the process of expansion and its attendant empiricism? To what extend did Charles V’s concept of the ‘universal empire’, formulated by his chancellor Mercurino Gattinara, represent a continuity with this process of erosion, insisting, with the ‘universal’ denomination, upon something that had previously gone without saying? Or was it, on the contrary, a modern concept that, with the pillars of Hercules as an insignia and Plus ultra (further beyond) as a motto, attempted to encompass these new tendencies in a universalist vision that invited the ‘barbarians’ to join it (Lester 2009)? And somewhat later in Spain and France, tacitism became an important aspect of self-identiication, a reminder of the Visigoths and Franks that was employed to challenge the overweening inluence of the Holy See in internal ecclesiastical politics. In the case of Portugal, in particular, more discussion is needed on tacitism in light of Silvio Bedini’s work (1997). The process that caused ‘empire’ and ‘Rome’ to be converted into concepts that served an often antagonistic policy also needs more in-depth analysis, in light of the shift in perspective that came about in a world that was changing quickly as the news of the expansion spread through Europe (Pieper 2000). Was this a process that slowly transformed the classical Holy Roman Empire into a series of Atlantic empires (Benton 2010)? 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Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e002. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.002 16 3(1) June 2014, e003 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World1 Renate Pieper Chair in Economic and Social History, History Department, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Attemsgasse 8, A-8010 Graz Austria Submitted: 30 April 2014. Accepted: 28 May 2014 ABSTRACT: In 1507, the excitement over the publication of the Mundus Novus led to the naming of a new continent on the map, a globe and a learned treatise as an appendix to an edition of a work by Ptolemy published in Saint-Dié, Lorraine. Network analysis of the cities where the broadsheet Mundus Novus, attributed to Amerigo Vespucci, appeared shows that the text was mainly published in German mercantile cities, especially Augsburg and Nuremberg between 1504 and 1506. There is strong evidence that this text about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci was primarily issued to raise money in order to inance German mercantile investments in the Portuguese leet to Asia in 1505-1506. In 1507, the map and the globe with the new name for the New World demonstrated the riches that the members of the Diet of Konstanz might obtain if they supported Maximilian in his expedition to Italy and his quest for the imperial crown. Thus, the struggle between Maximilian I and Louis XII for the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the need for investment in German trade with Asia determined the invention of America. KEYWORDS: Maximilian I ; Louis XII; Holy Roman Emperor; Konstanz; Augsburg; Nuremberg Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Pieper, Renate (2014). “Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e003. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 RESUMEN: Entre la India y las Indias: redes mercantiles alemanas, la lucha por la corona imperial y el nombramiento del Nuevo Mundo.-El gran número de impresos sobre el “Mundus Novus” descubierto por Amerigo Vespucci incitaron el nombramiento del nuevo continente en un globo, un mapa y un tratado de geografía junto con una edición de la obra de Tolomeo impresos en Saint-Dié en 1507. El análisis de las redes de las ciudades en donde se publicó el “Mundus Novus” muestra que este texto fue impreso sobre todo en ciudades mercantiles alemanas, especialmente en Augsburgo y Nuremberg entre 1504 y 1506. Esta ola de publicidad se debió seguramente a las necesidades inancieras de las casas mercantiles de la región para poder participar en una lota portuguesa a la India en 1505-06. En 1507, el mapa y el globo que llevaban un nombre nuevo para un nuevo mundo mostraban las riquezas que los participantes de la dieta imperial de Konstanz pudieran ganar apoyando a Maximiliano de Austria en su expedición a Italia para recibir la corona imperial. La contienda entre Maximiliano I y Luis XII por obtener el título de Emperador así como las inversiones de las casas mercantiles alemanas en el comercio con Asia determinaron la invención de América. PALABRAS CLAVE: Maximiliano I; Luis XII; corona imperial; Konstanz; Augsburgo; Nuremberg Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. America was invented in Saint-Dié, Lorraine in 1507 (O’Gorman, 1995; Sanz, 1959) and immediately met with resounding success. In southern Germany, humanists copied and recopied the sketch of the new continent and its new designation. In contrast, the creator of the map of the new continent, cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, omitted the name America from the maps he printed from 1513 onwards. Nonetheless, America was already irmly attached to the New World in the German humanist consciousness.2 This story is very well known, 17 2 • Renate Pieper but certain matters are still the subject of debate: why German humanists were much more familiar with the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci than with those of Christopher Columbus; why they retained the new name even when its inventor had dropped it; and why it was humanists from southern Germany, and not Spanish, Portuguese or Italian scholars, who determined the name of the New World. In order to answer these questions, the transfer of information between the southern Atlantic and southern Germany which led to the dissemination of the deeds of Amerigo Vespucci will be analysed. A reconstruction of the networks of printed media will be crucial to our understanding of why Vespucci received such enormous attention in contrast to other contemporary explorers. In order to place the publicity gained by the voyage of Vespucci in a broader context, it will be compared with the distribution of news about similar events, i.e. the first voyage of Columbus, as its most important predecessor based on number of publications. Comparison of the distribution of information about the first voyages of Columbus and Vespucci thus forms the basis of the following analysis. The spread of these messages will be studied mainly for the German Empire and Southern Europe, the centres of the printing press in Europe. Although ultimately the naming of the New World was a long process, its initial years will be the focus of the present study. Historiography has followed the 1958 argument of Edmundo O’Gorman that America was invented and not really discovered (O’Gorman, 1996; Gil, 1989; Pietschmann, 2007: 367-389). The naming was the work of two German humanists from the University of Freiburg: Mathias Ringmann, a young scholar, and Martin Waldseemüller, an outstanding cartographer. In 1507, they published an edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography in Saint-Dié, Lorraine, a centre of learning recently created by Duke René II of Lorraine. Ringmann added an account of four voyages to Brazil attributed to Florentine humanist Amerigo Vespucci to Ptolemy’s work. Furthermore, Ringmann attached a geographical commentary in which he suggested calling the recently discovered landmass in the southwestern Atlantic after Vespucci’s irst name: America, an alliteration with Asia and Africa. The cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, designed a large world map and a small globe, both printed as woodcuts. On the map and globe, the territories in the southwestern Atlantic were named America. This published sample from 1507 – the world map, the globe, the account of the voyages and the humanist commentary – determined the name of the New World. Lehmann (2010) offers a new edition and translation of Ringmann’s text. And although this information is widely known, it remains unclear why Ringmann and Waldseemüller chose the accounts of Vespucci rather than those of Columbus. Historians have stressed that the images attributed to the New World had been deeply rooted in European culture since antiquity. The same monsters and giants that appeared in the grotesques of Renaissance gardens were used in descriptions of the Americas. In addition, these perceptions seemed to have been rather long-lasting and static (Elliot, 1970; Pagden, 1993; Siraisi, 1992). The same happened with the cartographic image by Martin Waldseemüller and especially the naming of the new continent. The reasons why changes occurred so slowly or not at all still remain obscure. Another point that has been brought to the attention of historiographical analysis was the importance of German publications concerning the Americas, which were rather numerous, especially during the first decades of the 16th century (Hirsch, 1976: 537-558). The same applied to the naming of the New World, which happened within the sphere of the German humanists, but it is rather unclear why the German scholars at Saint-Dié were so influential, as they had no direct relation to the Iberian Peninsula and even less to the southern Atlantic. Possible reasons why America was forever named after Vespucci at Saint-Dié in 1507 may be identiied by comparing the dissemination of news about the Columbus and Vespucci voyages. The networks of the different editions will be reconstructed and analysed in chronological order, with short references to the circulation of manuscripts and maps in each case. This comparison of the networks for printed broadsheets needs to be preceded by a few general considerations regarding the economic aspects of printing in the early modern period. The printing press has been regarded as an agent of considerable change in early modern times and especially as a means to further capitalism in the information business (Eisenstein, 1983). This historiographical concept of the 1970s and 1980s has been contested since the turn of the 21th century (Bethencourt and Egmond, 2007; Vivo, 2007; Infelise, 2002; Bouza, 2001). Recent studies stress the market orientation of manuscript production in numerous ofices, where scribes copied and recopied the latest news based on demand from subscribers and readers. In contrast, printers needed large preliminary investments in paper, manpower and machinery. These were not usually paid for by readers in advance, but by persons interested in disseminating information, or in some cases, like manuscripts, by subscribers. Thus, printed publications were to a great extent inanced by those concerned to exercise inluence in the public sphere. Because this was one objective of printing, it is crucial to determine the parties interested in inancing the broadsheets discussing the new continent and its naming. The first look at the new continent was offered by Christopher Columbus when he returned from his first voyage of exploration to the western Atlantic in February of 1493. Immediately upon arriving at Lisbon, he sent several letters to the Catholic Monarchs and his own financial backers in Barcelona. Columbus’s handwritten letters were copied and disseminated through manuscripts in Spain and Italy (Pieper, 2000). The hub of the network for the distribution of the handwritten letters was the Castilian-Aragonese court Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 18 Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World • 3 Martin Waldseemüller, Universalis Comographia, 1507. This is the irst map to include the name "America" and the irst to depict the Americas as separate from Asia. of the Catholic Monarchs. Based on the handwritten correspondence, the first printed Columbus letters and the various editions were published first in Spain and then in Italy, primarily in Rome (Alden and Landis, 1980, vol. 1). From Rome, Italian and Latin publications were mostly distributed through printing houses of German origin. In contrast to the network for the handwritten letters of Columbus, the network of printers was centred in Rome (Diagram 1). Nine editions and references were issued in Rome, and Rome was connected, except in one case, to all the cities where Columbus’s letters or references to his explorations were published in 1493. Next to Rome, the “Spanish” court was the most important place in the network, as the first two printings of Columbus’s letters were published in Barcelona. In Seville, as early as 1493, a large law book was issued which included a short reference to Columbus’s findings. The French participated in the publishing business as well. In Paris, one single printing house issued three editions of the Columbus letters in 1493. Reprints or translations, in some cases even with illustrations, appeared in Antwerp, Leipzig, Basel, Pavia and Florence. Thus, in contrast to the general belief in the prevalence of German printing centres, this was not the case for publication of Columbus’s letters and references to him. In 1493, most, i.e. eleven, editions of the letters or references to his endeavours in the southwestern Atlantic were published in Italy, three on the Iberian Peninsula, three in France and only two in Germanspeaking regions and one in Flanders. The structure of the network implies that the publications were intended to serve as propaganda for the Catholic Monarchs. At least one of the publications from Barcelona was ordered, published and paid for by the Castilian-Aragonese crown (Rumeu de Armas, 1989). In the case of the Roman publications, speciic data are lacking, but many of the titles suggest that the propaganda in Rome would have supported the position of the Catholic Monarchs in the Roman and Vatican public spheres. At the same time, the Castilian-Aragonese monarchs obtained several papal bulls from Aragonese pope Alexander VI to be used to reverse the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) with Portugal. According to this older treaty, the Castilians were required to avoid exploration south of Cape Bojador, near the Canary Islands. After the return of Columbus, the Treaty of Alcáçovas had to be replaced if the Castilian-Aragonese monarchs wanted to authorize further expeditions in the southwestern Atlantic. The use of these publications as propaganda proved to be effective, as the Spanish Monarchs obtained favourable papal bulls and were able to sign a new treaty with Portugal after just one year of negotiations, in 1494. The new Treaty of Tordesillas allowed the Castilians to explore territories in the western Atlantic even if they were located in the south. After 1493, publications which discussed the account of Columbus’s travels at length ceased on the Iberian Peninsula. Up to 1496, only three editions with an increasing number of engravings were issued by printing houses in northwestern Europe. Thus the irst publications on the Columbian voyages must be attributed mainly to the political interests of the Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 19 4 • Renate Pieper Diagram 1. Network of cities where references of the irst Columbian expedition were published in 1493 Source: John Alden and Dennis C. Landis (editors), European Americana. A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1600, vol. 1, New York, 1980. Database available online: European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1600, EBSCOhost. Numbers in brackets refer to the number of editions. Castilian-Aragonese Catholic Monarchs. The dissemination of information about the irst Columbian expedition by means of the printing press sharply contrasts with the current historiographical hypothesis: In the case of Columbus’s irst voyage, there was no naming according to humanist concepts of classical antiquity, rather the Columbian labelling responded to contemporary geopolitical interests. The publications from Germanspeaking areas were vastly outnumbered by those from Italy. Columbus’s irst published letters were not destined to have a long-lasting effect, but they were an effective use of fresh information in the ongoing political and commercial struggle between Castile and Aragon on the one hand and Portugal on the other. Columbus’s efforts to reach Asia seemed to have been successful in 1493. But between 1494 and 1500, after two subsequent Columbian voyages, quite a number of other explorers and the irst expedition of Vasco da Gama to India (1497–1499), the Mediterranean powers realized that a new landmass, an island or continent, had been found in the southern Atlantic. Since reaching the Orinoco in 1498, Columbus himself believed that the northern territories in the western Atlantic were connected to Asia in the northwest, whereas the landmass he had seen in the southwestern Atlantic was described by him as another world, different from the ones known to Europeans since antiquity (Rumeu de Armas, 1989; Varela, 1984: 282; Gil, 1982: 487-502). In 1500, shortly after the return of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, humanist Peter Martir de Anghiera wrote to Rome from the “Spanish” court regarding “De orbem … novo” and stated that the Castilians sailing west found naked inhabitants, whereas the Portuguese had followed the route of their spice trade to the south (Lunardi, Magioncalda and Mazzacane, 1988: 92-95). In 1500-1501, the Portuguese dispatched their own transatlantic expeditions: to the south under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral and to the north under Miguel and Gaspar Corte Real. After the return of these voyages of exploration, the opinion circulated in Lisbon that the territories found in the northwestern and southwestern Atlantic were probably linked to each other but were certainly different from Asia (Berchet, 1892-1893, vol. 1: 87). Therefore, Columbus set out on his last expedition in 1502 in order to ind the strait in central America which was believed to separate the southern island or continent from the northern one, and would open up a passage to India. The Columbian conception of geography in 1500–1502 was painted by Juan de la Cosa as a parchment mappa mundi.3 But La Cosa, a pilot on the irst Columbian exploration, did not offer any indication as to whether there was a strait or an isthmus separating or uniting the southern and northern parts of the newly found landmasses. Instead, La Cosa painted the igure of Saint Christopher in its place. Thus, the crucial question remained open for Portugal and Castile. Due to the uncertain situation in the western Atlantic, the African territories became essential for access to India in the commercial and political struggle between Portugal and Castile. Therefore, La Cosa depicted the western coast of African recently explored by the Portuguese as the most valuable territories in the southern Atlantic and a sort of grey landmass blocked the direct route to India in the west. Between 1502 and 1504, at the same time as Columbus’s fourth voyage, various manuscript maps designed irst in Lisbon and later copied in Genoa circulated across Europe. They reached Flanders, southern Germany, Austria and France. In Antwerp, Matthäus Lang, archbishop of Salzburg and secretary to Emperor Maximilian I, ordered a copy of one such Portuguese map. Another map reached Augsburg. The Welser family, a former German merchant house, still holds a fragment of a mappa mundi on parchment which shows the European image of East Asia between 1502 and 1504. The most famous of the Portuguese mappae mundi is the one bought by merchant Alberto Cantino in Lisbon for Duke Hercules of Ferrara in 1502.4 The centre of Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 20 Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World • 5 this large and richly illustrated map on parchment shows Africa and its wealth. The two major cities depicted are Venice and Jerusalem. Portuguese explorations along the Brazilian coast are highlighted as well. Thus, on this manuscript map designed in Lisbon, the Portuguese promoted their own achievements in the southern Atlantic. Unlike the manuscript map made by La Cosa, Cantino’s map on parchment, along with the other known maps of Portuguese-Genoese origin, showed a strait between the northern and southern lands in the western Atlantic. Thus, they disseminated the geographical conception of Columbus from 1498 that there was an island or continent in the western part of the Southern Hemisphere that was distinct from the northern territories explored in the western Atlantic, and thus the southern island was certainly distinct from Asia. Only the results of the fourth Columbian voyage could prove which idea was valid: an isthmus or a strait between the south and the north. The connection between the newly found lands and Asia in the northwest would remain an enigma for centuries (Milanesi, 1992: 19–50). One year later, in 1503, the European balance of power would change. Castile and Aragon had dynastic problems. The heiress of Castile, Joanna, was married to the duke of Burgundy and heir to the Holy Roman Emperor (Aram, 2005). Thus a foreign king would inherit Castile in the near future. In the irst half of 1503, Aragon was not very successful in its struggles with France in Italy. Milan, Florence and a larger part of Naples were under French control (Tewes, 2011: 517602). And in 1503, Aragonese pope Alexander VI, who had issued the bulls in 1493, died. After the short interregnum of Pius III, Julius II, a sworn enemy of Alexander VI, was elected in the same year. And even worse for Castile and Aragon, Portugal had regained its power under its new king Manuel I and was equipping its ifth leet to India. Under these circumstances, in 1503, a Latin broadsheet was published in Paris describing a minor Portuguese voyage of exploration to the Brazilian coast. The small fleet had returned to Lisbon in 1502. The supposed author of the travel account, written in the form of a letter, was a member of the crew, Florentine merchant and mariner Amerigo Vespucci. At that time, Vespucci lived alternatively in Lisbon and Seville. The addressee of the published letter was the recently deceased, renowned member of the Florentine Republic, Pier Francesco de Medici, who had initially been supported by France. The Parisian broadsheet attributed the description of a voyage to the southwestern Atlantic where a new world – “Mundus Novus” – had been found to Amerigo Vespucci.5 This term referred to a report by Columbus, who in 1498, on his arrival at the Orinoco, had used the designation “another world” – “Otro Mundo” – in southwestern Atlantic. The broadsheet attributed to Vespucci published five years later in Paris stressed the anthropophagy and the nakedness of the inhabitants of these new territories. The description of male and female personal adornments is very extensive and the women are reported to be especially lascivious. Descriptions of the constellations of stars south of the equator are sprinkled throughout the text. Nonetheless, the geographical references in the broadsheet are so vague that even today the regions explored by this expedition remain unclear. What is most astonishing, the broadsheet does not mention the leader of the fleet. Even the descriptions of the fauna are somewhat hazy. The various colours of the parrots were described with an erroneous allusion to Polycleitus, who is considered the master of antique sculpture and not painting. In sharp contrast to the earlier Columbian letters, the subjects mentioned in the Mundus Novus broadsheet were not really new. Anthropophagy and lasciviousness were classic European clichés. Nakedness and large personal adornments in the ears, lips and nose with precious stones and bones were also known from Africa. Finally, the constellations of stars in the Southern Hemisphere had already been familiar to Europeans for half a century (Vogel, 1992: 53-104). Nor did the Vespucci letter stress the Portuguese endeavours or the accomplishments of the leader of the expedition. Rather, it described the adventures of an Italian member of the crew. In contrast to other travel accounts, which described their points of arrival as precisely as possible in order to secure new territories, the broadsheet attributed to Amerigo Vespucci offered only uncertain geographical data. In 1503, the broadsheet was not issued in Portugal, the leet’s point of arrival, or in Florence, even though the deceased addressee of the printed letter had lived in that city. Instead, the irst edition of the Mundus Novus was printed in Paris one year after the return of the expedition. This bizarre situation notwithstanding, the broadsheet attributed to Amerigo Vespucci had resounding repercussions: It was reprinted time and again, especially in Upper German merchant towns, irst in Augsburg and later in Nuremberg and many other cities. In Basel and Strasbourg, illustrations were added, and recopied in Augsburg and Nuremberg. The success of the broadsheet was astonishing, in so far as it was reprinted only twice in Italy, in Venice and Rome, and was not printed at all on the Iberian Peninsula. The dissemination of manuscript information on the Vespucci expedition is less well documented. The only references to the voyage are the letters attributed to Vespucci. The authenticity of surviving manuscript copies is still a matter of debate and there are serious doubts about the authorship of the printed versions (Delgado Gómez, 1993: 3–20). Nonetheless, some letters must have circulated between Lisbon, Florence and Paris mentioning the name Vespucci as a participant in a Portuguese expedition to the southern Atlantic. This information must have been used as source material for the 1503 compilation of the Paris broadsheet. Due to this uncertain situation, the parties interested in printing the broadsheets concerning the Portuguese expedition with an unknown leader described by a Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 21 6 • Renate Pieper Florentine crew member are unknown, but publication details for the Mundus Novus offer some hints. French interests in the Atlantic must have been responsible for the irst edition in Paris. In 1503, French troops were in Italy and on their way to Naples. Florence once again came under French inluence. This may have extended the distribution of the written account describing the Portuguese expedition to the southern Atlantic, which circulated between Florence and Paris. In addition, the French crown tried to join the group of Atlantic explorers. Also in 1503, French nobleman Paulmier de Gounville set sail from Honleur and probably reached Brazil. He returned in 1505, without any inancial proits but accompanied by the son of an Indian chief (PerroneMoisés, 1996: 84-93). In contrast to Columbus’s irst letter, which was republished 17 times in the irst year of its appearance, no second edition of the Mundus Novus is known from 1503. However, between 1504 and 1506, the enormous igure of 28 editions of the Mundus Novus were published in Europe. These even outnumbered the success of the irst Columbus letter, which had been issued 22 times between 1493 and 1496. Whereas almost all editions of Columbus’s letter appeared in 1493 and publication declined considerably over the following three years, quite the opposite happened with the irst Vespucci letter. Only 1 edition was published in 1503 and 4 editions were issued in 1504, but most appeared later: 14 editions in 1505 and 10 in 1506. Thereafter, publication of the irst Vespucci letter virtually ceased for a while. Publication of the Columbus and Vespucci letters differed not only in timing, but also in geographic distribution (Diagram 2). The centre of the network of publications was Augsburg, where the most (ive) editions of the Mundus Novus appeared. The Augsburg editions were connected to ive other places which issued Vespucci’s letter. Paris held a similar position to Augsburg. The printings started in Paris and therefore there were connections to six different places that reprinted the Vespucci story. Strasbourg, Basel and Nuremberg followed Paris and Augsburg in importance with regard to the dissemination of the Mundus Novus. The Strasbourg and Basel publications relied directly on the irst Paris edition, whereas in Nuremberg, printers used publications from either Basel or Rome. Other editions were issued in Cologne and Antwerp, as well as central Germany, i.e. in Leipzig, Magdeburg, Rostock and Munich. Only two editions appeared in Italy, in Venice and Rome. In 1505, readers in Pilsen received a copy of Vespucci as well. In assessing the geographic distribution of the Mundus Novus, it is striking that there were no publications on the Iberian Peninsula and only two editions in Italy, none in Florence. Most of the printings occurred in German-speaking areas. Thus, the irst Vespucci letter is like a model for a scientiic view of early publications on the Americas: most broadsheets were issued in German-speaking areas, the publications used classic images like anthropophagy and the origins of the Vespucci letter are unclear. Following the words of O’Gorman: an invention, a work of iction. The reason for these extraordinary differences between the Columbus and Vespucci letters might be approached by further analysing the timeline and relating it to the geography of the Mundus Novus publications. The vast majority of the 23 editions appeared in commercial cities, with the only copies published in political centres being from Paris, Rome and Munich. Therefore, in contrast to the irst Columbus letter, the publishers of the irst Vespucci letter must have had a strong mercantile background, as well as political interests. In 1504, two publications appeared in Augsburg. The next year, 1505, the sites of publication were Augsburg (3), Nuremberg (2) and Strasbourg (2). In the latter two cities, additional editions were put out in 1506, with two and one issues, respectively. Moreover, in that same year, printers from Leipzig, who had reprinted an edition of the Mundus Novus from Strasbourg in 1505, published two more editions based on the same publication. Finally, with three re-editions of the original issue, publication returned to Paris in 1506. Thus most editions appeared in the commercial centres of Augsburg, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Strasbourg between 1504 and 1506, and in the political centre of Paris in 1506. From a geographical perspective, the printings between 1504 and 1506 were clearly an issue of the commercial centres of the Rhine Valley, from Basel and Strasbourg to Cologne, and the mercantile and manufacturing centres of Upper Germany, Augsburg and Nuremberg, as well as Leipzig. All of them had connections to the port of Antwerp. 19 editions of the Mundus Novus appeared in these locations, with a peak of 11 publications in 1505. In 1505, one Strasbourg edition of the Mundus Novus was published by young humanist Matthias Ringmann. This edition of the irst Vespucci letter was given the title “De Ora Antarctica per Regem Portugallie Pridem Inventa”,6 a poem by Ringmann used as a preface to the Vespucci text. At the end of the Vespucci account, Ringmann added conirmation by the Papal notary, who testiied to the presence of a Portuguese embassy to Pope Julius II. This certainly referred to a 1505 embassy, in which the ongoing Portuguese voyages to Africa and India were recommended to papal tutelage. The event of the Portuguese embassy was published in a Roman publication from 1505 with the title “Obedientia Potentissimi Emanuelis Lusitaniae Reis …. Ad Julium”.7 Thus, in 1505, in his Basel edition of the Mundus Novus, Matthias Ringmann closely associated the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci with Portuguese expeditions to Africa and India. The keen interest in publishing the Vespucci letter, an almost ictional report of a Portuguese voyage to the southwestern Atlantic, might be connected to the increasing commercial importance of the southern Atlantic region after 1503. In that same year, the Catholic Monarchs set up the Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville in order to supervise Caribbean affairs and subsequent explorations. Also in 1503, the Por- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 22 Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World • 7 Diagram 2. Network of cities where the Mundus Novus was published, 1503-1506 Source: John Alden and Dennis C. Landis (editors), European Americana. A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1600, vol. 1, New York, 1980. Database available online: European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1600, EBSCOhost. Numbers in brackets refer to the number of editions. tuguese sent a second expedition to Brazil under the command of Gonçalo Coelho and accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci. Frenchmen Gouneville departed for Brazil as well. But most importantly, in 1503, work began in Lisbon on organizing the Seventh Portuguese India Armada. A very large leet of 22 ships would sail under the command of Francisco de Almeida, the irst Portuguese viceroy to Goa. For the irst time, leading houses of business from southern Germany, which had formed a consortium, succeeded in participating in a Portuguese leet to India with considerable investment (Häbler, 1903: 17–23; Erhard & Ramminger, 1998: 57–63, 99–110). In 1503, the renowned Wesler merchant family sent Lucas Rem to act as the common agent for the consortium in Lisbon. At the same time, the Welsers obtained a Genoese copy of the large Portuguese world map mentioned earlier. On the 1st of August 1504, the Portuguese crown inally agreed that the German consortium could equip three ships in the leet. One of the agents for the German merchant houses was Balthasar Springer, who accompanied the “German” cargo to India. Springer originally came from Tyrol, where the Welsers and the Fuggers were involved in silver mining, and silver was one of India’s most important exports. In the spring of 1505, the leet led by Almeida set sail for Africa and India. From January 1506 on, several ships, including the German-owned ships, returned from India with Asian merchandise, especially pepper and spices traded for the German investments. The irst German ships arrived at Lisbon in May 1506, and Springer returned to Lisbon with considerable proits in November 1506. The following year, 1507, the lood of Mundus Novus editions ceased. Analysis of the chronology and geographical distribution of the Mundus Novus letter has shown that these publications were issued mainly in commercial and industrial cities in Upper Germany, the Rhine Valley and Antwerp between 1504 and 1506. Therefore, it might be safely assumed that these propagandistic endeavours were related to the huge investments by the Upper German merchant houses in the seventh Portuguese leet to India. These wholesale traders and inanciers needed to raise funds for their ventures in Asia. When their ships came back with considerable proits, the loans raised for their investments could be paid back and no further printing and fundraising were necessary. The contents of the Novus Mundus letter were suficiently vague, and so could refer equally to America or Africa and could easily be associated by its readers with the leet of Francisco de Almeida. Illustrations and the references to anthropophagy and extreme sexual behaviour secured attention for the broadsheet. Furthermore, the mentions of precious stones, bright bones, which might be an allusion to ivory, and parrots referred to riches that might be expected from investment in this trade. Thus the resounding popularity of the irst Vespucci letter regarding the new island in the southwestern Atlantic should be attributed mainly to the commercial interests of German merchants in the Portuguese-Asian spice trade. But there might have been a second group interested in inancing editions of the Vespucci letter. None of the three Paris editions which appeared at the end of the lood of publications can be attributed to commercial interests, but must be explained by political reasons and the growing antagonism between the Habsburg and Valois dynasties. On one side, Maximilian I of Habsburg Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 23 8 • Renate Pieper was the son of a Portuguese princess, husband of the deceased duchess of Burgundy and father of the heir to those territories. Maximilian had married his two children to Castilian princes. On the other side, the house of Valois sought to improve its own situation in the Atlantic and to seek a Portuguese alliance. Both Habsburg and Valois tried to strengthen their claims to Burgundian territories adjacent to the Rhine Valley. An ambivalent position in the middle of this struggle was held by the Duke of Lorraine, René II, who tried to defend the rest of his inheritance. When in September 1506, Maximilian I’s son Philip the Handsome died in Castile, he left his wife Joanna the Mad and two young sons, Charles and Ferdinand, in Flanders under the custody of their aunt Margaret. Perhaps this uncertain political situation in Castile, Burgundy and the German territories created favourable conditions for three reprints of the irst Vespucci letter in Paris. These editions could be used to once more underline the French connection to Portugal and its transatlantic endeavours, and thus strengthen the position of Louis XII in Italy and his claim to the imperial title. Louis XII’s rival, Maximilian of Habsburg, tried to obtain a formal coronation in Rome in order to secure his title as Holy Roman Emperor against France, following the death of his son in September 1506 (Buck, 2008: 35-57). In order to inance his planned expedition to Rome, Maximilian called the German estates to a diet on the 27th of October 1506. The estates assembled in Konstanz from the 30th of April to the 26th of July 1507. England, Castile and Aragon, Portugal, Sicily, Hungary and Russia sent special embassies. Before opening the diet, Maximilian had issued broadsheets explaining the international political situation and the need to prevent French King Louis XII from obtaining the imperial title in Rome. In addition, a letter from Pope Julius II was read aloud to the estates during the meeting. In this letter, Julius II requested Maximilian’s help against Louis XII. Furthermore, a solemn funeral mass was held for the deceased Philip the Handsome at the Cathedral of Konstanz in June 1507. Despite his propagandistic efforts, Maximilian obtained only scant inancial promises from the estates, and only a small part of the inancial support actually reached the Habsburg treasury. Nonetheless, Maximilian entered northern Italy in the winter of 1507/08 (Wieslecker, 1986: 171-175).8 As the route to Rome was blocked by Venice, Maximilian made his formal entrance at Trento in a triumphal parade and proclaimed himself the chosen Holy Roman Emperor in February 1508. This title was later conirmed by Pope Julius II. During the winter of 1506/07, when preparations were being made for the Diet of Konstanz, two humanists, Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller, travelled from Freiburg to Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, a city in the territories of Duke René II of Lorraine, which were part of the German Empire. Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, from the University of Freiburg, was a former student of Georg Reisch, the confessor of Max- imilian I. The young poet and Latinist Matthias Ringmann, who had already published a Vespucci letter, was also a former student of Reisch. In Saint-Dié, Jean Basin de Sandaucourt (Digot, 1856: 134-135), a member of the chapel of Saint-Dié, made a Latin translation of “… delle isole nuevamente trovate”, which had been issued at the height of the lood of Mundus Novus publications in Florence in 1505.9 In contrast to the Mundus Novus, this new text described four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. The broadsheet maintained that the Florentine merchant-mariner had participated in two expeditions under the lag of Castile and had taken part in two voyages aboard Portuguese ships. Furthermore, the Florentine publication claimed that Vespucci had made his irst voyage to the new continent in 1497, i.e. even before Columbus reached South America on his third voyage in 1498. In 1506-07, in Saint-Dié, the humanists from Freiburg, Waldseemüller and Ringmann, published Ptolomy’s Cosmography and the Latin translation of the text about the four voyages attributed to Vespucci. Ringmann added a text explaining that a new continent had been found which should be named after Amerigo Vespucci. Waldseemüller attached a large printed world map and a small globe, both with the name America used to designate the new island or continent, and drew a strait between the northern and the southern landmasses in the western Atlantic. Whereas the shape of the Atlantic coasts of Africa and the new island or continent in the southwestern Atlantic reproduced the information provided by Portuguese-Genoese world maps that had been circulating in 1502–1504, the outline of India and Indonesia reproduced outdated knowledge that had been made current before the irst voyage of Vasco da Gama. On the 25th of April 1507, this humanist enterprise was published in quarto in two editions at Saint-Dié.10 The printer, Walter Ludd, was the nephew of John Ludd, secretary to René II. This edition of the Cosmography of Ptolemy was dedicated to “Divo Maximiliano Caesari semper Augusto” and the following travel account attributed to Vespucci was dedicated to René II. Thus, on the 27th of April, just before Maximilian formally entered Konstanz to open the diet on the 30th of April, in SaintDié, at a distance of approximately 200 km, a very impressive humanist book showing a new continent in the text, on a map and on a globe was issued, and part of these new territories were claimed for Maximilian’s heir. In the book’s dedication, Maximilian was addressed as Emperor, just as he was asking the German estates to inance his coronation in Italy. Obviously, Maximilian not only issued the broadsheet mentioned previously, which explained the political situation and called for money to inance his expedition to Rome, but made an additional propagandistic effort. The geographic and cartographic publications on “America” would impress the assembled estates and ambassadors with Maximilian’s connections to the New World so that the assembly would support him rather than the French king in his quest for the imperial crown. This situation resembled Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 24 Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World • 9 the dispute between Charles V and Francis I twelve years later. In spite of the fantastic descriptions in the Quatuor Navigationes and the outdated representation of India and East India, the map and globe were an especially big success. German humanists copied and recopied Waldseemüller’s geographical sketch and immediately sent it to their colleagues. This new promotion was furthered by three additional editions of the Ringmann and Waldseemüller work, which were published on the 29th of August 1507, on the eve of Maximilian’s expedition to northern Italy. But in the following years, publication ceased. Waldseemüller left Saint-Dié and returned to Freiburg. On his future maps, he omitted the new name of the new continent. Ringmann published only one further work in Saint-Dié, namely a book for Latin teachers in 1509, and left afterwards for a job as a schoolteacher in Alsace, where he died in 1511. Duke René had already died in an accident in December 1508. Even though Waldseemüller, one of the inventors of America, very soon dropped the name, especially as new maps from the New World that linked the northern and southern parts of the continent had become available, America survived on many printed maps and in the late 16th century, became predominant on geographical charts issued in Northern Europe. To offer a hypothesis in the debate about the naming of the New World, it may be suggested that from 1506 onwards, German humanists were much more familiar with the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci than with those of Christopher Columbus. This was due to the enormous propaganda efforts of merchant houses from Upper Germany that needed to finance their participation in the fleet of the first Portuguese viceroy to India, As a result, more than twenty editions of the Mundus Novus were issued in just three years. Like his patronage of the arts and printing (Silver, 2008), the hype about Amerigo Vespucci was also used by Maximilian I in order to further his own quest for the imperial crown and title, in opposition to Louis XII of France. Therefore, Maximilian I not only financed a broadsheet explicitly explaining his financial needs to the Diet of Konstanz, but he also must have ordered the propaganda regarding the possible gains to be expected when he was crowned emperor. To this end, Waldseemüller and Ringmann, former students of his personal confessor Reisch at Freiburg, invented a new continent on a map, a globe and explained them in a geographical treatise published at the beginning of the Diet of Konstanz. From 1507 onwards, the familiarity with the name Amerigo Vespucci and the deep impression made by the globe and world map, furthered by Emperor Maximilian I, must have been the reason why German humanist circles stuck with the new name even when its inventor had dropped it. The extensive impact of Waldseemüller’s and Ringmann’s naming must to a large extent be attributed to early propaganda for the “Mundus Novus”, i.e. to German mercantile interests in Asia. This could also be used by Maximilian I to strengthen his political position and obtain the imperial crown. Thus, the struggle for the Holy Roman Empire and the need for investment in European trade with Asia determined the invention of America. NOTES 1. For intensive discussions of this paper and for supplying me with very important information concerning European politics around 1500 I would like to thank Horst Pietschmann. 2. For the cartographical aspects see Gall, 2006; Wolff, München 1992: 111-126; a summary in English of current research: Johnson, 2006: 3-43. 3. For the cartography between 1500 and 1504 see: Martín-Merás, 1993. 4. Raccolta di documenti e studi, part III, vol. 1, p. 153: letter of Alberto Cantino to Hercules I of Ferrara, Rome, 19th of November of 1502. 5. Vespucci. Petri Francisci de Medicis Salutem plurimam, Paris: F.Baligaut & J.Lambert, 1503. [11]p. quarto; John Carter Brown Library: CB (3) I:40; Database: European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, EBSCOhost (accessed March 6, 2014). 6. This edition of the Vespucci letter is preserved at the John Carter Brown Library: H 505 V581 ds (F). 7. John Carter Brown Library: C505 P116a. 8. I would like to thank Ingeborg Wieslecker-Friedhuber for her advice. 9. See the cartographic study of Lehmann, Cosmographiae introductio. th 10. Two editions were published on 25 of April and three editions th on 28 of August in 1507. Both in quarto, 167 pages and illustrations by the same printer G. Ludd at Saint-Dié: Waldseemuller. Cosmographiae introductio . . . Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucij navigationes. Universales cosmographiae descriptio . . . eis etiam insertis quae Ptholomaeo ignota a nuperis reperta sunt, European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, EBSCOhost (accessed March 21, 2014). For the text see the digitalization of the Library of Congress: http://archive.org/ stream/cosmographiaeint00walduoft/cosmographiaeint00walduoft _djvu.txt (accessed March 21, 2014) REFERENCES Alden, John; Landis, Dennis C. (editors), (1980) European Americana. A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1600, vol. 1. 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Hirsch, Rudolf (1976) “Printed Reports on the Early Discoveries and their Reception”. In First Images of America. The Impact of the New World on the Old, edited by Chiapelli, Fredi; Allen, Michael J.B. and Benson, Robert L., vol. 2., University of California Press, Berkeley: 537-558. Infelise, Mario (2002) Prima dei giornali, Alle origini della pubblica informazione (secoli XVI e XVII). Laterza, Roma-Bari. Johnson, Christine R. (2006) “Renaissance German Cosmographers and the Naming of America”. Past and Present, 191: 3-43. Lehmann, Martin (2010) Die Cosmographiae Introductio Matthias Ringmanns und die Weltkarte Martin Waldseemüllers aus dem Jahr 1507. Ein Meilenstein frühneuzeitlicher Kartographie. Martin Meidenbauer, München. Lunardi, Ernest; Magioncalda, Elisa and Mazzacane, Rosanna (1988) La scoperta del nuovo mondo negli scritti di Pietro Martire d’Anghiara. Istituto poligraico e zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, Roma: 92-95. Milanesi, Marica (1992) “Arsarot o Anian? Identità e separazione tra Asia e Nuovo Mondo nella cartograia del Cinquecento (1500-1700)”. In Il Nuovo Mondo nella coscienza italiana e tedesca del Cinquecento, edited by Prosperi, Adriano and Reinhard, Wolfgang, Il Mulino, Bologna: 19-50. O’Gorman, Edmundo (1958) La invención de América: investigación acerca de la estructura histórica del nuevo mundo y del sentido de su devenir. UNAM, México. Pagden, Anthony (1993) European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. Yale University Press, New Haven. Perrone-Moisés, Leyla (1996) “O Brasil “descoberto” pelos Franceses”. Revista Universidade São Paulo, 30 (Junio-Agosto): 84-93. Pieper, Renate (2000) Die Vermittlung einer neuen Welt. Amerika im Kommunikationsnetz des habsburgischen Imperiums (1493-1598). Von Zabern, Mainz. Pietschmann, Horst (2007) “Bemerkungen zur ‘Jubiläumshistoriographie’ am Beispiel ‘500 Jahre Martin Waldseemüller und der Name ‘Amerika’’”. Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 44: 367-389. Rumeu de Armas, Antonio (1989) Libro copiador de Cristóbal Colón. Correspondencia inédita con los Reyes Católicos sobre los viajes a América. Estudio histórico-crítico y edición. 2 vols., Testimonio, Madrid. Sanz, Carlos (1959) El nombre América. Libros y mapas que lo impusieron. Descripción y crítica histórica. Libreria General Victoriano Suárez, Madrid. Silver, Larry (2008) Marketing Maximilian. The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor. Princeton University Press, PrincetonLondon. Tewes, Götz-Rüdiger (2011) Kampf um Florenz. Die Medici im Exil. Böhlau, Köln. Vespucci (1503) “Petri Francisci de Medicis Salutem plurimam. F.Baligaut & J.Lambert, Paris. [11] p. quarto; John Carter Brown Library: CB (3) I:40”. European Americana: A Chronological Guide To Works Printed In Europe Relating To The Americas, 1493-1600, European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, EBSCOhost, viewed March 6, 2014. For the text see the digitalization of the University of Freiburg: Vespucci (1505) De ora antarctiqua per regem portugalliae pridem inventa. Strassburg: M.Hupfuff, [11] p.; illustration; quarto. Vogel, Klaus (1992) “Amerigo Vespucci und die Humanisten in Wien”. Pirckheimer Jahrbuch 7: 53-104. Waldseemüller (1507) “Cosmographiae introductio . . . Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucij navigationes. Universales cosmographiae descriptio . . . eis etiam insertis quae Ptholomaeo ignota a nuperis reperta sunt. G.Lud, St. Die 25 Apr. 1507. [167] p.; diagr.; quarto; Harrisse (BAV) Add.” European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750, EBSCOhost (viewed March 21, 2014). For the text see the digitalization of the Library of Congress: http://archive.org/stream/cosmographiaeint00walduoft/ cosmographiaeint00walduoft_djvu.txt, viewed March 21, 2014. Wieslecker, Hermann (1986) Kaiser Maximilian I.: das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit, vol. 5: Der Kaiser und seine Umwelt: Hof, Staat, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Kultur. Oldenbourg München. Wolff, Hans (1992) “Martin Waldseemüller. Bedeutendster Kosmograph in einer Epochen forschenden Umbruchs”. In America. Das frühe Bild der Neuen Welt. Ausstellung der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, edited by Hans Wolff. Prestl, München: 111-126. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003 26 3(1) June 2014, e004 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola Department of Modern History, Facultad de Humanidades, C/ Senda del Rey, 7, Madrid, 28040, UNED e-mail: cmshaw@geo.uned.e, malfonso@geo.uned.e Submitted: 10 April 2014. Accepted: 15 May 2014 ABSTRACT: The irst globalization is a concept which should be interpreted as the period during which a system of exchanges of every kind (human, economic, cultural) was established between the different continents, unknown to th each other until the last decade of the 15 century. After being conquered by Spain in 1565, the Philippine Islands represented a vital crossroads in this process. Firstly, the islands acted as a major distributor of Mexican silver in the Paciic sphere. Secondly, they were Spain’s launching pad for access to neighbouring kingdoms (China, Japan, the countries of Southeast Asia, the Spice Islands), with which it was connected by means of trade, missionary activities, diplomacy and sometimes war. News, learning and exotic products were taken from the islands to Mexico and other parts of Spanish America. Lastly, the Philippine Islands were connected directly to the mother country following the opening of the Cape of Good Hope route by various ships, dispatched irst by the Navy, then by private trading companies and lastly, by the Royal Company of the Philippines. The Seville (or Cádiz)-Veracruz-Mexico City-AcapulcoManila axis, with movement in both directions, served as a permanent route for the exchange of precious metals and exotic products. th th KEYWORDS: Spain; America; Asia; 16 -18 Centuries; Silver; Trade Relations; Cultural Exchange Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Martínez Shaw, Carlos and Alfonso Mola, Marina (2014). “The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e004. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 RESUMEN: Las Islas Filipinas: un cruce vital en la era de la primera globalización.- La primera globalización es una noción que debe interpretarse como el periodo en que se establece un sistema de intercambios de toda índole (humanos, económicos, culturales) entre los distintos continentes que hasta la última década del siglo XV se desconocían mutuamente. Las Islas Filipinas, tras su conquista por España en 1565, constituyeron una encrucijada vital para este proceso. Primero, las islas jugaron el papel de gran distribuidor de la plata mexicana en el espacio del Pacíico. Segundo, fueron la plataforma española para alcanzar los reinos vecinos (China, Japón, los países del Sudeste de Asia, las Islas de las Especias), con los que se relacionaron a través del comercio, la acción misional, la diplomacia y, a veces, la guerra, y desde donde se transirieron noticias, conocimientos y productos exóticos a México y otras áreas de la América hispana. Finalmente, las Islas Filipinas se comunicaron directamente con la metrópoli tras la apertura de la ruta del Cabo de Buena Esperanza y a través del envío de diversos buques de la Armada primero, de algunas sociedades mercantiles privadas después y de la Real Compañía de Filipinas inalmente. Así, el eje Sevilla (o Cádiz)-VeracruzMéxico-Acapulco-Manila, vigente en ambas direcciones, sirvió como vía permanente para los intercambios de metales preciosos y productos exóticos, así como para las transferencias culturales de toda índole, entre España, América y Asia, a lo largo de los tiempos modernos. PALABRAS CLAVE: España; América; Asia; siglos XVI-XVIII; Plata; Relaciones comerciales; intercambios culturales Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. 27 2 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola The first globalization is a concept which should be interpreted as the period during which a system of exchanges of every kind (human, economic, cultural) was established between the different continents, which until the last decade of the 15th century had been unknown to each other. The key dates in this historical context span 30 years: the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1492), Vasco de Gama’s arrival in India (1498), the discovery of the South Sea by Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1513) and the circumnavigation of the world by the fleet which set off under the command of Ferdinand Magellan and completed its voyage under Juan Sebastián Elcano (1522). The first of these events made it possible to forge a connection between Europe and an unknown continent, which the Europeans explored and colonized over the course of the 16th century and beyond. The second marked the arrival point for a lengthy exploration, first of the western coast of Africa and then its eastern coast, before finally landing in India. This opened up the possibility of continuing the voyage until they reached the lands of the Asian Far East: Malaysia, China and Japan. The third event presented the possibility of crossing America and from its western coast, embarking on journeys of exploration both northward and southward. It also offered the option of venturing across a vast ocean, a voyage that would reveal the existence of a far-flung world of islands and would also ultimately lead to the Asian Far East from theoppositeside.Thevoyagearoundtheworldestablished interconnections among all of the previous pieces: it led to the Americas via the Atlantic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Magellan, to East and South Asia, across the Indian Ocean to Africa and back around Africa, returning to Europe, the starting point. And so the most immediate consequences of the explorations undertaken during this thirty-year period would be the creation of a network of intercontinental exchanges, the discovery of the existence of many worlds, the paradoxical emergence of a single world for the first time and the possibility, also for the first time, of conceiving of a universal history. The Portuguese route placed Lisbon at the European end of an axis of communications which ran along the African coast, reached India and continued on to its Asian terminus, deined by the Chinese coasts and the arc of islands extending from Japan to Indonesia, with the Philippine Islands at the centre. The Spanish route positioned Seville (and later Cádiz) at the European end of another axis which linked Spain with both Veracruz and the Atlantic ports of Panama. From there, it continued across the American continent either via the Isthmus of Panama to the port of El Callao in Peru, or along the old route of the viceroys to Mexico City and then along the “Asia Route” to the port of Acapulco. From there it crossed the Paciic Ocean, the “Spanish Lake”, to the Philippine Islands, where it converged with the Portuguese route. Thus, in geographic terms, the Philippine Islands became the terminus of the two major routes of the irst globalization period, with one other distinctive feature: after 1565, the Hispanic monarchy held sovereignty over the archipelago. THE SPANISH IN THE PHILIPPINES Beginning in 1503, the route which linked the terminus at Seville with the American ports on the Atlantic was supervised by the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación). This institution would run the system of trade known as the Indies Route (Carrera de Indias) for three centuries. The system encompassed a network of several American ports. The most important were Veracruz, which supplied the Viceroyalty of Mexico, or New Spain; those that supplied the Viceroyalty of Peru: Nombre de Dios (later replaced by Portobelo) and Cartagena de Indias on the Atlantic, as well as Panama and El Callao on the Paciic, which were reached via the isthmus; and lastly Havana, on the island of Cuba, where the two leets – one to New Spain and one to Tierra Firme and Peru – converged en route back to Seville (and from 1717, to Cádiz) (García-Baquero González, 1992). Until well into the 16th century, goods shipped from Seville reached Mexico City (where the Merchant Guild (Consulado) founded in the city organized their redistribution to every corner of the viceroyalty) and Lima (with that city’s Merchant Guild redistributing the goods to the entire viceroyalty). However, the 1513 discovery of the South Sea marked the beginning of a series of explorations of the Paciic Ocean, in pursuit of various aims. The irst of these was access to the Moluccas, the legendary Spice Islands, which would soon become the private preserve of Portuguese trade after Spain relinquished any possible claim to the islands (Treaty of Zaragoza, 1529). The second was a permanent presence on the Philippine Islands, which time and again had been situated on the route of expeditions to the Moluccas and which could serve as a solid base between the Americas and Asia. This was achieved in 1565. The third and inal aim (of less interest to us here), was the attempt to discover the mythical Terra Australis, the southern land which the imagined models of ancient geography believed must balance out the continental mass of the Northern Hemisphere (Martínez Shaw, 1998, 2001; Landín Carrasco, 1991; Spate, 2006). Having reached the Philippine Islands in February 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi took possession of the successive islands in the archipelago he visited: Ibabao, Samar, Leyte, Limasawa, Camiguin, Bohol, Mindanao, Siquijor, Negros and, inally, Cebu, where he founded the irst Spanish settlement, Villa de San Miguel. From there, he continued on to the island of Panay, where he received the assistance sent to him by Martín Enríquez de Almansa, the viceroy of New Spain: three ships with a military detachment under the command of Juan de Isla. They also carried the eagerly awaited royal deeds for the expedition leader, granting him the title of adelantado to conquer and govern the “Islands of the Thieves” (the Mariana Islands), with the power to found cities and distribute sections of land known as encomiendas. It was now time to occupy the islands of Panay, Masbate and Mindoro (where he rescued the Chinese Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 28 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 3 slaves with the intention of establishing friendly relations, an action which produced positive results). From there, he went on to the island of Luzon, which from that time forward would constitute the centre of Spanish control over the archipelago (Cabrero, 2004: 229-462). Once in Luzon, following the exploratory mission led by Martín de Goiti, Legazpi spend two days in Cavite before preparing to disembark in the village called Maynila. Taking advantage of dissension among the three Muslim rulers (Sulayman, Matanda and Lakandula), he obtained concessions for land in the area of the Pasig River, around a magniicent natural port. He oficially founded the city of Manila there on July 24th, 1571, enacting the by-laws of its council and making it the capital of the Philippines. He then immediately undertook the conquest of the rest of the island. This conquest was extended to other island groups by his successors to the governorship. The only areas that would remain outside their jurisdiction were part of the territory of Mindanao and the most distant archipelago, Jolo or Sulu, which would continue to be an independent territory in the hands of various Muslim sovereigns (Alonso Álvarez, 2004). The death of Legazpi (in August 1572) did not halt the process of regulating the institutions of the Philippine Islands, which were raised to the rank of captaincy general, with a sovereign government and their own audiencia (royal court). As stated in the deed, the final jurisdiction encompassed “the island of Luzon, all of the other Philippine Islands, the China archipelago and the mainland, that which has been discovered and is yet to be discovered”. However, in reality, the Spanish held actual control first over the island of Luzon and the Visayas island group (Panay, Cebu, Leyte, Samar). Other islands were progressively added, along with part of the island of Mindanao, up to the enclave of Zamboanga. This is where the socalled Moorish frontier began, the territory controlled by the Muslim sultans and datos, both on the island itself and in the Sulu Archipelago. Lastly, the Mariana Islands fell under the domain of the Philippines, although for a long period of time, Spanish sovereignty was nominal, despite the island of Guam serving as port of call for the Manila Galleon (Phelan, 1967; Cushner, 1971; Cabrero, 2000). MEXICAN SILVER IN THE FAR EAST Thus, the Philippine capital of Manila became on one hand, the setting-off point for making a number of contacts with neighbouring countries. These would be alternatively commercial, missionary, diplomatic and military, and would increase signiicantly following the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns in 1580 (Valladares, 2002; Martínez Shaw & Martínez Torres, 2014). On the other hand, Manila was also the terminus of the great trans-Paciic trade route known as the Manila Galleon or “Nao de China”. This route linked the Philippine Islands and the Viceroyalty of New Spain for more than two centuries, from the inal third of the 16th century to the second decade of the 19th century (Schurz, 1992; Yuste López, 1984; Alfonso Mola & Martínez Shaw, 2003). While the route’s two termini were Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico, the trade route had to extend further east and west at either end. In the direction of the Asian continent, the Philippine port beneitted from a pre-existing low of trade which connected the archipelago with its neighbouring territories. Conversely, its connection with the American continent made it possible for the irst time to incorporate this regional trafic into the wider scope of international maritime trade, within a new planet-wide system. In the opposite direction, part of the merchandise brought to the Mexican coast was distributed within the Viceroyalty of New Spain or sent on to other parts of Spanish America. However, another part travelled the route to Veracruz on the Atlantic coast to be shipped to the mother country via the Indies Route, whose ports in Seville, and later Cádiz, received products from the Far East via this single route (Bernal, 2004). Trafic between the Philippines and Mexico began in 1565 with the sailing of the galleon San Pedro, captained by Felipe de Salcedo, with Augustinian friar Andrés de Urdaneta as its chief pilot and a crew of two hundred men. It made port in Acapulco, which from then on would serve as the American end of the Manila Galleon route. However, during the inal years of the 16th century, there was an alternative route, with ships sailing from the Philippine capital to the Peruvian port of El Callao, the Nicaraguan port of Realejo and the port at Huatulco on the Mexican coast, just as Peruvian ships travelled to Acapulco to stock up on the most sought-after Chinese products (Cárdenas de la Peña, 1965; Truchuelo García, 2009: 479-561). However, the Spanish crown soon began to combat Peruvian trade connections with the Far East, in response to complaints from Spanish and Mexican “leet members”. As a result, in 1591, trafic between Guatemala, Tierra Firme and Peru was banned, as well as trafic from any port apart from Acapulco “with China and the Philippines” (Schurz , 1992: 312-313; Borah, 1954; Iwasaki Cauti, 1992: 21-54). In any event, as was typical, this trafic came to be regulated beginning in 1593, the year in which a timetable of two annual sailings was established (which merchant interests would soon reduce to a single sailing). Merchandise valued at 300,000 pesos was loaded in Manila, with double that amount in pesos fuertes being loaded in Acapulco. These amounts would be increased over the years by successive decrees, oficially updating the size of the transactions. The galleon departed from Cavite – Manila’s neighbouring port at the mouth of the Pasig – in the month of July, in order to take advantage of the summer monsoon. When it reached the latitude of Japan, it followed the Kuroshio Current to the California coast, landing at Acapulco in December (normally between Christmas and New Year), when it was unloaded. The annual fair was then held – with large Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 29 4 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola Abraham Ortelius, Maris Paciici, 1589. This map was published in the "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. It was not only the irst printed map of the Paciic, but it also showed the Americas for the irst time. numbers of merchants from Mexico City, as well as Puebla, Oaxaca and neighbouring towns – under the supervision of the mayor and the castellan of Fort San Diego, built in 1617. In the month of March, or April at the latest, the galleon departed from Acapulco and after stopping at the Mariana Islands, it reached Manila in July, in time to see its successor on the route set off (Alonso Álvarez, 2009; 2013; Yuste, 2013). Trade in Manila was primarily controlled by Chinese merchants (commonly known as Sangleyes), whose junks brought foodstuffs to the Philippine capital (wheat and barley, sugar and fresh and dried fruit, especially grapes and oranges), but especially manufactured goods from throughout the Eastern world. Deals were made in an open market known as the Parián de los Sangleyes, where Spanish merchants who were permanent residents of the Philippines came to negotiate prices and quotas for goods to be sent to Acapulco. This was conducted by means of a complicated oficially regulated system known as the pancada. Over time, trading escaped the control of the pancada, just as Chinese merchants had to withstand competition from English, Moorish, Armenian and Spanish merchants interested in this trade. In any case, just as in Seville with the ships of the Indies Route, the Galleon was a monopoly of individuals and the ship (or tonnage) had to be divided exclusively amongst Spaniards resident in Manila. They either travelled with the goods they had purchased or entrusted stewards with their care and sale once the ship had reached New Spain.1 Trade was essentially based on remittances of silver from Acapulco to Manila, which were exchanged for a number of Asian products, many of them brought over on Chinese sampans. Over the course of the 18th century, these were joined by the ships of European countries that had established themselves in the region. While Spanish silver from Acapulco was primarily sent on to the coasts of China, the holds of the galleons that departed from Manila were illed with Chinese products (mostly silk and porcelain goods). However, they also carried Japanese lacquered goods, furniture and ivory from Portuguese India, cotton textiles from Bengal and spices (pepper and cloves from the Moluccas, cinnamon from Ceylon), as well as certain typical Philippine products, which always accounted for a small percentage of the hold’s contents. In the other direction, the cargo of silver (96–99% of the total) was illed out with certain other products such as cochineal from Oaxaca, soap Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 30 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 5 from Puebla and indigo from Guatemala, as well as oficial shipments, which included Royal Treasury stamped paper and accounts (naipes de cuentas), along with items destined for the Royal Warehouses, for the use of authorities and the missions. The latter included anything from paintings and religious images to wine to be consecrated (Yuste, 1984; 2007). American silver was therefore the foundation or cornerstone of the Manila Galleon. In Manila, Spanish currency (especially the peso fuerte, the eight-real peso, also commonly known as the piece of eight) was used above all to pay for Asian goods shipped on to Mexico. As a result, a large portion of the pieces of eight ended up in the hands of the Sangleyes, the Chinese merchants who operated out of the Parián de Manila, who in turn acted as intermediaries for the many Chinese junks that travelled to the Philippines. There was another route which brought American silver into the hands of other intermediaries, Portuguese merchants in Macau. When they could not get it directly from Portugal (through trade with Seville or smuggling via Brazil), they obtained it through trade with the Spanish Philippines, which may have been legal or illegal, but was always active. In both cases, the metal might then travel on to other destinations, particularly to India, the countries of Southeast Asia or the Spice Islands.2 China attracted Spanish American silver for various reasons related to its economic and inancial policy. First of all, during the second half of the 15th century, there was a gradual trend in the Middle Kingdom towards using silver for commercial exchanges. Secondly, this stimulus from the private sector soon carried over to the public sector. As a result, the decentralized treasury of the Ming Dynasty also began demanding silver as payment for taxes. Thus, the Chinese Empire became a vast territory subject to a single-metal standard, silver, over the following centuries. However, as China did not have its own silver deposits, its need for the metal had to be met by other countries, particularly by Japan, East Asia’s main producer. In fact, the country was a regular source of supply for the Mings before and after Spanish American silver reached the Far East (Kobata, 1965; Kamiki and Yamamura, 1983; Flynn, 1991). In addition, because it offered European traders the opportunity to proit from the high value of the American metal, the hunger for silver in China helped reinforce this trend, which was also aided by the negative balance of trade between Europe and China. Indeed, the European merchants who operated in the region essentially sought silk goods, as well as porcelain and other high quality, high cost objects, but were hardly able to ship goods from their countries of origin that would arouse the interest of the court or individuals in the Middle Kingdom. In this case, it was European (and Spanish American) eagerness to obtain Chinese luxury goods that acted as the impetus for sending pieces of eight to the silver “pit” of the Far East (Atwell, 1988; Myers and Wang, 2002). Godinho (1963-1965, t. 1: 465) describes Philippine as “bomba de absorción de plata”. In fact, American silver was necessary for all transactions in the Asian world. As a result, beginning in the mid-16th century, its inluence gradually spread to the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire and the various states of India. Thus, merchants from the different European companies in the East Indies found themselves with the need to acquire this silver, either in Europe or by offering their commercial services. To this end, the practice of engaging in multiple exchanges in various local markets in Asia developed, according to the formula known as country trade (Reid, 1993: 25-32; Quiason, 1966). To use a phrase that has become famous, on its voyage from Acapulco to Manila, the Galleon essentially transported “friars and silver”. The friars came to evangelize the archipelago and the silver came in the form of luxury items (both religious and domestic), but especially in the form of coins to pay for Chinese goods. As a result, Spanish pesos circulated widely in the Celestial Empire, to such an extent that present-day historian Dennis Flynn has even stated – undoubtedly with some degree of exaggeration – that the decisions of the Spanish sovereigns depended to a great extent on the situation in Ming China. In any event, what is certain is that Spain had a negative balance of trade with the Philippines, which had to be compensated for with silver, especially Mexican silver. This was a precious metal for China, which needed it for both transactions in the private sector and for public treasury operations, but did not have its own deposits. Consequently, as we have already mentioned, it had to turn to Japanese mines or Spanish American remittances from Manila (Flynn and Giráldez, 1996). Asian products also reached the mother country via Mexico. Indeed, Spain received the same silk pieces, lacquer work and ceramics, some expressly commissioned, such as “Indies Company” china for the use of oficials, aristocrats and even the royal house (as evidenced by the splendid china with the coat of arms of Philip V). It also received scientiic materials such as books, maps and views of those distant lands, including the 1555 map of China held in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville. And then there were the oriental inspired Mexican products, such as Japanese folding screens manufactured in New Spain, pieces with motherof-pearl inlay, maque lacquer work from Michoacán and ceramics from Puebla with oriental motifs (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2003). In conclusion, the essential fact is that the trade which took place via Manila, between Spain on the one hand and China and other Asian countries on the other, was based on exporting silver from Spanish American mines. Spanish eight-real pesos (the so-called pieces of eight, also known in the region as Spanish pesos, pesos fuertes, silver pesos and “pillar pesos” because of the pillars on the reverse), as well as the pesos coined in Mexico after independence (known as eagle pesos and soon as Mexican dollars), functioned as oficial legal tender. This was indicated by stamping them with Chinese characters known as “chop” marks, which can Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 31 6 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola be seen on the many pieces preserved in various museums and private collections both inside and outside Spain. Thus, Spanish (Mexican and Peruvian) silver was one of the major catalysts of the irst globalization. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AS A LAUNCHING PAD TO EAST ASIA As we have already indicated, for Spain, Manila was not just the terminus of the trade route from Acapulco, it was also a launching pad located between the west coast of the Americas and the east coast of Asia, a springboard to stimulate contacts with neighbouring Asian states and conversely, to begin the colonization of Micronesia. With regard to the latter, the Mariana Islands joined the empire as a result of a mission led by the Jesuits (1668), while the Caroline Islands came into the Spanish orbit following the arrival of Francisco Lezcano from Palau (1686) and also later when the Jesuits settled there (1710). These initiatives laid the foundations for the creation of Spanish Micronesia. These domains were halfway between Mexico and the Philippines, at a point along the extremely long route from Seville to Manila (Galván Guijo, 1998; Hidalgo Nuchera, 1983; Morales and Le Gobien, 2013). Manila also had to extend itself further in the opposite direction, towards China, Japan and the independent state of Ryukyu (also known as Lewchew), Siam, Cambodia, the various kingdoms of Vietnam, Formosa, Malaysia, Indonesia (especially the Moluccas) and, very tangentially, Korea, Laos and Burma. Contacts took the form of trade, evangelization, diplomacy and war. They began with an early expansion phase initiated by Spanish settlement and ended with withdrawal from the most forward positions occupied at the time of the union with Portugal. They also continued during the 18th century after Spain recovered its imperial initiative. Thus, during the early modern period, there was an entire network of exchanges and information in operation, with its epicentre at the city of Manila: “mistress of many seas, capital of many archipelagos and hub and storehouse of the Orient” (Torre Villar, 1980; “El Elogio de Manila, en Zaragoza”, 1990: 24). Manila’s westward expansion began with instructions given in 1572 by Martín Enríquez de Almansa, viceroy of New Spain, to captain Juan de Isla. After he entered Manila with his leet of three ships, he was to embark on one of them with a contingent of men recruited by Miguel López de Legazpi to undertake the exploration of China’s coasts. However, the operation was never carried out. It continued with the plan – not only for exploration, but now openly for conquest – laid out by the new governor, Guido de Lavezares (1572-1575), in a letter sent to Philip II in 1574. Signiicantly, it included the above-mentioned 1555 map preserved in the General Archive of the Indies. Lastly, in that same decade, this desire for conquest would be adopted in a determined fashion by the following governor of the Philippines, Francisco de Sande (1575-1580). He found support for his plans in the irst Spanish embassy to the Middle Kingdom, carried out in 1575 by the Augustinian Martín de Rada. His information would be used as documentation in successive letters sent to Spain in 1576 by the archipelago’s top authority, containing such bold proposals as the following: “Regarding China, the job is simple and will not cost much, as Spaniards selected to serve will come at their own expense without payment, and they will pay for freightage and be fortunate.” With a leet capable of carrying between four and six thousand men, “the entire conquest” would be a done thing. However, the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) showed itself to be much more prudent than the imaginative governor. In 1577, it ordered the suspension of all military intentions and that it should be attempted to have “a good friendship with the Chinese”. This did not prevent the idea of conquest from entering the minds of certain other igures, including governor Diego Ronquillo (1580-1583) and Father Alonso Sánchez. Even at the late date of 1584, it was still possible to discuss such an ambitious plan as that proposed by the Bishop of Malacca, Joâo Ribeio Gaio. He devised a proposal for a joint Portuguese-Spanish expedition to conquer the Sultanate of Aceh (on the island of Sumatra), the city of Patani, the kingdom of Siam and the city of Canton in China from bases in Goa and Manila (González Mendoza, 1990; Ollé, 2000a, 2002). Apart from these military plans, evangelization was another of the paths pursued as a way to approach China. However, in this case, the Christianizing aims of the Spanish missionaries came up against the rivalry with Portugal. This led Philip II to ban such initiatives in 1589 in order to avoid a conlict in the heart of his own empire in the Far East. Nonetheless, experts have pointed to the numerous successions of attempts (before and after the ban) as the fruit of a true “obsession with evangelizing China”, the same obsession that had led St Francis Xavier to his death off the Guangdong coast, on Shangchuan Island, in 1552. In 1570, the Augustinians who had arrived with Legazpi sent Philip II a letter requesting that they be included in a future embassy charged with establishing trade relations with the Chinese Empire. A short time later, in 1572 (the year in which the Augustinians had called the area of their mission in the Far East the “province of China”, rather than the Philippines, which would have been the logical name), another two Augustinian friars devised a strategy to gain access to the Celestial Empire by means of the roundabout process of selling themselves to Chinese merchants as slaves. The plan was overridden by Legazpi. Next came the mission of Martín de Rada (accompanied by three other Spaniards), although he was forced to return to Manila without achieving his aim of bringing the Christian faith to that land. He would however leave an account of the undertaking that would become part of the work written by fellow Augustinian Juan González de Mendoza, his famous Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reino de la China (History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 32 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 7 of China and the Situation Thereof), published in Rome in 1585. The Augustinians again landed in China in 1586, in the city of Canton, where they remained until 1594, when they became convinced of the impossibility of gaining access to the inland Celestial Empire. In 1587, it was the turn of the Dominicans. They founded a monastery in Macau before being expelled by order of the Portuguese viceroy and sent to Goa, where they were repatriated to Spain. The Augustinians made other attempts, with some successes, unfortunately always leeting. These included their 1590 settlement on the Fujian coast (from where they were forced to return to Manila, accused of espionage), Macau in 1609, Canton in 1619 and Formosa in 1626. It was not until well into the 17th century that the Spanish friars saw their dream realized, with oficial authorization to establish missions being granted to the Franciscans in 1632, the Dominicans in 1633, the Manila Jesuits in 1665 and the Augustinians (the irst to make the attempt and the last to succeed) in 1680. However, the true protagonists of the evangelization of China were always the Jesuits from Goa, who, beginning in 1582, would set up their many missions along the route from Macau to Peking (Martínez Shaw and Alfonso Mola, 2007). The Spanish presence in territories situated around the Philippines intensiied beginning in the 1580s as a result of the union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal. Between 1580 and 1640, this made closer collaboration possible between the two empires in the Far East. And so Spanish Franciscan Martín Ignacio de Loyola was able to circle the world between 1581 and 1584, stopping almost exclusively in Spanish and Portuguese territories: Seville, the Canary Islands, Veracruz, Mexico City, Acapulco, the Mariana Islands, Manila, Macau, Malacca, Ceylon, Kochi, Goa, the Maldives, Madagascar, Santa Elena and the Azores, before ending his journey in Lisbon. In contrast, Portuguese Pedro Teixeira would travel in the opposite direction. He was able to complete his journey around the world via the Spanish-Portuguese empire, departing from Lisbon and following the route to Goa, Kochi, Malacca, Manila, Acapulco, Mexico City, Veracruz, Havana, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and Seville, before reaching Lisbon in 1601 (Loyola, 1989; Teixeira, 1994: 355-472). One area where the union of the crowns was soon forced to test its effectiveness was in military defence, as beginning in the early 17th century, it was necessary to deal with the aggressive presence of Dutch ships. In fact, signiicantly, the Dutch made their irst attack the year after founding their East India Company in 1602, on Goa, capital of Portuguese India. This was two years before Admiral Cornelis Maatalief would occupy the entire Moluccas archipelago, expelling the Portuguese from the islands of Ambon, Ternate and Tidore. An offensive on such a scale mobilized the Spanish in the Philippines. Their governor, Pedro Bravo de Acuña (1602-1606), headed up an expedition which set off from the port at Oton (on the island of Panay) on January 23rd, 1606. A force numbering three thousand men dis- embarked on Ternate, obtaining a decisive victory over the sultan, retaking the island and imposing compliance with Spanish sovereignty on the Sultan of Tidore. These events marked the beginning of a policy of systematic occupation, maintaining a resident governor on Ternate and constructing a network of fortiications to prevent a Dutch counteroffensive. This action was celebrated by the pen of Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola in his famous work Conquista de las Islas Malucas (The Discovery and Conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands), written at the behest of the Count of Lemos – at the time chairman of the Council of the Indies – and published in Madrid in 1609 (Argensola, 1992; Israel, 1982; Centenero de Arce and Terrasa Lozano, 2009). However, Spanish actions during the period of the union of the crowns were not limited to defending the Paciic holdings of Spain and Portugal against the threat of the Dutch East India Company. This period also saw the irst trade and diplomatic contacts established by the Spanish with the Kingdom of Siam. The irst embassy to the Siamese kingdom was the result of the personal initiative of governor Santiago de Vera (1584-1590). After notifying Philip II that he had sent missions of peace to the “kings of the region of Borneo, Mindanao, Siam”, he stated with regard to the last of these states: “I have had a report that the king wished to send ships to these islands and on them have talks and our friendship. Let a ship be sent with some gift and present, offering him what has been offered to others on behalf of HM and let us try to open up the route.” We do not know if this proposal to establish a new trade route was successful, although we do have reports of ships arriving in Manila from that kingdom in subsequent years. In 1598, governor Francisco Tello de Guzmán (1596-1602) sent another embassy led by his nephew, Juan Tello de Aguirre. He obtained a trade agreement with King Naresuan of Ayutthaya which, according to the letter sent to Philip II by the governor, left the “port open for Spaniards to go and freely settle there, tax-free”. However, the sudden arrival of the Dutch in the area prevented the treaty from being realized and began a period of conlict which reduced trafic between Siam and the Philippines to a very limited low. According to Antonio de Morga, at the beginning of the century, it was reduced to “a little benzoin, pepper, ivory, some cotton blankets, rubies, poorly cut set sapphires and a few slaves, rhinoceros horns, and the skins, nails and molars of that animal”, products which were always exchanged for American silver (Rodao, 1997). While Spain always attempted to conduct its relations with Siam along friendly lines, mainly by signing trade agreements, the Spanish presence in the Kingdom of Cambodia was dominated by war. In fact, relations were initiated by a call for help against Siam’s policy of aggression, sent by King Paramaja II in 1593. According to Antonio de Morga, the request sent to the governor of the Philippines, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas (1590-1593), offered him “friendship and trade in his land [...] asking for assistance against Siam, which was threatening him”. The Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 33 8 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola governor decided not to intervene in an enterprise which he deemed risky. This would later be considered a lost opportunity, as the procurator general of the Philippines, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel, would point out in 1621. He believed that the expedition to Cambodia would have given Philip II not only the friendship of that kingdom, but also the crown of Siam: “If it had been done, it would have been a stroke of luck and Your Majesty would be king of Siam, which is very rich” (Morga, 1997). Lacking Philippine support, the ive Portuguese and Spanish soldiers who took part in the action could not prevent the destruction of Lovek, the Cambodian capital, and the kingdom from becoming subject to Siamese interference from that point forward, although they all survived and managed to return to Manila. After that, the successive governors of the Philippines opted to support the Cambodian sovereigns in their efforts to shake off the Thai yoke. They declared themselves in favour of direct intervention, which took the form of a series of military expeditions. The irst, in 1596, was led by Juan Juárez Gallinato. It concluded without achieving its aims with an extraordinary withdrawal to the lands of present-day Vietnam (Champa and Tonkin). The second expedition was dispatched in 1598 under the command of Luis Pérez Dasmariñas, son of the former governor. Despite his extensive experience in military conlicts in the area, he was also unable to obtain any positive results, even after a number of particularly bloody episodes. The third and last, less noteworthy and unsuccessful, was launched under the leadership of Juan Díaz in 1603 (Boxer, 1969; Rodao, 1997: 12-38; Valladares, 2001: 17-18). The ultimate failure of the Cambodia enterprise did not prevent some of its most noteworthy events from having a signiicant impact on Spanish public opinion. People were able to learn of the adventures taking place in such distant lands through the accounts of two eyewitnesses, Fray Gabriel de San Antonio, author of Breve y verdadera relación de los sucesos de Camboya (A Brief and Truthful Relation of Events in the Kingdom of Cambodia), published in Valladolid in 1604; and Fray Diego Aduarte, who included another recounting of events in Cambodia in his Historia de la provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores en Filipinas, Japón y China (History of the Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary in the Philippines, Japan and China), published in Manila in 1640. The subject would ultimately be taken up by the Spanish literature of the period, speciically, by Luis de Góngora, Andrés de Claramonte and Miguel de Cervantes (San Antonio, 1988; Aduarte, 1962). Nor was the military adventure in Cambodia an obstacle which inhibited the evangelizing desire of the brothers in Manila to establish themselves in Southeast Asia. It appears that the irst expedition departed in 1581, led by Augustinian friars Diego de Oropesa and Bartolomé Ruiz. They travelled to the coast of Vietnam, but were expelled by the Portuguese, who were defend- ing the prerogatives of the patriarch of the East Indies. Other reports describe activities in the Kingdom of Champa by Pedro Ordóñez de Cevallos, author of Tratado de las relaciones verdaderas de las regiones de China, Cochinchina y Champan (Treatise on True Relations in the Regions of China, Cochinchina and Champan), published in Jaén in 1628. Lastly, in the 18th century, the experience of Dominican Juan Ventura is noteworthy. He made the traditional voyage, following the route from Cádiz to Veracruz, Mexico City, Acapulco and Manila, before continuing on to Canton and from there, crossing southern China to the Kingdom of Tonkin, where he performed his missionary duties between 1715 and 1724, the year of his death (Órdoñez de Cevallos, 1628; Muñoz, 1958). However, despite this trend of Spaniards travelling to Southeast Asia, the main ield of action for the Philippine governors was the Japanese empire (Hall, 1991). Here, the Spanish presence made quite a late appearance in comparison with the Portuguese. This was despite the fact that the most important igure in the rapid spread of Christianity was a Spanish Jesuit, St Francis Xavier, whose preaching produced the spectacular result of one hundred thousand converts in just a short time, operating from a base at Nagasaki. However, the assertion of absolutism during the Momoyama period unleashed the irst persecution of the Christians. It was decreed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who in 1587 declared Christianity a “pernicious doctrine” and ordered the expulsion of all missionaries. Things seemed to return to the earlier situation thanks to the embassy sent to Manila in 1592 by the Japanese ruler himself. It was led by Harada Magoshichiro, and was reciprocated in the form of the mission of Dominican Juan Cobo, who disappeared at sea while returning to Manila that same year. There was also a second embassy headed by Harada Kikuyemon, which reached Manila in 1593. It resulted in an important agreement obtained by governor Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas to send Franciscan missionaries to Japan to counteract the actions of the Portuguese Jesuits, having resolved the thorny question of demarcation in the Treaty of Tordesillas, as the Japanese archipelago was located to the north and east of the Philippines, and therefore, in the part of the world under the Spanish sphere of inluence. This gave way to a golden age of Franciscan proselytizing, which swiftly expanded from the base at Nagasaki (although always in competition with the Jesuits arriving from Goa), and good relations between the two countries. This situation was sanctioned by a series of Spanish embassies to Japan, headed by Pedro Bautista, Pedro González de Carvajal, Jerónimo de Jesús and Luis de Navarrete, respectively (Boxer, 1951; Cabezas, 1994; Lisón Tolosana, 2005; Sánchez & Fuertes, 1979). However, this peaceful environment was abruptly interrupted by the resumption of persecution by Hideyoshi, who took irm action. In late 1596, the wreck of the galleon San Felipe off the Japanese coast triggered the ruler’s suspicions. He felt threatened by the com- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 34 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 9 bined actions of the merchants and missionaries and reacted by ordering the famous cruciixion of the “twentyseven martyrs of Japan”, which brought an end to the irst stage of parallel Spanish diplomatic and evangelical activity. The tale of the cruel torture of the Christians (six Franciscans, three Jesuits and seventeen Japanese lay people, cruciied in Nagasaki in February 1597) would be recounted by Franciscan missionary Marcelo Ribadeneyra in the penultimate section of a book intended to given an account of the past and present of the remote Asian lands, his Historia de las islas del archipiélago y reinos de la Gran China, Tartaria, Cuchinchina, Malaca, Sian, Camboxa y Jappón (History of the Philippines and Other Kingdoms), published in Barcelona in 1601 (Ribadeneyra, 1947; Berry, 1982). Despite everything, the martyrdom at Nagasaki did not yet mean the end of either trade or Christianity in Japanese lands. The second phase of rapprochement between Japan and Spain took place during the period when the Tokugawa shogunate was taking shape (speciically, under the shoguns Ieyasu and Hidetada). The re-establishment of relations was the work of Franciscan Fray Jerónimo de Jesús. In 1599, he obtained a letter from Ieyasu to governor Francisco Tello de Guzmán requesting that a regular trade route be set up between Manila and Edo. He asked that pilots and wooden boat builders be sent to train the Japanese in navigation and boat building, as well as miners to improve operations in the silver mines. In 1602, a second letter from Ieyasu was carried to the new governor, Pedro Bravo de Acuña (1602-1606) by Franciscan Fray Pedro Burguillos. In it, he insisted on two crucial proposals: the offer of a port for Spanish ships (for both trade between Japan and the Philippines and to serve as a port of call for the Manila Galleon) and the opening of a permanent direct trade route between Japan and New Spain. These proposals would repeatedly be the object of Japanese initiatives over the next twelve years. The Spanish response was to agree to send one boat a year, demand good treatment of Franciscan missionaries and a irm response to the Dutch of the East India Company, and delay the issue of direct trade with New Spain, which could clearly be harmful to Manila’s interests (Sola, 1999; Oliveira e Costa, 2003; Iaccarino, 2013). Negotiations were revived when Rodrigo Vivero, interim governor of the Philippines between 1608 and 1609, entered the arena. Not only did he view Ieyasu’s proposal in a positive light, but he also had occasion to engage in a series of direct conversations with the Japanese leaders when the galleon San Francisco, which was to return him to New Spain in 1609, accidentally landed on the Japanese coast. His requests for friendship between the two countries and Franciscan evangelizing were well received by the courts at Edo (headquarters of the shogun Hidetada) and Suraga (residence of Ieyasu, who despite his abdication, retained enormous power), although the same could not be said of his pressure to resist the Dutch. In the end, the trade issues were left to an embassy headed by Fray Alonso Muñoz, which travelled to Spain via Mexico in 1611 with two letters (from Ieyasu and Hidetada) for the Duke of Lerma, which are held in the General Archive of the Indies. They proposed peace between Spain and Japan, instituting one ship a year between a Japanese port (the port at Usuki on Kyushu Island had previously been used) and Manila, negotiating a ship that would sail from Japan directly to New Spain and the possibility of the free settlement of religious brothers in Tokugawa domains. That same year, Sebastián Vizcaíno escorted the Japanese legation back to Japan after their visit to New Spain. He took advantage of the opportunity to revisit the courts at Edo and Suraga and surveyed the eastern ports of Honshu Island. This journey brought him into contact with the lord of Sendai, Daté Masamune, leading to the second Japanese embassy to Spain (Monbeig, 1972; Mathes, 1973). The embassy, oficially initiated by the daimyo of Sendai, with the knowledge and approval of the Edo court, was led by Tsunenaga Hasekura Rokuyemon and Fray Luis Sotelo, reaching Seville in 1614. They left behind the famous letter in the Seville Municipal Archives and some of the members of the ambassador’s retinue settled in the town of Coria del Río. Negotiations were again undertaken based on the offering of perpetual peace between Japan and Spain, in exchange for an annual ship to New Spain. However, they now also requested that pilots, sailors and Spanish religious brothers be sent to Japan, in an amalgam that combined practical reasons with spiritual arguments. After a month’s stay in the city of Seville, the embassy travelled to Madrid (where they were received by Philip III in January 1615) and then on to Rome (where they were welcomed by Pope Paul V in November of the same year). They returned to Seville, from where they departed (after a stay by Hasekura at the Franciscan Monastery of Loreto de Espartinas) for New Spain (in July 1617). From there, they continued on the Japan, with the leader of the expedition landing in his homeland after an absence of more than seven years (Fernández Gómez, 1998; Oizumi, 1994; 1998, 1999, 2005, 2010; Oizumi & Gil, 2011; Takizawa, 2008; Soler del Campo, 2003). However, despite all of these promising signs, including the spectacular nature and lengthy duration of the embassies to Philip III, these years signalled the failure of the rapprochement between Tokugawa Japan and Hapsburg Spain. Firstly, a conclusive Spanish response was precluded by the reluctance on the part of those who beneitted from the Manila Galleon to allow the opening of another route they considered a rival. Secondly, the breakdown in relations took place within the context of a radical shift in Japanese policy, which in little more than two decades would immerse the country in complete isolation. This was done by abolishing all overseas travel, violently eradicating Christianity following a long and bloody persecution which subjected the faithful to death or silence (including the “great martyrdom” of Nagasaki in 1622), and absolutely prohibiting Iberian trade in favour of trade with the Dutch Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 35 10 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola (1639). We have evidence of this crucial moment in the accounts of the travels of Rodrigo Vivero and Sebastián Vizcaíno (which remained in their handwritten form for a very long time) and the more numerous works published to spread the word about the religious persecution. Examples include the work by Diego de San Francisco, a religious who was kept captive and possibly tortured. He reported on the culminating period of repression (1613-1624) in his widely read Relación verdadera y breve de la persecución... en Japón de 15 religiosos de la provincia de San Gregorio (True and Brief Account of the Persecution ... in Japan of Religious Brothers from the Province of San Gregorio, published in Manila in 1625 and republished in Mexico twice in the following year. This is amazing evidence of the events which would bring the “Christian century” in Japan to an end (Boxer, 1951; Cabezas, 1995; San Francisco, 1914). Despite everything, the presence of missionaries in Japan had another unique outcome: it allowed a Spaniard to be the irst European to visit the Kingdom of Korea. Indeed, Madrid Jesuit Gregorio de Céspedes, who had reached the Far East by taking the Portuguese route via Goa, Macau and Nagasaki, was able to set off for Korea with the help of the Catholic Japanese daimios. There he witnessed the invasion of the country by the troops of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He wrote four letters from Korea. His primary intention was to denounce the war undertaken by the Japanese leader and give an account of some of the circumstances of the conlict, as well as the subsequent peace negotiations. However, they also have unquestionable historiographical value, as they include the irst reports on Korea given by a European eyewitness. As a result, his information was used by Luis de Guzmán to write one of the passages in his Historia de las misiones que han hecho los religiosos de la Compañía de Jesús para predicar el Santo Evangelio en los Reinos de Japón (History of the Missions of the Company of Jesus in Eastern India, China and Japan), published in Alcalá de Henares in 1601 (Guzmán, 1601; Chul, 1993). While Portuguese independence in 1640 marked a turning point for the Spanish presence on the Asian continent, contact was reinitiated in the 18th century. This revitalization of political and diplomatic action in the area is borne out by the resumption of previous relations with the Kingdom of Siam, on the initiative of governor Fernando Manuel de Bustamante. He managed to sign a new trade agreement with the government of Ayutthaya by sending an embassy headed by his nephew, Gregorio Alejandro de Bustamante, in 1718 (Díaz de Villegas, 1967; Silos Rodríguez, 2005). In addition, late in the century, the corvette Atrevida, under the command of José de Bustamante, set sail from Manila to visit China as part of the activities carried out by the scientiic expedition led by Alejandro Malaspina. Their stay in Macau allowed the ship’s commander to make observations (including a precise description of the Portuguese colony) and produced the four drawings by Fernando Brambila with views of the town, now kept in Madrid, in the Naval Museum and the Museum of the Americas (Sáiz, 1994: 326-331; Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2007: 194-200). The spirit of the Enlightenment was especially symbolized by the last of the great Spanish enterprises, known as the Balmis Expedition (1803-1806). It spread the practice of smallpox vaccinations among various populations in the Americas, but also reached Asia. Francisco Javier Balmis landed in Manila in 1805 aboard the ship Magallanes. He then embarked on the Portuguese frigate Diligencia, bound for China. He landed in Macau with the aim of introducing the smallpox vaccine to the Middle Kingdom, given that, in his own words, “the English had not ever been able to bring the vaccine to China, despite having attempted to do so many times with the luids they had sent from Bombay, Madras, Bengal and Malacca”. Balmis remained in China until at least the end of January 1806. He performed vaccinations in Macau (where it seems that only a total of 22 people received them) and Canton. He travelled to the second city accompanied by a young inoculated Chinese and performed the irst vaccination in an atmosphere of expectation before a large audience of locals of every sex, age and position. Upon returning to Macau, the Spanish physician completed his stay, again in his own words, “spreading the vaccine, stocking up on works of natural history and observing the state of the sciences and arts among the Chinese”. That is to say, he behaved like a perfect Enlightenment scientist during this new chapter in the transmission of knowledge between Spain and the Far East which had been made possible by the route between Seville and Manila (Ramírez Martín, 1999, 2002). DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH THE MOTHER COUNTRY While on one hand, Manila established a wide range of relations with the neighbouring world, on the other, its economy was essentially founded on trans-Paciic trade. This was based on exchanging Mexican silver for products from China (mainly silk goods) and other Asian countries by means of a route that linked it with the port of Acapulco in New Spain. During the period of Bourbon reforms, the fact that Spain only participated in trade with the Far East indirectly, with Mexico acting as an intermediary, led Spanish authorities to consider a direct route to the Philippines from the mother country. This would be apart from the trans-Paciic route taken by the Manila Galleon. However, while the irst dissenting voices regarding the nonexistent beneits of the Manila Galleon for the mother country were heard in the late 16th century, continuing with the arbitrista reformers in the 17th century, it was not until the 18th century that there was any real reaction in Spain. This took the form of the emergence of economic literature that generated a succession of trade-related plans, promoted at the highest levels of government and supported by individuals (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2013a). Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 36 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 11 Broadly speaking, the economic literature of the 18th century proposed realigning the Philippine economy based on three areas of action: The irst was the development of production on the islands themselves to cancel out the effects of so-called passive trade, in other words, the deicit produced when highly valuable imports have no counterpart in local goods, resulting in currency light. The second was strengthening regional trade as a means of diversifying commercial exchange, alleviating the dependence on Chinese suppliers, achieving a more balanced low of imports and exports and reducing the drain of silver. And the third involved shifting part of the traditional commerce of the Manila Galleon from Mexico to Cádiz as a way to establish direct trafic not only between the mother country and the Philippines, but also between Spain and other Asian markets. This brought an end to the monopoly of the Spanish colonists on the archipelago, abolished the exclusive rights of the Mexican merchants on the other side of the Paciic, promoted multilateral commercial exchange and allowed Spanish interests access to the area of Asia from which Spanish trade had been excluded and which was being exploited by other European powers (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2013b). And so the possibility of an alternate route to the Manila Galleon began to take shape. The process, long in the planning stages, was accelerated when the city of Manila was occupied by England between 1762 and 1764. This served as a wakeup call for the Spanish authorities, who then grasped the structural fragility at the outer reaches of its imperial system and the need to introduce an extensive programme of reforms to ensure its continued existence. Indeed, the English occupation of Manila (1762-1764) during the Seven Years’ War and the delay in returning control to Spain would inluence the stages and forms of trade liberalization in the Paciic sphere. Now, the economic interests that had been insinuating themselves over the previous three decades would be reinforced by urgent military requirements. In other words, they beneitted from the need to signiicantly improve the defence of the islands and guarantee a direct route to send any aid from the peninsula that might be necessary in the event any threat from foreign powers, particularly England, reappeared (Tracy, 1995). Thus, beginning in 1765, without shutting down the traditional route of the Manila Galleon, the Spanish crown decided to open up a direct route from Spain to the Philippines. It would depart from Cádiz (the new headquarters of the monopoly on Spanish overseas trade) and reach Manila via the Cape of Good Hope (a route prohibited to the Spanish since the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494). The route was gradually implemented in several stages. The irst involved sending a number of Navy vessels straight to the archipelago via the Cape of Good Hope route between 1765 and 1784. In the second, licences for direct trade with Manila were granted to different private irms: the Five Major Guilds of Madrid Company (Compañia de los Cinco Gremios Mayores de Madrid) and Ustáriz y Llano San Ginés. In the third and last stage, the monopoly for the route was granted to a single privileged company, the Royal Company of the Philippines (Real Compañía de Filipinas), in 1785 (Díaz-Trechuelo, 1963). The Navy ships inaugurated the Cádiz-Manila route in 1765 and made 14 return voyages in 20 years. The expeditions sailed aboard the following ships (some of which made more than one voyage): the vessel El Buen Consejo; the frigates Venus, Astrea, Palas and Juno and the hooker Santa Inés. Some of these voyages included two stops at commercial ports of call in India: Tranquebar (a Danish colony on the Coromandel Coast, founded in 1616 as comptoir of the Danish East India Company) and Calcutta (on the Bay of Bengal, headquarters of England’s East India Company) (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2013c). In this context, it is interesting to make special note of the preparations for the irst Navy ship to make the voyage to Asia, El Buen Consejo (60 cannons, 2 decks, launched in 1761). For the process is indicative of all the problems involved in itting a ship out and providing it with a crew, provisions and food, as well as the diplomatic problems resulting from implementing this government initiative. Minister of the Navy Julián de Arriaga used the vía reservada system, which gave him direct access to the king, to charge quartermaster Juan Gerbaut with inding out what ships were available at the port of Cádiz to undertake the enterprise, and about the availability of crew members (200 men), the existence of pilots capable of carrying out such a complex voyage, the possibility of obtaining the food supplies and medicines for the long voyage, the necessary ports of call and the most suitable dates for setting sail from both ends of the return voyage. This he did through frigate captain Juan de Caséns. The inquiries were conducted in secret, reaching the conclusion that it was possible to ind everything required in Cádiz, as it was a port town with extensive experience in preparing ships for the Indies Route. However, the sole exception was the pilots. In fact, as it was a new route, there were no Spanish pilots capable of taking on the enterprise. This forced the authorities to seek advice on the practices used by the ships of the French and Swedish East India companies. They ultimately opted for the French (possibly because of the guarantees offered by the shared ancestry of the reigning dynasties in the two countries), who were experts in sailing to China on ships of the company established in Lorient. After a lengthy outward voyage, El Buen Consejo landed successfully in Manila, from which it returned, also without mishap (Martínez Shaw and Alfonso Mola, 2013). Focusing on mercantile aspects, the naval expeditions (1765-1784) that opened up the Cádiz-Manila route offer a number of interesting lessons. Firstly, although they exercised caution, Cádiz merchants responded to the call and loaded a small amount of products bound for the Philippines (a little wine, spirits and oil and a few quintals of iron). And more importantly, they received abundant supplies of Asian goods in return, notably cotton textiles, silk cloth, silk in all its varieties, spices Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 37 12 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola (cinnamon, pepper), sappanwood and ceramics. The termination of the exclusive rights of the Manila Galleon route and promotion of an alternate route made the hostility of the Philippine merchants perfectly justiied. However, this irst adventure in direct trade led only to the acceptance and, to a certain extent, the conirmation of a system of trade based on the exclusive sale of Asian goods, especially those from China, by merchants established in the capital of the archipelago. As such, Acapulco remained the undisputed terminus of New Spain. Meanwhile, Cádiz was barely making its debut as a Spanish terminus and was still in its infancy, regardless of how much this irst concrete measure of the desire for change which had been expressed for some decades generated more than logical uncertainty regarding the future among those who beneitted from the Manila Galleon (Cosano Moya, 1981; 1983). 1784 brought an end to the series of expeditions made aboard war ships which combined strategic, scientiic and commercial interests. They were an excellent test run for exploring a route denied to the Spanish Navy for more than two and a half centuries, and for learning about the economic, and especially the mercantile, situation of the Philippine Islands. It also gave Cádiz merchants their irst experience of direct trade between the city and the remote conines of Asia, and demonstrated that this voyage was shorter than the system currently in place (the round trip, including lay days, had been reduced to eighteen months). The Philippine Islands, and with them all the trade of the Far East, were now closer (Bernabeu Albert, 1987). After the new route was established, as was to be expected, there was complete opposition by other European powers with commercial interests in the East, as well as those who beneitted from the Manila Galleon trade. The Spanish authorities were aware of an existing issue, the likely challenge by other nations, especially the United Provinces, to Spain’s right to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. While it is certain that Spanish leaders did not lose sleep over the complaints, which at no time put the expedition in doubt, it is also certain that the issue was the subject of intense debate in certain quarters (and over quite a long period). It was some time before the dispute was resolved. This is demonstrated by the fact that the States-General of the United Provinces still denied the legitimacy of Spanish ships taking the Cape route in 1786, at the request of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), when the Royal Company of the Philippines began sailing this route (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2013c). After the Navy ships stage, the commercial route to Manila was opened up to companies authorized by Charles III to trade between Cádiz and the Pacific sphere. The Five Major Guilds of Madrid Company only joined the operation after the route had been fully established by the Navy. While the Navy ships fulfilled military, scientific and commercial functions, trade activity was the only reason for this entirely different series of voyages undertaken between Cádiz and Manila along the Cape of Good Hope route. The first of- ficial licence for this traffic was issued in 1776 to the Five Major Guilds of Madrid Company. The company was granted the authority to register goods on the Navy ships bound for the Philippines and in the future, to charter its own ships, as well as setting up two agents in Manila and Canton. The second licence for direct trade with Manila was granted to the Cádiz firm Ustáriz y Llano San Ginés in 1779. It was authorized to send riches, fruit and other goods from Cádiz and import spices, silk goods and cotton textiles from Manila. To this end, that same year, the vessel San Francisco de Paula (a) Hércules set sail on behalf of the company. When it landed in Manila, it was surprised by the declaration of war by the Thirteen Colonies. As a result, it opted to forgo returning to Spain and dedicate its energies to another type of trade, requesting and obtaining authorization from the governor, José Basco y Vargas, to sail to Canton to purchase Chinese products, and then on to Acapulco (as well as Guayaquil and El Callao) to sell them, thus disrupting the monopoly of the Manila Galleon on trade between Asia and the Americas. In 1783, the ship departed again, this time for Macau. It left there in 1784, headed back to Acapulco, reaching San Blas before undertaking a further voyage to Paita and El Callao, where it arrived the following year. The adventure of the San Francisco de Paula (a) Hércules is not therefore a mere anecdote. Rather, its primary value lies in representing a preview of the system of trade which would gradually be established by the Royal Company of the Philippines beginning in 1785 (although it was carried out on an exceptional basis by obtaining individual authorization from the governor of the archipelago after being rejected by the Manila Merchant Guild) (Capella and Matilla Tascón, 1957; Ruiz Rivera, 1976; Herrero Gil, 2008-2009, 2013). Lastly, authorization to found the Royal Company of the Philippines had been granted by Charles III, as indicated in article 50 of its articles of association, with “the special object of the good of my beloved subjects and of promoting agriculture and industry in the Philippines”. This required the company to invest four percent of its annual proits in the archipelago, in speciically developing these two areas. The presence of the Royal Company of the Philippines meant the end of the “Nao de China” monopoly, as it combined trade expeditions along the traditional route and those that sailed apart from the Manila Galleon route. The Cádiz-Manila voyage was initiated in September 1785 by the frigate Nuestra Señora de los Placeres, which following the Cape Horn route, while the frigates Nuestra Señora de las Nieves and El Águila Imperial set sail in January of the following year, taking the Cape of Good Hope route and reaching the Philippines in August (Díaz Trechuelo, 1965). The Company spared no effort in attempting to expand its concessions. As a result, ive years later (1790), it succeeded in having the obligation to make port in Manila abolished. That is to say, it obtained the right to direct trade between Spain and India and China, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 38 The Philippine Islands: a vital crossroads during the irst globalization period • 13 an authorization which would be ratiied by royal order on July 12th, 1803, conirming the privileges (article 60). Of these two new lines, the irst was effectively opened in 1796, with an eventful voyage which carried the commissioner in India to Île-de-France (Mauritius) – from where he sent a shipment of Asian textiles, coffee and pepper from the Malabar Coast to Cádiz – before landing on the Coromandel Coast, irst at the Danish colony of Tranquebar and then at the English colony of Madras. He then permanently settled in Calcutta as an agent of the Royal Company. After this, the CádizTranquebar-Calcutta line acquired a certain degree of regularity, with some variations. There were numerous expeditions between 1797 and 1818 (aboard the vessel Columbus, the frigates Clive, Iigenia, Princesa de Asturias and Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso (a) La Esperanza and the vessel San Julián), to the extent that it became one of the most travelled and among the most proitable routes of those opened by the company. Therefore, a large part of its business excluded Manila and of course, the Acapulco route. The Royal Company of the Philippines soon established a permanent trading post in Canton. Together with those in Manila and Calcutta (which also had a branch on the Coromandel Coast from 1818), they made up the framework of permanent establishments in Asia. Preferably, the trading post acted as a shipping agent ofice (not only for company ships, but also those of others), both when purchasing Chinese goods (tea, silks, ceramics) bound for Manila and when inding a buyer for products from the Philippines in China. In addition to these functions, the trading post could also be used for direct trade between Cádiz and Canton, without the involvement of Manila. However, although royal orders issued in 1790 and 1803 also envisaged the opening up of China together with India, the route never worked, regardless of how much Canton might provide excellent services for direct relations between Asia and the America, again excluding the Manila Galleon (Ugartemendia, 2012). In short, in the late 18th century, the dispute between Spanish interests and combined Philippine and Mexican interests was settled with one agreement: the continued existence of the traditional trade with New Spain would coexist with legally established direct trade with the mother country. Meanwhile, another set of measures substantially expanded the role of the port of Manila in international maritime trade. And so the port of Manila experienced a gradual recovery after beginning to allow Asian ships in 1785. In 1790, it began allowing ships lying under any lag, provided that they were not transporting European goods. And in 1793, it began allowing ships and goods of any origin, especially during periods of military conlict, with the resulting supply problems (Martínez Shaw, 2007). It was the independence process in the Americas that brought the Manila Galleon route to an end. In December 1811, the galleon Magallanes found Acapulco paralyzed by war and she prepared to withstand what was expected to be a long stay. In 1813, the Spanish authorities responded to the situation by ordering the suspension of trafic between the Philippines and Mexico. In 1815, the Magallanes set sail to complete its inal voyage from the New Spain port to the Philippine capital. Nonetheless, trafic was not interrupted. Not even the oficial suspension of the Manila Galleon (by decree of the Parliament of Cádiz (Cortes de Cádiz) on September 14th, 1813, ratiied by a new decree by Ferdinand VII on April 23rd, 1815) meant the death of the route. It continued to beneit from the inertia of past centuries, taking advantage of the alternative concessions contained in these decrees, which authorized individual ships to travel from Manila to Acapulco, San Blas and Sonsonate. In fact, a document from the Acapulco Public Treasury (dated September 20th, 1820) gives a “report of the shipments brought to Acapulco by trade vessels from Manila from the years 1815 to 1818”. It recorded a total of seven ships present in the Mexican port: the frigate Victoria, the brigantine Feliz, the frigate María, the frigate Victoria (for a second time), the frigate María (for a second time), the frigate Paz and the covette Espina. What is more, we have reports that in 1820 there were still Spanish ships from the Far East in both the port of Acapulco and the port of El Callao. Therefore, the route did not shut down until it was absolutely impossible the keep it active. Likewise, between 1790 and 1820, Manila not only remained the centre of the Spanish Paciic, but it was also one of the largest ports of trade in Asia and the major distribution centre for silver in the Far East (Yuste, 2000; Martínez Shaw, 2007). In 1820, this long history came to its inal conclusion: the history of the Seville (or Cádiz)-Veracruz-Mexico City-Acapulco-Manila axis, with activity in both directions, which had served as a permanent route for the movement of men and women, for the exchange of precious metals and exotic products, and as an avenue for cultural transfers of all kinds among Spain, Spanish America and Spanish Asia throughout the early modern period. And as such, it had made the Philippine Islands one of the major crossroads of the irst globalization. NOTES 1. For the study of the “sangleyes” or Chinese from the Philippines: Gil, 2011 and García-Abásolo, 2012. For the “Parián de los Sangleyes”, see: Ollé, 2008. 2. Some examples of the literature on Spanish silver: Chaunu (1960); Chuan (1969); Attman (1981); Barrett (1983); Te Paske (1983); Valdés Lakowsky (1987); Flynn (1996); Flynn & Giráldez (1996); Fradera (2001). For the commercial relations between Manila and Macao see: Boxer (1959); and Ollé (2000b). REFERENCES Aduarte, Diego (1962) Historia de la provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores en Filipinas, Japón y China. CSIC, Madrid (original edition, 1640). Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (editors), (2000) El Galeón de Manila. Catálogo. Aldeasa, Madrid. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 39 14 • Carlos Martínez Shaw and Marina Alfonso Mola Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (editors), (2003) Oriente en Palacio. Tesoros asiáticos en las Colecciones Reales españolas. Catálogo. El Viso, Madrid. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (2004) “La era de la plata española en Extremo Oriente”. Revista Española del Pacíico, No. 17: 33-53. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (editors), (2007) La ruta española a China. Relaciones entre España y China en los tiempos modernos. El Viso, Madrid. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (2013a) “La reorientación de la economía ilipina en el proyectismo del siglo XVIII”. In Homenaje a Juan Luis Castellano. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada, Granada: 539-557. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (2013b) “España y el comercio de Asia en el siglo XVIII. Comercio directo frente a comercio transpacíico”. In El sistema comercial español en la economía mundial (siglos XVII-XVIII), eds. Oliva, José María ans Lobato, Isabel. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Huelva, Huelva: 325-380. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (2013c) “La ruta del Cabo y el comercio español con Filipinas”. In Un océano de seda y plata: el universo económico del Galeón de Manila, eds. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador and Martínez Shaw, Carlos. EEHA/CSIC, Madrid: 307-340. Alonso Álvarez, Luis (2004) “La política de Legazpi y su proyección: la formación del proyecto español en las islas Filipinas, 1565-1593”. In España y el Pacíico. Legazpi, doord. Cabrero, Leoncio. Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Históricas, Madrid, t. I: 437-462. Alonso Álvarez, Luis (2009) El costo del imperio asiático. La formación colonial de las islas Filipinas bajo el dominio español, 1565-1800. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Coruña, Corunna. 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Zaragoza, Ramón María (1990) Old Manila. Oxford University Press, Singapore. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e004. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.004 42 3(1) June 2014, e005 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640)1 José Antonio Martínez Torres Profesor contratado Ramón y Cajal, Department of Modern History, Facultad de Humanidades, C/ Senda del Rey, 7, Madrid, 28040, UNED, Spain e-mail: jmtorres@geo.uned.es Submitted: 20 March 2014. Accepted: 15 May 2014 ABSTRACT: The study of the overseas empire of the Spanish Habsburgs during the period when the Crown of Portugal was incorporated to this politico-economic structure and the study of their encounters, exchanges and contributions at all levels are increasingly being perceived as a plausible and original alternative within the current historiographical debate evolving around the coniguration of the new European political order produced during the Early Modern period and characterised by the so-called ‘crisis of the State’ and the economic ‘decadence’ of the territories of southern Europe. This article offers some observations concerning this interesting subject, as well as some insight into the implications that this process carried in the Spanish and Portuguese cases. KEYWORDS: Spanish Monarchy; Portuguese Crown; Early modern period; Global history Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: José Antonio Martínez Torres (2014). “‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640)”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e005. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 RESUMEN: ‘No hay más que un mundo’: Globalización y conexiones en los territorios ultramarinos de los Hasburgos españoles (1581-1640).- Dentro del vigente debate historiográico sobre la coniguración del orden político europeo que se produjo durante la Edad Moderna, caracterizado por la llamada “crisis del Estado” y por la “decadencia” económica en los territorios del sur de Europa, el estudio de las posesiones de Ultramar de los Habsburgo españoles durante el momento de agregación de la Corona de Portugal a la Monarquía Hispánica (1581-1640), con sus encuentros, sus intercambios y sus mixturas a todos los niveles, se insinúa como una posible y original alternativa de trabajo y relexión. En el presente artículo se ofrecen algunas consideraciones sobre esta interesante cuestión, destacando además las implicaciones que dicho proceso tuvo en los casos español y portugués. PALABRAS CLAVE: Monarquía Hispánica; Corona de Portugal; Edad Moderna; Historia global Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. INTRODUCTION Just one year had elapsed from the sad and shocking news of the loss in the cold waters of the English Channel of almost 10,000 soldiers and more than half of the 130 ships composing the Spanish leet which had left Lisbon aiming at the invasion of England, when the well-known printing press of Giolitti, in Venice, pub- lished Della Ragion di Stato (1589), a political treatise written by Giovanni Botero, the Piamontese thinker, cleric and diplomat from Bene (Cuneo), and dedicated to the archbishop of Salzburg, Wolfgang Theodoric. The author would have probably never guessed the outstanding dissemination that this work would have in Spain, where it underwent at least six editions in Castilian during the three decades following the publi- 43 2 • José Antonio Martínez Torres cation of the beautiful and user-friendly editio princeps (Descendre, 2009). The text follows a solid structure divided in ten chapters written with elegant brilliance and precision, and it impressed two generations of Spaniards ruled by Philip II and Philip III. From the very irst pages of the text, the author stressed the main aim of his work, which was to rebuke Machiavelli’s notion of ‘reason of State’ and rules of government as well as the methods used by Tacitus to obtain and keep an empire. Botero also emphasised how important it was, for the development of certain political strategies of a Christian prince, to be able to control the world’s seas and oceans through the establishment of advanced defensive positions, which were usually poorly manned and provisioned by the metropolis with men, food, armament and money. In the irst chapter of his work, Botero asked himself ‘Whether compact or dispersed states are more lasting.’ The question did not lack substance in the context of the Spanish Monarchy, for almost a decade before, it had incorporated the disperse and – as such – vulnerable Portuguese colonies in the American, African and Asian continents (Elliott, 1991a: 48-67; Parker, 2001: 321-346; Martínez Shaw and Martínez Torres (directors), 2014). The Spanish Empire of this period was a giant with feet of clay presenting poorly articulated parts, and this made it susceptible to the maritime blockades and attacks to ports and ships in the Atlantic, Indian and Paciic oceans inlicted by the East Indian Company (EIC), the Vereenidge Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) and the West Indische Compagnie (WIC) from a very early stage. In 1598, 1606 and 1623, the sought-after and exotic products usually brought into Europe by the galleons and carracks of the Carreira da India could not be disembarked in Lisbon because its port and that of Goa, which had been linked since the arrival in the latter of the Portuguese navigator and explorer Vasco da Gama, were blocked off by Dutch and English galleons. Throughout the period during which the Portuguese Crown and its colonies remained united to the Spanish Monarchy, the years between 1629 and 1636 proved to be extraordinarily tumultuous for the Portuguese who had settled in the colonies of the Indian Ocean, especially for those living around the waters of the Strait of Malacca and the Malabar Coast, with almost 150 of their ships being attacked and destroyed by the dreaded Batavian sailors. In the following decades, the mercantile triangle conformed by Goa, Manila and Malacca was incessantly harassed by Dutch ships. The Spanish and Portuguese oficers which were part of the Council of Portugal in Madrid knew that it was necessary to synchronise, with the ine precision of a clock maker, the naval forces available and the sums usually destined to redress those circumstances which were considered dramatic by the sovereign and his most trusted ministers (Boxer, 2002: 251-322, 287; Van Veen, 2000: 75-81, 147-171; Murteira, 2012: 95-212). As early as 1608, the merchant Pedro de Baeza was stressing the importance of establishing a greater ‘com- munication’ between the Portuguese and the Spaniards living in Macao and Manila, since both were ‘Christians and vassals of the same king’.2 According to this intelligent merchant from Madrid, who spent more than twenty-ive years arranging commercial agreements in China, Malacca and Nagasaki for the Spanish Habsburgs, if this most necessary ‘communication’ was to be encouraged, it would ‘result in the ones and the others being stronger against the enemy’; that is, the Dutch, who were strongly present in strategic Asian territories since 1595. This strange paradox did not only emerge in the context of military defeats, plagues and famine, but it also overlapped with the no less paradoxical and relevant context of ‘conscience crisis’ and ‘introspection’ in which, for reasons which were as moral as they were practical, the possession of riches was viewed as the quickest way to reach the most solemn and humiliating levels of poverty (Elliott, 2010: 190-191). ‘Our Spain has become so ixated on its dealings with the Indies, from which they obtain gold and silver,’ Martín González de Cellórigo warned in 1600, that the country ‘has abandoned its communication with the neighbouring kingdoms. If all the gold and silver that its natives have found – and are still discovering – in the New World, would enter [Spain], it would not make the country as rich and powerful as it would be without it.’ (González de Cellórigo, 1600: 15v). This intriguing paradox of weakness in spite of power and poverty in spite of riches, which emerged during Philip II’s last years and the beginning of Philip III’s reign, was commented upon by most theoreticians dealing with the future of the Spanish Monarchy. As Conrad Rott wrote to Philip III in a long and complex letter in 1600, ‘the Spains’ were still bound to suffer much more than they had done up to that point unless the ‘communication’ between vassals and kingdoms advocated by Pedro de Baeza and Martín González de Cellórigo actually took place. According to this text, the Portuguese dwelling in the overseas possessions had told this notable German merchant dealing in Goa, Lisbon and Hamburg, that if they ‘lost India, Lisbon would also be lost.’ The Sevillians said as much about America.3 ‘Up until today’, Rott emphatically and vehemently insisted, Spain had devoted itself to the creation of Armadas, but not to the creation ‘of the substance of the same’, which was ‘to have an immense sum of money’. The amounts of gold and silver arriving in Holland ‘from all around’ were substantial, and the main reason for this lay in the fact that ‘they kept their word and offered good interest rates and advantages’, whereas it was clear ‘that all the interest that comes from the Indies into Spain goes out again, and not a single real comes in from any nation, much to the contrary, the whole world seeks to steal from Spain and to avoid giving anything to the same’.4 As the procuradores to the Cortes of this period used to say, Spain had become ‘the Indies of Europe,’ which explains why responses to the different dilemmas which came up were not lacking (Vilar, 1976: 149-150). Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 44 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 3 Undoubtedly, the underlying argument behind Conrad Rott’s words was the creation, during the irst decades of the union of Portugal and its possessions with the Spanish Monarchy, of a powerful and dynamic public bank which would be able to fund the navies of both Indies. Through it, part of the beneits produced in the customs of Lisbon and Seville could be destined to compensate the lenders with 12% interest. Unfortunately, the project was immediately rejected because those years were too glorious for anyone to even consider giving up a privileged position to the merchants and money lenders of Germany, Genoa or Florence. Things started changing, however, after the loss of Ormus in 1622. The ‘rampant nervousness’ with which royal oficers would usually deal with the political and commercial projects sent to the relevant Councils of the Monarchy between the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth centuries, would evolve into the detailed and careful study of strong proposals. These ranged from a total reform of the mercantile system in Asia to a ‘territorial withdrawal,’ including calculated peace negotiations with the Dutch and the English (Kellenbenz, 1963: 281-283; Subrahmanyam, 1999: 185-228; Valladares, 2001: 37-64, 46). Unfortunately, the igures at our disposal concerning the naval forces belonging to both crowns during this period of their union are not as thorough as we would like them to be. We do know, however, that a decade after the decisive battle of Lepanto (1571), Spain and Portugal possessed a merchant navy of between 250,000 and 300,000 tons. Such igures were similar to those of their main enemies and rivals, Holland (232,000) and England (66,827). The naval decline of the Spanish Monarchy was already obvious at the end of the sixteenth century. In 1585, only three years before the disaster of the ‘Invincible Armada’, which cost more than ten million ducats – a igure which was slightly bigger than the total annual income for that period – the Dutch had already attained maritime supremacy in all the seas and oceans of the world. In a similar vein, the English, especially under the reign of Elizabeth I, were already organising signiicant plunder and piracy campaigns on the coasts of Spanish America and Africa, making strenuous efforts to counteract the leadership of Holland which resulted in them rising their 50,816 tons in 1572 to 66,827 tons in 1582 (Usher, 1928: 465-478, 467; Valdez-Bubnov, 2011). The conlict between the Iberian Catholics and the Protestants from central and northern Europe for European leadership was very similar to a ‘world war’, possibly the irst one which took place in history if we are willing to accept the anachronism and concentrate our efforts into understanding the impact that this secular dispute had in the rest of the continents around the globe (Boxer, 2001: 115-133; Emmer, 2003: 1-14). To the attacks made by the English and the Dutch against the Iberian enclaves and their ships, we should add those made by Barbary corsairs and French sailors throughout the Mediterranean and the mid-Atlantic. The former, with their light and swift xebecs, would capture the Spanish soldiers and passengers coming from America on board the unprotected navío de aviso (or packet-boat) which headed the annual leet coming back from the ports of the western Indies, or the peasants and shepherds living in the coasts of southern Europe. The raïs or Muslim captains would normally launch a razia or raid usually at dawn or at dusk, and the usual destinations of such war prisoners would be the corsair Republic of Salé, the sultanate of Morocco, or the Turk regencies of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli. In such places they would end up retaining approximately one ifth of a cosmopolitan population coming from all the corners of Europe. They became indispensable to their owners as qualiied workforce to be employed in all sorts of tasks both in coastal and inland towns (Davis, 2003; Martínez Torres, 2004). On the other hand, the French sailors were ruthless when it came to the destruction of the deteriorated and neglected Iberian coastal defences in the so-called ‘Coast of the Slaves’. Manuel de Andrada Castel Blanco, a cleric with great geographical and mathematical knowledge who served the governments of Portugal and Spain indistinctively in Brazil and Cape Verde, warned against the dangers that the Spanish Monarchy would face if several strategic defensive bastions – both coastal and insular – such as those of Santa Catarina (Cape Verde), Bezeguiche (Senegal), São Jorge da Mina, Santa Elena (some 2.800 km off the coast of Angola) and Mina (Congo), were not urgently, simultaneously, and properly fortiied. Coming back from their dealings in the mouth of the Río de la Plata, the coasts of Brazil and some locations in India, the French, Dutch and English sailors would take advantage of the fact that these places were lacking in ‘people to populate, farm and defend’, to replenish their water supplies (hacer la aguada), rest and plan their next blow, as the Portuguese cleric had bluntly declared in a barely known ‘instruction’ consisting of fourteen points which was offered to Philip II on his behalf by Don Felipe de Albornoz in 1590 (Hair (editor), 1990: 211-257; Alvares de Almada, 1964: 5150, 21-22; Seijas y Lobera, 2011: 79-87). The absence of permanent Iberian population in these strategic points of the western African coast became a problem to be solved and it did not escape the analysis of the arbitristas, captains of the main Angolan strongholds (especially Luanda and Muxima).5 What their texts sought from the Spanish Crown was the redeinition of territorial occupation in this vital area, the crossroads between the routes uniting Lisbon and Seville with the eastern coast of South America and with the possessions of the Estado da Índia. Garcia Mendes Castelo Branco, one of the renowned oficers who had accompanied Paulo Dias de Novais in his expedition to conquest Angola in 1575, was aware, as Manuel de Andrada Castel Blanco had been before him, of how important it was for the Spanish Monarchy to fortify the Congolese port of Pinda. He did not hesitate to write several works aiming at this in the irst few decades of Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 45 4 • José Antonio Martínez Torres the seventeenth century (Cordeiro, 1935, I: 168-211). In 1603, Castelo Branco highlighted, ‘two to three Dutch ships’ were already in charge of commerce – basically slaves and ivory – in the area. The ‘need’ for the Spanish Monarchy to build a dissuasive fortiication in Pinda against the ‘Dutch enemies’ was ‘very strong,’ so time should not be wasted in requesting a planting ‘licence’ from the allied manicongo, as had been the case before. Two or three ‘big’ ships were to be sent quickly carrying ‘men well-provided’ with gunpowder – some two hundred for one or two months at the beginning and forty ‘continuously’ after that – and, especially, ‘lots of’ artillery. The feeding needs of the soldiers would be covered by the governor of Angola, Manuel Cerveira Pereira, who would load one or two ‘small’ vesels with lour from Brazil ‘to be consumed as soon as the said fortress is done’. This enormous fortress, which would run along ‘more or less thirty leagues’, would provide Philip III with two advantages. It would serve to ‘remove resources’ from the Dutch and thus ‘win’ them for himself and it would notably promote and enhance the Catholic faith in all of these territories. From his point of view, this last point was a matter of urgency, since it was known that the people of the Congo were close to converting to the ‘sects that the Dutch take to them and teach them’ (Cordeiro, 1935, I: 173-178). The gradual loss of hegemony of the Spanish Monarchy in Europe and in the waters surrounding its colonies, which dated back to the late sixteenth- and early mid-seventeenth-centuries, had its inluence in a particular intellectual movement which emerged in northern Europe. Sir Walter Raleigh, renowned sailor, cosmographer and relentless explorer in search of the mythical region of El Dorado in the margins of the rivers Amazon and Orinoco, was already pointing at something similar in his work Judicious and Select Essays and Observations, written before his death in 1618. In this work, Raleigh stated that ‘him who will govern the seas will govern the world, and him who will govern over trade in the world, will govern over its riches and he will thus govern the world’ (Raleigh, 1667: 20). Diego Sarmiento y Acuña, Count of Gondomar and Spanish ambassador in London, was a privileged witness of the ‘incredible events’ which took place in Stuart England in the irst third of the seventeenth century. He had already expressed his anxiety concerning the dramatic twist that these events had taken more or less around the same time as Raleigh’s comments were being made. Thus in 1616, he advised Philip III to react immediately in an appropriate way, ‘for in our world today, him who will be the lord of the sea will also be the lord of the land’ (Elliott and De la Peña, 1978: 142). Domingo de Echeverri, royal secretary and general superintendent for shipbuilding in Guipuzcoa, was even more categorical when, in the same period as Gondomar, he pointed out that the Spanish empire, because of its ‘dismemberment’, should have ‘more bridges over the seas’ than before. This royal oficer had no doubts that, as historical ‘experience’ demonstrated, ‘in order to keep and gain, which is what everything amounts to, it is necessary to own the sea.’ In the dialogues of his El Pasajero (1617), the author Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa insisted on this ‘dismemberment’ of the Spanish Monarchy by stating that ‘when the body of the monarchy is interpolated between the seas,’ only two ‘remedies’ were crucial to its ‘conservation’; ‘many vessels and people’ (Suárez de Figueroa, 1914: 48; Palacio Atard, 1949: 46). Similar evidence can be found in a varied and still widely unknown series of texts – essentially of a political and economic nature – written in the imperial periphery during this period by soldiers, merchants and clerics serving under the Spanish Habsburgs (Ramada Curto, 2009; Martínez Torres, 2014). Their evaluations, which invaded the secretarial ofices of the Councils of State, War, Indies and Portugal of the Spanish Monarchy, were the product of the providential mission of spreading Christ’s word across the world and of the hopeful atmosphere resulting from the initiative to reorganise and optimise – in a second expansionist wave distinct from that of the late ifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries – the trade routes and the resources obtained from the exploration of the territories of Africa and Asia. The climax of these projects took place during the last years of Philip II’s reign and the beginnings of that of his son, Philip III, and it was sealed by the conquests of the legendary kingdom of Monomotapa (the current states of Mozambique and Zimbabwe) and Angola in 1565 and 1575 respectively; the taking of the islands of Ceylon, of the kingdom of Kotte and of Colombo (1580, 15941612); the plans made to colonise China’s tianxia (15671588) and to intervene in the kingdoms of Pegu (Birmania), Cambodia and Champa (Vietnam) (15921599); or the recovery, in 1606, of the proitable commercial factory of Ternate, in the Molucca Islands, after the frustrated Portuguese succour attempts (1597-1599, 1601-1603 and 1606) sent from Goa and Malacca by the viceroys Francisco de Gama, Aires de Saldanha and Martim Alfonso de Castro. In most of these texts they petitioned, as had been done before by Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Miguel López de Legazpi and other well-known conquistadors of Spanish America and the Paciic, the recognition of a merced or gift which would further legitimise their prerogatives to exploit lands which were extraordinarily rich in silver, slaves that could be put to labour and be converted to Roman Catholicism and diverse fruits which could be used to feed ‘all those [conquistadors] who are lost, unoccupied and idle in Mexico, Peru and the Philippines’6 (Cabaton, 1914-1916: 1-102). Some of the conquest projects required disproportionate costs and were quixotic in their conception and, as such, unrealistic. Others, however, expressed with solvency and accuracy the ‘urgent necessity’ to make the eastern economic axis much more viable by putting together, as in a common cuerpo de fuerza or special forces group, the Portuguese and Spanish possessions in this vast geographical area. Thanks to these measures, the colonies of Asia and Africa which were also part of what Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 46 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 5 was known as the cuerpo místico or ‘mystical body’ of the Monarchy, would not be as isolated as they had been until this point. The commerce of minted silver, as well as that of mercury, black pepper and nutmeg would make of Philip III of Spain – and II of Portugal – a true ‘peaceful’ monarch, the ‘absolute lord’ of all the ‘Especiería’ with real and effective capacity to be able to halt the mercantile expansionist aims that the ‘rebellious’ Dutch had been declaring since the end of the sixteenth century. If the Catholic sovereign was really intent on enseñorear, or irmly govern, this neglected corner of the Spanish empire, he would have to pay a ‘minimum’ price which would include a pact with his eastern vassals, the recovery for the royal Hacienda of a series of taxes which had been previously granted by his ancestors to private collectors, or the creation of new obligations such as the avería of Manila. The beneits of some of these sums would be destined to the creation of an Armada of great mobility which would be in charge of the area’s defence. These ‘recommendations’ that the Crown was to follow in maritime and mercantile affairs were a relection of the labile and precarious political and inancial situation that the Iberian Peninsula and its overseas possessions were in between the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. There are several similar considerations about these important matters which should not be forgotten and which, as has already been mentioned at the beginning of this article, stemmed from the reading – even if supericial – of Giovanni Botero’s Della Ragion di Stato (1589). He further developed his ideas in other previous and later works of his such as Delle cause della grandeza e magniiciencia delle cità (1588) or Relazioni Universali (1595), which also provide a useful overview of some of the problems that the disperse and heterogeneous ‘world monarchy’ of the Spanish Habsburgs was facing in this period. In contrast with other theoreticians of the ‘Reason of State’, Botero was much more concerned with the ‘keeping’ of power than with the conquest of the same. It is precisely for this reason why the role he ascribes in such works to the ‘distant’ overseas fortresses and to the ‘conquerors-merchants’, as settlers and integral parts of the local governments, is so fundamental and decisive. It may be possible that Botero’s ideas, entwined with the neostoic inluence he had received from the Brabantine Justus Lipsius, ended up crystallising in the ideology of the count-duke of Olivares, Philip IV’s powerful favourite, through his conception, in 1621, of the famous Union of Arms (Elliott, 1991: 251-283; Pagden, 1997: 58-63, 140-149; Pagden, 2001: 419-438). Proof of this inluence is provided by the inventory of the nowadays extinct library of the high tower of the Alcázar of Madrid, which contained several editions of Botero’s main works as well as maps and plans of the known world. When it was catalogued, in 1620, the library possessed 2,700 printed books and 1,400 manuscripts, many of them inherited from Olivares’s fatherin-law, the Count of Monterrey, and selected with atten- tion and care by its librarian, the Sevillian poet Lucas de Alaejos. Other ministers, such as Luis de Haro, Olivares’s nephew, learned courtiers like the Marquis of Velada, Philip III’s tutor, writers such as the already mentioned Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa or Martín González de Cellórigo and able state and war secretaries like Martín de Aróztegui were also mesmerised by the relections of the Italian thinker. This was so to such an extent that it would not be exaggerated to afirm that a whole generation of lawyers and politicians serving the Spanish Crown read Botero with interest and delight through the Spanish translation undertaken by the royal chronicler and cosmographer Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. The renown achieved by Herrera’s La razón de Estado within the learned circles of the Spanish Court enhanced Giovanni Botero’s reputation even more. According to Apollinaire de Calderini, Philip II himself had given it to his son shortly before dying ‘as a useful work for the keeping of so many kingdoms and empires that he hopes to inherit’ (Iñurritegui, 1993: 121-150; Gil Pujol, 2004: 969-1022; Bouza, 2005: 25-165; Wrigth, 2001: 118). In the Catholic Spain of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, reading the works of Giovanni Botero presented an alternative – he distinguished, as is well-known, between ‘good and bad reason of State’ – to his compatriot, the ‘impious’ Niccolò Machiavelli. This has been pointed out, from different viewpoints and through different methods, by many notable historians of political thought.7 The readers of Botero’s works, which were also abundant in Portugal and its overseas colonies – Pedro Barbosa Homen, Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos and Fernando Peres de Sousa perhaps being the most prominent examples –, could also ind among their pages one famous and thought-provoking apothegm: ‘Him who is the lord of the seas will also be the lord of the land.’ The aforementioned Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, governor and captain-general of Angola between 1617 and 1621 and author of Do sitio de Lisboa (1608) and Arte militar (1612), reined this phrase even more in the irst of the works quoted by labelling as ‘extremely harmful’ those conquests ‘which cannot be united [by sea] with the state that creates them’ (Ramada Curto, 1988: 179). Similar ideas can be found in a series of Catholic political treatises which are still widely unknown and which emerged in some parts of the Spanish Monarchy as a direct and critical response to the truces that Spain signed with England (1604) and Holland (1609-1621). It is possible that in the draft of Minos [...], the Flemish Jesuit Nicolaus Bonaert became the irst to reply to Hugo Grotius [...], who had argued that Portugal and Spain did not have an exclusive right to trade in the possessions of the Estado da Índia in anticipation to the Portuguese Seraim de Freitas [...]. The right of discovery and conquest, as well as the granting of papal bulls endorsed by both governments in the treaties of Tordesillas (1494) and Saragossa (1529) did not bind the other powers by reason of the principle res inter Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 47 6 • José Antonio Martínez Torres alios acta. It is often stated that the papal bulls (ive in total) granted to the kings of Spain and Portugal were irrelevant in the seventeenth century, but the truth is that authors such as Pedro Calixto Ramírez (Analyticus Tractatus de Lege Regia, 1619) and Juan de Solórzano Pereira (Politicia Indiana, 1647), were still using them in some of their theoretical arguments. There is no doubt about the fact that the eastern and western Indies were, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, more than a mere ‘experimental laboratory’ for the missionary enterprises of Spain and Portugal, and were becoming increasingly integrated in the political, inancial and diplomatic systems of the period. This can be surmised from the words written by the Inca Garcilaso: ‘There is but one World, and although we say Old World and New World, this is because the latter has only been newly discovered for us and not because they are two; but only one’ (Garcilaso de la Vega, 1723: 33). Despite the providentialism enclosed in that statement for all of the Catholic king’s vassals, the truth is that upholding such heavy burden required ‘superhuman’ efforts. Could the Iberians overcome the cyclic ‘natural law’ of rise and fall which had befallen the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks and their admired Romans? (Elliott, 1991: 70) Few treatise writers of the period were suficiently equipped to answer this question. However, in a masterful combination of political theory and praxis, Giovanni Botero offered himself again as a referential oracle for attentive ears. Despite the importance of extending, planting and defending any possessions, the most important task that any ruler would face would be that of ‘keeping’ them, for ‘all things human grow and diminish, just like the moon, to which they are subjected.’ ‘The [ruler] who conquers and extends his possessions,’ Botero added, ‘only needs to ight against the outside causes of destruction; but the [ruler] who makes an effort to keep what he already has, must ight both outside and inside causes of destruction. Territories are acquired little by little, but they must all be kept at the same time.’ Politics and its raison d’être became, in Botero’s words, l’arte de contrapesare or the ‘art of compensating’ powers. The dificulties lay in how to incorporate new territories without transforming the original matrix, because the loss or decay of any of the parts would inevitably lead to the loss or decay of the whole (Pagden, 2001: 425-426). *** May this lengthy digression serve to illustrate, as well as it may be possible to do so, the existence of a – close – link between the ambition to control the seas and oceans of the world and the birth, rise and decline of the empires of Spain and Portugal. Such a link has always been reflected upon by the historiography, from the sixteenth century to our own days, when a series of researchers, sensitive to the methodological approaches of global history, have questioned certain Eurocentric axioms about Europe’s modernitydefendedbysomeworksdealingwithEuropean expansionwhichwerewritteninthemid-twentiethcentury mainlybyFrench,GermanandEnglishspeakinghistorians (Valladares, 2012: 57-117). It is not an easy task to articulateacoherentandsoliddiscourseaboutIberianinfluence in America, Africa and Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the study of the circulation (of knowledge, beliefs and goods) and the ‘connections’ developed by the ‘peoples without history’ (in an expression made famous by the anthropologist Eric R. Wolf). It is not easy because it requires certain skills, such as the knowledge of several languages or of different archives and libraries, both in and outside Europe, which are possessed only by a limited number of researchers. Some of these difficulties may explain why we still lack an up to date study of the secular rivalry between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans going beyond Leopold von Ranke’s still valid work. Reading and interpreting the rich and variedsourcesemanatingfromdifferentcontexts,produces a new style of history writing; one which is much more ‘polyphonic’ (Burke, 2010: 479-486; Remaud, Thireau, Schaub (eds.), 2012) than that which we can still read in some national histories and in which much more attention is paid to the details and the bigger picture. GLOBALISATION What could explain – if indeed an explanation can be found – that an indigenous Mexican nobleman called Domingo de Chimalpáhin noted in his diary the murder of Henry IV of France at the hands of the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac just a few months after the regicide had taken place in 1610? Moreover, why do some Japanese folding screens painted during the shogunate of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a period in which there was a lack of cultural receptiveness towards the main commercial powers of the West, show the battle of Lepanto as if it were an ancient war between Romans and Carthaginians? These very original questions were posed by Serge Gruzinski in his work Les quatre parties du monde (2004), which is as magniicently conceived and written as it is dificult to classify within the fragmented historiographical debate of our days. Among the inluences discernable in this intuitive and extraordinary work, we will ind concepts such as those of ‘ininite mobilisation’ formulated by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and ‘acculturation’, used by the Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán. Within the historical ield, it is forceful to mention the debts we owe to Marc Bloch’s project of ‘comparative history’ (and to his precursors, Charles-Victor Langlois and Henri Pirenne, and followers, Fernand Braudel, Pierre Chaunu, Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Frédéric Mauro and Immanuel Wallerstein) as well as with Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s ‘connected histories.’ A critical engagement with such methodological tools has served to prove and illustrate the development of náhuatl writing in the Viceroyalty of Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the acceptance of the nanban style folding screens among Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 48 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 7 the American elites, the achievements of the quarrel between the ‘old’ and the ‘modern’ in its colonial dimension, and even the ‘deep and terrible pit’ which unfortunately still separates the histories of Portugal and Spain which deal with this very same historical period. The Catholic Monarchy of the Iberians; the dynastic, political and ideological construction extant between 1580 and 1640, is the ‘observational example’ through which Serge Gruzinski argues that the culture of southern Europe exerted certain inluence in America, Africa and Asia through the circulation of people, knowledge and merchandise which started after the geographical discoveries of the ifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This ‘global experimental laboratory’ allows us to consider and uphold or reject any possible degrees of acculturation and intermixing. This ‘planetary conglomerate’, composed of territories as distant and diverse as Naples, Angola, Mexico, India, Macau and the Philippines and united under a unique sovereign from the Spanish House of Habsburg, can be studied from different perspectives. We could place the expansion of ‘world-systems’ as having a key and deinitional role in this crucial period. However, such a historical approach has cornered other matters which were no less decisive, as the existence of power networks which shared close links with the Church and which operated in all the known continents (Molho and Ramada Curto (editors), 2003; Crespo Solana (editor), 2010). From this point of view, it becomes evident that the Catholic Monarchy was a more or less homogeneous space in terms of religion. At the same time, it was an extremely useful example in which to assess the existing interactions between Christianity, Islam and what the Iberians of the time liked to call ‘idolatries’ (Gruzinski, 2001: 85-107; Schwartz, 2010). Part of Gruzinski’s originality in this work, in which he expands some of the points he had raised in his La pensée métisse (1999), lies in the use of abundant and suggestive sources, including pictorical ones. The power of images is as persuasive and convincing as that offered by spoken and written words. Using an image as a document is revealing mainly because of what it says and what it silences, as it goes further than a crude and simplistic political or mental representation (Burke, 2005). It is also a wonderful means of expression, not only in an iconographic sense, but also in an economic one, since commerce contributed to disseminate knowledge and technique by means of the buying and selling of books, maps, paintings, utensils, and luxurious objects (Chinese porcelains, Japanese folding screens, Aztec censers, water pitchers, bezoar stones, rhinoceros horns, corals, ostrich eggs, ivory spoons and salt-cellars and African rock crystal). In relation to this trafic of utensils and other objects, the ‘westernisation’ that we have alluded to was not limited to directing these pieces of Asian, American and African origin exclusively to a European market. In many cases these products would be mixed with other cultures and peoples with the aim of enhancing their price and prestige. This was the case of the famous bezoar stones, which were believed to cure intoxications, poisonings, the illness known as ‘melancholy’ and even leprosy. Many of them originated from Goa, but they were covered with thin golden iligree laces – an art at which the goldsmiths of Castile and Peru excelled. Concerning the dissemination of culture, we know that more than 8.000 books were sent from Spain to the West Indies between 1558 and the late seventeenth century, but this igure will probably need to be duplicated in the future after taking smuggling into account. During the more than ifty years in which Portugal and Spain remained united, the dissemination across the world of the core values of Catholic Europe was progressive and the efforts made in this sense by the religious orders cannot be denied (González Sánchez, 2001: 203; Sánchez-Molero, 2013). The irst European printing presses in Japan and the Philippines were established thanks to the efforts of the Jesuits in 1590 and 1593 respectively. Just like people, books travelled too. A copy of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum (1579) had reached China before Matteo Ricci decided to offer it to Emperor Wanli. People read while on the ships to ight boredom and the fear of long and dangerous voyages. They would read out loudly to entertain and inform those – the majority – who did not know how to read. They would take the most used and popular books to the most distant places. In 1583, for instance, the library of a Spaniard living in Manila contained 23 literary works among which some revealing titles could be found, such as Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia. However, not all the works being circulated in the world were as well-known then and now. While Portugal and its colonies remained united to the Spanish Monarchy, some ‘best-sellers’ (for the most part pastoral romances by instalments) were circulated of whose quality even the experts are unsure about. Works such as Jorge de Montemayor’s Los siete libros de la Diana (1559) were written for a wider audience and they found readers in places as distant and remote as the Brazilian city of São Salvador da Bahia or the small and underpopulated towns of the Philippines. In the same manner, Esopo’s Fábulas became accessible to certain Christianised elites of the time in Mexico and Japan because they were respectively translated into náhuatl and Japanese. Mexico received not only books, but also Japanese embassies coming from Manila which in turn travelled to Seville, Madrid and Rome. Similarly, it was also in Mexico where the putreied remains of 26 religious martyrs cruciied in Nagasaki on 5 February 1597 for their attempt to introduce Catholicism were received together with the paintings portraying this macabre event which had been made in the Portuguese colony of Macao (Takizawa, 2011; Oizumi and Gil, 2011). In the vast and yet small, Iberian colonial world of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not only knowledge was circulated, but also thousands of men and women from almost every corner of Europe who brought with them their experiences, fears and un- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 49 8 • José Antonio Martínez Torres certainties. If we add up the Spaniards and Portuguese who emigrated to the Indies, those who were expelled because of their Jewish, Muslim, crypto-Muslim or crypto-Jewish religion, and those who ended up being enslaved and ‘forced’ to recant their original faith by the Barbary and Turk pirates, we can safely state that there was a demographic loss of near one million people. This estimated but signiicant amount helps explain why the American, African and Asian continents were only barely penetrated further than the coastlines until well advanced the nineteenth century with the arrival of great British and French explorers. At the same time, it allows us to imagine a better context for the thought of famous arbitristas such as Sancho de Moncada and Pedro Fernández de Navarrete, who respectively wrote Restauración política de España (1618) and Conservación de Monarquías (1626). According to both authors, the main causes for the Crown of Castile’s poverty and depopulation were, ‘the expulsion of the Jews and Moriscos’ as well as the ‘new discoveries or colonies’. This prescriptive perception of the overseas territories as an onerous burden instead of a proit was not only present in the middle and lower echelons of Spanish society, but also in the highest political circles. Even the CountDuke of Olivares expressed himself in similar terms to those of Moncada and Navarrete in a meeting of the Council of State in 1631: ‘Big conquests (even if winning and conquering them and acquiring those possessions for ourselves) have left this Monarchy in such a miserable estate, that we can say with reason that it would be more powerful if it had less of that new world’. Even if, as John H. Elliott points out, these may be the exaggerated words of an overwhelmed and exhausted minister concerned about the dificult political and inancial situation that the Monarchy was in, they nevertheless seem to suggest a revealing change of mood in comparison to the happy times of Emperor Charles V (Elliott, 2002: 225-229; Elliott, 2007: 48-49). The dimensions of this Iberian-influenced world were also reflected in some relevant voyage accounts like those of the Florentine Francesco Carletti (Ragionamenti sopra le cose da lui vedute ne´suoi vaiggi si dell´Indie occidentali, e orientali come d´altri paesi, 1594-1602) or the Spaniard Pedro Ordóñez de Ceballos (Viaje del Mundo, 1614), which are full of exotic images – the product of first-hand knowledge of some of the most diverse cultures, fauna and flora of the time. The need to understand and explain these is prominently present in such works (Rubiés, 2007). They were not alone in this. The observations made by the Portuguese authors Domingo de Abreu e Brito (Sumario e descripçao do Reino de Angola, e do Descobrimento da Ilha de Loanda, 1592) and André Alvares de Almada (Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo, 1594) about the rites and customs of some cannibal tribes (mainly the Jagas and the Sobas) which inhabited the western coasts of Africa or the views provided by Luis del Mármol Carvajal (Descripción general de África, 1573-1599) and Diego de Haedo (Topografía e historia general de Argel, 1612) about the lands of ‘Prester John’ (in modern-day Ethiopia) and the mundane Ottoman Alger are so meticulous that it would not be mistaken to classify them as almost ethnographic. It is thanks to the attentive and privileged eyes of these European travellers, which we will not be able to explore further due to reasons of space – see the writings of Martín Ignacio de Loyola and Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco – that we know of the existence of Janissaries in Spanish America, Mamelucos in Brazil, and renegados, lançados or tagomaos in the coasts of Africa, agents which would end up playing a prominent and privileged role as cultural mediators. Unfortunately, the national histories of Spain and Portugal had nothing to say about these men until recent times (Ares Queija and Gruzinski, 1997; Loureiro y Gruzinski, 1999; Kaiser (editor), 2008). However, Iberian globalisation was not as perfect as a irst glance would allow us to think. There were rifts and cracks, places were the circulation of people, knowledge and goods was never possible. A visible mestizaje existed in the sacred images of the altarpieces, and in the chapels and vaults of the American churches and convents founded by the Jesuits and the Franciscans, but this mestizaje sometimes decreased or dissapeared entirely due to the requirements of the local elites, which demanded the application of European rules of ornamentation. The languages of the Catholic Monarchy – Latin, Castilian and Portuguese – were also vehicles of intellectual globalisation through the dissemination of Aristotelian political thought and even, to some extent, of certain messianic and millenarian hopes which were underlying in the Iberian enterprises of expansion and conquest before they surfaced under the imperial igure of Charles V and his successor, King Philip II. Even if permeable in face of certain indigenous terms, the structure of the language remained immutable and intact even years later, during the attempts of the Bourbons to reorganise the ‘kingdoms of the Indies’. Different spaces and times crossed and confronted each other. In Manila, for instance, the district of the Chinese merchants, or sanglays, was organised according to the Chinese calendar. At the same time, the indigenous chroniclers of New Spain insisted on establishing concordances between their own and the Gregorian Catholic calendars. Gruzinski thus distinguished between globalisation and westernisation, the ‘two heads of the Iberian eagle.’ It is not an easy task to deine what is global and what is local. Even more dificult is the attempt to determine the nature of the bonds linking both concepts. Throughout the sixteenth century, the relationship between what was considered local, the homeland, and what was considered global, the world, was in constant evolution. Just as if they were two parallel and inseparable processes, the redeinition of ‘local’ was accompanied by the emergence of ‘global’, which ended up being increasingly identiied with the space of the planet (Mignolo, 2003: 19-107). Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 50 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 9 CONNECTIONS Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s works are provocative and stimulating studies in which he explores the encounters which took place in the period going from the late ifteenth- to the mid-seventeenth centuries, between the Portuguese and other peoples of Turkey, Persia, India and south-eastern Asia. In his works, Subrahmanyam points out that connecting history means to unblock and re-establish the connections which existed in the past (that ‘strange country’ in David Lowenthal’s words) between the diverse cultures and societies composing the world, like a suspicious electrician who aims at repairing what other historians have previously and consciously disconnected. If the example of Habsburg America shows that there were indeed cultural contacts in both directions, Asia, especially India, the janela or window of the continent, also provides similar examples (Subrahmanyam, 1997: 289-315, 2007a: 34-53, 2007b: 1359-1385). In contrast with what has been assumed by a signiicant part of the traditional historiography, the intellectuals of Renaissance Europe were not the only ones to consider how best to conceive and write the History of the World paying attention to the cultures and spaces newly discovered. In Turkey, Persia, India, and other Muslim territories, in addition to a wide dissemination of historian Ibn Khaldun’s great works, there was also a signiicant tendency among historians and chroniclers to be extraordinarily preoccupied with being acquainted with the different forms of political organisation, religious customs, literature, cartography and lora and fauna of the main peoples of Europe. Such were the cases of Hudūd Al-´Alan, Mustafa ´Ali and Künh UlAkhbār. Even some historians, such as ´Tarith-i-Hindi Gabi, decided to insert into their accounts the story of the colonisation of America by the Spaniards through their knowledge of works such as that of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (Subrahmanyam and Alam, 2007c, 2011). From a strictly mercantile point of view, since the arrival of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama until its almost complete commercial monopolisation by the English, India became the most vigorous colony of Portuguese merchants outside of Portugal. In 1600 Ugolim (close to today’s Calcutta), 10% of the population were Portuguese merchants trading in black pepper, gemstones and silk and cotton fabrics. The main purpose of this diaspora was to make proitable business enterprises in this geographical area and expand them as much as possible towards China, Japan and northern Europe. This process was not dissimilar to that which took place a bit later in the Philippines, the Viceroyalties of Mexico, Peru and Brazil, and the region of Río de la Plata (Cross, 1978; Ventura, 2005; Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007). From the Persian Gulf to Malacca, and all the way through to Goa, there were active communities of Portuguese merchants who, taking advantage of the distance from the metropolis and of the governmental and administrative laxity of the beginnings of the territorial and spiritual conquest, managed to achieve the recognition and money that the homeland was denying to them. James Boyajian, who has studied the volume and composition of this commerce, states that between 1580 and 1640, close to 90% of the value of the shipments sent from the ports of India to Lisbon was in private hands. The Crown did not hinder this practice, for these interests secured the income of the Casa da Índia (Boyajian, 1993). The group of works composing Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s impeccable and erudite Impérios em concorrência: Histórias conectadas nos séculos XVI e XVII (2012), examines in detail some of the aforementioned subjects, rounding off some of his most relevant research works such as The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History (1993), The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (1997),8 and Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India (2001). Subrahmanyam’s suggestive but dificult way of making history has been inluenced by the intellectual imprint left by prominent Indian historians such as Tapan Raychaudhuri, Om Prakash, Dharma Kumar, Ashin Das Gupta and Ranajit Guha, unfortunately all of them virtually unknown to most part of the European historiography. Works devoted to the incorporation of the Crown of Portugal into the Spanish Monarchy emphasise that, some ifteen years before the union in 1581, the Portuguese inhabiting Asia were already gravitating towards a model of territorial expansion and conquest based on the Spanish experience in the viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru and the Philippine Isles. The extrapolation of the model set forward by the Spanish conquistadors who had followed Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and Miguel López de Legazpi, was not only taken to Asia, but also to the western and eastern coasts of Africa. During the controversial and little studied reign of Sebastian I (1554-1578), Portuguese Asia was divided into three different areas with three different governors. The irst area, a purely commercial one, was Malacca. The second area, located in India and Ceylon, was something of a mixed centre for military and mercantile operations. Finally, the third area, located in Mozambique, was still a largely unknown and attractive frontier ripe for exploration by impoverished idalgos, merchants and clerics. Exact igures for the number of Portuguese leaving the homeland are not reliable, but it has been estimated that some 100.000 to 150.000 were living in the overseas possessions, between Morocco and the Far East by the second half of the sixteenth century. In other words, approximately 8% of the peninsular population would have left to the territories on the right side of the Tordesillas demarcation if we accept that, for this same period, there were 1.2 million Portuguese in the peninsula and if we take the lowest values for the same igures (Enders, 1994: 29; Ferreira Rodrigues, 2008: 527). The territorial division of Portugal’s maritime empire, implemented in some Asian and African areas Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 51 10 • José Antonio Martínez Torres between the last third of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, came to an abrupt end after the loss of Ormus at the hands of an Anglo-Persian alliance. It had reached its peak with Francisco Barreto’s and Vasco Fernandes Homem’s attempts to conquest Mozambique between 1565 and 1573, and the Angolan enterprise launched by Paulo Dias de Novais in 1575, but not fully undertaken until Philip II of Spain became king of Portugal. The conquest of this African region, compared, as has been pointed out, to that undertaken by the Spaniards in Mexico, Peru and the Philippines, included the commercial linking of the western and eastern coasts by sailing the wide rivers Cuanza and Cuama (the old name of the Zambezi river). Once this was achieved a viceroy of the ‘royal blood’ would be appointed to rule over this supraterritory and keep close links with Brazil.9 If the Spanish Monarchy was able to annex this African supra-territory comprising the fertile island of Luanda, Angola and the modern states which form a natural corridor towards Mozambique, the Catholic monarch and his spent royal treasury would be able to beneit from the enterprise’s ‘grandeur’, ‘reputation’, and signiicant resources – mainly slaves and precious metals. It would also contribute to greatly reduce in half the amount of time employed in the naval communications between the ports of Goa and Lisbon.10 Francisco Barreto’s territorial expansion was made easier by the Portuguese ships which regularly sailed from Portugal to India following the route of the Cape of Good Hope. Thanks to natural or forced stops in this part of eastern Africa, the Portuguese ended up founding and planting coastal factories such as those in Matatana and Quelimane. Such settlements would be used as a platform from which to penetrate inland, where they expected to exploit some legendary silver mines which dated back to the mythical times of King Solomon. Francisco Barreto, Governor of India between 1555 and 1558, was appointed by Sebastian I in 1569 to conquer this vast territory with the support of three ships and one thousand soldiers coming from some of the noblest families of Portugal. After a failed exploratory attempt, Barreto decided to return to Lisbon, in order to better provision himself so that he could return to the heart of the kingdom of Monomotapa in 1571, when Catholic Europe had its eyes in the ight against its inidel enemies in the eastern Mediterranean. Following the course of the Zambezi River, they managed to plant the strongholds of Sena and Tete, although at the cost of a great number of casualties (including Francisco Barreto himself) and money (approximately 120.000 cruzados). This irst attempt to conquer the kingdom of Monomotapa was followed by that of Vasco Fernandes Homen in 1573, a captain who had accompanied Barreto since the dificult beginnings of the enterprise. After strenuous efforts to extend the Portuguese area of inluence to Manica, Fernandes Homem inally realised that the silver gathered up to that point was not worthy of the human and inancial efforts which had been made. However, the Portuguese dream of conquering a silver depos- it similar to that of the Spanish in Potosí did not fade until the irst third of the seventeenth century (Thornton, 2010: 145-168; Disney, 2010, II: 43-318). Paulo Dias de Novais’s expedition to Angola in 1575 can be considered as being more successful than those of Barreto and Fernandes Homen in the kingdom of Monomotapa. Although it is true that there was not much inland penetration achieved, several defensive settlements were founded along the rivers (Dande and Cuanza) and the coastline which would later be crucial in the development of the slave trade with Brazil. Many Portuguese soldiers died in combat, and the igures show that they had to ight hard against hostile cannibal tribes (Jagas), the dense vegetation of the territory and lethal tropical diseases (dengue and malaria). Between 1575 and 1594, 3,480 soldiers disembarked of which 3,180 perished (Martínez Torres, 2014). Such igures show that the ‘permanent state of war’ in the African continent was as much the norm as it was in the rest of the continents. In spite of this, the proitability of the Angolan settlement had more guarantees than those of the eastern African coast. Between 1575 and 1587, 4,000 slaves on average were embarked each year in the port of Luanda as labour for the engenhos of Brazil, a igure that would double itself in the following decades. The dependent ties established between Brazil and Angola became so strong that even during the Restauraçao of the Braganzas there were plans to create an Atlantic empire between Brazil and the Azores (Alencastro, 2000: 4476). The decade preceding the union of the Crown of Portugal to the Spanish Monarchy had started with an attempt to redeine and even suppress the frontiers existing between their respective overseas possessions. The Philippines, with regular contacts with the Viceroyalty of Mexico through the Manila Galleon became the hinge uniting a signiicant mercantile system exporting silver and importing mercury, cinnamon, clove, black pepper, nutmeg, silk fabrics, amber, ine china, Japanese folding screens, ivory and high quality and resistance woods (Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, 2000). It is unclear whether or not it was an operational base from which to launch a territorial expansion in Asia, but this does not diminish the usefulness of its institutional mechanisms, which had been irst rehearsed in Mexico with the example of the Spanish viceroys. Since the Philippines were conquered by Miguel López de Legazpi in 1564, several dozen encomiendas had been established in the towns of Luzon and Panay. By the end of 1591, there were already almost three hundred of them. The aim behind this ploy was to take over the proitable silk and spice commerce of the Portuguese. Of course, there was mistrust, but there were also important trading projects since the East-West cooperation started which were aimed at setting suspicions aside, as was the case of Duarte Gomes Solis and his Discursos sobre los comercios de las dos Indias (1622), dedicated to Philip IV. Driven by his ‘many years and long experience in businesses both general and of great consideration’, this Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 52 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 11 Portuguese Jew resident in Madrid decided to propose to the monarch of ‘the Spains’ a signiicant change of style in mercantile affairs. In short, the ‘restitution’ of the commerce of both Indies that Gomes Solis demanded from the sovereign meant granting permission to the Jews ‘dwelling in the lands of Turks, Moors and heretics, to have their juderías like they have them in Rome and other parts of Italy because, granting that, they will all go to live there and the commerce and yields of your Majesty will increase’. From his point of view, relations between the vassals of the same monarch, especially in such faraway places, had to be established independently of their religions. They had to be reduced to a mere ‘communication between merchants and merchants’. Such a declaration of intent did not prevent him from making many other proposals which were no less important. Among them, we can highlight the creation of a university for merchants in Madrid, the involvement of ‘businessmen’ in the councils and juntas advising the ministers, the ‘need’ to reach a consensus for exchange rates in international fairs, the creation of a mercantile company based on the example of Holland and England and that the silvers coins which were to serve as the basis of commerce and ordinary use of the kingdom ‘be alloyed like the alloy the placas in Flanders, because [in that way] it will be avoided that false copper coins shall enter or leave Spain, because this alloyed coin will be used for everything’. Duarte Gomes Solis was very clear on this point: only commerce was more powerful than arms, and the end of the Spanish Monarchy would come soon if the former was to be lost (Gomes Solis, 1943; Bourdon, 1955: 11-12). Although not widespread, during these very same years there were detailed and serious attempts at joining Spanish and Portuguese overseas efforts and territories. Anthony Sherley must be highlighted among the foreign proyectistas and informers at the service of the Spanish Monarchy because of his good knowledge of the diplomatic and mercantile relations existing between the main Asian territories, the eastern Indies and, more speciically, the Philippines and the Moluccas. These relations were important because of their geostrategic location – halfway between the Asian and American continents – and because of the enormous wealth that they could provide to the royal treasury through the continuous exploitation of its main products (black pepper, clove and nutmeg). They were crucial pieces for the Monarchy which could undermine the power of Dutch and English sailors and which could obtain for Philip IV what his father and grandfather never achieved; that is, the ‘lordship of the southern sea’. Since ‘the increase in contracting business increases power through the sea’, Sherley pointed out, ‘it seems that if your Majesty would increase and expand the contracts which he already has in the spice business, this very increase of relationships will multiply the contracts in those seas and, with them, the power in the seas’. These were the categorical remarks made by this English adventurer, who had been a pensioner of the Spanish Monarchy in Granada since 1610, in two complementary works of his: Peso de todo el Mundo (1622) and Discurso sobre el aumento de esta Monarquía (1625) (Sherley, 2010: 183-184). The well-informed procuradores for the Philippines Hernando de los Ríos Coronel and Juan Grau Monfalcón expressed similar arguments to those expounded by Sherley. In lengthy and detailed memorials sent respectively to the Council of Indies in 1607 and 1635, they urged Philip III and Philip IV to exploit in a more ‘rational’ way the ‘business of clove and black pepper’ in their neglected and defenceless possessions in Asia. The beneits of this trafic, will be conducted away from the traditional Portuguese routes in order to avoid the stops and the ‘many potential stealers’, would revert to the royal Hacienda and to the maintenance and defence of the factory at Ternate, ending for once and for all with the obvious ‘impoverishment’ suffered by Manila and the Philippines for their defence of the same and other Portuguese possessions in the area.11 Juan de Silva and Juan Niño de Távora, governors of the Philippines in 1609-1616 and 1626-1632 respectively, paid attention to the dissatisfaction expressed by some of their procuradores and factors, who were sensitive to the dificult situation in which Iberian Asia was. In a letter to Philip III written in 1612, Juan de Silva thought that ‘if the clove that is picked up – and which we hope will be picked up – is not put together by hands with their own fortune and sailed to Spain at their own expense and risk, as is the style that the Flemish use, it will not serve’, since ‘while it is taken out by private persons, your Majesty spends his royal treasury with no proit at all’.12 Shortly before his premature death still in ofice in 1632, Juan Niño de Távora advised Philip IV to go even further by uniting the jurisdictions of Manila and Macau. As Niño de Távora put it himself: ‘To unite these two strongholds under a same hand should not be dificult for, even if belonging to two different crowns, if they are not united together, they will not have strength. Portugal and Castile belong to your Majesty and so it is just that their arms should be united. If your Majesty’s arms were united, we would not only defend what we have already won, but we would also [move] forward every day’ (Pastells, 1925-34: VII, clxxxiv-clxxxv). The truth is that this impulse to ‘move forward’ in jurisdictional matters expressed by the Spanish governor of the Philippines, Juan Niño de Távora, or the closer collaboration in matters relating to Asian commerce and defence demanded by experienced merchants and proyectistas such as Duarte Gomes Solis, Anthony Sherley, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel and Juan Grau Monfalcón, were not exclusive to Spanish oficers. Just a few years earlier, in a letter to Governor Niño de Távora, the Portuguese admiral Diogo Lopes Lobo – an eminent naval authority of the times due to his frequent voyages in the Indian and Paciic oceans – had expressed his desire to ‘unite’ Manila, Malacca and Macau under a unique power, thus creating ‘a force comprising the district of the South Sea up to the strait of Malacca, for otherwise the power of the enemy will increase every Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 53 12 • José Antonio Martínez Torres day’ (Pastells, 1925-34, VII: clxxxi-clxxxii). The brief ‘recommendations’ made by André Coelho were written in a similar vein. Coelho, a Portuguese captain forged in the siege and defence of Ormus in 1622, proposed to Philip IV – soon after the Portuguese garrison fell – the creation in Manila of a strong amphibious leet of twenty galleys to defend the strategic Sunda Strait, thus uniting all the Portuguese defences with those of Spain which were, in his opinion, too separated.13 As it happened, all these politico-mercantile projects aimed at the union of Manila, Malacca and Macau would never materialise. According to Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, Juan Niño de Távora’s successor as governor (between 1635 and 1644), the union would have been signiicantly proitable in terms of the safeguarding of Spanish and Portuguese interests in this vast geographical area. From Hurtado de Corcuera’s point of view, had some of these proposals been considered by the oficers in the councils and juntas of experts in Madrid, ‘perhaps the city of Malacca would not have been lost’, and probably the Philippines, ‘through the city of Macau’, would have obtained ‘more convenience and commodities in the necessary agreements and commerce’ (Serrano Mangas, 1994: 162). It is undeniable that during this period, both in Spain and Portugal, a series of voices were rethinking the traditional constitutional position in which each of the territories composing the ‘composite’ or ‘aggregated monarchy’ of the Spanish Habsburgs was. They did so through an ideological element which presented its ‘own’ language, based in the ‘love’ of a father-shepherd towards its lock (Elliott, 1994; Fernández Albaladejo, 2009: 73-81; Gil Pujol, 2013, 69-108; Irigoyen-García, 2014). At the same time, in the overseas periphery, some people who were serving there essentially as soldiers and merchants, were proposing something in a similar vein, calling on for a greater ‘communication’ and understanding in defensive and mercantile matters. These writers wished that some of the overseas territories (the links between Angola and Brazil in the irst place, followed by the triangle composed by Macau, Manila and Goa) would become more active and dynamic than they had been prior to 1580. It was not the case here of creating something similar to an ‘Iberian system’ in the Atlantic and the Paciic. Confronting the loss of crucial strongholds such as Ormus (1622) in the Persian Gulf, Nagasaki (1639) in Japan, all the settlements in Ceylon (1638-1658), Malacca (1641) and part of India, including Cochin (1663), it made sense to reactivate and give new impulse to what already existed. CONCLUSIONS It is still common to ind in encyclopaedias and manuals of early modern universal history that the Portuguese expansion initiated with the conquests of the north-African cities of Ceuta and Tangier in 1415 and 1471 lost its original vigour in the second half of the sixteenth century, falling into a state of absolute ‘de- cline’ from which it would never recover. Thus in little more than a century, the Portuguese maritime empire – ‘one of the biggest enigmas in history’ in words of John Harold Plumb – founded by Manuel I and John III, of the House of Avis, among others, succumbed to the unrestrained attacks of Dutch, English and French sailors who, thanks to the improvements made by their respective governments in naval, commercial and defensive affairs, were able to conquer almost without opposition or resistance the rich, distant and neglected Portuguese possessions in Asia and Africa. The union of Portugal and its overseas colonies to the ‘composite monarchy’ of the Spanish Habsburg between 1581 and 1640 made this line of argument even harsher while providing certain legitimacy to the Braganza rebels who raised against the ‘tyranny’ and ‘bad government’ of Philip IV and his valido, the Count-Duke of Olivares. The ritual assassination of Miguel de Vasconcelos, the hated secretary of State for the Council of Portugal in the royal palace of Lisbon on 1 December 1640 – with its similarities to the ‘defenestrations of Prague’ over twenty years earlier in the kingdom of Bohemia – marked the end of the ‘Babylonian captivity’ suffered by the Portuguese at the hands of the ‘proud’ Castilians for more than half a century. This biased, essentialist and one-sided reading of events, which stems partially from the contradictory writings of some of the most relevant chroniclers of the period, has undoubtedly inluenced our views about this fundamental historical period. Fortunately, a series of new studies – such as those by Serge Gruzinski and Sanjay Subrahmanyam mentioned in this text – are now questioning this historiographical paradigm through a lively debate and the taking of positions which are far from Eurocentric. During the sixty years in which the Spanish and the Portuguese were ruled by the same king, and despite the fact that the voices against the dynastic and political ‘union’ of the two peoples were always in the majority, they tried their utmost to expand their common culture and defend their overseas possessions from the systematic attacks of the sailors of Protestant Europe. This is one of the most revealing conclusions reached in both studies. The Spanish monarch’s respect for the ‘internal constitution’ of Portugal which he had sworn before the three estates in the Cortes of Tomar (1581) was ever-present. The pact only broke down when it became obvious that Castile, on its own, could not support the high costs of ‘keeping’ a ‘world monarchy’ (Cardim, 2014). Similarly, the expansionist decline of the Portuguese empire in Asia and Africa, traditionally set in the second half of the sixteenth century, has now been qualiied by these works, as it did not take place in those dates but later, after the disaster of Ormus in 1622. The premature death of King Sebastian I (who had launched the second conqueror wave that we have alluded to) and of a signiicant part of the Portuguese elite in the battle of al-Qasral-Kabir (1578), was no doubt a ‘national trauma’ for Portugal similar to that experienced by Spain in 1588 Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 54 ‘There is but one world’: Globalisation and connections in the overseas territories of the Spanish Habsburgs (1581-1640) • 13 with the defeat of the ‘Invincible’ Armada in English waters, but it is also a lexible ‘point of departure’ rather than ‘arrival’ from which to demonstrate that after Philip II inherited the Portuguese Crown, there was a signiicant circulation of people, knowledge and goods at a global level which had not been previously considered by the historiography leaving aside some exceptional examples (Lach, 1971, 9 vols; Russell-Wood, 1998; Thornton, 2012). Although these comparisons may be seen as anachronistic, the very signiicant role played by the Iberians in this process is undeniable. Anthony Pagden is right to highlight that no other empire ever relected so much about itself as the Spanish empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Pagden, 2001: 419-420). The union in 1581 of the Crown of Portugal and its overseas territories to the Spanish Monarchy – which took place in a neglected historical context of ‘conidence crisis’ and ‘introspection’ in the peninsula – provides us with a frame from which to study and analyse, from the perspective of political and cultural history, the reach of this ‘union’ from all possible angles. The union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, understood by some people in the period under the Boterian logics of ‘keeping’ united what had been previously ‘disunited’ or even under the perspective of a necessary ‘communication’ between the different territories composing the ‘mystical body’ of the monarchy, could make a difference in the metamorphosis of what was considered as an old, dispersed and poorly defended maritime empire into a more modern, compact and terrestrial one, which would be able to counteract Dutch and English power, omnipresent in all the seas and oceans of the world since the late sixteenth century. It is true that this politico-mercantile discourse only represents a minority, but this is a minority which allows us to shift the focus when it comes to the thorny matter of Iberian ‘decadence’ and ‘modernity’ by paying attention to the Hispanic-Portuguese overseas possessions. It may still be early to incorporate these indings to the ‘normality’ of encyclopaedias and early modern universal history textbooks, but there is no doubt about the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese sources, read and evaluated using different methods and using their elements of singularity to question traditional historical interpretations, can still provide us with numerous surprises. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article has been done under the research projects with reference numbers RYC-2011-08053, HAR 201125907, HAR 2012-37560-C02-01. I am indebted to the conversations I have had with my friends and colleagues, Professors Carlos Martínez Shaw and José María Iñurritegui Rodríguez. I would also like to thank the contributions made by Mr Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer, from the University of Bristol and Professor David Martín Marcos, my colleague at UNED. I am grateful, too, to Professors Sir John H. Elliott, Bernard Vincent, Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, Antonio-Miguel Bernal, Xavier Gil Pujol, Marina Alfonso Mola, Pedro Cardim, Ana Crespo Solana, Julio A. Pardos, Rafael Valladares, James S. Amelang, Manuel Herrero Sánchez and José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, who have always shown themselves attentive towards the development of my research. I take full responsibility for any errors or omissions which may appear in the text. NOTES 1. These pages aim to be, by means of a critical and constructive dialogue, an introduction and contextualisation of the works of Serge Gruzinski (Les quatre parties du monde. Histoire d´une mondialisation, Paris, Éditions La Martinière, 2004; Spanish translation by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010) and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Impérios em Concorrência. Histórias conectadas nos séculos XVI e XVII, Lisbon, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2012) for a specialised readership with an interest in the study and analysis of the overseas possessions of Spain and Portugal between 1581 and 1640. 2. Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), R/14.034, “Reports by Pedro de Baeza”: 1-17, esp: 6-7 (Madrid, 5 April 1608): 1-11, esp: 3-6 (Madrid, 15 January 1609). 3. Archivo Histórico Nacional de España (AHNE), Estado, Libro 89 D, “Letter from Conrad Rott to his Majesty Philip III. Lisbon, 4 August 1600”, folios 363-366. 4. Ibid. 5. Biblioteca del Palacio de Ajuda (BPA), 51-VIII-20, folio 5. An account of 1613 commenting on the Dutch threat in Mina and Pinda (includes a map). 6. BNE, R/14.034, “Reports by Pedro de Baeza”: 1-7 (Madrid, 1 October de 1607): 1-10, esp: 5-10 (Madrid, 14 January 1608): 1-16, esp: 1-12 (Madrid, 5 April 1608): 1-11, esp: 3-6 (Madrid, 15 January 1609). Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Filipinas, 1, N. 135, “Consultas and other documents relating to the keeping of the forces at Ternate and to the circulation of clove” (Seville, 4 July 1611). 7. Friedrich Meinecke, Federico Chabod, Luigi Firpo, José Antonio Maravall, Quentin Skinner, Anthony Pagden, Richard Tuck, Maurizio Viroli and Romain Descendre. 8. There is a Spanish edition, published in 1998 by Crítica. 9. Archivo Histórico Ultramarino de Portugal (AHUP), Mozambique, Caja 1, Documento 10.951, folios 59 y 63 (The proposal can be dated in 1599). 10. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP), Códice 294, folios 2, 5-14, 16. 11. AGI, Patronato, 47, R. 24, “Report by Hernando de los Ríos Coronel about the negotiations regarding clove” and “Account of the things touching Maluco” (Manila, 30 March 1607). BNE, Mss. 8.990: “Reasoning by [Juan Grau Monfalcón about] the convenience of taking good care in the preservation [of the city of Manila and Philippine Isles]”, 1635 12. Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España (CODOIN), volume LII: 13. 13. BNP, Códice 636. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 55 14 • José Antonio Martínez Torres REFERENCES Alencastro, Luis Felipe de (2000) O Trato dos Viventes. Formação do Brasil no Atlântico sul. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras. Alexandrowicz, Charles H. (1998) “Freitas versus Grocio”. In Theories of Empire, 1450-1800, edited by Armitage, D., Ashgate-Variorum, London: 239-259. Alfonso Mola, Marina and Martínez Shaw, Carlos (2000) El Galeón de Manila. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Madrid. Alvares de Almada, André (1964) [1594] Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde. Editorial LIAM, Lisbon. Ares Queija, Berta and Gruzinski, Serge (eds.), (1997) Entre dos mundos. Fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores. Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos del CSIC, Seville. 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Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e005. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.005 57 3(1) June 2014, e006 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic Regina Grafe Chair in Early Modern History, Dept of History and Civilisation, European University Institute, Via Boccaccio 121, 50133 Firenze, Italia Submitted: 20 April 2014. Accepted: 15 May 2014 ABSTRACT: Studies of commercial, cultural and political networks in the Atlantic tend to juxtapose the soft ties of networks to the hard rules of imperial law and trade regulation. The implicit or explicit assumption has been that networks in the Spanish Atlantic served primarily as an antidote to the organisation of the empire and broke out of its spatial boundaries. Networks stood for luidity, as opposed to the static structures of state and church. This article argues in contrast that networks not only were institutions, but that the empire’s institutions were (mostly) networks. It uses the case of the English Atlantic networks operating in northern Spain in the irst half of the seventeenth century to show how our interpretation of the interactions between merchant networks and political institutions is transformed when we break up the supposed dichotomy between the two. KEYWORDS: Networks; formal and informal institutions; 17th century; English merchants; Basque Country; consulados Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Grafe, Regina(2014). “On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e006. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/ chdj.2014.006 RESUMEN: Sobre la naturaleza espacial de las instituciones y la naturaleza institucional de las redes personales en el Atlántico Español.- Los estudios de las redes comerciales, culturales y políticas en el Atlántico suelen contrastar los lazos débiles de las redes con las reglas irmes de las leyes y regulaciones de comercio imperiales. Se presume implícita o explícitamente que en el ámbito del Atlántico español las redes funcionaron fundamentalmente como antídoto de la organización del imperio trascendiendo sus limitaciones espaciales. Las redes se asocian con luidez, opuestas a las estructuras estáticas del estado y de la iglesia. En este artículo sugerimos que las redes no solamente eran instituciones, sino también que las instituciones imperiales se deberían considerar como redes. Con el objetivo de demostrar cómo nuestras interpretaciones de las interacciones entre redes mercantiles e instituciones cambian si rompemos con la idea de una dicotomía entre las dos se analiza el caso de las redes atlánticas inglesas que se establecieron en el norte de España en la primera mitad del siglo XVII. PALABRAS CLAVE: redes; instituciones formales e informales; siglo XVII; mercaderes ingleses; País Vasco; consulados Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. I The rise of Atlantic history and that of a distinct literature that could be described as the history of networks coincide broadly in time from the late 1990s onwards. The former was in its origin a thoroughly Anglo American enterprise and at least in part rightly criticised as such (Hancock, 1995; Greene and Morgan, 2009; Bailyn, 2005; Games, 2008). Cynical observers argued from its inception that Atlantic History especially as practiced in North American academia was a rear guard ight of historians of the nation state against the rise of global, world and transnational history. At a time when many history departments looked to diversify their traditionally heavily US focused faculties, Atlantic History was charged with being just one way, in which North- 59 2 • Regina Grafe Americanists could reinvent themselves and ind a new raison d’être. To many scholars’ surprise, Atlantic history turned out to be too dynamic to remain in its original habitat. David Armitage’s widening of the concept into cis-Atlantic, trans-Atlantic and circum-Atlantic Histories might have struck some historians as one concept too many. Yet, italsobeautifullyillustratedthatoncehistorianshadstarted to think outside traditional national boxes, there was no turning back. Cis-Altantic crossings, comparisons either side of the trans-Atlantic space and the history of circumAtlantic peoples in the Americas, Africa and Europe became the subjects of studies that now also included Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch speakers. Even more recently historians have begun to give (over-)due attention to Africans in the Atlantic as actors and not just as nameless objects of the middle passage (Armitage, 2002). The Atlantic was an open system that contained, but also broke out of national,imperialand commoditybased subsystems (Pietschmann, 2002). If Atlantic history was an attempt to save US and British national historians from the challenges of globalisation it was a resounding failure. The Genie of Clio has refused to go back into the bottle of the reified nation state of old, no matter how many historians trained in the old ways wish it would. (Bell, 2013). The historiography on networks has had a more variegated lineage but most strands of it are intimately linked to the history of the Atlantic. Mercantile networks have had pride of place in studies of trans-Atlantic connections long before the label Atlantic history was applied (Liss, 1983; Fernández Pérez, 1997; Lamikiz, 2010; Ewert andSelzer,2001).WhileintheAnglophonehistoriography studies of diasporas, i.e. religious, linguistic and/or ethnic minorities, abound in Atlantic history, in the Iberian case those have become prominent only more recently (Trivellato, 2009; Zahedieh, 2010). Obviously the official requirement for participation in the carrera de Indias of being a natural of the kingdom of the Spains meant that traders from elsewhere had to integrate into the Seville/Cadiz networks (Álvarez Nogal, 2011). Closed networks based on internal cohesion of a religious or linguistic or proto national minority, say the Flemish or Dutch traders at Seville, were always limited by their having to work hand in hand with merchants of the carrera, or at least with a native testaferro. (Crespo Solana, 2011). At the same time, the role played by Basque, Navarrese and later Catalan mercantile networks of common provenance has long been acknowledged (Priotti, 1996). The outsized role of alignments along lines of peninsular origins in Mexico has been stressed yet again by recent studies of the eighteenthcentury (Stein and Stein, 2009; 2000; 2003). At the same time, who was a vecino (citizens) or a natural (vassals of the Spanish kings) was only in exceptional cases a matter of legal norms. Most of the time, acting like a vecino constituted sufficient proof to become a vecino in the eyes of local authorities, which were the ones that couldconfirmthestatus(Herzog,2003).Thelinesbetween foreigners and locals were therefore also more fluid than often assumed complicating the notion of networks of common provenance further. Meanwhile, research on religious minority networks of converso merchants usually described as the “Portuguese nation” has shed even more light on the hybridity of Iberian societies in the Peninsula, the Americas and Africa (Mark and Silva Horta, 2011; Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007).1 The study of Atlantic networks has also transformed how historians understand cultural exchange, the circulation of knowledge, migration and, in particular, political governance in the Hispanic World. Starting from a critique of traditional models of the absolutist state, historians have begun to conceive of monarchical government in early modern Europe as a persistent negotiation between corporate powers, elite networks and the monarch and his councils. Spain’s kings ruled through networks of royal administrators and contacts in urban, ecclesiastical and corporate bodies.2 The “King’s Men” were the faces of a polity that had yet to become a fully sovereign state. Their immersion in local society turned them into the point of contact between powerful elites in historic territories and Viceroyalties in the Americas and Europe on the one hand, and the Monarchy on the other. The role of these individuals and their personal networks went far beyond the purely administrative. They advanced funds to implement royal policies from naval construction to military levies, and especially the collection of taxes (Harding and Solbes Ferri, 2012; Torres Sánchez, 2002). They supplied troops and negotiated peace. Their rewards came in the form of social advancement as well as pecuniary beneits, asientos and other commercial privileges, and beneicial marriage alliances (Janssens and Yun Casalilla, 2005; Drelichman and Voth, 2014). Their activities raise attention to the less than monolithic nature of the early modern polity and question established interpretations of the relationship between networks and the state in the Spanish Atlantic. Political networks typically relied on patronage and cooperation rather than command. But they were as much part of the state as the councils of the kings. In the following section this paper will offer some thoughts about the relationship between networks and institutions in the Spanish Atlantic. In Section three it introduces a case study, the transformation of institutions and networks in the northern Spanish Atlantic trade. The radical change in orientation and organisation of the northern wool trade between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could indeed be interpreted in a traditional juxtaposition of closed, monopoly based, mercantilist trade organisation in the sixteenth century and more open networks in the seventeenth. However, section four suggests a new interpretation that breaks down the supposed antagonism between networks and institutions. Section ive concludes. II In historiography networks are often an answer to the critique of an earlier legalistic institutional history. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 60 On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic • 3 The common thread in studies of commercial, cultural and political networks in the Atlantic is that they tend to juxtapose the soft ties of networks to the hard rules of imperial law and trade regulation. The implicit or explicit assumption has thus been that networks in the Spanish Atlantic served primarily as an antidote to the organisation of empire. Networks stood for luidity, as opposed to the static structures of state and church. They were vertically integrated, not hierarchical. Merchants collaborated instead of establishing hegemony. They had urban roots and resisted being drawn into territorial state and empire building. They broke open the strict spatial boundaries between incipient nations and across empires. They obstructed, undermined and perverted the attempts of states to regulate and control every aspect of the economy. As the human face of commerce they destabilised strict trade regulations and the power of the mercantilist bureaucrats in the Atlantic world. In a recent description of the role of the Portuguese nation in Atlantic trade Studnicki-Gizbert sums up this view . “The intimate scale, the number and the geographical spread of houses that composed a mercantile nation precluded the kind of institutionalized and hierarchical coordination characteristic of states and empires” (Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007: 9). And he goes on to explain that Trade in the early sixteenth-century was deeply multinational in character, a fact that points to the persistence of medieval commercial structures organized around cities rather than nation-states or empires. Whereas the most visible apparatus of sixteenth-century colonial expansion - the institutions of conquest, administration, and conversion - was ultimately organized by the Castilian or Portuguese Crown, enterprise were based in, and articulated around, urban centers (Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007: 27). Historians have tended to interpret Atlantic networks as the lexible left-overs of late medieval urban trading traditions that skilfully took advantages of the inconsistencies of absolutist drive to regulate every facet of economic and social life. Networks or nations were thus one important reason why “[u]ltimately it proved impossible for the Spanish state to completely harness the roving dynamism of an Atlantic economy in full economic expansion” (Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007: 30). Networks, we are told, were able to take advantage of the early form of capitalism that was well-established at the close of the Middle Ages and which, we are supposed to conclude, was orthogonal to the state-constrained commercial structure of the carrera. This widely echoed narrative relies on a set of assumptions that are rarely examined in any detail. First, it harks back to a notion of the Spanish Empire as a centralising, powerful, absolutist, imperial machine at least in ambition. Yet, this has long been exposed as deeply problematic. The political organisation of las Españas – contemporaries wisely employed the plural until deep into the 18th century - was that of a polycentric state (Grafe, 2012). Its most salient characteristic was the lat hierarchies of location of power, visible in the processes negotiation between several centres and across the spatial extension of the Spains (Grafe, 2012). The notion that colonial authorities in Oruro executed what the Audiencia in Potosi asked them to do, which in turn followed the command of a viceroy in Lima, who received his instructions from the monarch and Councils in Madrid is clearly erroneous. Oficials at all levels and in all branches of the administration were involved in initiating, discussing, assessing and occasionally refusing to apply what we think of formally as royal or viceregal decrees. Even leading bureaucrats with privileged direct access to the inner circles of the polity were not just the willing executioners of the monarch’s wishes. GaschTomas’ excellent research on the bargaining about the regulation of the silk trade is exemplary in this context. Institutions in three of the centres of the polycentric reigns, Manila, Mexico and Seville negotiated over the direction of lows of Chinese, Mexican and European silks in the Atlantic and Paciic. Mexican viceroys were initially against an expansion of the Paciic trade. Yet, as soon as the Manila trade had become important for the Mexican merchant community, the viceroys of New Spain became the staunchest allies of the local consulado, eloquently defending Paciic trade against Seville’s attempts to restrict it, and the royal hacienda’s efforts to tax it (Gasch-Tomas, 2012: 231-239). In these conlicts the king and his councils were the ultimate arbiter between local elites rather than the source of most of the legislation. This was true as much in the peninsula as in the Americas (Irigoin and Grafe, 2008). Where the exercise of power relied on decentralised networks as the administrators of the Empire, the location of power was dispersed. Legislation, commercial or otherwise, could effectively be initiated in any institution and at every level of the administration. It was often informed by what was deemed necessary in the local context, and where there was resistance, the King’s Men, like the viceroy of Mexico, often quite happily impeded the application of locally unacceptable decrees. On closer examination it turns out that StudnickiGizbert’s “institutions of conquest, administration and conversion” should more correctly be described as private networked enterprises of conquest with hardly any involvement of the Monarchy, webs of administrators with surprising degrees of local and regional power of decision-making, and a church that was as much a competitor for power, inluence and tax incomes as an ally of the monarchy. The Spanish Empire has often been described as a paper tiger that could not enforce the decrees that lowed to every corner of the Hispanic reigns precisely because networks of foreign or local merchants, unruly administrators or corrupt tax farmers undermined its urge to control. What the recent literature on political networks shows, however, is that it was never meant to be a forceful centralised structure. Instead Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 61 4 • Regina Grafe it was a complex administrative web of shared sovereignties and networks of power and inluence that ultimately relied on a process of negotiation in the local context. Second, the polycentric nature of the polity not only contradicted any notion of a centralised, imperial administrative structure but also made sure that there was never much room for mercantilism in early modern Spain (Grafe, 2014). The Spanish commercial system is still regularly described as a quasi “monopoly” by historians. The loose use of the term “monopoly” in this context is at least imprecise, at worst misleading. To take the most famous example, the leet system of the Carrera de Indias mirrored the traditional organisation of maritime long-distance trade with a staple port (Seville/Cadiz), a convoy system for protection (lotas and galeones) and a privileged position for merchants of the guild (the consulado) who were licenced to participate. However it maintained internal competition between guild members in stark contrast to the English or Dutch, which created proper monopolies through the EIC and VOC. The licensing system was more effective in guaranteeing a functioning market than early historians of the carrera imagined.3 Jeremy Baskes uses the eventual abolition of the system of leets and staple ports in the late eighteenth century as a way to assess their role. He argues that merchants’ failing attempts to insure the Spanish American trades after the end of convoys and the proclamation of comercio libre in 1778 illustrate that the rationale for convoying and therefore for a staple port had been sound (Baskes, 2013). Insurance could cover maritime risk, i.e shipwrecks or even piracy, equally or better than convoys had done. Yet, the uncertainty of market conditions in the Atlantic resulting from poor information, shallow markets and wartime privateering threatened to cripple commercial activity in the absence of convoys. Indeed, when compulsory convoys were abolished merchants desperately tried to put together their own. Baskes has concluded that even in the Bourbon period there is little evidence that merchants either in Cadiz or in Mexico enjoyed monopoly rents or acted as a cartel. Others have made a similar argument about the organisation of the carrera in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Álvarez Nogal, 2011). It was not the outcome of the regulatory mania of a mercantilist state but an attempt to enable trade and maintain competitive structures in the face of almost unsurmountable degrees of uncertainty. Regulation was meant to create a market in a condition of market failure not to suppress it. What emerges from the recent literature on political and commercial networks in the Spanish Atlantic is thus a polity that seems less rigid in its institutional set-up and a regulation of trade that was more responsive to commercial realities than often assumed. In this light the juxtaposition of a supposedly state-sponsored, mercantilist and closed trading system and governance with the lexibility of networks of provenance that ran circles around the cumbersome oficial system increasingly looks like a smokescreen. But how can we understand the relationship between commercial and political institutions on the one hand and networks on the other without relying on their supposed antagonism? A look across the disciplinary divide towards the social sciences can help to dissolve the smokescreen. From an economist’s perspective all types of associations including nations and other merchant networks were institutions. There are important nuances between the “strength of weak ties” to use Granovetter’s path breaking description of networks and that of formalised institutions (Granovetter, 1982). Yet, the strict distinction between institutions (state, church, town, consulado) and networks (of family, religious or provenance ties) makes little sense from a social scientist’s perspective. The difference between mercantile networks and the institutions that for example underpinned the carrera de Indias is simply that the former were overwhelmingly informal and the latter formal (Greif, 2005). Family bounds, nations, diasporas, guilds, consulados, mercantile courts were all institutional responses to what is known as the “fundamental problems of exchange”. Participants in exchange had to be willing to commit ex-ante to a business deal and to be willing to comply with the deal ex-post (Greif, 2000). This created on the one hand a credibility problem. How could a merchant in Lima convince a correspondent in Seville or Cadiz that he was going to sell a shipment of goods at the best possible price and remit the entire gain when the merchant in the peninsula had little chance to monitor his correspondent’s dealings? On the other hand, this generated a compliance issue. How could the Lima merchant be sure that the Cadiz trader would pay for the wares he send? Trust was built precisely around informal and formal institutions. The importance of the work of Greif and others is that they have shown the strength and weaknesses of different forms of organisation. Family members were usually trusted more willingly but limited the size of the network. They also often turned out to be not the most able correspondents. Networks based on provenance or socio-religious minority status offered more diversity in terms of points of contact. But they left merchants with serious issues of monitoring and enforcement. Often referred to as “multilateral coalitions” in the economics literature they increased the incentive for members of the network to act in good faith because members were in constant contact by letter. Information about a cheating corresponding might thus travel fast in the entire network. In other words, misbehaviour would be sanctioned not only by the betrayed trading partner but presumably the dishonest trader would be effectively frozen out of the entire network. Nations and other informal networks were, however, by far not a perfect way of monitoring good behaviour and, if necessary, punishing dishonest conduct. The slow movement of information in early modern trans-Atlantic trade created such high degrees of market uncertainty, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 62 On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic • 5 as Baskes has suggested, that conlict between traders either side of the Atlantic more often than not resulted from the grey zones of trade. While a Mexican merchant might be convinced a correspondent had taken a cut off the sale of a shipment of dyestuffs, the Seville merchant might have genuinely found himself trying to sell in a glutted market. Commercial fraud was rarely a clear cut story complicating the building of trust. Members of the informal trans-Atlantic networks that kept the Spanish trade going therefore relied on the formal institutions of the mercantile courts of the consulados or those of the temporal and even ecclesiastical courts to protect their property rights. Family and other networks were most of the time not an alternative to the reliance on formal courts but a complement. Greif showed that informal networks such as the medieval Mediterranean Magribi traders could create self-sustaining informal institutions that could effectively govern their group’s trade (Greif, 1988). However, it is also clear now that even these Jewish diasporas made use of Muslim courts in certain circumstances (Goldberg, 2012). To put it another way: informal and formal institutions all provided commitment and enforcement devices that helped to overcome the fundamental problems of trading across long distances. But informal institutions such as networks rarely replaced formal institutions such as courts or merchant guilds altogether. Nor did formal institutions ever fully substitute for informal ones. Instead merchants combined them in complex and often shifting ways (Gelderblom and Grafe, 2010). Flexibility was not a consequence of the luidity of (informal) networks that could counter the rigid and hierarchical structures of the state’s (formal) mercantilist institutions. Instead the complementarity between different forms of institutional structures allowed traders to deal more effectively with the high degrees of uncertainty they faced. III Thinking about formal and informal institutions, networks, merchant guilds and imperial institutions not as antagonistic forms of social, economic, and political organisation implies a methodological challenge to the writing of Atlantic history. If one gives up the juxtaposition of hard rules and soft ties that seems ill-suited for the early modern Spains, one ought to think about actors in overlapping and interacting political and commercial networks rather than in separate political and economic spheres. There will be a need to remain open-minded with regard to the kinds of political and economic actors that one might encounter rather than start say from a particular nation of merchants, as many in economic history have done so far. This section uses a small example as an illustration of what this might mean. The chosen case is the networks of merchants that connected the northern Spanish Cantabrian Coast – Asturias, the cuatro villas de la mar de Castilla, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa - with the Americas between the late 16th and the irst half of the 17th centuries. Their spatial dimension reached from the Spanish Peninsula to the Americas, North and South, and north-western Europe, initially Flanders and northern France, later England. The cast in this play was on the one hand the well-known set of Hispanic institutions active in regulating and organising trans-Atlantic and European long distance trade. There were the urban institutions of the major ports such as Bilbao, Santander, or San Sebastián/Donosti. The territorial political representations, such as the Juntas of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, as well as the king’s representatives, the corregidores, played a crucial role. So did the merchant guilds active in northern Spain, the Consulados of Burgos and Bilbao. On the other hand, there were the foreign nations from Flanders, Nantes, and England active in northern Spain as well as networks of northern Spanish traders active in Seville, Flanders and Nantes. More surprisingly, as we will see, these also interacted with networks of English and north American merchants and isherman as well as converso networks. Northern Spanish commercial networks have been researched mostly with regard to their indirect participation in the cycle of activity in the Spanish Americas. In terms of goods trade in the sixteenth century they overwhelmingly engaged in an exchange of wool for textiles with Flanders and northern France as well as in the import of food staples into the agriculturally poor northern regions of Spain. Yet, through the Castilian fairs at Medina del Campo, Medina de Rioseco and Villalón they were intimately linked to the fortunes of the Americas trades. Furthermore, especially in the 16th century trade in the north of Castile and the Cantabrian Coast mirrored in terms of its formal and informal institutions those in the better known carrera. A process of institutional learning between different towns meant that irst Bilbao (1511), and a few decades later Seville (1543) followed the example of Burgos (1494) in establishing a merchant guild and commercial court known as Consulado y Casa de Contratación. While Seville imitated the Burgos and Bilbao consulados with regard to commercial arbitration, regulation and the treatment of foreign nations, Bilbao in 1572 adopted a set of ordinances to govern maritime insurance that replicated those developed by Seville, which had more experience in the matter (Grafe, 2005). Both northern Castilian and Basque merchants equally used a structure of mandatory membership in the nación in the most important host towns abroad, irst Bruges then Antwerp, just as merchants in Lima and Mexico were joined in consulados.4 French, Flemish and English traders in northern Spain in turn had formal representations, consuls and agreements in Burgos and Bilbao. The main trades in wool and cloth were organised in protective convoys, inspirations for the lotas and galeones, and goods were traded at the Castilian fairs, foretelling those at Portobello. Beyond the obvious parallels in organisation between the northern trades and the American markets, they also Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 63 6 • Regina Grafe converged directly at the Castilian fairs as mentioned above. The royal treasury used the fairs as payment fairs, just as merchants did. The additional liquidity in turn allowed northern wool merchants to ind the credit they needed to buy wool in forward contracts before the shearing season. The Monarchy’s payment made out of American remittances lubricated thus the business of the pre-existing northern Spanish trading networks with Flanders and Nantes and propelled them to unprecedented heights in the 1550 and 60s (Abed al-Hussein, 1982). As is well known, that interdependence also proved to be their undoing. When the royal treasury experienced liquidity problems in the 1570s it had to renegotiate its debt with its creditors. The temporary stoppage and conversion of short term debt into long-term bonds did little to harm the mostly Genoese creditors. But together with the interruption of trade after the Dutch Republic closed of the Scheldt in 1576 and war with England resumed they did break the neck of the northern wool and cloth trade. Between the 1580s and the 1620s the once closely knit informal institutions of trade within northern Spain, between the north and the south and with southern Netherlands and France disappeared almost entirely. Networks disintegrated, merchant families redirected their business or left active trade altogether. The Vizcayan and Castilian nations in Antwerp practically disappeared, with many Castilians moving to Rouen (Gelderblom and Grafe, 2010). Formal institutions, the regulations of trade, the mercantile tribunals and guilds of Bilbao and Burgos and even the fairs languished and lost most of their business. When war dealt a severe external shock to the business formal regulation and organisation and informal networks alike did little to lessen the blow. In fact, the opposite was true. Interconnectedness now meant that bankruptcies had domino effects. Across the entire spatial extension of the networks from Antwerp to Bilbao, Burgos, the Castilian Fairs, and Seville shockwaves ran through the system (Phillips and Phillips, 1977). Historians, including this author, have looked at the collapse of this system as the typical story of a closed trading system, in which corporate bodies with monopoly rights to certain parts of the trade collected rents (Grafe, 2005; Priotti, 1996; 2005; Phillips and Phillips, 1977; 1982). When the external conditions changed they were unable to adapt quickly. The organisation of trade in the north was one characterised by a geographical specialisation between participating towns, each of which tried to acquire royal privileges that would give it rights to a particular part of the trade. The Burgos consulado had the right to organise the wool leets to Flanders; the Bilbao consulado the right to a ixed share of that shipping business excluding both foreigners and other Cantabrian towns; credit and tax bills were by privilege of the fairs due in Medina and so on. The trade was regulated by the Monarchy, which was free to give out monopolies, and exclude other participants. The state supported the control of formal institutions over the trade and made it more susceptible to crisis in the process. When northern trades recovered after the 1620s the formal structure and regulations were still in place. But the reality of the new commercial networks could not be more different. Burgos never recovered an active role in the trade, though it made several attempts to expand its privileges in the early 1600s. The Castilian Fairs ceased to have any supra-regional role. Trade became concentrated in Bilbao. The amount of wool shipped through the port by the 1640s was still only about half of that that had left all northern ports in the frenzied 1560s. But it tripled between the early 1630s and the mid-1640s returning to levels that had been normal before the boom of the 1550s and 60s. In a radical break with previous patterns practically all of it, about 1100 tons, went to England. To contextualise the importance of the trade one might add that this amount was equivalent to about 10 percent of England total wool productions and England was a major producer as is well known. A contemporary English pamphlet estimated that the Bilbao trade was worth £250,000. This made it comparable to the Levant trade usually considered the most lucrative English trade at the time. The new English Atlantic network was the start of a spectacular recovery of the commercial fortunes of Bilbao and instrumental in propelling it from the position of one of the northern Spanish ports to becoming The northern Spanish port. The return to the general ad valoram tax raised by its consulado speaks for itself.5 Why England? The secret of the sudden recovery of Bilbao’s fortunes was a completely new trading network. Spanish wool was in high demand in the English West Country, where the production of lighter New Draperies for local and southern European markets was expanding fast and relied on the unusually high quality of Spanish merino. But English products were not in demand in northern Spain and English merchants were notoriously short of bullion to pay for their purchases. At the same time, West Country merchants were also strongly involved in English North American settlements. The settlers had but one product to sell, dried and salted codish, known in Spain as bacalao. There was no demand for this in England, but introduced in the Iberian Peninsula by Basque Fisherman since the early 16th century, it found reasonable demand there. Here then were the makings of one of the irst really important triangular Atlantic trades. The networks that underpinned this trade contradict much of how historians think about the Atlantic. To begin with, they encompassed the English and the Spanish Atlantic apparently without much resistance. In the 1640s there were about 45 resident English merchants in Bilbao, a town whose consulado counted around 65 merchant citizens at the time, some of whom were likely ship captains rather than active merchants. In the sixteenth century northern Castilian and Basque merchants had collaborated in networks that reached Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 64 On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic • 7 Figure 1. Bilbao's trade 1603-1658: returns of the Averia (nominal) Source: AFB/CB, Libro 208, Nr. 1-11, Libro 210, Nr.13-21, Libro 211, Nr.22-33, Libro 212, Nr.34-36 and (Ezkiaga 1977) from wool producers, via the fairs, and the shipping to the point of the sale in northern Europe. Now the Basques organised the internal supply of wool and the sale of ish. But the English took care of shipping. Seen from the point of view of the institutional rules in trade this is surprising. According to the Spanish-English peace treaty of 1604 there was no reason why Spanish ships could not go to England. At the same time, the legal preference for Basque shipowners to take cargo before any foreign vessel was allowed to ship it, was still in place. Every English ship master had to ask the town crier to announce his intentions to take a cargo lest a local shipowner objected.6 But no shipowner ever did. In other ways too, the English nation at Bilbao behaved in unusual ways. Most lived for many years, or decades in Bilbao, but very few got married, applied for naturalisation, or bought property. When they did, however, they faced apparently no obstacles. Nor were they keen on formalising the representation of their nation. In the sixteenth century, the relatively few Englishmen on the Cantabrian Coast had been represented by a consul in Bilbao. During the long wars towards the end of the century, the institution had been discontinued, but in the 1640s some English merchants suggested reviving it.7 They envisaged for the consul the typical functions: support with legal problems, assurance that the peace treaties were respected, protection against unjust taxation, and organisation of the election of a commission of four English merchants. This commission in turn should take care of the affairs of merchants who died in Cantabria, control the business behaviour of the English, including the rights to check a merchant’s books, decide Spanish complaints about the quality of English imports, and inally report to Parliament over the business affairs of the English in Bilbao. The pamphlet suggesting these changes was countered immediately by some Bilbao merchants with “A humble Answer to a Petition, desiring a regulation of the Biskey-Trade, by a Consull and foure English Factors resident in that place, shewing that thereby we shall not be remedied rather further inconveniences will insue by the same”. The title indicated the arguments, namely, that a consul was unnecessary and indeed would Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 65 8 • Regina Grafe be harmful. The pamphlet amounted to an astonishing catalogue of the beneits of Bilbao commercial regulation, arbitration and taxation compiled by the English merchants. They argued that contracts in Spain always stipulated a penalty in case of breach, and that this was suficient to ensure proper behaviour by Englishmen and Spaniards, (indeed, all contracts did contain a clause that in case of late payment the debtor had to pay a ixed amount, often 500 to 600 maravedíes a day, plus the legal costs). Even in the recovery of debt there was no reason for a consul to intervene. Regarding protection against unfair taxes, the authors felt that this was quite unnecessary as well. In principle, this point was covered by the peace treaty of 1604 and if any problem should occur it was preferable to appeal to the Spanish Crown directly. Moreover, there had only been a few problems regarding particular goods sold on in the interior, but there was no problem with direct taxation of trade. The English were equally happy to appeal to the local justice. They distrusted their fellows more than the Bilbao commercial authorities, and felt that an attempt to create a commission of Englishmen that would have been entitled to check a merchant’s books would be abused for commercial ends. For the English counterpetitioners, this sort of commission would just lead to delays and corruption. The Bilbao authorities were the only protection against this behaviour, especially because they never forced a merchant to open his business contacts to the public. Apparently tax collectors, local authorities and the legal services of the consulado tribunal were all behaving nicely towards this large foreign community. Nor were the English just talking the talk. Rather there is abundant evidence that English merchants were suing compatriots in Spain in cases which could just as easily have been brought before an English court. Legal documentation available in the Bilbao archives of the corregimiento and the consulado contain more than 200 cases, in which members of the English merchant community were involved in some way between 1620 and 1650. The large majority deals with commercial disputes of some kind, sometimes between two or more English merchants resident in Bilbao, sometimes between an English merchant and a Spaniard. A small number refer to criminal cases, typically the death of a sailor or merchant, beatings or rape. What is curiously missing from all these cases is any indication of protests by English merchants resident in Bilbao against unfair treatment, excesses of the authorities or complaints about the workings of the Spanish justice. The contrast between the English and Basque networks involved in the new triangular trade with North America and the wool trader networks with Flanders and northern France that had dominated in the sixteenth century could hardly be more pronounced. It would be easy to describe this transformation in the traditional way that juxtaposes state sponsored commercial institutions and monopoly systems in the Spanish dominated sixteenth century networks with an anti-monopolistic attitude of the traders in the English dominated seventeenth century communities. One could write a story of the failure of closed consulado regulations and their mercantilist, anti-capitalist attitudes and the success of the proto-capitalist English Atlantic networks. Indeed, historians of the Basque Country often imply that the exposure of the northern trade of the Dutch and English led to more market oriented attitudes in northern merchant networks. IV A re-evaluation of the evidence in the light of the above discussion about networks and institutions, however, suggests a somewhat altered story. The important difference between the sixteenth and seventeenth century networks is not their spatial extension, here northern Spain, Flanders, and Spanish American silver, there northern Spain, England and North American fish, striking as that might be. Nor is it in the formal institutions regulating trade. The Consulado of Bilbao still had the right to force merchants to first load local ships. The town still had the right to exclude merchants from property ownership, to apply higher taxes to foreigners, to restrict where they could live. The Inquisition still had the right to search every foreign ship coming into port for books (and heretics). Lastly, the informal networks of English and Basque merchants worked largely in similar ways as they had done a century earlier organising around common provenance and family ties. The fundamental shift was that the Bilbao institutions, urban, ecclesiastical and commercial made no attempt to use their legal rights. This becomes obvious when comparing the situation in Bilbao with other parts of the Spains in the same decades through the protests and enquiries iled by the English Ambassador in Madrid. Complaints about maltreatment of merchants in Andalusia, Portugal, the Levant and the islands bear witness to the problems Englishmen faced elsewhere. But there are practically no complaints from northern Spain.8 A closer examination of Inquisition iles reveals that few foreigners in the north ever got into trouble about issues of religion. Local Inquisition oficials clearly dragged their feet when they were asked to report about the behaviour of the large group of protestant new arrivals in 1632. Otherwise it is hard to explain why they irst responded to the request in 1648 (!) and after some serious words from their superiors. The oficials from smaller ports in the north reported that all the Englishmen were residing in Bilbao anyway, while the oficial there vouched for their good behaviour. The only offence to report was that many of them had illegitimate offspring whom they sent to England for education. This was unfortunate because the poor child’s soul was lost – but it was unavoidable since the Inquisition could not afford their teaching.9 Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 66 On the spatial nature of institutions and the institutional nature of personal networks in the Spanish Atlantic • 9 Bilbao institutions of all kinds and the political networks that underpinned them evidently made all efforts to accommodate the English. From the early seventeenth century onwards the political, commercial and religious authorities used their power to neutralise anything that they felt could hinder commercial success. They protested against the introduction in 1603 to demand deposits from exporting merchants to be returned if they could prove that they had not traded with the enemy. The Madrid Councils initially delayed in part because of the opposition and in part because of the peace of 1604 (Echevarría Bacigalupe, 1986).10 Still, in 1628 the Councils raised the stakes and decreed the introduction of a shipping register. It was to no avail. Antonio de Landaverde, the representative of the assembly of the Señorio de Vizcaya, publicly invoked the pase foral, that is he argued that the province would obey the king, but not execute the order.11 The province of Guipúzcoa was equally opposed.12 The introduction of registers was stopped until 1641. Then the king’s Councils tried again to persuade the northern ports to adopt some measures against the rampant smuggling with enemy ships. The power elites of Vizcaya now changed tactic. They agreed to the introduction of the post of a scrivener, who would take the registers of foreign shipping. But the consulado immediately bought the ofice for the hefty sum of 5000 ducados making sure that the oficeholder would not bother anyone. This was neither the irst nor the last time the commercial networks of Bilbao had used their money and cloud to intervene on behalf of their foreign trading partners. Since 1612, the consulado paid a salary to the oficials of the Inquisition, thus reducing the burden the visitations imposed on foreign trade.13 Not surprisingly the documentation shows that the charge levied on merchants for the so-called visita de navios was signiicantly lower in Bilbao than in smaller northern ports and much lower than in other parts of Spain.14 The Bilbao consulado also spent much time, effort and ink on keeping the interruption created by the visita to a minimum. Even when forbidden books where found coniscation was about the worst that could happen in Bilbao as it did in the case of an Anglican Bible found in a ship from Chester.15 The merchant guilds had a similar attitude to other oficials who were initially not directly under its control. In 1660, it paid the royal inspector for contraband for not coming to Bilbao.16 The small example of the Atlantic trading networks in Northern Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth century illustrates nicely why it is problematic to think about networks and institutions in the early modern Hispanic world as antagonistic forms of social organisation, that were possibly complimentary but in any case fundamentally different. The early modern polity was in many ways a network. It is easy to see why merchant dominated urban and consulado institutions in Bilbao should at all times try to favour their protestant trading partners. Yet, so did the provincial institutions, even if the provincial assembly, the juntas, were in fact dominated by rural interests. And so did the Church and Inquisition officials. Not even the collectors of the royal wool taxes were an exception. Since 1627 the only tax directly to be paid into the royal coffers rather than to the Señorio or the town was controlled by a network of converso entrepreneurs with Castilian, Portuguese and Dutch correspondents. Garcia de Yllan organised collection 1627-39, then passed on the business to Manuel Cortizos y Villasante, who in 1637 sold it to Simon de Fonseca Piña, tax farmer until 1665. All of them were prominent conversos and are often described as members of the Portuguese nation (Studnicki-Gizbert, 2007: 151, 129-133). Garcia de Yllan spent the 1630s writing tracts about how to improve the commercial fortunes of Spain. He praised the role of the consulados, as he would, having worked directly with them in the recovery of the northern wool trade. Control over the taxation of the northern wool trade made commercial sense for the conversos because it helped to transfer funds between their Dutch and Spanish business activities by using England as a stepping point (Kepler, 1976).17 Yet, it also meant that they too were part of the state. V The seventeenth century northern commercial networks integrated Basque merchants, wool producers in Castile, English West Country merchants, settlers in North America, and the conversos of the Portuguese nation with their business interests from Madrid and Bilbao to Brazil and Amsterdam. Political, commercial and even ecclesiastical networks were deeply intertwined. What looked like the juxtaposition of powerful institutions with royal privileges in the sixteenth century, the fairs, the consulados and their convoys, the commercial courts, urban restrictions on foreign traders, by the seventeenth century just looked like another set of networks that lexibly engaged with a new group of foreigners. The “institutions of administration” in this particular corner of the Atlantic space were the commercial and religious elites, who crafted, shaped and implemented (or not) most of what is often referred to as the Spanish commercial system. Over time the interests of the commercial networks of local Bilbao or foreign English traders might change, as might those of the political networks in the Basque Provinces, or indeed those of the Sephardic networks. However, the latter like all the others were not the antithesis of the state, they were part and parcel of the very same polity. Networks were institutions and early modern institutions were at their foundations always informal networks. NOTES 1. Curiously, though, much less research has been done on conversos who remained in the Spanish reigns. For an exception, see Schreiber, 1994. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 67 10 • Regina Grafe 2. One of the irst to think about the absolutist state as a networked state was Kettering, 1986. For Spain see Yun Casalilla, 2009. 3. This is partly due to the extraordinary inluence of Clarence Henry Haring, “Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs” (Harvard University Press, 1918). Haring’s book was translated into Spanish and repeatedly reprinted until 1984. 4. The comparison here is not perfect, the naciones in Antwerp were effectively outposts of the Bilbao and Burgos consulados, while the American guilds were independent. But the important point is that guilded structures dominated in both cases. th 5. The charge was a 1 maravedi per ducado, that is 1/375 of value. For details see Grafe, 2005: 102. 6. AFB, Corr., Leg.1126/085. See also AHPV, Leg.4730/Enc9/s.f., AHPV/Enc10/s.f. See also Teoilo Guiard Larrauri, Historia Del Consulado De Bilbao Y Casa De Contratación De Bilbao Y Del Comercio De La Villa (1511-1699), Vol I (Bilbao: Jose de Astuy, 1913). Vol.I, 62-4. 7. British Library (BL), 712.g.15/9. 8. See e.g. AHN, Estado, libro 347. 9. AHN, Inquisición, legajo 3645. 10. AFB/CB061, No. 15. 11. AFB/CB, libro 065, No. 59 and AFB/CB, Libro 061, No.4. “yo en nombre del dho senorio con el respecto devido obedezco la dha Prematica como mandado de nro Rey y senor natural. Pero enquanto eso puede ser en qualquiera manera contra los dhos nros fueros por las razones dhas, suplico con toda humildad deella para ante su Real persona, y de ella abaxo para ante los senores del consejo suppremo de Justicia y donde mejor pueda y deva. y contradigo le execucion y cumplimiento de la dha Real prematica en todo lo prejudicial […]" 12. AHN, Estado, libro 347d. 13. Initially, it was decided that the three oficials would get 2,000 reales per year but the consulado later decided that this was too much. In 1615, it decided to pay 50 ducados (550 reales) for the ships from Nantes and agreed on tariffs for other goods. AFB/CB, libro 451, f.xCvi and Cxx,ff. See also the accounts for 1619/20 and 1620/21, AFB/CB, caja 153, No. 28 and No. 27 (old classmark). 14. AHN, Inquisición, legajos 3644 and 3645. 15. AHN, Inquisición, legajo 3645, registro de la visita de navíos en Bilbao, July 1612. 16. AFB/CB, libro 206. 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Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e006. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.006 69 3(1) June 2014, e007 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht1 Ana Crespo Solana Instituto de Historia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas (CSIC), C/ Albasanz, 26-28, 28037 Madrid, Spain e-mail: ana.crespo@cchs.csic.es Submitted: 10 April 2014. Accepted: 28 May 2014 ABSTRACT: Current research into Spanish commercial expansion in the Americas has recently turned to a new consideration of space as a historical category. In fact, when the interconnecting processes are analysed, one of the most striking phenomena is the actual “production of the space” in which a wide variety of exchanges took place. This production/creation of space becomes obvious in Spanish colonial commerce. This article discusses the theoretical framework for this spatial perspective, and analyses the impact that this construction of space on the organization of routes and on network formation, as well as its evolution within the institutional context following the Treaties of Utrecht. KEYWORDS: Spanish Colonial Trade; Early Modern History; Merchant Networks; Maritime Routes Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Crespo Solana, Ana (2014). “The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e007. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 RESUMEN: La formación del espacio social hispano-atlántico y la integración de las comunidades mercantiles después de los tratados de Utrecht.- Los estudios sobre la expansión comercial española en América han virado recientemente hacia una importante reconsideración del espacio como categoría histórica. De hecho, uno de los fenómenos más interesantes de analizar en los procesos de interconexión global es la “producción de espacio” en el que se producen los intercambios de todo tipo. Esta producción de espacio es evidente en el caso del comercio colonial español. En este artículo se explicará el marco teórico de esta perspectiva espacial y se analizará el impacto de esta construcción de espacio en la organización de las rutas y en la formación de redes así como su evolución en el marco institucional después de los tratados de Utrecht. PALABRAS CLAVE: Comercio colonial español; Historia moderna; Redes mercantiles; rutas marítimas Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. INTRODUCTION Today, it is widely accepted that during the centuries of European expansion, a social, institutional and scientiic space was created at global level which greatly inluenced the subsequent evolution of the interconnected societies. Far from being “eurocentrist”, the result of this reorientation of history towards a global history is a new social theory on the Atlantic World. This theory highlights the empirical evidence demonstrating that globalization is not a recent phenomenon– although this belief was previously accepted as fact, and still is by some scholars – but an underlying globalization process dating as far back as the 15th century, if not earlier. McNeill states that “macrohistorians grossly overlook most available literary records” (McNeill, 1996: 21). But there is also recent research which, although focused on spaces limited by social, political and economic factors, describes the global connection of various territories by means of a process of selection and critical as- 71 2 • Ana Crespo Solana sessment of the available sources. The empirical information is drawn from the available sources in order to enable us to respond to questions related to the problems and limitations affecting global interactions within the various spaces (Ringrose, 2001; Parker, 2001). At the same time, a new theoretical framework is being created so as to offer a number of valuable features and pedagogical aids designed to pique students’ interest with regard to speciic world history topics and help them process and retain key information. Due to its interesting interdisciplinary approach, one of the major theoretical and methodological lines of research may be the spatial turn. A brief survey of recent publications and scholarly activity focused on discussions of the spatial turn reveals the extent to which it has developed into something of a dominant paradigm (Roberts, 2012: 15). This is obvious when approaching the study of the empires and the various and highly connected Atlantic and global systems which formed around maritime routes and economic centres. Patrick O’Brien has stated that the space which derived from the expansion of western societies and their converging with indigenous societies outside of Europe led to connections and flows, primarily of information, science and the knowledge derived from natural philosophy, and that this led to the so-called western societies in which we currently live (O’Brien, 2013: 1-36). This is an obvious phenomenon when studying Iberian expansion. Between the “First America” (as David Brading calls the Spanish America from which the first Atlantic world emerged as a result of conquest and early colonization by the Iberians) and the port cities of Seville, Huelva and Cadiz, new channels of exchange were opened up. These were ever-changing in terms of time and space. And in those early days of the Hispanization process, three issues merged together in the American Atlantic: race, religion and language. This combination is still an important issue in large parts of the American continents, from Mexico to Patagonia (around 16 million square kilometres at the time). Brazil and its Portuguese culture and language had strong ties with the Spanish side, as Portugal had been part of the Spanish monarchy between 1580 and 1640 (Crespo Solana, 2014). These processes of interconnection were not homogeneous, but affected by determining factors related to spatial and geographic location. They led to the creation of, among other things, perception-based cartography onto which historical processes and the construction of the social space were projected. Pierre Chaunu has stated that time and space, history and geography rely on one other to provide the beginning of an explanation, and this is essential for a time when inequality, based on a combination of power and race, was the norm in the evolution of historical processes (Chaunu, 1985: 265). The construction of a social space as deined by Henri Lefebvre in his book The Production of Space (1991) does not simply refer to natural geography, nor is it an empty container illed by history. Rather, space includes the importance of spatial relationships. Space and human relations change over the course of history and each in- luences the other. Lefebvre spoke of “social space” when considering the idea that space and humankind are mutually constituent elements and not separate categories in an abstract model. Relationships are important in the geographic and social construction of history. The work of the historian is in fact dedicated to highlighting this important phenomenon: the relationship between space and mankind. Relationships are categorized and analysed by the movement of human beings through space and this movement is dynamic. The new approach taken since the spatial turn clariies new concepts related to space. Its importance stems from two issues of signiicant value for historiography today, as it champions a reconsideration of “space” as a historical and analytical category. Aside from notable exceptions, the study of space as an object had already begun to be found lacking in the majority of previous historical studies, as analyses with a time-based coniguration were traditionally given greater consideration. However, space as an object of study was also subliminally present in studies of Atlantic history, as well as the intellectual tradition of historiography on European expansion and global history. Nonetheless, these schools considered the oceans and associated territories around them as cultural and historical constructions overlaid on heterogeneous geography, rather than applying truly scientiic economic and social criteria. This idea has been broken open with the publication of a group study on the importance of oceans as a means of communication and global union, while at the same time considering the waterscapes or marine landscapes where human social action takes place not as empty spaces, but as key in analysing global integration and its evolution (Mukherjee, 2013: 3). Regarding his concept of geohistory, Fernand Braudel states that the physical environment imposes changes and adaptations on man by means of constant or even slight variations (Braudel, 2002: 87). The meaning of time and space is closely linked to the social subject, although events are always considered. Yuan and Stewart (2008) proposed a conceptual premise that synthesizes the concepts of events, processes, activities, change, movement and spatiotemporal data. “An event denotes that something has happened, a process characterizes how it happens, and an activity is an action carried out by an actor. When events and activities take place, they may trigger a process to initiate or become intensiied” (Yuan, 2014). The formation of a Hispanic Atlantic social space went through various stages which were heavily influenced by the social and political evolution of the Spanish monarchy. In addition, global interaction in the Iberian Atlantic was determined by territorial circumstances. In this paper, I will analyse two main factors that are necessary to understand how this Hispanic Atlantic world was shaped as a result of the Treaties of Utrecht. I will share some ideas in relation to whether these treaties led to significant changesintworespects:spatialintegrationalongtheroutes linking Spain with its colonies and the adaptation of the merchant communities around this space. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 72 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht • 3 SPATIALIZATION AND TRADE ROUTES Research into the Iberian empires has highlighted that, although these empires have been regarded as secondary in comparison with the attention other merchant nations have attracted, their Atlantic expansion was one of the most important achievements in world history (Bethencourt and Curto, 2007). As for the Spanish empire, the study of its Atlantic commercial system has only recently been addressed from the perspective of Atlantic historiography (Pietschmann, 2002; Martínez Shaw & Oliva Melgar, 2005). However, new lines of research are being explored, looking into the Hispanic presence in the Atlantic world. These chiely focus on analysis of the transnational low of ideas coming from Spain to France and England, albeit from an American perspective (Yuste López, 1997; Hill, 2005; Romano, 2004), or from the perspective of the relationship between merchants and the state (Pérez Sarrión, 2012). A very good book published recently by Cardim, Herzog, Ruiz Ibáñez and Sabatini (2012) highlighted the importance of the movement of peoples, models and ideas in establishing an Iberian political legacy at a global level. The Hispanic expansion developed and was built around a licence-based trading system which was overseen and inspected by the Crown of Castile – although privately run – and which delimited a number of areas of production and markets in Spain and the Spanish America. This expansion was a dynamic spatial model which evolved into self-sustaining locational structures (Crespo Solana, 2014). And the resulting spatial structure was perhaps what primarily inluenced the logistics infrastructures that other mercantile empires put in place when they came to pursue their own respective expansions. The extensive route which began in Andalusia – its path to America departing from South Andalusia – and linked the Canary Islands, the Antilles, various areas around the Caribbean (especially Mexico and Venezuela), southern Florida, the coastal areas of the South American Cone, and various areas in Sub-Saharan Western Africa supplying slaves, constituted and consolidated a large integrated zone made up of various regions. In certain contemporary documents, this Atlantic space was referred to as the “Hispanic Sea” (Pietschmann, 2010). Not all of these regions participated equally in the global economy which emerged from this trade. Their integration, to a greater or lesser extent, continues to be a reason for synergies, asymmetries and unequal exchange. A great many merchant networks from other European nations were also operating within this space, on occasions as competitors and real enemies, but also at other times as valuable collaborators. Institutional development and the spread of trade routes were the hands that modelled this newly created system. Beginning in the early stages of the consolidation of the Spanish empire in the Americas, the monarchy devised certain mechanisms – revised and reformed several times over the centuries – with the purpose of encompassing these newly found territories. Proof of this is the series of administrative and institutional measures implemented with the object of gaining total knowledge and control of the new lands. In addition to this, the entire empire was processed cartographically according to the contemporary perception of these kingdoms in the Indies. It is well known that the bureaucratic burden had been very heavy since the times of Philip II. This process also had a scientiic bias, as all the empire’s civil servants and oficials had to account for the dimensions of the territories through empirical, direct knowledge. As had been foreseen by Francis Bacon, there was no longer any boundary between geographic expansion and science.2 Spanish colonial trade followed a route which ran across the Atlantic from the ports of Andalusia to the Canary Islands and then on to the Antilles. It then forked off in the direction of the approved ports for the two viceroyalties: Peru and New Spain. The Spanish Crown created legislation (inluenced mostly by the economic elite close to the kings of Castile) stating that the colonization and exploitation of the Americas was a private enterprise, but with collaboration and iscal supervision from the Crown by means of a few institutions created for this purpose. Spanish colonial trade between the 16th and 18th centuries was an undertaking which was intended to be a state business (subject to monopolies and licences), but privately inanced. This was a model which had previously been developed in Europe when commercial trafic took place within a particular area, as in the case of Cantabrian trade with Flanders (Flanders Route and Eastern Route from the Middle Ages onwards), trade with the Hansa, or even Portuguese trade from the 14th century. In 1569, the two leets were clearly identiied: the Flota de Nueva España (Fleet of New Spain), with a inal destination in the port of Veracruz (required to set sail from Spain in the month of April); and the leet headed for the continent (Galleons of Terra Firma), bound for Nombre de Dios – a port later replaced by Portobelo (Panama) – which was to depart in August. Every year, these two leets spent the winter in the Indies and met in March at the port in Havana to undertake the return ocean crossing to the peninsula together (García-Baquero González, 1992). This system remained in operation until almost 1765. Prior to this date, there were a number of attempts to reform the shipping systems in a bid to curtail the monopoly enjoyed irst by Seville and then by Cadiz. It seems contradictory that the change of dynasty in Spain following the War of Succession and the resulting attempts to exclude the English and the Dutch from the Indies trade led to tighter controls, both military and iscal, being imposed on Cadiz, as the city was a major centre for foreign trade. There were many efforts to reform this system between 1720 and 1765 – such as the anonymous “Memorial a S.M. sobre que el comercio es la riqueza y el mayor poder de las potencias del mundo, 1721” (“Memorandum to His Majesty regarding commerce being the wealth and might of the world’s major powers”), which did not gain much support Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 73 4 • Ana Crespo Solana Map 1. Routes of the Fleets and Galleons (Delgado Barrado, 2003: 185-213).3 Despite its rigidity, this system was improved through subsequent reforms, such as the addition of individual register ships in the time of Philip V. This affected intraregional trade within the Caribbean (Map 2). As part of an extensive spatio-temporal process, this system was built around trading networks that are shaping the spatial coniguration (Middell, 2010; Krugmann, Fujita and Venables, 1999). By using new technologies such as GIS – Geographic Information Systems – we are now able to visualize, and analyse, these networks with the object of gaining valuable insight into how the spatial and economic organization of trading networks inluenced the integration of maritime spaces and relationships among the numerous trading areas that formed the Hispanic commercial system. The available data on Portuguese and Spanish expansion are the testing grounds for this new tool.4 With regard to this analytical model, we are asking the following question, which relates the organization of trade networks to the construction of a social space in the Hispanic Atlantic: How did the commercial systems of the mercantile nations in the 17th and 18th centuries inluence the formation of structures and types of territorial organization? The Portuguese case has been analysed by Amándio Barros. He states: “networks redesigned geography, or better, created their own geography through an actual destruction of the space” (Barros, 2014). He goes on to say that this “destruction of space”, crossing political frontiers and disregarding cultural and religious boundaries, recommended itself to Iberian merchants and networks if they wanted to succeed in the competitive early modern trading world. As for the Hispanic Atlantic, in order to grasp how these trade networks were organized, we must bear in mind that the Atlantic was the setting for continuous migratory processes. Migratory waves multiplied within Europe proper from the mid-16th century, for religious, political and/or socio-economic reasons. The demographic growth seen in many commercial cities, together with the creation of a young labour force and the emergence of new socio-professional categories, turned these cites into key institutional spaces in which mercantile capitalism was consolidated (Pipitone, 2003). The 18th-century Hispanic Atlantic reveals certain features related to the growth seen in some cities. These include the monopolistic role played by Cadiz, driven by the colonies of foreign merchants living there, and the opposing forces against this monopoly driven by the internal, social and economic synergies that emerged around Spanish trade in the Atlantic. Bourbon policies also gave other port cities in Spain direct or indirect access to colonial trade, like Barcelona, Malaga and Alicante. In addition, capital and trading cities in America were stimulated. The consulates Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 74 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht • 5 Map 2. Trade in the Caribbean and the subsidiary leets (merchants' guilds) in Mexico and Lima were allowed to continue as they had enormous power in political and economic affairs. A consulate was also created in Veracruz. One of the most important subjects to be considered when attempting to understand the complexity of the connections at both socio-institutional and economic levels relates to the role played by trade communities of different nationalities based in various urban centres in Europe and the Americas linked to the Atlantic economy, along with large trading companies in Asia and Africa. Historiography has also highlighted the importance and features of these merchant communities, how they worked and were structured around this system of global interaction, establishing a close relationship between the phenomenon of migration, the formation of trading companies and the evolution and integration of various socio-cultural and economic areas, together with the role played by these groups in economic transformation (Mauro, 1993; Subrahmanyam, 1996; Crespo Solana, 2011). Furthermore, it has been possible to create a theoretical model for the study of trade communities and their impact on the evolution of these companies, as well as their inluence on political and diplomatic relations between modern states. These studies have evolved from traditional macro-economic works (Chaunu, 1956-1959) or analyses of European trading companies in the colonial world or the Spanish trade with the Americas (Emmer, Petre-Grenouilleau, Roit- man, 2006; Bustos Rodríguez, 2005; Crespo Solana, 2010b). In this line of research, which aims primarily to study the role played by merchant networks, important developments have undoubtedly been made, but it is still possible to make further progress on issues related to geographic, conceptual and methodological aspects, as pointed out by Ramada Curto and Molho (2002). A good part of the existing studies on the Spanish commercial system – as much in the Atlantic as, to a lesser extent, in the Asia-Paciic area of inluence (due to trade with the Philippines) – make reference to how trade networks operated in these areas. Many studies on this topic describe the emergence of new forms of cooperation and competition among economic agents and how merchants developed mechanisms for trade and cooperation. Commerce in the irst global age was characterized by high rates of smuggling. This was not possible without cooperation and close relationships between agents who on most occasions lived very far apart from each other and had never met one another. In most commercial port cities, these agents formed an oligopoly and almost always previously had or had developed ties of kinship through marriage or patronage by means of various mechanisms of symbiosis and integration. Even when formal commercial agreements could be ratiied before a notary, these were frequently hard to enforce and their validity depended heavily on the willingness of the parties to cooperate with each other. For this reason, trust and reputation were crucial Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 75 6 • Ana Crespo Solana factors in understanding merchant behaviour in social environments. Therefore, the behaviour of merchants, inanciers and others involved in the development of commercial networks will provide evidence of cooperation in trading activity, which has not been considered in other studies. Global trade between the 16th and 18th centuries would not have been possible without the emergence of new forms of human behaviour, cooperation, defection or competition, depending on the complex dynamics in which this evolution took place. The integration of the Atlantic World was closely related to how merchant networks were organized. John Elliot spoke of an “integration of communities” but failed to explore its full meaning. In actual fact, the family networks of merchants who were involved in economic activities in Spain and its colonies developed entrepreneurial mechanisms with the purpose of protecting their businesses – depending to a lesser or greater degree on their nationality and the historical junctures that inluenced their behaviour. Those merchants that migrated to Spanish cities had to develop forms of cooperation and symbiosis – very often beyond religious, ideological and/or identity-related sympathies – which allowed them to interact with other families with similar interests, and become integrated into contemporary Spanish society. This speciic issue must be further discussed from the perspective of “social networks”. Despite the massive amount of empirical data which historians have so far gathered on merchant networks in the early modern era, we are still in the process of developing theories and conceptual frameworks with which we can link the data gathered to a theoretical argument from both a sociological and historical perspective (Van Young, 2011: 289-309; Crespo Solana and Alonso García, 2012). A “social network” can be described as an “informal association of a group of people based on a relationship of trust and a continuous exchange of services or favours within a reciprocal system”. And this is indeed what an adequate “social environment” provides in terms of elements of informality, trust-based relationships, exchange and reciprocity.5 However, I would also add the relative absence of actual credit (hard cash) required for businesses in order to fulil the internal needs of these networks and market demands, rather than to meet the political interests of the nations. In my opinion, the former premise (which is patently obvious when the colonies of foreign merchants in Spain involved in colonial trade are studied) is central when it comes to “tracing connections”, as argued by John Elliot (2001), and to inding opportunities to compare empires and being able to understand the role played by certain communities in the Atlantic world as a whole. In general, the foreign merchant communities settled in Spain played an important role in this Hispanic Atlantic scenario. In the words of Fréderic Mauro: “the study of merchant communities represents the sociological dimension of research on ‘merchant empires’” (Mauro, 1990: 255-285). And this is clear in the case of the merchant colonies in Spanish cities involved in the Carrera de las Indias (Indies Route), such as Seville or Cadiz. Recently, I was able to show how these networks operated within the Spanish Empire (Crespo Solana, 2010a: 181-314). The entrenched urban nature of these colonies meant that many merchant families were susceptible to the various historic processes that took place in early modern Europe between the 16th and the 18th centuries as a result of religious wars, structural changes in the economic development of different regions and the emergence of new representatives and forms of political power. Due to their role in the economic development and integration of regions and markets, the existing literature places great importance on issues such as their ability to control monopolies, their ability to act as both private traders and as part of merchant companies, and their activity within the economic system. They organized themselves into cooperative and competing social networks. From this perspective, because of their economic activity, the colonies of foreign merchants promoted spatial economic integration and maritime routes between the various European markets and between these and the colonies. In fact, the merchant communities were essentially local urban groups which created trading organizations displaying strong solidarity and fraternal ties amongst their members. They established monopolies and created a way to pass on their commercial skills. This fact is essential to understanding Spanish expansion into the Atlantic region. Studies also point to certain aspects relating to the population characteristics of these groups and to their family relationships, not to mention the complex aspects arising from socioeconomic and institutional research. To understand the Spanish case, French, German, English and Flemish communities established in Spain have been examined and their study has highlighted some interesting discrepancies in relation to the current state of research on foreign colonies (Hausberger and Ibarra, 2003). For example, attention has been drawn to the dificulty in deining such contradictory terms as nation, merchant colony or consulate. The irst refers directly to the community itself, with its internal hierarchy and fraternal bonds, its members linked by family, economic and social relationships (the latter nearly always based on the institutional system and a shared religion), as well as common geographic and linguistic origins. More studies have been carried out on this subject.6 Consulates, on the other hand, were organizations imposed by the Spanish Crown based on its diplomatic interests at a given time, but they did not always favour the interests of the merchant communities established in the Hispanic Atlantic (Crespo Solana, 2011: 373-403). HOW NETWORKS FUNCTIONED In the case of Cadiz, networks can be analysed as the local hub for the activities of these merchant networks. Cadiz was a port city and a derivatives market: this would explain certain peculiar phenomena in rela- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 76 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht • 7 tion to the Indies trade. According to some historians, such as Clé Lesger and others, this dual function would turn the region into a “gateway system”, that is, a hub within an integrated economic spatial system where external trade was conducted through specialized middlemen. This would reveal that there was a kind of specialization that would exclude other economic sectors, or that the market structures themselves, the dynamics of the low and the metal trade would have an oligopsonic nature. This speciic situation occurs in markets where a very few traders have a lot of market power and there is a small number of buyers acting as an elite that exercises maximum control over prices and the amount of products to be made available on the market. Therefore, proits would primarily go to the buyers (in most cases these buyers are middlemen) rather than the producers. As a result, the situation of the latter worsens because they do not receive a reasonable price for their products (Nogués-Marco, 2010). This economic reality – with a fundamentally social background – makes it obvious that foreign merchants were not alien to the Spanish monopoly. Quite the contrary, they were the most eager supporters/sponsors at a time when Spain kept its depleted Atlantic empire only with permission from Europe. They functioned as intermediaries in an oligopsonic – as well as oligopolic – market whose main features were the alliances, interdependence and coexistence that characterized the true nature of the relationship between Spaniards and foreigners, except on few and rare exceptional occasions. What was most needed in a frontier society with high levels of smuggling was cooperation. This cooperation was not at all incompatible with competition among the various networks connecting the different market areas and the various inancial centres. Here you would see the richest and most powerful businessmen monopolizing a trafic that was highly characterized by a black market in metals. This market was coordinated by foreigners, mostly transient agents involved in the purchase and sale of goods with the object of accumulating silver. A great number of these middlemen were related to each other. Such traders would ix market prices, undercutting the oficial price of silver. In order to move contraband, it was necessary to utilize legal strategies that would disguise the appearance of smuggling. These strategies operated in close symbiosis with the law and the ambiguous, or at least not very clear, regulations that the monarchy wished to implement in order to maintain this alleged monopoly or state business under its control at all costs. It was these networks that shaped the social and even the institutional aspects of the American Atlantic that emerged after Utrecht. MAINTAINING THE EMPIRE UNTIL 1765 After the Treaties of Utrecht, a new dynamic system began to consolidate around the Spanish trading system in the Atlantic as a result of various articles in the treaties. There was a “before” and “after” Utrecht, as this historical series of events led to a divergence in the Hispanic Atlantic world. The contents of the articles regarding the Spanish empire in the Americas and its commercial system began to be written back in the mid17th century. At that time, the continued existence of the Spanish Hapsburg monarchy was brought into question, as was the system imposed in the Atlantic by the old politico-imperial structure. This system was intended to leave nothing for the other merchant nations but the peripheral territories discarded by the Spaniards. In 1705, the Auditor General of the Spanish Board of Trade (Junta de Comercio), Bernardo Tinajero, admitted: “It can be said that what foreign nations own in the Americas is but the worst and most barren and only what the Spaniards decided not to keep and populate.7 However, he also admitted that those foreign nations had succeeded in creating and developing powerful navies and wealthy colonies “to and from which vessels sail in such numbers that princes make use of them and their crews whenever they see it”.8 Eloquent voices of concern regarding the possible loss of the Indies were raised. Among them was the Marquis de Varinas, writing in his memorial. Also, the fear of ports being attacked was voiced by merchants and published in several pamphlets at the time. Perhaps it was this fear that led the people of several territories in the Spanish empire to welcome Philip V. A prominent example is Catalonia, where in 1701, the Courts received the king and pledged to support him. This resulted in Barcelona being granted permission to send two ships a year to the Americas without registering them in Seville. Among the other beneits gained by the Catalans was the creation of a Universal Maritime Merchant Company inspired by the Dutch companies (Sanz Ayán, 2013: 189). Several of these rewards were maintained, despite the extremely heavy repression later suffered by the former kingdom of Aragon. The dynastic change allowed Catalonia to become part of the Spanish Atlantic world and also set in motion what would later become Catalonia’s industrial revolution (Martínez Shaw, 1981). Colonial and commercial interests were already on the agenda at the preliminary peace negotiation that took place in April 1711 in London. Even in the 1699 and 1700 Partition Treaties, such interests were taken into account. The 19th of August 1712 brought the signing of a truce and armistice between Great Britain, Spain and France, in which provisions were made to return any people or property captured to Britain. It was also agreed that Gibraltar and Port Mahon would remain in British hands and that Britain was allowed to moor its own warships there for protection. In March 1713, a peace and trade treaty was signed between England and Spain, without the involvement of France. In it, Menorca was added to the concessions in recognition of an earlier period of Anglo-Spanish collaboration. In this agreement, the English were granted a contract to supply black slaves. They were allowed to store their “merchandise” in the River Plate under the supervision of a Spanish oficial. This treaty also included other privileges gran- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 77 8 • Ana Crespo Solana ted to the English nation, which were later extended to Dutch merchants with businesses in Spain (Cantillo, 1843: 15). Access to the Americas was a crucial point in the agreements reached at Utrecht, and regulations were established to ensure that only England had access to Spanish America: “… and it has been so established, in order for this rule to be observed, that under no license or appointment shall the French, or indeed any other nation, be permitted to directly or indirectly sail to the American territories belonging to the Spanish king and trade in negroes, goods, merchandise or any other thing” (Cantillo, 1843: 77). English merchants were granted economic privileges and tax exemptions in certain towns and cities, as they had requested before the war. This was now endorsed by Philip V in an agreement signed on the 14th of December 1715. Further trade agreements were signed between 1713 and May 1716. Spain could not afford to surrender sovereignty over her colonies or alienate her territories to other nations. It may be said that Utrecht allowed Spain to maintain her colonial empire with the consent of the remaining interested nations, as they had made inroads into the intricate, supposedly monopolistic, Spanish commercial system. Many mysteries related to Spain and Spanish America as a result of the dynastic transition occurred during the reign of Philip V. The Nueva Planta Decrees and the reform of the Spanish commercial system have been thoroughly studied and revisited, but never seen as a direct consequence of the Treaties of Utrecht. Spain’s territories were reconigured as ancient privileges and charters (fueros) were abolished by the Nueva Planta Decrees. The old peninsular kingdoms were made obsolete and Spain was divided into captaincies general in a successful attempt to both militarize and centralize state administration. Almost all of these captaincies were governed by the same law, with the exception of the old viceroyalties, such as Navarre, in which this new territorial arrangement was required to coexist with the ancient fueros. In addition, the Leyes de Extranjería (ImmigrationLaws), whereby a citizen of one Iberian kingdom was a foreigner in any of the other Iberian kingdoms, were abolished. This in fact enabled the Catalans to trade directly with the Americas. Despite French interference, several Spanish statesmen, including Tinajero de la Escalera, attempt to tackle the Achilles’ heel of the Spanish colonial system: widespread corruption as most civil servants operated as front men and allies to private merchants. In a report circulated in July 1707 at the Board of Trade, Tinajero exposes how the consulates engendered signiicant losses for the royal treasury by recording incorrect information with regard to the cargoes of all leets and galleons since 1689. It is worth noting that 1689 was identiied as the earliest year for which they were capable of collecting suficient hard evidence.9 Repeated fraudulent igures reported by the Consulate of Seville were one of the reasons that led the Board of Trade to relocate to Cadiz, along with the consulate. In this port city, it would be easier to enforce the newly created vía reservada system – later implemented by Patiño – by means of new regulations. This system was an attempt by the institutions in charge of the leets to liaise directly with the crown. This minor innovation – largely ineffective in the end – was seen by Patiño as the only way to tax American cash advantageously, given the impossibility of undertaking a full reform of the shipping system while the 500-tonne license issued to English merchants following Utrecht was in force. Patiño himself admitted that until 1744 at the earliest, it would not be possible to change it (Delgado Barrado, 2003). The crown insisted on colonial trade being a “state business”, but it was also aware of the enormous power held then and in the future by the communities of foreign merchants operating out of Cadiz. Bernardo Tinajero de la Escalera himself admitted the need to operate in harmony with foreigners, thus showing the crown’s willingness to fully participate in the lobby of Cadiz. It would never be possible for the state to be a major player on the commercial stage in Seville, due to the power of the local aristocracy. Documents seized from the secretary and accounting ofice of the Consulate in Seville which were held by its agent Cristobal Esquerra (books for the leets from 1689 to 1705) reveal an underlying issue: there were several parties in the Seville aristocracy aligned either for or against the new Bourbon government. The Indies trade was solely in the hands of Seville’s Consulado de Cargadores – an all-powerful merchants’ lobby – but they saw that this was about to change in favour of the foreign merchants involved in the Indies trade by means of networks and consignees in Cadiz. There were also French agents who frequently visited the court in Madrid, and English as well as Dutch merchants had extended their networks to Hispanic American ports. Seville’s consuls were accused of “having committed continuous excesses, misused their powers and given no account for their actions, in breach of royal orders and resulting in harm to commerce and loss to the royal treasury”.10 These factors are central to understanding the events that occurred subsequently and the changes in the government of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, especially after the appointment of Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, Duke of Alburquerque, as new viceroy. He was also in charge of building the trading posts that would be used by the French company responsible for the slave trade in the Spanish colonies. He also seized property and goods belonging to English and Dutch merchants in Mexican ports, as well as those belonging to Portuguese Jews (Escamilla González, 2001: 157-178). In addition, the decisions made by the Board of Trade led to the creation of an intendancy structure in Spain with the object of taxing American cash for the defence and support of the empire. This system was implemented in 1711 and had a clear French inluence. The Junta de Restablecimiento del Comercio (Trade Reestablishment Council) ruled that the Seville consulate did behave unfairly in not supporting this defence, which was favourable to the control measures implemented by Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 78 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht • 9 French merchants in most Spanish port cities, from Cadiz to Veracruz. It was then estimated that the consulate had evaded a total of 645 million pesos in taxes.11 It is important to note that as a result of the repeated fraudulent accounting, Philip V ordered the seizure of all documentation from the consulate and sent the consulate’s agent at court to prison, as well as some former consulates. All of this fraud compelled the crown to change the system for collecting cash from the Americas. The Auditor General issued a number of dispatches in 1706 to ensure that the cash belonging to the imprisoned oficials on board the leets and galleons leaving Cadiz would be seized on arrival in America and then sent back to swell the war treasury.12 The king left court to oversee the war in Aragon and appointed four ministers to the cabinet: Antonio Ronquillo, García Pérez de Araciel, Pascual de Villacampos and Cándido de Molina. They were commissioned to resolve any dificulties in all matters related to the consulate, and to prevent the cash from the Indies from being distributed in the American ports by the leets’ deputies (representatives), who also worked for private, usually foreign, merchants. The pre-existing, high amount of corruption quite simply soared as a result of the power vacuum during the succession crisis and subsequent war. The Board of Trade was intent on clearing up this mess so that the Royal Treasury could receive its due and changing the system to be able to provide enough cash to the Navy, something the Seville consulate had never been interested in, as its only concern appeared to have been keeping as much cash as it was able to.13 Part of the fraud consisted of the leets’ deputies charging a higher rate at the American ports than what was declared upon return to the Spanish ports, and pocketing the difference. On occasions, cash was stolen while the leet was under attack or after an accident, such as when the Vigo leet commanded by Manuel de Velasco was shipwrecked off the coast of Galicia. In the Canary Islands, the leets’ deputies charged an extra 2% on all outbound merchandise as well as “on all merchandise coming from the Indies on board loose (unregistered) ships”.14 The reform of the Consejo de Indias (Council of the Indies) in 1719 was a reflection of the substantial change that the institutions responsible for the Indies trade were undergoing. Once it was officially relocated to Cadiz in 1717 – in practice the move had began in 1660 – the Casa de la Contratación (Board of Trade) shared part of its responsibilities with the newly created Intendencia General de Marina (Naval Intendancy), an agency in charge of certain naval and fiscal affairs related to the fleet system (Crespo Solana, 1996). The Board of Trade agreed on a series of budgets that would change the structure of port control for the Indies trade, routes and their corresponding ports, and the merchants’ activities themselves. It was decided that a Secretary of State should be appointed, a person “as prudent, able and experienced as can be found in the Navy, in the Indies trade or in commerce in general, and general regulations must passed with regard to these departments”. It was also decided that all departments would be furnished with intendancies, police inspectors, navy bookkeepers, shipyards, factories and warehouses for weapons and ammunition for warships, for which the best port locations had to be found. This was the main reason why the Bay of Cadiz was chosen. The board was already in favour of this option, and Jose Patiño also had his own reasons: “[Cadiz] boasts a bay which is rightfully depicted as both beautiful and extensively frequented by vessels of all nations; this bay is ideally located in the event of a war and best suited to conduct the Indies trade as this is one of the largest trades in the world.” The idea was to make Cadiz into a massive naval base with intendants, inspectors, etc. Patiño also pointed out that Cadiz was not suitable for large-scale shipbuilding due the high price of hardware, timber and labour, but only suited for occasional maintenance and repairs on a small number of ships. Furthermore, the bay had three or four canals which were blocked with debris. They could be cleared up and the banks reinforced with lime and stone in the French fashion. This way each storehouse would have its own mooring under a sign with its name and the expenditure was certain to pay for itself in a very short time.15 Intendants would be in charge of naval inspectors, royal clerks and warehouse keepers, and would be responsible for visiting all the kingdom’s shores and ports, as well as training a corps of high-ranking oficers who would be on stand-by, ready to go whenever they were needed. Spain had a shortage of naval oficers, so they had to be recruited from among foreigners from any country. This new policy was intended to educate and train companies of naval soldiers as well as appoint a general Navy Treasurer. At the same time, new regulations were passed to restore colonial trade.16 These regulations stipulated that only Spanish merchants and their vessels were allowed to sail to and enter American ports. The subjects of any other crown were prevented by law and their ships would not be permitted to enter ports in the Indies. Along with foreign friends and allies, they would be allowed to send merchandise to the Indies by means of a Spanish merchant and by using a Spanish vessel – even if the ship was foreign made. Foreign nations did issue public announcements prohibiting their citizens from sailing to Spanish America, as they would be left to be punished by the Spanish authorities if caught. All persons allowed to trade were entitled to ship all legal merchandise to Cadiz, where it would be taken to the customs office to be checked, “but no tax or duty will be levied on merchandise, clothing or produce of any kind any longer, as the customs officers will only be responsible for checking”. Also, all ships from allied nations which arrived in Cadiz had to register their merchandise with the customs officers and state within 48 hours, the consignee responsible for the load. All merchandise bound for the Indies was subject to an export tax known as the almojarifazgo. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 79 10 • Ana Crespo Solana The system of leets and galleons was maintained as per the 1720 Royal Plan, which was intended to strengthen this main maritime route. However, changes taking place in American intraregional trade led to this system failing and being replaced by a system of “loose” register ships, which allowed for a substantial increase in Hispano-American commerce. This new system did not prevent foreign nations from increasing their already obvious involvement in the Indies trade (Delgado Ribas, 2007: 77). The greatest impact that Utrecht had on colonial trade resulted from granting England the right to supply African slaves to the Spanish colonies. The English crown gave this licence to the South Sea Company. This company also obtained a licence to send a 500-tonne ship full of merchandise consigned by English merchants to the Americas.17 This was the inal nail in the cofin for Spain’s control over American trade, as it meant that foreign merchants controlled most of this commerce and Spain totally lost what small amount of control it had had over its colonial trade. The Nueva Planta Decrees were also applied in America. The previous Leyes de Indias (Laws of the Indies) and the encomienda land grant system were abolished, and the internal organization of the viceroyalties was signiicantly altered (Muro Orejón, 1967). It has been said that setting up captaincies general was based on the territorial structure in France at the time. However, the changes enforced in the Americas by the Bourbon ruling were directed against the power of the creole aristocracy, although the viceroyalties were maintained and a even new one was created. New Granada was created in 1717 by Philip V as a reward for the loyalty shown by America. The Viceroyalty of Peru was also reduced in size, as it had previously comprised most of South America. New viceroyalties were created in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, and captaincies in Chile and Caracas. Other areas were split off and allocated to a different viceroyalty. In 1718, the vast region between the River Tumbez and Quito was assigned to New Granada (Vadillo, 2006: 113). Buenos Aires was the only port suited for the trade with Spain, although it was in ierce competition with Montevideo, as the latter was located on a bay more suitable for large draught ships. Spain had been colonizing Montevideo since 1724 in an attempt to drive the Portuguese away from the Sacramento colony (Angelis, 1836). Bourbon reforms in the Americas led to signiicant territorial expansion, despite the demographic deicit in several areas. This expansion was the result of missionary as well as military activity, driven by the Bourbon desire to get ahead of the expected invasions by other nations already settled in the Americas, which threatened the weak and barely guarded borders. During the entire 18th century, the Spanish crown continued to be on the defensive in the Caribbean and the northern provinces of the Viceroyalty of Mexico. Naval policy in the Americas was strengthened as a result of the continuous state of colonial warfare and harassment of the Spanish colonies by foreign nations, especially in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, amongst other things. The Anglo-French war in America led to several, largely unimportant, territorial changes, but placed England in an advantageous position after the 1763 Treaty of Paris. In addition, Spain and Portugal were at war again over control of the River Plate and this led to further borderrelated disagreements. England was all too ready to take advantage of this and increased its smuggling activities in various areas. However, at a political level there was a change of approach to the “Indian kingdoms” as a result of the Hispanic Monarchy’s loss of the European empire when the Treaties of Utrecht were enforced: the Americas at last became the object of more well-planned policies. Antonio Domínguez Ortíz has stated that “the Spanish government became aware that promoting its American empire was the only way to remain a great power, hence the subsequent reorganization and expansion which greatly altered the physiognomy of Spanish America (Domínguez Ortíz, 2010: 41). Despite the wars endured during the 18th century, the Spanish empire enjoyed a period of commercial prosperity. This prosperity was not interrupted when the Cadiz monopoly ended. On the contrary, the increase in wealth spread to other areas of the peninsula. It has been said that the 18th century represents the highest peak for both Spanish colonial domination in the Americas and Spanish trade itself. NOTES 1. This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministery of Science and Innovation (MICINN), GlobalNet (Ref: HAR2011-27694). 2. Instauratio Magna, by Francis Bacon was published in 1620. Quoted by Brendecke, 2012: 16 - 17. 3. Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE], Mss. 18.055, fols. 239-240. 4. Barros, Polonia, Pinto, Riveiro, in Crespo Solana, 2014: 102-140, 140-178. 5. This has been speciied in the theoretical and methodological introduction to: Crespo Solana, coord., 2010, Introduction: 15-29. 6. Further reading about the social and economic framework of merchant communities in: Salas Aussens, 2009; Weber, 2001: 169-174; Hancock, 1995; Gestrich & Schulte Beerbühl, 2011; Ramada Curto & Molho, 2002; Crespo Solana, 2010a, 2012 and 2014. 7. BNE Mss. 12055, fol. 187v. 8. Ibidem. 9. BNE Mss. 12055. 10. BNE, Mss. 12055, fol. 2. 11. BNE, Mss. 12055, fol. 66. 12. BNE Mss. 12055, fol. 62. 13. “Extracto individual de todas las cuentas que hay que tomar y deben dar los consulados de la ciudad de Sevilla desde el año de 1689 según el Real Decreto de S.M.”. 14. BNE, Mss. 12055, fol. 105. th 15. Report signed in Madrid, May 15 , 1713 by Juan de Monsegur. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 80 The formation of a social Hispanic Atlantic space and the integration of merchant communities following the Treaties of Utrecht • 11 16. “Ordenanzas nuevas que se han de publicar y observar para el comercio y tráico de las Indias entre los vasallos de estos Reinos con los de aquellos dominios en que se comprenden así los vasallos mis súbditos que estaban excluidos de este comercio como todas las naciones con que se tuviesen alianzas, paz o amistad” 17. Archivo General de Indias [AGI], Sevilla, Indiferente General, 2769, L. 8. “Asiento ajustado entre las dos majestades Católica y Británica sobre encargarse la Compañía de Inglaterra de la introducción de esclavos negros en la América española por tiempo de 30 años”. REFERENCES Angelis, Pedro de (1836) Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de La Plata. Tomo III, Imprenta del Estado, Buenos Aires. Barros, Amandio Jorge (2014) “Northern Portuguese Commercial Networks and the Geographies of Trade in the Early Modern Period”. In Spatio-Temporal Narratives. Historical GIS and the Study of Global Trading Networks (1500-1800), edited by Crespo Solana, Ana. Cambridge Scholar Publishing, London: 102-140. Bethencourt, Francisco and Ramada Curto, Diogo (editors), (2007) Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Braudel, Fernand (2002) Las ambiciones de la Historia. Crítica, Barcelona. 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Yuan, Yuan (2014) “Temporal GIS for historical research”. In Spatio-Temporal Narratives. Historical GIS and the Study of Global Trading Networks (1500-1800), edited by Crespo Solana, Ana. Cambridge Scholar Publishing, London: 45-56. Yuste López, Carmen (1997) Comercio marítimo colonial: nuevas interpretaciones y últimas fuentes. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e007. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.007 82 3(1) June 2014, e008 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera Departamento de Historia de la Ciencia, Instituto de Historia, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, C/ Albasanz nº 26-28. 28037 Madrid CSIC e-mail: leoncio.lopez-ocon@cchs.csic.es Submitted: 13 January 2014. Accepted: 31 March 2014 RESUMEN: El objetivo de este ensayo es triple. Por una parte se ofrece una visión panorámica de los vínculos entre ciencia, guerra y universidad durante tres momentos clave deinitorios de la contemporaneidad: la Revolución francesa, la Gran Guerra y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Por otro lado se presta atención particular a las movilizaciones de actores, a las transformaciones en los sistemas de organización de la ciencia y a la creación de artefactos técnicos en cada una de las mencionadas coyunturas belicistas. Y en tercer lugar se considera el hecho de que la comunidad cientíica tiende a escindirse en coyunturas críticas. Durante la revolución francesa el mesianismo revolucionario politizó a la ciencia y dividió a los cientíicos en el interior de su país. Un siglo después, a principios del siglo XX, dominó la escena política el mesianismo nacionalista, responsable de que la misma escisión separase a los cientíicos no sólo en el interior de sus respectivos Estados, sino también entre los diversos Estados integrantes de la comunidad internacional. PALABRAS CLAVE: ciencia; universidad; Revolución francesa; primera guerra mundial; segunda guerra mundial; Carnot; Fritz Haber; Robert Oppenheimer Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: López-Ocón Cabrera, Leoncio (2014). “Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e008. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 ABSTRACT: Mobilizations and divisions of the scientiic community in wartime.- This paper has a triple objective. On the one hand, it pretends to give an overview of the links between science, war and university during three key moments of contemporary history: the French Revolution, the Great War and the Second World War. Furthermore special attention is paid to the mobilization of actors, to changes in the organizational processes of science and to the creation of technical artifacts in each of the above warmongers situations. Thirdly we consider the fact that the scientiic community tends to split at critical junctures. During the French Revolution the revolutionary messianism politicized science and it divided scientists within their country. A century later, in the early twentieth century, the nationalist messianism dominated the political scene. This messianism raised controversy among scientists, not only within their respective states, but also between the various states of the international community. KEYWORDS: science; university; French Revolution; First World War; Second World War; Carnot; Fritz Haber; Robert Oppenheimer Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. Las relaciones entre la ciencia y la guerra han sido estrechas a lo largo de la historia. Se remontan a tiempos antiguos. Son bien conocidas, por ejemplo, las contribuciones del matemático e ingeniero Arquímedes quien diseñó diversos inventos –como la manus férrea, artilu- gio capaz de sacar barcos enemigos del agua- para mejorar la defensa de su ciudad natal Siracusa durante las segundas guerras púnicas. Pero, como intentaré explicar a continuación, esas interrelaciones han caracterizado sobre todo nuestra 83 2 • Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera edad contemporánea, según ha destacado una abundante bibliografía (Sánchez Ron, 2007; Pestre, 2005; Krige y Pestre, 1997; Forman y Sánchez Ron, 1996; SchroederGudehus, 1978). Han marcado a sangre y fuego el convulso y dramático siglo XX, deinido en 1946 por Albert Camus como el “siglo del miedo”, miedo producido por las aplicaciones bélicas de la ciencia que podrían destruir la vida en la tierra1. Ahora bien, las conexiones entre universidad, ciencia, y guerra ya no son tan claras en los tiempos modernos, pues es bien conocido que instituciones tan representativas de la ciencia moderna como la Royal Society y l’Académie des Sciences nacieron al margen de la universidad. Hay que tener en cuenta además que, al iniciarse el ciclo de las revoluciones atlánticas con las que se inauguró nuestra contemporaneidad, las universidades europeas y americanas enseñaban saberes que, excepto la medicina, incidían poco en el conocimiento de la realidad. Ilustrados, como Diderot y D’Alembert, las consideraban reliquias del corporativismo medieval, necesitadas urgentemente de una profunda renovación2. En aquel entonces, con independencia de la fecha de su fundación, las universidades del mundo occidental presentaban una serie de rasgos comunes. Eran corporaciones autogobernadas y descompuestas en facultades, beneiciarias de variados privilegios judiciales, iscales y académicos. Su acceso estaba circunscrito solo a aspirantes masculinos, que acreditasen un suiciente dominio del latín como lengua de uso general en el terreno de la transmisión y la difusión del conocimiento. La organización de las facultades era deudora de la vieja separación medieval al estar divididas en cuatro grandes ramas: gramática y ilosofía -englobadas ambas como artesteología, derecho civil y canónico, y medicina. Su principal función era la de enseñar y examinar en su respectiva parcela, disfrutando en ella de una supremacía educativa que se sustentaba en un monopolio en el otorgamiento de grados, recibido de la Iglesia o del Estado. Se convertían así en lugar de paso obligado para todo aquel que pretendiese incorporarse al desempeño de ciertas profesiones de especial relevancia (Bermejo, 2008: 50-51). Estas características eran más o menos comunes a las universidades existentes en el siglo XVIII en el ámbito cultural europeo: cuarenta y cinco germánicas, fuesen protestantes o católicas, veintiocho españolas, contando las americanas, veinticuatro francesas, dieciocho italianas, cuatro escocesas, dos inglesas, y dos en Portugal- las de Coimbra y Evora (Bermejo, 2008: 56). Hecha esta puntualización acerca de las diicultades de establecer una relación unívoca y directa entre los tres soportes del trípode ciencia, guerra, universidad a lo largo de los períodos históricos que han conigurado nuestra contemporaneidad, quisiera ofrecer a continuación una visión panorámica de sus vínculos atendiendo a tres coyunturas especíicas: el período de las revoluciones atlánticas prestando particular atención a la revolución francesa3; la Gran Guerra de 1914-1918 y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En cada una de esas coyunturas se produjeron movilizaciones de múltiples actores relacionados con la producción y distribución de conocimientos, y transformaciones en los sistemas de organización de la ciencia y en la creación de artefactos técnicos que garantizasen la victoria sobre los enemigos. Explicar algunas características de esos fenómenos es el hilo conductor de la relexión que se efectúa a continuación. Para ello me aproximaré a las tres coyunturas bélicas, a tres escenarios de la historia contemporánea, que conviene contemplar desde diferentes puntos de vista como hacemos cuando observamos un panorama, como el que existe en el museo moscovita que nos evoca la batalla de Borodino. LA RÉPUBLIQUE N’A PAS BESOIN DES SAVANTS NI DES CHIMISTES El primer escenario está deinido por la frase apócrifa –La République n’a pas besoin des savants ni des chimistes- que se ha atribuido a diversos robiesperristas, como Jean-Baptiste Cofinhal, que juzgaron y condenaron a Lavoisier a la guillotina en 1794.4 Es bien conocido que los hechos desmienten tan pretenciosa sentencia, como se aprecia en el informe efectuado el 3 de enero de 1795 por el médico y químico Antoine François de Fourcroy (1755-1809), un notorio jacobino en representación del Comité de Salud Pública. En él expuso a la Convención nacional las decisivas aportaciones efectuadas por la ciencia en la defensa de la República de tal manera que las luces de sus colegas cientíicas se habían convertido en “el ancla de la salvación de todos”. Y en otro informe este reorganizador de la enseñanza cientíica y médica insistió en sus consideraciones. Subrayó entonces que la guerra había sido la ocasión propicia para que la República francesa pudiese desarrollar todo el poder de sus ingenieros y cientíicos (Salomon, 1974: 30). En efecto, la movilización de los cientíicos en el bienio 1793-1794 fue decisiva para salvar la naciente república francesa que en el año de 1793 se encontraba ante el abismo, falta de armamento y materias primas para contener la amenaza de las potencias europeas monárquicas, coaligadas para derribar el régimen republicano y evitar la contaminación de las ideas revolucionarias. Defender eicazmente la nación en armas requirió el concurso del mayor número posible de técnicos e ingenieros que hasta entonces estaban mal representados en la Convención o en el gobierno revolucionario. El instrumento para movilizarlos fue la creación – el 6 de abril de 1793 - del Comité de Salud Pública por parte de la Convención. Su primer presidente, Guyton de Morveau, decidió coniar misiones técnicas a expertos cientíicos para crear los instrumentos adecuados que garantizasen la defensa de la República y reconstruyesen las infraestructuras del país, cuyas carreteras, puentes, puertos y arsenales estaban abandonados. Así, una de las comisiones creadas por Guyton de Morveau fue la de obras públicas. En ella estaban presentes cinco quí- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 84 Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra • 3 micos –Berthollet, Chaptal, Fourcroy, el mismo Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin-; un físico: Hassenfratz; dos ingenieros –Lamblardie y Prieur de la Côte-d’Or-; y dos matemáticos –Monge y Vandermonde-, representantes en su mayor parte del ala izquierda de la ciencia francesa. En esa coyuntura bélica decisiva los cientíicos participan, por primera vez activamente, en los asuntos de Estado para conducirlo a la victoria militar. Cifras, artefactos técnicos y rostros son elocuentes respecto a ese compromiso que llevará a que los representantes de la ciencia tomen el poder en la Francia revolucionaria. El informe de Fourcroy a la Convención, al que aludí anteriormente, estaba respaldado por una serie de datos que muestran la eicacia lograda hacia 1795 por los cientíicos en la producción acelerada y masiva de armamento y en el impulso dado a la industria química para el aprovisionamiento de soda y potasio: 6.000 fusiles por día, 30 fundiciones –en lugar de las 4 existentes en 1789- que producían 13.000 cañones, una cosecha de nitratos, vital para la fabricación de pólvora, doce veces superior a la de 1792 (Dhombres, 1988: 60). Estos guarismos revelaban la importancia del esfuerzo colectivo de los cientíicos movilizados por la Revolución para mejorar la defensa nacional5, la cual se manifestó también en las aplicaciones bélicas que se dieron a dos descubrimientos previos como fue el caso del telégrafo aéreo y de los aerostatos. Claude Chappe presentó su telégrafo a la Asamblea legislativa en marzo de 1792. Hizo hincapié en su valor militar al resaltar que su invento permitiría a los legisladores transmitir sus órdenes a los ejércitos establecidos en las fronteras y recibir la respuesta inmediatamente durante la misma sesión. El proyecto se adoptó y en julio de 1793 se construyó la primera línea entre Paris y Lille, un punto neurálgico del frente del norte. Por otra parte, en ese mismo mes de julio de 1793, el químico Guyton de Morveau, presidente del Comité de Salud Pública, expuso a sus colegas de comité las ventajas militares aportada por el uso de los aerostatos: podrían informar de los movimientos de los ejércitos enemigos, transmitir órdenes a las tropas, lanzar propaganda de las nuevas ideas revolucionarias sobre las líneas enemigas. Surgió entonces la aerostación militar, una aplicación para la guerra del invento de los hermanos Joseph y Etienne Montgolfier, producto de la investigación científica promovida por la nueva química de Lavoisier. Los hermanos Montgolfier tuvieron, en efecto, la idea de encerrar en un espacio cerrado en forma de globo un gas más ligero que el aire para que el artilugio pudiera ascender en la atmósfera. Lograron el primer lanzamiento de un globo aerostático el 5 de junio de 1783. Una década después, en la batalla de Fleurus de 26 de junio de 1794 que abrió las puertas de Bélgica a Francia, las tropas de este país pudieron vencer porque el general Jourdan pudo observar los movimientos de las tropas enemigas anglo-holandesas desde un globo aerostático. Esta nueva arma estratégica operacional revolucionó entonces el arte de la guerra. Señalemos también que si hay un rostro que representa la estrecha involucración entre ciencia y república en aquella coyuntura, y la eicaz movilización de los savants decididos a ganar la guerra, ese es el del ingeniero militar, matemático y ilósofo Lázaro Carnot (17531823). Diputado en la Convención, tras imponer la autoridad republicana en el ejército del Norte, se incorporó en agosto de 1793 al grupo de nueve integrantes del Comité de Salud Pública que tenía poderes extraordinarios para salvar la República de la guerra civil y de las agresiones externas. Allí pone al servicio de la guerra todos sus conocimientos cientíicos y técnicos y encarna la ingeniería de la guerra. Organiza a través del decreto presentado a la Convención el 23 de agosto de ese año 1793 el gran movimiento de movilización general que permite a la República crear diez ejércitos como escudos protectores de su perímetro fronterizo. Ejerce de jefe de estado mayor de esa imponente maquinaria bélica en la que interviene en enero de 1794 una masa heterogénea de casi un millón de hombres, soldados-ciudadanos que constituyen la columna vertebral de la nación en armas. Él mismo calcula todos los planes de batalla. Cuando se produce el éxito para las tropas revolucionarias en la batalla de Fleurus, a la que ya se ha aludido, el 8 messidor del año II de la República, Carnot obtendrá el título de “organizador de la victoria”. Plenamente convencido del protagonismo que han de asumir los ingenieros y los cientíicos en el gobierno de la Nación y en que la Revolución señalaba el inicio de una nueva era impregnada de espíritu cientíico, Carnot puso en práctica estas convicciones cuando ejerció el poder. Privilegia entonces sistemáticamente a los expertos que muestran en la marcha del Estado sus competencias profesionales e intelectuales y reestructura el sistema educativo en beneicio de los cientíicos. Él es uno de los impulsores de la fundación de l’Ecole polytechnique, dedicada a formar alumnos leales tanto a la causa de las ciencias como a la de la República6. Carnot, que también será a partir del 4 de noviembre de 1795 uno de los cinco integrantes del Directorio, simboliza la fuerza del “lobby” cientíico en el período revolucionario (Dhombres, 1989). Los representantes del conjunto de saberes cientíicos, sean matemáticos o economistas, físicos, químicos, naturalistas o médicos, se introducen de golpe en la política, no individualmente, sino en bloque (Serres, 1991). Y así el astrónomo Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793) fue el primer presidente de la Asamblea constituyente y el primer alcalde de París; Condorcet pasó de la Asamblea legislativa a la Convención, de la que Lacepède también era miembro; Laplace fue senador; Fourier, prefecto y Monge, Arago y Chaptal, ministros. Esta profunda interrelación entre saber y poder se mantendrá durante el período napoleónico cuando el geómetra Napoleón Bonaparte (1769-1821) se apoderó del poder militar y civil. Su carrera había sido impulsada precisamente por Lázaro Carnot quien, siendo miembro del Directorio, eligió al joven general Bonaparte como jefe del ejército de Italia, donde obtuvo decisivas victo- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 85 4 • Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera rias contra los ejércitos austriacos. Durante su dirección de los destinos de la Francia revolucionaria los cientíicos continuarán sus relaciones privilegiadas con el poder político (Dhombres, 1989: 709-731). Además la gran expedición que organizó Napoleón en Egipto inauguró un modelo que deiniría las acciones bélicas extraeuropeas de la era del imperialismo: el de poner sus conocimientos al servicio del dominio europeo sobre otras culturas. A partir del afán francés de vencer a los británicos en tierras egipcias y asegurar así su hegemonía colonial en África y Asia, el binomio cienciaimperialismo se revelaría imparable. Para cerrar nuestra aproximación a este primer cuadro insistamos en nuestro planteamiento inicial: en los inicios del siglo XIX la relación entre ciencia y guerra era muy estrecha, pero la vinculación entre los tres elementos del trípode ciencia-guerra-universidad era más laxa. Un siglo después, sin embargo, se incrementó notablemente la interrelación entre los elementos de ese triángulo creando una densa trama de intereses y acciones compartidas entre el aparato militar, el sistema cientíico y el ámbito universitario. Así se puede constatar al aproximarnos a la Gran Guerra, iniciada en el verano de 1914, deinida recientemente por el novelista francés Jean Echenoz, como “la primera guerra industrial” y la “peor carnicería de la historia” al relexionar sobre su novela 14.7 En los cuatro años que duró aquella conlagración mundial los cientíicos se comportaron como aprendices de brujo, como vamos a intentar ver brevemente a continuación. Pero antes de abordar el segundo momento de esta relexión, quisiera destacar cómo la comunidad cientíica tiende a escindirse en coyunturas críticas. Durante las revoluciones atlánticas el mesianismo revolucionario subyacente a ellas politizó a la ciencia y dividió a los cientíicos en el interior de su país, con trágicas consecuencias en algunos casos, como le sucedió a Lavoisier. Un siglo después, a principios del siglo XX, domina la escena política el mesianismo nacionalista, responsable de que la misma escisión separe a los cientíicos no sólo en el interior de su país, sino también entre los países. Se rompía así una de las características del conocimiento cientíico, como es su carácter cosmopolita o universalista. APRENDICES DE BRUJO “Las lámparas se están apagando en toda Europa; no las volveremos a ver encendidas en toda nuestra vida”. Estas fueron las relexiones premonitorias de sir Edward Grey cuando en el verano de 1914 se desencadenó la Primera Guerra Mundial (Stern, 2003: 125). Los cientíicos se implicaron masivamente en la gigantesca maquinaria bélica que se puso en marcha en los múltiples frentes que se abrieron en el continente europeo. Sus lealtades, multiestratiicadas –pues se reieren a la familia, a la institución, a la disciplina, a la nación- y a menudo antagónicas (Cornwell 2005: 30) se decantaron hacia sus respectivos Estados naciones. Así sucedió con los cientíicos vinculados a sistemas universitarios centralistas, muy dependientes de una política oicial de ayuda a la investigación cientíica, relativamente escasa, como sucedía en la Francia de la Tercera República. Y también afectó a los que dependían de un sistema educativo regido por las reglas del laissez-faire donde los gobiernos centrales se abstenían de ayudar a la investigación cientíica, como sucedía en los casos británico y alemán. En esos países, las empresas industriales fueron los principales agentes promotores de la investigación cientíica llevada a cabo en las universidades o en instituciones ad hoc. Así, el Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Cientíicas y Técnicas creado por Helmholtz en 1888 estaba inanciado en su arranque por el industrial Siemens y muchos mecenas privados sostenían la multitud de laboratorios bien equipados de las universidades alemanas. Pertenecieran a cualquiera de las alianzas o ejes políticos en pugna, los científicos de uno y otro bando aconsejaron a sus respectivos gobiernos acerca de los programas militares que dependían de los conocimientos científicos y técnicos acumulados durante el siglo XIX, conocido como la era de la ciencia. Se implicaron además con ahínco en la producción y movilización en masa de nuevas armas, fuesen tanques, submarinos, dirigibles, aviones o gases, quizás la más letal de todas ellas, identificada con la figura de Fritz Haber. En él me voy a detener, pues su trayectoria es reveladora de cómo los científicos alemanes, formados en las mejores universidades europeas existentes en el siglo XIX, se vieron arrastrados a ser aprendices de brujo, co-responsabilizándose de la “peor carnicería de la historia” en la que murieron más de nueve millones de combatientes. Es sabido que el estallido de la guerra en agosto de 1914 fue recibido en toda Europa en medio de una gran exaltación nacional. En el imperio alemán fue particularmente intensa. Ante la amenaza extranjera los cientíicos se movilizaron masivamente, máxime cuando ellos habían sido actores fundamentales en la construcción de la grandeza alemana, cuyos pilares estaban basados en la combinación de poderío militar y cultivo de la Wissenschaft. De hecho, esa singular combinación había permitido a Alemania, y en concreto a Berlín, convertirse en la Meca internacional de la ciencia al inalizar la primera década del siglo XX. En esa movilización destacó el que sería considerado el padre de la guerra química, Fritz Haber, director desde 1911 del Instituto Kaiser Wilhelm para la Química Física y Electroquímica en el suburbio berlinés de Dahlem que Friedrich Althoff, el principal responsable de las universidades prusianas, quería transformar en un Oxford alemán. Iniciada la guerra, el prestigioso químico Fritz Haber, de origen judío, pero convertido al cristianismo, se dedicó en cuerpo y alma a las tareas bélicas, consciente de que la ciencia alemana tenía que contribuir a la victoria Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 86 Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra • 5 aportando fuentes alternativas de las materias primas indispensables, importadas en el pasado. Ayudó decisivamente a los políticos, como Walter Rathenau, que dirigían la división del Ministerio de Guerra dedicada a la distribución de las materias primas. Puso entonces a su instituto de Dahlem en pie de guerra y creó una especie de proyecto Manhattan “avant la lettre”. Reclutó a ciento cincuenta “colaboradores cientíicos” y una cantidad más elevada de personal de distinta índole. Y organizó el uso a gran escala del proceso de ijación de nitrógeno para conseguir que la producción de ácido nítrico para explosivos y fertilizantes se adecuara a una demanda cada vez mayor. Se le conoce como proceso Bosch-Haber, pues fue desarrollado inicialmente cuando Carl Bosh y Fritz Haber coincidieron en la Universidad de Karlsruhe entre 1894 y 1911. Estaba basado en la síntesis catalítica del amoníaco a partir del dihidrógeno y el dinitrógeno atmosférico en condiciones de alta temperatura y presión. Fue un hito en la industria química, pues independizó la síntesis del amoníaco y de productos nitrogenados - como fertilizantes, explosivos y materias primas químicas-, de los depósitos naturales, especialmente del nitrato de sodio, del que Chile era casi el único productor mundial. De hecho, en 1916 el Instituto de Haber era capaz de producir 25 millones de toneladas mensuales de salitre, inexistente en Alemania antes de la guerra. De no haber efectuado ese esfuerzo, la capacidad militar de ese país se hubiera agotado en la primavera de 1915 por falta de munición, y el pueblo alemán habría pasado hambre por falta de fertilizantes. Pero la contribución más conocida de Haber a la guerra fue la elaboración de gas tóxico, arma con la que se pretendía superar el estancamiento mortífero de la guerra de trincheras, contraviniendo su prohibición decretada por la Convención de La Haya de 1907, irmada, entre otros países, por la misma Alemania. Los denominados soldados de la unidad de gas de Haber no eran cualesquiera: se trataba de jóvenes científicos talentosos. Así en torno a él, que obtuvo el premio Nobel en 1918, se agruparon otros tres futuros premios Nobel: James Franck, Gustav Hertz y Otto Hahn. Todos ellos hicieron propia la reflexión de Haber: “en tiempo de paz, un científico pertenece al mundo, pero en tiempo de guerra pertenece a su país”.Sus investigacionespermitieronusarpor primera vez el gas cloro el 22 de abril de 1915 contra las tropas francoargelinas en la segunda batalla de Ypres, a la que asistió personalmente Haber. La guerra con gases tóxicos no inclinó la balanza del lado alemán, pero el horror que provocó –la espeluznante asfixia, la ceguera, las muertes, la experiencia incluso para los supervivientes de una muerte en vida- ha pasado a formar parte de manera indeleble de nuestra memoria colectiva, un temprano ejemplo de la ciencia al servicio de unos propósitos satánicos (Stern, 2003: 132). Haber se convirtió por tanto en el organizador de la ciencia más importante de la Alemania bélica. Así lo reconoció uno de sus hijos, historiador de la ciencia, quien señaló que en su padre “[el alto mando] encontró una mente brillante y un organizador sumamente enérgico, resuelto y posiblemente también sin escrúpulos”. Quizás esa falta de escrúpulos esté relacionada con la decisión que tomó su primera esposa, Clara Inmmerwahr, química también y la primera mujer doctorada en la universidad de Breslau, de suicidarse el 15 de mayo de 1915, tras haberse opuesto a la guerra química. Pero la falta de escrúpulos afectó a muchos otros cientíicos de otros países contendientes. Francia tuvo en el profesor universitario y premio Nobel de Química de 1912 Víctor Grignard la contraparte de Haber en la guerra del gas franco-alemana, al especializarse en el uso de gases militares –como el fosgeno y el gas mostaza- y explosivos. Situándonos en terreno francés, diversos estudios han mostrado cómo los médicos se organizaron en una máquina de guerra (Becker, 2000; Delaporte, 2004; Le Naour 2011). Por un lado contra la Alemania de Guillermo II a la que se acusó de llevar a cabo un plan diabólico tendente a destruir la “raza” francesa mediante una guerra total. Pero también contra los “soldados de la vergüenza”, es decir los más de cien mil soldados franceses con enfermedades mentales, cuyos síntomas eran la parálisis, los temblores del cuerpo, la mudez, los cuerpos plegados, etc., traumatizados por los horrores de la guerra, que llegaron a ocupar una séptima parte de la camas disponibles de los hospitales entre 1914 y 1918 (Becker, 2000: 144). Se crearon centros neurológicos para tratarlos mediante una electroterapia persuasiva impulsada por el neurólogo Joseph Babinski que acuñó el concepto de “pithiatismo” para designar el conjunto de desórdenes funcionales que no tenían una causa orgánica. Los enfermos de pithiatismo eran sospechosos de tener mala voluntad, es decir de ser simuladores, que no querían afrontar sus responsabilidades en la línea del frente (Darmon, 2001). En 1915 la Sociedad de neurología consideró que no podían ser reformados. Pero un año después un importante neurólogo, Clovis Vincent, apostó por el uso de la violencia como método de curación, considerando que la inyección de dosis masivas de electricidad a los enfermos era el tratamiento más eicaz y más rápido para enviarlos al frente. De modo que mayoritariamente los médicos franceses se pusieron al lado del Estado, convencidos de que su tarea era proporcionar soldados a la patria, olvidándose de que se debían a los enfermos a los que debían de mitigar sus sufrimientos. La Gran Guerra dejó consternados a los cientíicos de los pocos países que permanecieron neutrales en aquella contienda. Uno de ellos fue el catedrático de la Universidad Central de Madrid Santiago Ramón y Cajal, premio Nobel de Medicina y Fisiología en 1906, quien en su autobiografía manifestó cómo “la perturbación producida en los espíritus por la horrenda guerra europea de 1914” fue para su actividad cientíica “un golpe rudísimo” de manera que “alteró mi salud…y enfrió, por primera vez, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 87 6 • Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera mis entusiasmos por la investigación”. En sus relexiones el cientíico español se mostró pesimista al constatar que en las “cruentas crisis de civilización” solo se apreciaban aquellas ciencias que se ponían, “con vergonzosa sumisión, al servicio de los grandes aniquiladores de pueblos” y expresó sus temores ante el futuro de la guerra biológica al comparar el armamento de su ayer – en el que habían predominado aeroplanos, cañones descomunales, gases asixiantes y lacrimógenos- con los que podría deparar su mañana caracterizado por armas letales como: microbios patógenos, epidemias inoculadas desde las nubes, envenenamiento de los alimentos y las aguas (Ramón y Cajal, 2006: 713-714). Por su parte, en los países contendientes pocas voces intentaron hacer frente a aquel tsunami de terror y horror entremezclados. Entre los cientíicos la voz que sonó más alta en contra de la guerra fue la de Albert Einstein, destacado paciista militante en aquella coyuntura, y que acababa de instalarse en Berlín para tener una cátedra en la universidad sin obligaciones docentes y dirigir el Instituto Káiser Guillermo de Física, gracias a las gestiones llevadas a cabo por su amigo Fritz Haber. Desde el principio del conlicto bélico Einstein consideró la guerra como una especie de drama suicida en la historia de Europa, un arrebato de locura. Se adhirió al contramaniiesto de octubre de 1914 que lanzó el físico berlinés G.F. Nicolai, nacido Lewinstein, para evitar que Europa sucumbiese al agotamiento y la destrucción por una guerra fratricida y en el que se marcaban distancias con el famoso maniiesto de los 93 sabios y eruditos, entre los que se encontraban Fritz Haber y Paul Ehrlich, en el que se reairmaba que Alemania no era culpable de haber provocado la guerra. Su pena y asco ante el desarrollo de los acontecimientos le reairmaron en su convicción de que “todo nuestro progreso tecnológico, tan elogiado, y la civilización en general, podrían compararse con un hacha en manos de un criminal patológico” (Stern, 2003:130). Pero su estado de ánimo maltrecho no le impidió seguir con sus “pacíicas relexiones” que culminaron en 1915 con la teoría general de la relatividad. Tras la Gran Guerra Einstein se convirtió en un héroe mundial, sobre todo a partir del momento en el que el presidente de la Royal Society y Premio Nobel J.J. Thompson manifestó que las observaciones de la expedición británica de A.S. Eddington sobre el eclipse solar de marzo de 1919 corroboraban las desviaciones gravitacionales de la luz que Einstein había supuesto y por lo tanto conirmaban la teoría general de la relatividad. Para Thompson el trabajo de Einstein era “uno de los mayores acontecimientos, tal vez el mayor, de la historia del pensamiento humano”. Pero a medida que crecía su ascendiente internacional empezó a ser objeto de ataques antisemitas en la sociedad alemana, planteando algunos cientíicos como el premio Nobel Philipp Lenard que la relatividad era “un fraude judío”, posición que los nazis enseguida apoyaron. Los delicados equilibrios que habían contribuido a hacer a las universidades alemanas las mejores del mundo a principios del siglo XX empezaron a romperse ante el crescendo de los prejuicios antijudíos. Así, en 1924, ante un acto discriminatorio contra un compañero judío, el químico Richard Willstätter, premio Nobel de 1915, renunció a su cátedra en la Universidad de Munich y no volvió a entrar en su laboratorio universitario nunca más. Einstein, por su parte, a medida que la política alemana giraba a la derecha se hizo más radical en su paciismo de izquierdas, instando a los ciudadanos a rechazar el servicio militar a principios de la década de 1930. Cuando Hitler alcanzó el poder el 30 de enero de 1933 se encontraba en el Instituto de Tecnología de California, en Pasadena. Inmediatamente se convirtió en un temible opositor al régimen nazi que replicó a sus denuncias quemando sus libros, coniscando sus propiedades y revocando su ciudadanía alemana en 1934. Recuérdese que la Ley de Restauración de la administración pública de abril de 1933 establecía, salvo algunas excepciones, la eliminación de las universidades alemanas de los profesores no arios. La guerra entre Einstein y el régimen nazi se prolongó varios años y culminó cuando Einstein abandonó sus posiciones paciistas, y consciente del “pacto con el diablo” que regía la política cientíica nazi (Cornwell, 2005), envió al presidente Roosevelt un comunicado el 2 de agosto de 1939 en el que le advertía que “trabajos recientes efectuados por E. Fermi y L. Szilard, cuyo manuscrito se me ha comunicado, me llevan a pensar que el elemento uranio podría convertirse en el futuro inmediato en una nueva e importante fuente de energía. Algunos aspectos de la situación actual parecen requerir una gran vigilancia y, dado el caso, una decisión rápida de parte de la Administración. Por eso creo que es mi deber poner ante su atención los hechos y las recomendaciones siguientes…”. Se iniciaba entonces una nueva fase, más intensa, en la asociación histórica del saber y el poder. Culminaría seis años después con la explosión de Hiroshima, reveladora de un mundo nuevo. En él los cientíicos se mancharon las manos de sangre, según constató el físico norteamericano Robert Oppenheimer en una célebre entrevista con el presidente Harry Truman. “TENGO LAS MANOS MANCHADAS DE SANGRE” Acerquémonos un poco más a aquella coyuntura dramática y a algunos de los rasgos que deinieron el papel de los cientíicos que se involucraron directamente en el desarrollo de la conlagración mundial, que se abrió apenas un mes después del memorándum enviado por Einstein al presidente Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tal escrito lo recibiría el mandatario norteamericano de manos del economista y hombre de negocios, y amigo personal, Alexander Sachs, en octubre de 1939 (Salomon, 1974: 57-58). Una doble circunstancia explicaría el abandono de Einstein de sus posiciones paciistas en aquel fatídico Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 88 Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra • 7 año 1939. Por una parte, la toma de conciencia de que el rearme de la Alemania hitleriana estaba abriendo una caja de Pandora que amenazaba la implantación de regímenes totalitarios en toda Europa, de lo que era un anticipo la victoria de Franco sobre la España republicana culminada el 1 de abril de 1939. Esa derrota de los republicanos españoles originaría una diáspora de su emergente elite cientíica8, entre la que Einstein tenía no solo admiradores sino buenos amigos, como el físico Blas Cabrera, catedrático de la Universidad Central de Madrid. Por otra parte, la carrera frenética en diversos lugares del mundo para obtener la primera isión nuclear artiicial en cadena, fundamento material de un arma cuyo poder de destrucción sería devastador: la bomba atómica. De hecho, ya el físico judío de origen húngaro Leo Szilard, una vez exiliado en el Reino Unido, había registrado en 1934 una patente acerca del principio de construcción de la bomba atómica que cedió dos años después al Almirantazgo Británico para asegurar su secreto. Consciente del poder fáustico de las investigaciones que tenía en marcha, intentó durante un tiempo imponer la autocensura a todos los investigadores antinazis. Pero a lo largo de 1939 los acontecimientos se precipitaron. En efecto, Szilard no logró impedir que en abril de 1939 el físico francés Fréderic Joliot, adscrito al Collège de France, publicase en la revista cientíica Nature un artículo en el que demostraba cómo operaba el principio de isión nuclear. Este principio se había descubierto recientemente. Los físicos habían constatado que un átomo de uranio, bombardeado por neutrones, se rompía y liberaba energía. Esta radiactividad artiicial tenía una consecuencia que muchos físicos tomaron en consideración: si cada átomo de uranio bombardeado liberaba dos o tres neutrones más, que a su vez pueden bombardear otros átomos de uranio, se provoca una reacción en cadena. En su mencionado artículo Joliot demostraba que era posible obtener 3,5 neutrones por isión. Desde entonces una decena de equipos de físicos, distribuidos en Alemania, Inglaterra y la Unión Soviética, orientaron sus investigaciones hacia la ejecución práctica de una reacción en cadena. Pero en esa carrera solo Joliot y sus colaboradores estaban en condiciones de pasar a la etapa práctica de aplicación industrial o militar de la isión nuclear, aunque tenían que superar problemas de diversa índole. Solucionada la obtención de un enorme volumen de uranio que Joliot necesitaba para sus proyectos de pila atómica – gracias a un acuerdo con una compañía minera belga, propietaria de un yacimiento de uranio en el Congo-, la principal diicultad de su empresa radicaba en la necesidad de aminorar la velocidad de los neutrones emitidos en las primeras isiones, ya que si iban demasiado rápido no se producía la reacción. El equipo francés buscó entonces con ahínco un moderador que ralentizase los neutrones sin absorberlos ni provocar rebotes. Se encontró en el deuterio, isótopo del hidrógeno, con el doble de densidad pero idéntico comportamiento, que puede ocupar el lugar del hidróge- no en moléculas de agua, obteniendo así agua “pesada” que tenía un grado de absorción de neutrones muy bajo. Pero este moderador ideal presentaba un gran inconveniente: en el agua existe un átomo de deuterio por cada 6.000 átomos de hidrógeno. De manera que la obtención de agua pesada costaba una fortuna y, a escala industrial, sólo se obtenía en una fábrica del mundo, la de la compañía noruega Norsk Hydro Elekstric, inmortalizada en la película La Bataille de l’eau lourde. En efecto, en ese ilm se presenta la batalla que, desencadenada la guerra mundial, libraron banqueros, diplomáticos y físicos ingleses, franceses y noruegos para evitar que los alemanes se apoderasen de veintiséis recipientes de agua pesada, entregados por los noruegos a los franceses, los cuales llegaron inalmente a manos de Joliot. Pero ante la debacle francesa ante el avance alemán, el ministro de Armamento Raoul Dautry, que había trabajado por la integración de la investigación militar y la investigación cientíica de vanguardia, organizó a mediados de 1940 el envío de ese stock de agua pesada a Inglaterra para evitar su caída en manos alemanas (Latour,1991). Entre tanto, en la otra orilla del Atlántico, tuvieron que transcurrir unos meses y producirse el ataque japonés a la base naval norteamericana de Pearl Harbor el 7 de diciembre de 1941 para que los Estados Unidos movilizasen todo su poderío cientíico-técnico para entrar a fondo en la carrera por obtener la bomba atómica. Se inició entonces, a principios de 1942, lo que se ha conocido como proyecto Manhattan cuyas consecuencias históricas han sido fundamentales por varios motivos 9. Nunca como entonces la asociación entre el Estado, la universidad y la industria adquirió tal volumen de esfuerzo científico colectivo, y de inversión económica. Con sus 15.000 sabios e ingenieros, sus 300.000 técnicos y obreros, su costo de dos mil millones de dólares, el Manhattan Engineering District, como fue conocido en un primer momento, se convirtió en la empresa de investigación más grande que jamás se haya realizado. Pero la escala de la empresa fue menos determinante que su resultado. El proyecto fue dirigido por dos personas muy diferentes: el general Leslie Groves, al que se considera un lobo solitario, y el físico Robert Oppenheimer, brillante, cultivado e hipersensible. Fue él quien encontró el lugar donde se instaló la parte principal del proyecto: Los Alamos, en un lugar perdido de Nuevo México. Las investigaciones realizadas allí, donde se creó una ciudad con cincuenta mil habitantes, se complementaron con los trabajos desarrollados en otros lugares. En la fábrica de Oak Ridge se trató el uranio, la de Hanson se dedicó al plutonio, y en el Laboratorio metalúrgico de Chicago se contrastaron los aceros y otros mecanismos necesarios para su construcción. Rodeado de los mejores físicos de aquel entonces, como Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi y Leo Szilard, Oppenheimer coordinó las múltiples actividades de carácter técnico vinculadas al proyecto. E impulsó al mismo tiempo los aspectos teóricos en una Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 89 8 • Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera época en la que los mecanismos de realización de la fisión nuclear y de producción de material fisible no estaban aún dominados. Gracias a sus extraordinarias capacidades, Oppenheimer logró dinamizar ese impresionante complejo científico-militar cuya labor culminó el 16 de julio de 1945 con la explosión de Trinity, la primera bomba atómica, no lejos de Alamogordo. En esa ocasión, que abría una nueva era en la historia de la humanidad, Oppenheimer reaccionó con frialdad manifestando “Esto ha funcionado”. Pero Kenneth Bainbridge, físico de la Universidad de Harvard y responsable de la detonación de esa primera bomba atómica, previendo los efectos de ese arma de destrucción masiva, replicó a Oppenheimer con una sentencia que ha pasado a la historia: “Ahora somos unos ‘cabrones’ [o hijos de perra])”. Las previsiones de Bainbridge se cumplieron apenas tres semanas después, cuando el 6 de agosto el bombardero estadounidense Enola Gray, por orden del presidente Harry S. Truman, lanzó una bomba atómica sobre la ciudad de Hiroshima causando la muerte de ciento veinte mil japoneses e hiriendo a más de trescientas sesenta mil personas que sufrirían graves alteraciones genéticas. Tres días después una segunda bomba atómica –la Fat Man- aún más poderosa fue arrojada a la otra ciudad mártir de Nagasaki: setenta y cinco mil de sus doscientos cuarenta mil habitantes murieron instantáneamente. Los responsables de esas matanzas tuvieron posteriormente problemas de conciencia, como le sucedió a Oppenheimer. Así narra Dean Acheson, que fue secretario de Estado del presidente Truman, una entrevista que tuvo el director cientíico del proyecto Manhattan con el presidente de Estados Unidos: “Cierta vez, acompañé a Oppie (Oppenheimer) a la oicina de Truman. Oppie se retorcía las manos diciendo: “Tengo manchadas las manos de sangre”. Más tarde Truman me dijo: “No me vuelva a traer jamás a ese maldito cretino. No es él quien lanzó la bomba. Fui yo. Estos lloriqueos me ponen enfermo”. CONCLUSIONES La secuencia inaugurada por la aventura del Manhattan Project, que transformó a los laboratorios universitarios en anexos de los arsenales, y concluida con los relámpagos causados por las bombas nucleares de Hiroshima y Nagasaki, tuvo pues hondas y trágicas consecuencias en nuestro mundo contemporáneo. Reveló un mundo nuevo caracterizado por el terror nuclear, consolidó la tendencia de “militarización” de la ciencia, que se remontaba a décadas atrás, convirtiéndose los cientíicos en agentes del Estado, e inauguró la etapa de la big science en la que se ha acelerado la industrialización de la investigación. Algunas cifras son elocuentes sobre la militarización de una parte signiicativa de la ciencia en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En 1968, en los Estados Unidos, más del 50% de los fondos consagrados a la investiga- ción y al desarrollo correspondían a la defensa, en Francia el 45% y en el Reino Unidos el 40%. Si se añaden las investigaciones atómicas y espaciales, estos porcentajes se elevaron en Estados Unidos a más del 80% y a más del 60% para el Reino Unido y Francia (Salomon, 1974: 67). Otros guarismos también revelan la coniguración de una “big science” en el sistema internacional de producción y distribución de conocimientos a lo largo del tercer cuarto del siglo XX. Así, a partir de 1945, y en veinte años, los efectivos totales de la mano de obra empleada en actividades de investigación se multiplicó por diez, de manera que en 1965 más de un millón de personas se dedicaban en Estados Unidos a trabajos de investigación y desarrollo, otras tantas en la Unión Soviética y más de quinientas mil en la Europa occidental (Salomon, 1974: 82). Ante las consecuencias de esa progresiva “militarización” de la ciencia en los tiempos contemporáneos, la percepción de que los cientíicos eran instrumentalizados por los políticos y la toma de conciencia de sus responsabilidades como ciudadanos, algunos cientíicos – y el caso más llamativo es el de Oppenheimer- estimaron que el único refugio del investigador era la “aldea universitaria”. Consideraron ese espacio como un lugar de paz, y de estímulo a la creatividad, donde se preserva el sentido de la investigación desinteresada y el cultivo de cualidades humanas esenciales como el intercambio intelectual por sí mismo. Pero todos sabemos, y es lo que he intentado explicar aquí, que esa “aldea cientíica” está recubierta como nunca por la historia, y que el cientíico no ha estado ni puede estar al margen de la política. Más bien lo que le corresponde, y este es cierta medida el sentido de la relexión que ha orientado mi intervención, es no ignorar para quién trabaja, ni quién le inancia, y no reducir su vigilancia moral y política para tener una visión relexiva del presente y de los desafíos futuros, algunos de ellos de gran envergadura como: el continuado abuso del medio ambiente en todo el planeta provocador de un cambio climático; la persistente escalada de las armas bioquímicas; la agresiva creación de patentes sobre elementos de la naturaleza; las anchas y profundas desigualdades sociales que marcan todo el planeta y el colapso de los ideales del libre acceso a la información, entre otros muchos que todos tenemos en mente. AGRADECIMIENTOS Agradezco a Maria Fernanda Rollo y Fátima Nunes haberme dado la oportunidad de presentar una versión preliminar de este texto en el coloquio internacional Guerra, Universidade, Ciencia celebrado en Lisboa el 7 de noviembre de 2013. Este evento fue organizado por el Instituto de Historia Contemporánea de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la Universidad Nueva de Lisboa y el Centro de Estudios de Historia y Filosofía de la Ciencia de la Universidad de Evora. En él fui invitado a impartir la conferencia inaugural. Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 90 Movilizaciones y escisiones de la comunidad cientíica en tiempos de guerra • 9 REFERENCIAS NOTES 1. Albert Camus, “Le siècle de la peur”, artículo de Combat, noviembre 1946 (sic) [1948], en Essais, Pléiade, Gallimard, 1965, p. 331, citado por Salomon (1989: 10). 2. Acusación vertida en el conocido informe de D. Diderot a Catalina la Grande “Plan d’une université ou d’une éducation publique dans toutes les sciences”, en Oeuvres complètes, ed. por R. L Winter, Paris, Le Club Français du Livre, 1969-1973, 15 vols., vol. XI, p. 757 y en el artículo de Jean le Rond D’Alembert y Denis Diderot “Université” de L’Encylopédie, Paris, Neufchastel, 1975-1989, p. 406, citado por Bermejo (2008: 51) 3. Una iniciativa conjunta de la Biblioteca Nacional de Francia y de la Universidad de Stanford permite a los investigadores a partir de principios de 2014 acceder a catorce mil imágenes relacionadas con diversos aspectos de la Revolución francesa y a los archivos parlamentarios que cubren el período que va de 1787 a 1794. Ver http://frda.stanford.edu/fr/catalog [consultado 13/Marzo/2014] 4. Ver al respecto la entrada dedicada a Jean-Baptiste Cofinhal en la Wikipedia francesa. [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/JeanBaptiste_Cofinhal] Consultada el 21 de enero de 2014. 5. Una interesante visión de conjunto del nuevo armamento creado por los cientíicos movilizados, apoyada en numerosos documentos, en Gillispie (1992). 6. Carnot ha sido objeto de varios estudios biográicos. Cabe destacar entre ellos el de Jean y Nicole Dhombres (1997). 7. Entrevista de Miguel Mora al escritor Jean Echenoz, El País, 20 septiembre 2013. http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/09/ 19/actualidad/1379621009_917809.html [consultada 21/ enero/ 2014] 8. Parte de esa diáspora cientíica republicana impulsaría a partir del 1 de marzo de 1940 la revista Ciencia, apoyada en sus primeros años por la editorial Atlante. Una breve aproximación al valor historiográico de esa revista cientíica en Leoncio López-Ocón (2014), “Ciencia. Los signiicados de una revista hispano-americana de ciencias puras y aplicadas en su arranque de 1940”, Portal Enlaces del Instituto Internacional para la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe de la UNESCO. http://www.iesalc.unesco.org.ve/index.php?option =com_content&view=article&id=3506:ciencia-los-signiicadosde-una-revista-hispano-americana-de-ciencias-puras-y-aplicadasen-su-arranque-de-1940&catid=200:circulacion-de-cientiicosexpertos-opinan&Itemid=749&lang=es [consultado 13/Marzo/ 2014]. 9. La bibliografía sobre el proyecto Manhattan es muy amplia. Destacaré las contribuciones recientes de Alex WELLERSTEIN, como su trabajo en la revista Isis (2008), su tesis doctoral presentada en la Universidad de Harvard en octubre de 2010, cuyo capítulo primero “The Need to Know, 1939-1945” está dedicado a los orígenes y desarrollo del proyecto, y su muy interesante bitácora Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ [consultado 14/Marzo/2014] Becker, Annette (2000) “Guerre totale et troubles mentaux”. Annales, 55, 1: 135-151. Bermejo Castrillo, Manuel Ángel (2008) “La Universidad europea entre Ilustración y liberalismo. Eclosión y difusión del modelo alemán y evolución de otros sistemas nacionales”. En Filosofía para la Universidad, ilosofía contra la Universidad (de Kant a Nietzsche), editor Oncina Coves, Faustino. Editorial Dykinson-Universidad Carlos III. Madrid: 49-165. Cornwell, John (2005) Los cientíicos de Hitler. Ciencia, guerra y el pacto con el diablo. Paidós, Barcelona. Darmon, Pierre (2001) “Des suppliciés oubliés de la Grande Guerre: les pithiatiques”. Histoire, économie et société, nº 1: 49-64. Delaporte, Sophie (2004) “Discours médical et simulation”. En Vrai et faux dans la Grande Guerre, eds. Prochasson, Christophe y Rasmussen Anne. La Découverte, Paris: 218-233. Dhombres, Nicole (1988) Les savants et la revolution. Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris. Dhombres, Nicole y Jean (1989) Naissance d’un nouveau pouvoir: sciences et savants en France (1793-1824). Payot, Paris. Dhombres, Jean y Nicole (1997) Lazare Carnot. Fayard, Paris. Fayet, Joseph (1960) La Révolution française et la Science. Librairie Marcel Rivière, Paris. Forman, Paul y Sánchez Ron, José Manuel (eds.), (1996) National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology: Studies in Twentieth Century History, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Gillispie, Charles C. (1992) “Science and Secret Weapons Development in Revolutionary France, 1794-1804: A Documentary History”. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 23: 35-152. Krige, John y Pestre, Dominique (eds.), (1997) Science in the twentieth century, Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam. Lafuente, Antonio (2003) “La movilización de la ciencia”. Quark, nº 28-29, 12 p. Latour, Bruno (1991) “Joliot: punto de encuentro de la historia y de la física”. En Historia de las Ciencias, ed. Serres, Michel. Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid: 553-573. Le Naour, Jean-Yves (2011) Les soldats de la honte. Perrin, Paris. Pestre, Dominique (2005) Ciencia, dinero y política. Traducido por Ricardo Figueira. Ediciones Nueva Visión, Buenos Aires. Ramón y Cajal, Santiago (2006) Recuerdos de mi vida, edición de Juan Fernández Santarén. Crítica, Fundación Iberdrola. Barcelona (1ª ed. 1917). Salomon, Jean-Jacques (1974) Ciencia y política. Siglo XXI editores, México Salomon, Jean-Jacques (1989) Science, guerre et paix, Economica, Paris. Sánchez Ron, José Manuel (2007) El poder de la ciencia: historia social, política y económica de la ciencia (siglos XIX y XX). Crítica, Barcelona. Schroeder-Gudehus, Brigitte (1978) Les scientiiques et la paix: la communauté scientiique internationale au cours des années 20. Presses de l’Université de Montreal, Montreal. En 2014 se ha reimpreso en formato PDF: http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/ catalogue/les-scientiiques-et-la-paix Serres, Michel (1991) “Paris 1800”. En Historia de las Ciencias, ed. Serres, Michel. Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid: 381-409. Stern, Fritz (2003) “Juntos y separados: Fritz Haber y Albert Einstein”. En El mundo alemán de Einstein, ed. Stern, Fritz. Paidós, Barcelona: 71-175. Wellerstein, Alex (2008) “Patenting the bomb: Nuclear weapons, intellectual property and technological control”. Isis, 99: 57-87. doi: 10.1086/587556. Wellerstein, Alex (2014) “Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog” (http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com) Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e008. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.008 91 3(1) June 2014, e009 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project Carl T. Feagans University of Texas at Arlington, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Box 19599, Arlington, TX e-mail: carl.feagans@mavs.uta.edu Submitted: 9 April 2013. Accepted: 20 December 2013 ABSTRACT: The nature of discourse in public culture has changed signiicantly if not noticeably in just the past few decades. The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) intended to create a commercial shipping lane between India and Sri Lanka demonstrates the nature of this change in discourse, which seems focused around the convergence of traditional news media and public commentary through the medium of the Internet which increases the reach of news as well as the speed with which that news arrives to its audience. Just two decades earlier, at a time when the Internet was very young, many of the same political parties and government agencies involved with the SSCP were also involved in the Babri Mosque controversy which culminated in the deaths of perhaps 2000 people as well as the destruction of an historical site, the mosque itself. While many factors are likely to have contributed, the SSCP controversy, in which thousands of concerned Hindus mobilized in protests, resulted in little if no injury or damage to property. This was, perhaps, due in part to the nature of the public discourse. KEYWORDS: Sethusamudram; SSCP; Indian cultural resources; cultural resource management; environmental resource management; public culture Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Feagans, Carl T. (2014). “Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 3(1): e009. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 RESUMEN: Discursos sagrados, seculares, y ecológicos: el Proyecto de Sethusamudram.- La naturaleza del discurso en la cultura pública ha experimentado cambios notables en el transcurso de unas décadas. El análisis del proyecto Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) para la creación de una línea de navegación comercial entre la India y Sri Lanka muestra el efecto de este cambio en el que Internet ha sido decisivo debido a la mayor aluencia de noticias y a su rápida difusión respecto de los medios tradicionales de comunicación y de creación de opinión pública. Solo dos décadas atrás, cuando Internet iniciaba su andadura, muchos de los partidos políticos y agencias gubernamentales involucrados en el SSCP se vieron implicados en el polémico asunto de la Mezquita de Babri que culminó con la muerte de casi 2.000 personas así como con la destrucción del propio monumento. Aunque indudablemente hay que tener en cuenta otros factores, la controversia en torno al SSCP que ha seguido movilizando a miles de activistas hindúes, no ha producido daños personales ni materiales. Comportamientos tan distintos podrían explicarse, en parte, por los cambios habidos en las formas del discurso público. PALABRAS CLAVE: Sethusamudram; SSCP (Proyecto de canal de navegación Sethusamudram); recursos culturales de la India; gestión de recursos culturales; gestión de recursos medioambientales; cultura pública Copyright: © 2014 CSIC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. 93 2 • Carl T. Feagans INTRODUCTION In today’s global cultures, many actions and events occur privately among government and non-government agencies, religious organizations, corporations, small businesses, individuals, and even extremist groups like Al Qaeda. These actions and events do not become part of the public sphere until after the fact if at all. They are not discussed in the public sphere until they are part of hindsight -if at all, with pundits, subject matter experts, politicians, and lay-people offering opinions that can do little more than opine ways to improve, prevent, or predict future actions or events. Examples of this might include the Babri Mosque demolition in 1992, the World Trade Center destruction in 2001, or decisions to “offshore” labor by Western corporations which exploit opportunities in the global south. In recent years, the Indian Government has sought and actually approved the construction of a shipping canal that would cut a passage for commercial shipping from the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Mannar to the Bay of Bengal between the Tamil Nadu province of Southern India and the island nation of Sri Lanka. Such a canal would be unique in the world in that it would be the irst of this size to link two seas through a non-inland route. The engineering has been compared to the Panama and Suez Canals in scope and, economically, it might save commercial ships as much as a full day of travel time and fuel. In addition, plans to create new ports in India and develop existing ones further could create an economic boon for the region, making it a shipping hub that has been compared to that of Singapore. The project was expected to cost nearly half a billion dollars, but the predicted return on the investment had many in business and government looking forward to the venture with great eagerness. The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) is not, however, without its detractors, perhaps appropriately so. Government and economic supporters posited many secular arguments for the project. Conversely, Hindu nationalists and religious leaders as well as environmentalists have raised sacred and ecological arguments against the project’s completion. Hindu leaders have proclaimed the limestone shoals that stretch across the Palk Strait between the Island of Ramswaram in Southern India and the Sri Lankan island of Mannar to be the bridge constructed by Lord Ram’s monkey army over 1.7 million years ago (“Hanuman Bridge”, 2002; O’Connor, 2007), and they have proclaimed the construction of a canal through the “bridge” to be blasphemous. The sacred connection perceived by Hindu believers is taken seriously by millions of Hindus worldwide as the cultural low of modern globalization continues to spread Hindu people to other nations even as they maintain their ethnic and ideological identities. Another set of detractors to the SSCP are the environmentalists and it can be argued that this group has an argument that can at least partially be described as sacred. Environmentalism has taken on many of the same tactics in recent years as have religious, nationalist, and ideological extremists for causes they perceive as righteous as well as of the highest priority. The conviction of some environmentalists to their causes can even be seen in their names: Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front are but two examples, the latter borrowing from the words “liberation front” from organizations like the Palestine Liberation Front. This paper seeks to explore the dynamics of the resulting discourse that has emerged in public culture as debate and discussion, which surrounds the SSCP controversy. It seeks also to compare this discourse with that of the Babri Mosque destruction in 1992, in which many of the same players were involved with some of the same arguments and concerns, but which resulted in great destruction of life and property. The relationships between traditional and new social movements, particularly among Hindu nationalists and environmentalists, is of particular interest since they are clearly present and clearly evolved. These explorations are in an effort to determine what role, if any, public culture has played in the actions of both groups and individuals as agents. SSCP BACKGROUND The desire to shorten the steaming distance and time between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea is not a new one. James Rennell, a British Geographer in the 18th century, proposed dredging a portion of the Palk Strait that crosses Adam’s Bridge, though his youth and lack of prominence may have contributed to the lack of serious attention given to his suggestion (Rennell, 1930). While Rennell was young at the time he made the suggestion, he was 88 years of age when he died in 1930, just 4 years before Major Sim’s report, which was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. In that 20 page report, Sim concluded that, “[t]he improvement of the navigation through the Mannar Straits is an object of so great value and importance to Indian commerce, and so much depends on the choice of place and on the means to be used, that every precaution ought to be taken to obtain the best possible advice on the subject”. Sim made no mention of religious or environmental objections to the project, but such was rarely the concern of 19th century commercial enterprises. All together, there were at least 9 separate proposals to construct a canal connecting the two bays prior to Indian Independence and several proposals that were post-Independence. In 1955, the Sethusamudram Project Committee, chaired by Dr. A. Ramaswami Mudaliar -and appointed to “examine and report on the feasibility and desirability of connecting the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Bay by cutting a channel at the approaches to the Adam’s Bridge” (Kumar 1993: 95), published their report and recommended the development of Tuticorin as a deep sea harbor along with the construction of the canal through Adam’s Bridge. Since that time, several other Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 94 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project • 3 routes have been discussed and proposed and the canal has been an item of contention at each election year. It was in 2005, however, that the SSCP was inally approved, funding started, and the Sethusamudram Corporation, Ltd. was established (“Sethusamudram Approval”, 2005). Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the project commencement of the SSCP on July 2, 2005 in a speech delivered in Madurai with an expected completion by the end of 2009. Dredging began in December 2006 (“Sethusamudram Project” 2006) but was halted in September 2007 on Adam’s Bridge and July 2009 in the Palk Strait (“Project Status”, 2011). The proposed canal itself, if constructed as originally planned, would be a two-way, 300 meter wide, 12 meter deep canal that links the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Mannar via the Palk Strait and Palk Bay at Adam’s Bridge. Finished, the canal would have been within Indian waters just west of the maritime boundary between India and Sri Lanka and generally aligned with the axes of wave, current, and wind directions. The length of the proposed canal was 167 kilometers and it would have accommodated vessels 215 meters long and 33 meters wide with a 10 meter draft traveling at a maximum speed of 8 knots. Unlike other canals, such as the Panama, the SSC would have no locks (L&T-Ramboll, 2005). ECONOMICS According to Sethusamudram Corporation, Ltd, the SSCP would provide many economic opportunities for the Tamil Nadu coast and India in general. The primary selling point has been the fact that the need to steam around Sri Lanka would be cut in both distance and time. At present, ships that wish to travel from the west coast of India to the east coast or viceversa need to travel up to 424 nautical miles taking up to 36 hours (L&T-Ramboll, 2005). The canal stands to provide the Indian economy with advantages, particularly in the Tamil Nadu province, as it will link western and eastern ports and perhaps promote development of new and existing harbors (L&T-Ramboll, 2005; Singh, 2005). Also the project may benefit fishermen making it easier to transition between the two bays through Adam’s Bridge where previously they needed to travel through the 7 meter deep Pamban Bay. In addition, fishermen might also find protection from Sri Lankan authorities since the canal will clearly delineate Indian from Sri Lankan waters. In recent times, Indian fishermen have ventured into deeper Sri Lankan waters in search of catches not available closer to Peninsular India and this has put them at risk of being shot at by both the Sri Lankan navy and the Sea Tigers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eealam, or the LTTE (The Hindu, 2009). The Project also made provision for the development of three fishing harbors between Nagapattinam and Tuticorin and to create a fishing harbor at Ramswaram, directly benefiting local fishermen. Along with the development of ports and harbors, they also predict an increase in manufac- turing and service industries as a consequence (L&TRamboll, 2005). Economic critics of the project point out that the limit of 30,000 tonnes of cargo at a 10 meter draft makes the canal out-dated before it is even built as modern heavy cargo ships load out at 60,000 tonnes with a draft of 17 meters. In addition, the canal would not beneit shipping between Africa and Indonesia since it would slow ships making the journey unnecessarily. The savings in distance would be negligible or non-existent for ships not traveling between the west and east coasts of India (Warrier, 2007). While the inal project report (L&T-Ramboll, 2005) projects a time savings of a day in travel, others calculate the difference to only be about 2 hours when the reality of steaming velocity in shallow water due to the squat effect in which a vessel traveling in shallow waters dips lower to the seabed as it increases velocity (Warrier, 2007a; Reinking, 2010). Initial costs of the SSCP were projected to be Rs. 2233 Crores, with the bulk of the cost in dredging at Rs. 1719.6 Crores. Projected operating and maintenance costs were estimated to be an average of Rs. 5063 Lakhs per year (L&TRomboll, 2005). But, again, critics question these igures, particularly with regard to maintenance costs for the canal once completed since it will most certainly face siltiication and sedimentation due to normal currents as well as abnormal conditions of cyclones. The canal itself is sure to face the same forces of nature that erode beaches and create sand bars in the area. Even the island of Rameswaram has undergone great changes in the last 50 years with the Pamban Bridge and the village of Dhanushkodi washed away by a cyclone in 1964. Continuous dredging would be needed to maintain the depth of the canal (Warrier, 2007a). RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION More vociferous arguments against the SSCP were provided by Hindu religious voices, often from religious fundamentalists and political extremist groups that have strong Hindu cultural agendas. One of the stronger, perhaps louder voices, has been that of Subramanian Swamy, the leader of the Janata (Peoples) Party. The Janata Party was originally created as an amalgamation of nearly a dozen opposition parties and groups in January 1977 following, and opposed to, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in which she, as India’s Prime Minister, convinced President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of national emergency. This had the effect of postponing elections, instituting curfews, allowing for search and seizure without warrant, control of the press, and general martial law, but it also had the effect of stimulating the economy because of certain reforms that had the beneit of occurring in the absence of unions and strikes. The Janata Party took power in the elections that followed, ousting Indira Gandhi, but lost its position of power after the 1980 elections -Indira Gandhi apologized for her decisions that created the Emergency, received endorsements of key national leaders and returned Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 95 4 • Carl T. Feagans to power. The Janata Party today is relatively small but active in the state of Tamil Nadu, where the SSCP is centered. Swamy has been no stranger to controversial topics and, in response to the 2011 Mumbai bombings, he stated that a Ram temple should have been rebuilt at the site of the destroyed Babri Mosque, that all mosques should be removed from Hindu temples, that conversion from Hinduism to any other religion should be prohibited, and that non-Hindu votes should be restricted (Swamy, 2011). Clearly Swamy is a Hindu fundamentalist and an Indian nationalist, and his opposition to the SSCP was consistent with this. In 2007, Swamy stated, “I am not opposing the project. My contention is that alternative routes are available to spare this religious and sentimental bridge from the dredgers. The managers of the project are atheists and have no qualms about erasing the cultural and religious symbol. The Centre should not have taken an arbitrary decision to dredge through the Sethu without studying the feasibility of alternative routes” (“SC Tells”, 2007). Swamy’s contention was that Adam’s Bridge, which Hindus call the Ram Setu, was an artiicial bridge, created over 1 million years ago by Hanuman’s monkey army at the behest of Lord Rama who needed the causeway in order to cross the sea into Sri Lanka as a means to effect a rescue of his wife Sita. This is based on the Ramayana, the oldest version of which can be dated to 400 BCE, and outlines a story that describes the journey of Rama, who has been banished by his father from Ayodhya to live in the wilderness with his wife, Sita. While out hunting, Sita is kidnapped by the demon-lord Ravana and taken to Lanka. Rama discovers this and sets out to rescue her but is confronted with the ocean. He threatens to shoot the ocean with an arrow from his bow, but the ocean convinces him that there’s another way: a bridge can be built across so that he may take his army and defeat Ravana. The ocean suggests the monkey Nala, son of Viswakarman, be allowed create the bridge, Rama agrees, and Hanuman’s monkey army constructs it. Once completed, they cross and a great battle ensues. Ultimately, Sita is rescued, Ravana defeated, and Rama returns to India from Lanka with Sita at his side (Dutt, 1893). What has, perhaps, angered Swamy and other Hindu nationalists most is the insistance by certain supporters of the SSCP that there is no evidence for an artiicial structure at the site of Adam’s Bridge (Ram Setu), and that Rama is a mythical character in a story -not an historical igure. One such supporter was Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Chief Minister Karunanidhi who stated that Lord Rama is a mythical character and questioned his qualiications as an engineer to build a bridge. The slight was more than an impartial observation and perhaps had an intent to provoke -which it did. In September 2007, Karunanidhi was quoted as saying, “Lord Ram is an imaginary character and Ram Sethu is not a man-made bridge. The Centre should not do anything to disturb the Sethusamudram project” (“Lord Ram”, 2007). The religious objections to the SSCP began perhaps in 2002 when Hindu nationalists claimed NASA photos of the Palk and Mannar Bays revealed the Ram Setu, the bridge built by Lord Rama (Gledhill and Page, 2007). It was even circulated in the media that NASA itself conirmed the man-made origin of the shoals (“Hanuman Bridge”, 2002), but NASA oficials quickly rebuffed this misunderstanding of the agency’s data, stating they can make no determinations regarding human origins of the shoals, only that there exists a chain of sandbanks commonly referred to as Adam’s Bridge (“Hanuman Bridge”, 2002; Gledhill and Page, 2007) and in 2007 Indian scientists concluded the formation was a geologic one. Increasingly, the secular government and the Sethusamudram Corporation pressed forward in its efforts to keep the canal project progressing. After the Prime Minister’s announcement in 2005 that the project was a go, Hindu nationalists began to step up their objections. In May of 2007 the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, was prevented from conducting business by the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) which protested the government stance that there was no archaeological evidence for artiicial construction of the Ram Setu. At this point in time, the SSCP as a project was progressing on time and dredging was well-underway (“Not Ram”, 2007). In response to the objections raised by leaders and members of Hindu nationalist organizations like the BJP, the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), and Janata Party, an afidavit was iled by the Archaeological Survey of India on September 10, 2007 with the nation’s Supreme Court. In this afidavit, it was concluded that Adam’s Bridge (Ram Setu), is a natural formation of shoals and sand bars and not an artiicially created “bridge” (Das, 2007). The afidavit was quoted as including, “The Valmiki Ramayana, the Ramcharitmanas by Tulsidas and other mythological texts, which admittedly form an ancient part of Indian literature, cannot be said to be historical records to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters or the occurrence of the events depicted therein” (Indo-Asian News Service, 2007). While no evidence of artiicial construction has ever been produced for the Adam’s Bridge feature, this afidavit had a mixed reception. It was all but praised by some Sri Lankan media outlets, where the move was referred to as “a major step in support of the secularism [which] underlines the Indian Constitution”. This Sri Lankan source also stated that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) conclusion “gave a signiicant blow to the forces of religious extremism,” (“India’s Own”, 2008). The DMK leadership in Tamil Nadu, the Indian state that stood to gain the most from the project economically, supported the afidavit as well. But this very secular response to the question of a potential religious site provoked Hindu nationalist organizations even further. Almost immediately, Rajnath Singh, president of the BJP, called for the withdrawal of the afidavit and an apology from the ASI (Das, 2007). Other BJP leaders, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 96 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project • 5 such as Lal Krishna Advani (now the Deputy Prime Minister of India), appealed directly to the Prime Minister’s Ofice and termed the ASI conclusion as “blasphemous” (Indo-Asian News Service, 2007). Just days after the afidavit was originally iled, the Indian Cultural Minister, Ambika Soni, withdrew it and apologized for any offense of religious sensibilities. Two senior oficials from the ASI involved in authoring the afidavit were suspended and Soni ordered an inquiry into the matter. As the SSCP continued to progress with its dredging, so did opposition. Renewed objections from Swamy and the Janata Party, the BJP, and the VHP were on the basis that the shoals were a religious site and place of worship and should be a protected monument, and this prompted additional court involvement. The Apex court ruled that Adam’s Bridge (Ram Setu) should not be damaged in any way so the matter ended up with the Indian Supreme Court. In April of 2008, the Court asked “[h]ow is Ram Sethu a place of worship,” and “[w]ho does puja in the middle of the sea?” The closest temple, the court noted, was “far from” Adam’s Bridge/Ram Setu at Rameshwaram (Mahapatra, 2008). From September 2007 through April 2010, Hindu nationalist organizations encouraged public protests that ranged from hunger strikes to gatherings that choked trafic in cities in the state of Tamil Nadu (Sahay, 2007). Many of the latter protesters were arrested, and much attention was garnered in the media. But the argument that may have inally put a halt to the SSCP, perhaps permanently, was not the religious one, rather the environmental one. Indeed, Swamy himself began including this in his protests in 2008 when he pointed out the region of the Gulf of Mannar was a delicate marine biosphere which would be greatly impacted by dredging (Legal Correspondent, 2008). ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Environmental concerns centered around the SSCP have largely been of two angles. One is that the biosphere of the region will be adversely affected by the dredging and subsequent pollution. The other is that the addition of a deep-water canal will potentially open the region to catastrophic damage by tsunamis that may occur in the future. Much like the religious arguments, the environmental opponents often perceive their position as “sacred”. Environmental activists throughout the world have a long history of adopting sacred points of view to justify their positions. In Cape Town, South Africa, Desmond Tutu spoke at a gallery opening for the Two Oceans Aquarium which presented in 2008 an anti-whaling exhibit titled “Sacred Oceans”. Here, Tutu commented, “[a]re we surprised that we can gun down innocent people in hotels, and bomb innocent children, when we can behave so barbarically towards God’s creatures?” (Stern, 2008). The natural tendency to link environmental activism with sacred duty or responsibility may make it easy for Hindu nationalists to side with environmentalists. As Matthew McDermott writes in Hinduism Today (2011), “[w]herever you look in Hindu scripture, you ind references reinforcing the central pillar of Hindu environmental thought: All is God, all is Divine, all is to be treated with reverence and respect, all is sacred”. In addition to appealing to a sacred duty to the marine environment and coastal communities, the arguments of environmentalists opposed to the SSCP are compelling on a rational and scientiic basis as well. And in the public sphere, these arguments add to the objections Indian government oficials and the Sethusamudram project leaders not only had to endure, but address. The most immediately affected group of people by the construction and operation of a completed canal were the ishermen in the region who number approximately 100,000 in about 127 villages and live in close proximity to the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar. These residents rely on ishing, harvesting seaweed, mining coral, some agriculture, and collecting chanks (Victor, 2000; Subramanian, 2005). Chank shells are a type of conch, Turbinella pyrum, which is native to the region and has special religious signiicance among both Hindus and Buddhists (Nayar and Mahadevan, 1973). The Gulf of Mannar is already among the most ecologically stressed regions of India as coral and species of ish and shellish as well as sea-weed are being over harvested. Fishermen complain about the decline in ish catches in Indian waters (Rajasuriya, 2000) and have been reported to seek fresh sources in Sri Lankan territorial waters (“Katchatheevu Settled”, 2009). The introduction of signiicant dredging at Adam’s Bridge and to either side of it have many environmentalists and scientists concerned that the already fragile ecosystem of the region may not survive the ordeal (Victor, 2000). Previous studies in nearby Cochin, the second largest harbor in India, show that the short-term effects of dredging are immediate: bottom fauna are signiicantly reduced; and the content of the water is changed drastically with regard to turbidity, transparency, and sediment load, which affect nutrients in the water (Balchand and Rasheed, 2000). This sort of effect has many worried that the over 3600 species of plant and animal life in the region of the Gulf of Mannar may be pushed beyond being able to survive considering many are already endangered and threatened due to overishing and over-harvesting (Sharma, 2005; Rodriguez, 2007). The increased turbidity of the region may have detrimental effects on Phytoplanktons, the lowest link in the marine food chain, due to the imbalance it can cause on the O2-CO2 ratios and the subsequent impact on photosynthesis. Corals would also be directly impacted by the turbidity created by dredging, causing an already stressed organism to be further stressed and perhaps destroyed. Both of these organisms are depended upon by marine life and are necessary to provide both habitat and food for organisms higher up the food chain (Victor, 2000; Kathal, 2005). In addition to the concerns related to fishing and the biosphere, scientists have warned against the pos- Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 97 6 • Carl T. Feagans sibility of increased danger from catastrophic tsunamis (Murty and Bapat, 1992; Ramesh, 2004; Ramesh, 2005; Kathal, 2005) . Indeed, this has been a resounding argument that even Hindu nationalists opposed to the project for religious reasons have latched onto and repeated within their own oppositional voices (Swamy, 2008). Ramesh published at least two separate articles in Economic and Political Weekly (Ramesh, 2005a; 2005b), both emphasizing environmental devastation as a probable outcome of the SSCP and both citing the work of oceonagrapher Tad Murty, who originally mentioned the effects of tsunami on the Indian coastline in 1992 (Murty and Bapat, 1992), prior to the December 2004 tsunami. Murty, an Indian-Canadian professor at the the University of Ottawa and prolific writer on the topic of tsunamis, was sought after by South Asian media outlets for his expertise (Warrier, 2007). Prior to the December 2004 tsunami in South Asia, Ramesh wrote a 73 page monograph that made little mention of this danger, providing only a few sentences that describe historical records of tsunamis that affected Pamban in 1881 and Chennai in 1941. Scarcely a month after Ramesh made his monograph available, the devastating tsunami of December 2004 impacted much of coastal South Asia. In Ramesh’s 2005 Economics and Political Weekly articles, the first published just one month after the tsunami, nearly his entire message opposing the SSCP capitalized on the fear generated by this catastrophe. In that article he begins with: [t]he tsunami of December 26 has given us an idea of what might happen to the proposed Sethusamudram Shipping Canal. Rushing through with the project without analysing issues related to sedimentation and meteorological regimes might cause a great economic disaster (Ramesh, 2005a). Clearly the 2004 tsunami was a signiicant event and provided a new consideration for all those involved in the SSCP discourse. Ramesh suggests that had the canal been operational at the time of the tsunami, it would have been considerably damaged (Ramesh, 2005a). In the June article of the same publication, Ramesh mentioned Murty very prominently, citing his recent (at the time) comments in the South Asian media which highlighted Murty’s concerns that the canal would create a deep-water route for future tsunamis to travel, with the potential to greatly affect Kerala, a state on the west coast of India. Among Ramesh’s conclusions is that the Palk Strait and Adam’s Bridge region, with it’s shallow shoals, greatly reduced the effect and propagation of tsunami waves, sparing much of India’s southern and western coastlines from it’s effects. The Sethusamudram Corporation responded to Murty’s remarks in the media and published their own commentary on the corporation’s website. Speciically, the corporation addressed canal alignment issues raised by Murty. They noted that tsunami waves were refracted by the coast, so alignment in that direction would be counter productive and the alignment toward the north-west would be optimal from the standpoint of avoiding tsunami wave propagation, but would divert shipping trafic closer to the coastline and thus delicate marine habitats. In addition, they noted that the currently projected alignment of the canal’s exit would cause any tsunami waves propagated through the canal to dissipate parallel to the Indian coast and not toward it, thus no additional danger to Kerala would be generated do to an operational SSCP (Sethusamudram Corporation, Ltd., 2011). In 2008, Murty participated in an interview with an online South Asian media outlet in which he clariied his earlier position: [I]n January 2005, following a question to me from a reporter, I said that widening and deepening the Sethu Channel will provide a route for some of the tsunami energy to travel and impact South Kerala. My position on this is still the same. However, on the overall project, my opinion is not useful to anyone. Please note that I am a meteorologist and physical oceanographer. I am not an economist, ecologist, archaeologist, and in those aspects I am a lay man (Warrier, 2007). This is interesting for a discussion on public culture since it shows how one expert opinion can sway the voices of many. It also demonstrates how that opinion can be mined for conclusions and supporting sentiment where it might not truly exist. Murty is clearly an expert on tsunamis and their effects, but in this interview, he readily admits that his opinion is limited by a lack of information and data analysis. Where Ramesh states “Murty’s observation on SSCP is based on an in-depth analysis of the various computer models proposed by tsunami experts around the world” (Ramesh, 2005b), Murty says, “I have not seen any of these reports. It is quite possible that the Ramar Sethu might have had some impact [on preventing wide-spread destruction in Kerala]. However, until and unless I do a very detailed numerical model on this aspect, I cannot say with any certainty the inluence of these on tsunami travel” (Warrier, 2007). Ramesh’s article goes into some detail regarding the “various computer models,” summarizing their results and data. So, while it is clear that Ramesh based his own opinions on detailed analysis, he may have been relying on an assumption that Murty did as well. One point that Murty did clarify is where his concern regarding the construction of a canal and its role for future tsunamis originates. In the same interview, he cites the effect that an inland canal had in British Columbia, Canada during the tsunami which resulted from the Alaska earthquake in 1964. The largest amplitude of the tsunami came at the end of the 40 km canal that links Port Alberni to the Paciic Ocean due to quarter-wave resonance ampliication. In this effect, the wave is ampliied because the path of the wave itself is narrowed (Fine et al, 2009). Murty also clariied that he only objected to a east or south-east orientation of the Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 98 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project • 7 canal’s Bay of Bengal entrance, stating that any other orientation would “minimise the probability of tsunami energy from future events to be funneled signiicantly into” it (Warrier, 2007). The SSCP is very clearly a project that created debate and heated discourse in the sphere of public culture. The secular ideals of a grandiose national project that has a potential to create economic progress for the region of Tamil Nadu as well as for India has a great appeal to a secular government and secular business interests. The perceived sacred space of the region, which includes the Ram Setu / Adam’s Bridge formation as well as the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay biospheres, played a signiicant role in mobilizing both the religious public and the environmentally concerned. The lines between political agendas and power plays on the one hand and genuine concern for religious, economic and environmental outcomes on the other seem continually blurred in the discourse on the SSCP. Economic arguments are very secular points of view; and religious arguments are clearly sacred. But political and environmental arguments appeared to ind ground on both sides, traversing sacred and secular perspectives through the public sphere of the discourse. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was, and still is, a prominent opponent of the SSCP. During the debates and political discourse following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the Project’s commencement, the BJP led and organized protests in opposition. According to Appadurai (2004), the BJP “increasingly rests its credibility on its stance on cultural heritage and historical correctness from a Hindu point of view [and] its politics has become steadily more hawkish” but he notes that they have also made a point to “equate modernity with technology” (pp. 104-106). Just a few years prior to the SSCP’s commencement, the BJP was the controlling party in Indian government and, as a political party, it was in favor of the construction of the canal. Indeed, the Prime Minister from 1996 to 2004 was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, an early leader of the BJP and the plan to construct the SSCP channel through Adam’s Bridge was decided by his government in 2002 (One India, 2007). The switch to opposition of the project by the BJP may have been in part due to a need to oppose the new UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government, the party which formed just following the 2004 elections, but there were clearly those within the Hindu nationalist parties and organizations who took opposition based on sacred arguments seriously. In September 2007, Hindu leader and former member of the Lok Sabha, Ram Vilas Vedanti, offered a inancial reward for anyone willing to cut out the tongue or behead those who “besmirched Rama’s name”. Vedanti later stated that he did not issue a “fatwa” but was misquoted and the BJP echoed this, but not before dozens of DMK workers attacked the BJP party headquarters and a BJP party leader’s house in Chennai (“BJP Ofice”, 2007; “VHP Leader”, 2007). This was perhaps the most violent clash between supporters and the opposition to the SSCP. India is no stranger to violence as a result of Hindu nationalist mobilization, so it may be remarkable as well as curious that more signiicant violence didn’t accompany the Sethusamudram protests when compared with the Babri Mosque demolition in 1992, particularly since many of the same players were present. A primary factor is probably that the Babri Mosque, situated in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh was routinely visited by thousands of people each year, whereas the Ram Setu is less accessible and more poorly delineated than the architecturally obvious Babri Mosque. In addition, the SSCP controversy featured Hindu versus Hindu for the most part, albeit fundamentalists versus liberals and secularists. The Muslim population, a principle actor in the Babri Mosque controversy, remained largely silent in the SSCP controversy, even though the geographic name of the site, Adam’s Bridge, is Muslim in origin. The Islamic story is that the father of mankind, Adam, being banished from Paradise, which was in modern day Sri Lanka, crossed over to India from Eden on Adam’s Bridge, which was washed away by the sea behind him as he walked, cutting off all prospects of return (Percival, 1883). In 2009, the “Report of Liberhan Enquiry Commission on Demolition of Babri Masjid” was iled with the Indian Parliament and, in it, was the conclusion that the demolition of the Babri Mosque was coordinated by the Sangh Parivar -the Family of Associations- comprised of several dozen smaller Hindu Nationalist organizations, including the BJP, which was the party of the soon to be Prime Minister, Vajpayee. The report stated that, “[a]s the inner core of the Parivar, the top leadership of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and the BJP bear primary responsibility’ in the mosque’s destruction. The destruction occurred when a political rally of over 150,000 Hindus turned violent, and this destruction sparked communal riots throughout South Asia, primarily in Pakistan and India, including major cities like Mumbai and Delhi, which resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people. Many of these were initiated by Muslims in response to the Mosque destruction (Engineer, 2002), but the riots in Mumbai in 1992 and 1993 were organized by Shiva Sena, which “has the longest record of organizing anti-Muslim sentiments and activities in Mumbai” (Appadurai, 2006). In spite of all this, the BJP gained signiicant political traction, perhaps because it allowed other members of the Parivar to play more active roles in the communal violence, putting the BJP in a position to promise an end to communal violence and a “riot-free” India (Engineer, 2002). The 2009 Liberhan report shows that much was kept from the public sphere during the planning of the of the Babri Mosque demolition and the subsequent power shifts among Hindu nationalist parties like the BJP. In contrast, the SSCP controversy has played out nearly completely in the public sphere, allowing for the inclusion of many voices to the discourse as a result. Many of the same actors are involved such as the Bharatiya Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 99 8 • Carl T. Feagans Janata Party, the Vishway Hindu Parishad, and the Archaeological Survey of India. But new actors became involved in the SSCP controversy, including the instant media of the Internet, environmental organizations, and business interests as well as individuals within the public. Dr. R. Ramesh presented very detailed and concise arguments appealing for more study and consideration before continuing with the project and was cited by many on both sides of the argument, yet his ield of expertise was medicine. The human rights organization, Manitham, published several appeals for the same and implored oficials to give more consideration to the environment and indigenous ishermen in the region. The DMK iled afidavits with the Supreme Court attesting to the mythical nature of the Ramayana and that the Hindu nationalist opposition have failed to prove Adam’s Bridge (Ram Setu) was vital to Hindu culture. After spending approximately Rs. 1,020 Crore, the last dredging on the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project stopped on July 27, 2009 when the state-run Dredging Corporation’s contract with the Sethusamudram Corporation, Ltd. ran out (Manoj, 2009). In February of 2010, the Supreme Court of India deferred judgment on the SSCP until February 2011 in order to give the Sethusamudram Corporation suficient time to conduct a new environmental impact assessment. The committee appointed by the Court noted that “[g]iven the variations in ocean currents, wind patterns and related sedimentation as well as other phenomena related to weather, it would be incomplete to arrive at an EIA on the basis of information which is less than the annual cycle of 365 days” (Venkatesan, 2010). Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s successor, Jayalalithaa Jayaram, stated in June 2011 that her party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), was never in favor of the SSCP and “would not want the project completed” (Venkatesan and Sunderarajan, 2011). Most recently, the ASI has remained silent on controversial issues such as Ayodhya and Adam’s Bridge, even of its own past stance on these topics (Subramanian, 2011). Finally, in September of this year, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as the panel assessing the viability of an alternative site for the SSCP visited Rameswaram island, including Dhanuskodi at the eastern end nearest Adam’s Bridge. Because of the length of time that has passed since the last dredging in July of 2009, it is expected that the dredged locations have back-illed with sediment. The project is not likely to be restarted (Raja, 2011). CONCLUSION Many of the of information sources which allowed this narrative to be retold came from news media which publish their work primarily on the Internet, either in concert with print media and television news, which are local to speciic regions of South Asia, or solely in electronic form. In either case, the discourse that emerged and evolved found its way into public culture and was available not only to South Asians wherever they were in the world, but also to anyone interested or concerned with the canal project. Unlike much earlier events that involved mobilized civic and nationalist activism, such as the events that led up to the violent demolition of the Babri Mosque, the more recent debates and discourse that culminated in the relatively peaceful abandonment of the plan to cut through Adam’s Bridge occurred during a period in which Internet journalism has lourished. While this in no way suggests a cause of reduced violence and destruction when compared to the Babri Mosque demolition, the correlation is nonetheless striking. Many of the same organizations and individuals were involved in both events, though geography as well as a lack of signiicant Muslim involvement may have contributed to the restraint in violence. However, thousands of concerned Hindus did mobilize even though most had not previously visited Adam’s Bridge or even Rameswaram Island; and, while Muslims make for an effective other to incite Hindu nationalist sentiments, so do, it seems, secular Indian government and business organizations and individuals. Appadurai (2006, p. 130) wonders if we are witnessing the “birth of a new global system of power, politics, violence and its dissemination, completely outside the structure of the international system […] a full-scale alternative global polity, with full access to lethal technologies of communication, planning, and devastation?” His prediction, however, is not all doom and gloom as Apparduari sees these technologies of communication as perhaps having as much potential to counter the “worldwide trend to enthnocide and ideocide” (p. 137) and suggests that a new, technologically enabled form of public culture can be the space where battles of “peace and equity” are to be fought. The environmental battle is the one, however, that may have the most traction. Guha and Martinez-Alier (1999) observe that there are often two perspectives of environmental concern. One is of ecological protection as a philosophical imperative. The other is born of survival for indigenous populations –a need to preserve ways of life that are rooted in the local ecology. The environmental needs of the waters surrounding Adam’s Bridge appeal to both perspectives since the danger to habitat may have a profound effect on ishing as well as ecological diversity. The discourses surrounding the Sethusamudram Canal Project found themselves naturally at home on the Internet with on-line news media. But more than a place to reprint journalistic reports, opinions and editorials, these venues also afforded the ability for the public to comment and interact. In addition to commercial news venues that redistribute for wire services like the Tamil News Network and government or corporate websites that post oficial positions and reports, there were also semi-journalistic and personal sites such as blogs and discussion forums that allowed these conversations to take place. As struggles for peace and equality continue around the globe, even in Western, developed nations, the instant ability for individual actors to share text, Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e009. eISSN 2253-797X, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.009 100 Sacred, Secular, and Ecological Discourses: the Sethusamudram Project • 9 images, and videos through modern communications networks like cellphones and the Internet will continue to play a greater part in determining the outcomes of the struggles. REFERENCES Appadurai, Arjun and Carol Breckenridge (1988) "Why Public Culture?". Public Culture Bulletin, 1(1): 5-9. 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