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Atlantic Intersections: Early American Commerce and the Rise of the Spanish West Indies (Cuba)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Linda K. Salvucci
Linda K. Salvucci
Affiliation:
LINDA K. SALVUCCI is associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
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Abstract

An Atlantic approach to the history of early American trade challenges traditional British opinions and, indeed, much Anglo-American scholarship regarding the commercial prospects of the new United States. Contemporary Spanish observations, in contrast to the more familiar and widely cited ones in English, correctly predicted the post-Revolutionary War integration of American and Spanish imperial markets. As political, diplomatic, and economic upheavals broke down the old mercantilist system, U.S. merchants quickly succeeded in exploiting their comparative advantage in the expanding Atlantic economy. The debate over the “decline” of the British West Indies is amplified by examining the concurrent “rise” of the Spanish West Indies, particularly Cuba, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Type
Special Section: Trade in the Atlantic World
Information
Business History Review , Volume 79 , Issue 4: Trade in the Atlantic World , Winter 2005 , pp. 781 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2005

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References

1 For the “idea” of Atlantic history and a current appraisal of the field, see Bailyn, Bernard, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass., 2005)Google Scholar. A very useful recent introduction is “Round Table Conference: The Nature of Atlantic History,” Itinerario, 23 (1999): 48–173Google Scholar. Also see Armitage, David and Braddick, Michael J., eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (New York, 2002)Google Scholar, particularly Armitage's essay, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” 11-27, as well as Canny, Nicholas, “Writing Atlantic History; or Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America,” Journal of American History 86 (Dec. 1999): 1093–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the wider-ranging essays in Daniels, Christine and Kennedy, Michael V., eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820 (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

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2 Severe inconsistencies in reporting and preserving records, coupled with shifting identifications of products (“cereals” vs. “wheat” vs. “flour”), volumes (“barrels” vs. “pounds”), and trading partners (“Pennsylvania” vs. “Philadelphia,” “Spanish West Indies” vs. “Cuba”) by the respective governments, make it difficult to generate reliable quantitative estimates of the trade between the United States and Cuba before 1821 and certainly not for that commerce during the pre-Revolutionary years. Sometimes the number of ships traveling between ports is the best available proxy of early patterns of exchange, as used by Nichols, Roy, “Trade Relations and the Establishment of United States Consulates in Spanish America, 1779-1809,” Hispanic American Historical Review 8 (1933): 289–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Smuggling” is a term whose working definition shifted according to moment and circumstance. Specific shipments did, of course, violate the letter of changing national laws, or sometimes merely their spirit; accusations were levied that were with or without merit. At least the latter category generated legal documents that economic historians can utilize to elucidate the complexities of trade.

For indications of the composition and magnitude of the United States-Cuba trade following the American Revolution, see Salvucci, Linda K., “Supply, Demand and the Making of a Market: Philadelphia and Havana, 1780-1830,” in Knight, Franklin W. and Liss, Peggy K., eds., Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (Knoxville, 1991): 40–57Google Scholar. For a creative approach to calculating post-Revolutionary trade, see Esteban, Javier Cuenca, “Trends and Cycles in U.S. Trade with Spain and the Spanish Empire, 1790-1819,” Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 521–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For analysis of the Cuba trade after 1821, when much better quantitative data are available, see Salvucci, Linda K. and Salvucci, Richard J., “Cuba and the Latin American Terms of Trade in the Nineteenth Century: Old Theories, New Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (Autumn 2000): 197–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Morris laid out his plan in a letter to the Governor of Cuba in Ferguson, E. James, The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781-1784, vol. 1 (Pittsburgh, 1973), 311–16Google Scholar.

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11 Catanzariti, John, ed., The Papers of Robert Morris, vol. 7 (Pittsburgh, 1988), 497n13.Google Scholar

12 Samuel Inglis and Co. to John and Francis Baring, Philadelphia, 25 Apr. 1783, in Catanzariti, ed., The Papers of Robert Morris, vol.7, p. 753.

13 Baring's skepticism is referenced in Catanzari, ed., The Papers of Robert Morris, vol. 7, p. 716n1. However, Phineas Bond, the British consul resident in Philadelphia, estimated that over 500,000 pesos entered the port in 1787 alone: see Whitaker, Arthur P., “Reed and Forde: Merchant Adventurers of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 61 (1937): 244–45Google Scholar.

14 There is an admirable four-page head note in The Papers of Robert Morris that recounts Pollock's misadventures in the context of the impending postwar restrictions on direct trade between the United States and Spain's prized colony. Nuxoll, Elizabeth M. and Gallagher, Mary A., eds., The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781-1784, vol. 8 (Pittsburgh, 1995), 62–65Google Scholar.

15 For Leamy's trading career, see Salvucci, Linda K., “Anglo-American Merchants and Stratagems for Success in Spanish Imperial Markets, 1783-1807,” in Barbier, Jacques and Kuethe, Allan J., eds., The North American Role in the Spanish Imperial Economy, 1760-1819 (Manchester, 1984), 127–33, 214-17.Google Scholar

16 Holroyd, John Baker, Sheffield, Lord, Observations on the Commerce of the United States with Europe and the West Indies… (London, 6th ed., 1784)Google Scholar. This edition is the most frequently cited, probably because it contains an enlarged appendix and index. For the text-book quotation, see Atack, Jeremy and Passell, Peter, A New Economic View of American History from Colonial Times to 1940, 2nd ed. (New York, 1994), 112Google Scholar.

17 Authors listed in Atack and Passell's bibliography include Donald Adams, R. Jr, “American Neutrality and Prosperity, 1793-1808: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Economic History 40 (1980): 713–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bjork, Gordon C., “The Weaning of the American Economy: Independence, Market Changes, and Economic Development,” Journal of Economic History 24 (1964): 541–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldin, Claudia D. and Lewis, Frank D., “The Role of Exports in American Economic Growth during the Napoleonic Wars, 1793 to 1807,” Explorations in Economic History 17 (1980): 6–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walton, Gary M. and Shepherd, James F., The Economic Rise of Early America (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar. Nettles, Curtis P., The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775-1815 (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, is the standard overview.

Other treatments that offer similar interpretations but are not cited by Atack and Passell include McCusker, John J. and Menard, Russell R., The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985)Google Scholar; and Hoffman, Ronald, McCusker, John J., Menard, Russell, and Albert, Peter J., eds., The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790 (Charlottesville, 1988Google Scholar).

A fuller picture emerges when the above are read in conjunction with Coatsworth, John H., “American Trade with European Colonies and the Caribbean and South America, 1790-1812,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 24 (1967): 243–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Crouzet, F., “Variations on the North American Triangle from Yorktown to Waterloo: Substitution, Complementarity, Parallelism,” in Kindleberger, Charles P. and Telia, Guido di, eds., Economics in the Long View: Essays in Honor of W. W. Rostow, 3 vols. (New York, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 44–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see the older but still useful Clauder, Anna C., American Commerce as Affected by the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1793-1812 (Philadelphia, 1932)Google Scholar; and Klopfer, Helen Louise, “Statistics of the Foreign Trade of Philadelphia, 1700–1860” (MSS. at the Eleutherian-Mills Historical Library, 1937).Google Scholar

18 See Crowley, John E., The Privileges of Independence: Neomercantilism and the American Revolution (Baltimore, 1993)Google Scholar, for characterization of Sheffield as a neomercantilist.

19 Cooke, Jacob E., Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, 1978).Google Scholar Coxe's rebuttal, A Brief Examination of Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the United States, was printed in six installments in the American Museum from March through July of 1791 and was subsequently published in pamphlet form. Also see Paine, Thomas, “A Supernumerary Crisis, December 9, 1783,” in Norman, Charles J., ed., The Crisis Papers, 1776–1783, by Thomas Paine (Albany, N.Y., 1990), 182–85.Google Scholar A number of West Indian planters, traders, and colonial officials also refuted Sheffield's arguments; for one example, see Long, Edward, A free and candid Review of a Tract, entitled “Observations on the Commerce of the American States,” showing the pernicious consequences, both to Great Britain, and to the British Sugar Islands, of the Systems recommended in that Tract (London, 1784)Google Scholar, Goldsmith's–Kress Library of Economic Literature, reel no. 1276, book no. 12628.15.

20 Francisco Rendón, “Memoria sobre las fianzas de los Treze Estados Unidos de América Septentrional,” 20 Apr. 1782; and “Primera y Segunda parte de la memoria sobre las produciones exportaciones e Ymportaciones y modo de hacer el comercio con los Estados Unidos: Que Don Francisco Rendón remite al Exmo Señor Don J. de Gálvez,” 8 Sept. 1783, Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Santo Domingo (hereafter SD), legajo (hereafter leg.) 2597. The original bundle of documents has been microfilmed, and photocopies are available from the Tulane University Library.

21 Cummins, Spanish Observers, esp. 174 and 180. Also see Bernades, Josep M., Els Catalans a les Indies (1493–1830), vol. 1 (Barcelona, 1992), 287–89Google Scholar, for a recent biographical sketch of Miralles.

22 Cummins, Spanish Observers, 170.

23 In addition to the original Spanish source utilized above, there exists a typescript of an English translation of Rendón's second memorial in the Aileen Moore Topping Translations, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, of which John McCusker supplied a copy. See Cummins, Spanish Observers, p. 211, for a brief explanation of the dimensions of Topping's project. My own translation agrees closely with hers; there are no original page numbers to cite in either the Spanish or English versions.

24 Cuenca Esteban, “Trends and Cycles,” 521–41.

25 See Murrin, John M., “The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Counterfactual Hypothesis: Reflections on Lawrence Henry Gipson and John Shy,” Reviews in American History 1 (Sept. 1973): 307–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the backward-looking mentality of the British ministers after the great victory over France.

26 Nuxoll, and Gallagher, , eds., The Papers of Robert Morris, vol. 8, pp. 467–79Google Scholar, for a printed Spanish version of the letter and an English translation of the same, preceded by a learned and lengthy annotation that explores the question of authorship. Special thanks go to Betty Nuxoll for clarifying some points about this document.

27 The immediate situation is carefully reconstructed by James A. Lewis, “Anglo-American Entrepreneurs and the Significance of the Expulsion of 1784–1785,” in Barbier and. Kuethe, eds., The North American Role, 112-26, 210-14.

28 Cummins, pp. 192–95, summarizes the scandal, which was the subject of numerous pieces of correspondence in several of the legajos I have consulted in Spain. Campillo, Miguel Gómez del, Relaciones diplomáticas entre España y los Estados Unidos (Madrid, 1944), xix–xxiGoogle Scholar, maintains that Gardoqui himself argued strongly against the marriage.

29 Salvucci, L. K., “Anglo-American Merchants and Stratagems for Success”; Michael A. Otero, “The American Mission of Diego de Gardoqui, 1785–1789” (Ph. D. diss., UCLA, 1948)Google Scholar; and Armillas, José Antonio, “Viar y Jáudenes,” in [no editor] Suma de Estudios Homenaje a Dr. Canellas (Zaragoza, 1969), 51–76.Google Scholar Some of the trading permits that Jáudenes and Viar issued are preserved in the AGI, Papeles de Cuba, leg. 1469, a portion of which has been photocopied and is held at the Library of Congress.

30 Emphasis upon the British starving their own islands is mine, but see Drescher, Seymour, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977).Google Scholar The dating of the decline of the British West Indies is the subject of considerable scholarly debate. For two conflicting interpretations, see Carrington, Selwyn H. H., “The American Revolution and the British West Indies' Economy,” in Solow, Barbara L. and Engerman, Stanley L., eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams (Cambridge, 1987), 135–62Google Scholar; and John J. McCusker, “Growth, Stagnation, or Decline? The Economy of the British West Indies, 1763–1790,” in Hoffman et al., eds., The Economy of Early America, 275-302.

31 Valentín Foronda (hereafter VF) to Pedro de Ceballos (hereafter PC), Phila., 24 Dec. 1803, Archivo Histórico National, Madrid (hereafter AHN), Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Foronda estimated that at least fourteen American ships then were in Havana harbor, and more were arriving daily. He had voiced similar complaints some nine months earlier: VF to PC, Phila., 7 Apr. 1803; AGI, Indiferente General (hereafter IG), leg. 1604. Little had changed after two more years: VF to PC, Phila., 8 May 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

32 VF to PC, Phila., 24 Dec. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. The consul general also complained that ship captains frequently advertised impending departures in the local news-papers and then left for Havana without consulting him: VF to Miguel Cayetano Soler (hereafter MCS), Phila., 28 Mar. 1802, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175.

33 VF to PC, Phila., 25 Jan. and 20 Apr. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Examples of Foronda's frustration and siege mentality abound in the correspondence: VF to PC, Phila., 3 Mar. and 8 Sept. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis; VF to PC, Phila., 29 Mar. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604.

34 “… and contrary to custom, [Foronda] is extremely succinct in this matter”: [?] to Carlos Martínez de Irujo, later the Marqués de Casa Irujo (hereafter CMI), Aranjuez, 28 Jan. 1806, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Foronda repeatedly complained that higher-ranking Spanish officials refused to reply to his letters and improperly administered commercial laws: VF to PC, Phila., 20 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604; copies of letters sent by VF to the intendant of Cuba, Phila., 16 Nov. and 20 Dec. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg., 6175 bis.

35 VF to PC, Phila., 8 Sept., 8 Nov., and 24 Dec. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis; the first letter relates how American shippers tried to force him to fill out certificates of good health for crews during an outbreak of yellow fever in the city. For libelous attacks upon the Spanish royal family in the local press, see VF to PC, Phila., 8 and 15 May 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

36 Irujo formed a business partnership with James Barry in 1797; CMI to Santa Clara, Phila., 13 Feb. 1797, AGI, México, leg. 2486. To Foronda's great consternation, Irujo was also involved with John Craig, one of the most prominent merchants in Philadelphia: VF to MCS, Phila., 16 June and 21 July 1806, AGI, IG, leg. 1603.

37 Spell, J. R., “An Illustrious Spaniard in Philadelphia, Valentín de Foronda,” Hispanic Review 4, no. 2 (1936): 136–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Robert S., “Valentín de Foronda, diplomático y economista,” Revista de Economía Político 10, no. 2 (1959): 425–64Google Scholar, esp. 429. VF to PC, Phila., 14 Feb. 1807, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 for “no voy a los tés ni a los Bailes,” as well as the observation that “los papeles públicos cuentan todo…”; Fausto de Foronda to PC, Phila., 17 and 24 Oct. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Fausto was later sent to Baltimore to replace the consul there: VF to PC, Phila., 26 Mar. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

Foronda was elected a full member of the American Philosophical Society on 16 July 1802; he immediately presented to that body several of his published treatises. Josef de Jáudenes had been elected in 1796, but he does not appear to have been very active or prolific: American Philosophical Society membership file and general catalogue, Philadelphia. A published source claims that Irujo was also a member: Sealove, Sandra, “The Founding Fathers as Seen by the Marqués de Casa-Irujo,” Americas 20 (1963): 37–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On one occasion, Foronda complained of the “pequeño número de Económico-políticos y de literates que se encuentran aquí”; the rest of the time, however, he seemed quite happy with his intellectual contacts: VF to PC, Phila., 30 Apr. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

38 VF to [?]. Phila., 20 July 1802, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175; VF to PC, Phila., 5 Apr. and 8 Sept. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. It is unclear which McKean Foronda confronted; Irujo had married into that family in 1796. See Beerman, Eric, “Spanish Envoy to the United States: Marqués de Casa Irujo and His Philadelphia Wife Sally McKean,” Americas 37 (1981): 445–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 For over twenty years, John Leamy, a well-connected Irish Catholic merchant who settled in Philadelphia after 1780, had virtual carte blanche to trade with Spanish imperial ports. Once Foronda arrived on the scene, however, Leamy began to experience unprecedented difficulties. The consul general's long-simmering quarrel with Irujo came to a head over the latter's support of Leamy, who was Jaudenes's landlord, in 1806: VF to PC, Phila., 14 Jan. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis: CMI to [?], Phila., 28 Mar. 1806, AGI, IG, leg. 1603.

40 Smith, “Valentín de Foronda,” 428–38; Letayf, Marcelo Bitar, Economistas españoles del siglo XVIII: sus ideas sobre la libertad del comercio con Indias (Madrid, 1968), 158–63Google Scholar; Shafer, Robert J., The Economic Societies in the Spanish World (1763–1821) (Syracuse, 1958), 12–13, 40Google Scholar; Herr, Richard, The Eighteenth Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, 1958), 55Google Scholar; and, more recently, Barrenechea, José Manuel, “Valentín de Foronda ante la fisiocracia,” in D'Abadal, Ernest Lluch y Lluis Argemi l, eds., Agronomía y fisiocracia en España (1750–1820) (Valencia, 1985), 153–83Google Scholar, which, interestingly enough, downplays the impact of Foronda's North American experiences on his thinking.

41 Valentín de Foronda, “Apuntos ligeros sobre los Estados Unidos de la América Septentrional,” Phila., 13 Mar. 1804, MSS., Obadiah Rich Collection, New York Public Library. A printed version is available in Onís, José de, ed., “Valentín de Foronda's Memoir on the United States of North America, 1804,” Americas 4 (Jan. 1948): 351–87.Google Scholar

Foronda authored another piece in which he urged the King to relinquish some of his vast, but unproductive empire. The short-sighted ones, in Foronda's opinion, were those who believed it better for Spain to possess territory thousands of leagues far away than to cultivate its own rich soil, which would produce more than all of America if cared for properly: VF to PC, Phila., 20 Apr. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

42 “Aquí hay muchos soldados en el nombre, pero sin disciplina … no hay obediencia, no hay respecto a los Jefes”: VF to PC, Phila., 5 Aug. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. “Sólo piensan en ganar Dólares”: VF to PC, Phila., 24 Jan. 1806, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175. Sealove, “The Founding Fathers,” 37, quotes Irujo as observing that “money is the God of the Americans.” Some seven years later, Foronda wrote: “el Oro es el Dios a quien rinden adoraciones.” VF to [?], Phila., 24 Jan. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Also see Edwin Cannan, ed., Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ([1776], 1904, Chicago, rep. 1977), 450-51: “Wealth, therefore, according to them [the Tartars], consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards, it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was nearest to the truth.”

43 The Jeffersonian view is ably sketched out in McCoy, Drew R., The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980)Google Scholar; even more germane to this study is Appleby, Joyce, “What is Still American in the Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson?” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 39 (1982): 287–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Foronda was delighted to report Jefferson's reelection to his superiors: VF to PC, Phila., 13 Jan. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Irujo also closely identified with the Jeffersonians: Sealove, “The Founding Fathers,” 38-39. Moreover, the consul general probably attended services at Old St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia, where many prominent Republicans worshipped.

44 VF to PC, Phila., Jan. 25, 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis, wherein he lamented the lost opportunity to spend these funds on internal improvements in Spain, such as canals.

45 Schroeder, Susan, Cuba: A Handbook of Historical Statistics (Boston, 1982), 3Google Scholar; VF to PC, Phila., 7 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604.

46 VF to PC, Phila., 5 Aug. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

47 VF to PC, Phila., 2 Nov. 1804, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175, in which the consul general included the previous day's issue of the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser that contained a reprint of the undated article from Richmond. Spanish American revolutionaries also appreciated this point: see Torres, Manuel, An Exposition of the Commerce of Spanish America with Some Observations upon Its Importance (Phila., 1816), esp. 13–14.Google Scholar

Foronda not only pinpointed Mexico and Peru as the predominant sources of specie for the United States; he also specifically tied specie supply trends to annual levels of activity in the American trade to the East Indies: VF to PC, Phila., 7 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604; VF to PC, Phila., 25 Jan. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

48 Almost every time that Foronda mentioned contraband, the word “escandoloso” preceded it. Following the Louisiana Purchase, he predicted that New Orleans would be the focus of contraband for the entire Gulf of Mexico: VF to PC, Phila., 24 Oct. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg., 6175 bis. Foronda also was concerned with attempts, often by New Englanders on whaling expeditions to the South Atlantic or the northwest coast of America, to penetrate Peruvian and Chilean markets. After calculating the amount of declared cargo against the capacity of a specific ship's hold, he asked: “So are they carrying 1635 tons of air?”: VF to PC, Phila., 20 Aug. 1805, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

49 One letter in particular lists many of these loopholes: VF to PC, Phila., 3 Jan. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604. Four months later, the consul general sarcastically enumerated them again and pointed out the obvious forgeries: VF to PC, Phila., 20 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604.

50 Foronda was especially incensed over ships that cleared for the Floridas and then went on to Cuba: VF to MCS, Phila., 20 May 1803; VF to PC, Phila., 20 May and 23 July 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. For evidence of indirect trade via the Caribbean islands of other European powers, see Arena, Carmelo Richard, “Philadelphia-Spanish New Orleans Trade: 1789–1803” (Ph. D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1959).Google Scholar

51 The consul general maintained that most shipwrecks were staged to gain entry to the Cuban ports. In cases when damaged ships were admitted, he recommended that, instead of allowing repairs to be financed by sales of cargoes, the vessels themselves should be sold at public auction: VF to PC, Phila., 23 Jun. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

52 The policy of allowing American ship captains to sell cargoes of flour if they also brought in slaves was on the books as early as 1789. Foronda was especially disturbed by the American practice of transporting only four or five young black males from the Danish or Dutch islands and then demanding payment in sugar or specie. This put an additional strain on the Bourbon imperial economy without satisfying the problem of a labor shortage in Cuba: VF to PC, Phila., 7 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604. Perceptive observer that he was, Foronda also recognized that some Americans had ambivalent thoughts about slavery' in general and the slave trade in particular: VF to PC, Phila., 8 Nov. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis.

53 Pointing out that it was the foreigners who always profited from these deals, Foronda proposed a four-year moratorium on the resale of ships that were purchased for the Spanish merchant marine. Otherwise, a 25 percent tax should be levied: VF to PC, Phila., 23 Jun. 1803, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175 bis. Ship captains, he said, should be held directly responsible for most infractions, and fines should be set at between 1,000 and 2,000 pesos: VF to PC, Phila., 3 Jan. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604.

54 VF to PC, Phila., 29 Mar. and 7 Apr. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604. Foronda genuinely cared about the welfare of sick Spanish mariners: VF to PC, Phila., 27 Dec. 1802 and 12 Oct. 1804, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175. Nevertheless, his problems in Philadelphia paled beside those of his American counterpart stationed in Santiago de Cuba. Not only did imperial officials refuse to recognize this agent formally; local administrators at one point threw him in jail: Josiah Blakeley to James Madison, Santiago de Cuba, 1 Nov. 1801, Dispatches from the United States Consuls in Santiago de Cuba, 1799–1906, National Archives of the United States, microcopy no. T-55, Washington, D.C., 1959, roll 1, vol. 1. Each side tried to limit the powers of the other's consuls, which strained relations even further. See also Nichols, “Trade Relations and the Establishment of United States Consulates,” 289–313.

55 Lampros, Peter James, “Merchant–Planter Cooperation and Conflict: The Havana Consulado, 1794–1832” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane Univ., 1980), esp. 278-79, 312.Google Scholar

56 This recommendation (“sin inovar”) appears in the following file: Minister of State to VF, Aranjuez, Mar. 14, 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604. A few months later, possibly the same unidentified advisor wrote: “se sirva prevenirle que siga en los mismos términos que sus antecesores sin causan molestías al poco comercio que tenemos.” [?] to PC, Aranjuez, 2 Jun. 1803, AGI, IG, leg. 1604.

57 Trade data and trends are laid out in chs. 2,4, and 5 of Salvucci, Linda Kerrigan, “Development and Decline: The Port of Philadelphia and Spanish Imperial Markets, 1783–1823” (Ph. D. diss., Princeton University, 1985).Google Scholar

58 Lowrie, Walter and Clarke, Matthew, eds., American State Papers, Class IV, Commerce and Navigation, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1832)Google Scholar; most of these documents also appear in the first several volumes of The New American State Papers: Commerce and Navigation, with an introduction by Salsbury, Stephen E., 47 vols. (Wilmington, Del., 1973).Google Scholar

59 As consul general, Foronda's place of residence was not fixed. However, after talking with traders once he disembarked in Boston, he had chosen Philadelphia because, he concluded, it was at the center of mercantile activities: VF to PC, Boston, 10 Jan. 1802, AHN, Estado, leg. 6175.

50 U.S. customs records indicate that 117 ships cleared at Philadelphia for all Cuban ports that year: L. K. Salvucci, “Development and Decline,” 325–26.

61 Cuenca Esteban, “Trends and Cycles,” 540-41.

62 VF to MCS, Phila., 16 Jun. and 21 July 1806, AGI, IG, leg. 1603. The prominent Philadelphian John Craig was identified as Irujo's “intimo amigo,” “su socio de comercio en varias operaciones mercantiles.…” Foronda alleged that several departures from Boston, New York, and Baltimore were deliberately hidden from him.

63 Felipe Fatio to PC, Phila., 18 Apr. 1809, AHN, Estado, leg. 6172, along with adjacent undated notes. Fatio, whose salary Foronda had withheld, claimed that conversations with some American citizens in New York led him to characterize the consul general's principles as follows: “son tan flexibles que como la giralda de Sevilla se dexa torzer segun los vientos.” Additional material related to this quarrel appears in Fatio to PC, Phila., 4 May 1809, Fatio to Martin de Garay, Phila., 27 and 30 Jun., 20 July, 2 and 9 Sept. 1809, AHN, Estado, leg. 6172. Also see González, Manuel Hernández, “Comercio hispanoamericano e ideas afrancesadas: en torno a la polémica entre Valentín de Foronda y Francisco Caballero Sarmiento en Filadelfia (1808–10),” Cuadernos de Investigatión Histórica 13 (1990): 93–102.Google Scholar

64 Lipscomb, Andrew A., ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., 1903)Google Scholar: Thomas Jefferson (hereafter TJ) to VF, Monticello, 4 Oct. 1809, vol. 12, 318–21; TJ to James Madison, Monticello, 16 Aug. 1807, vol. 11, 326–27, and 27 Apr. 1809, vol. 12, 274-77; TJ to Henry Dearborn, Monticello, 5 Jul. 1819, vol. 19, 270-72; TJ to James Monroe, Monticello, 23 Jun. 1823, vol. 15, 452–54.

65 Lipscomb, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson: TJ to James Monroe, Monticello, 11 Jun. 1823, vol. 15, pp. 435-38, and 24 Oct. 1823, vol. 15, pp. 477-80.

66 Adams expressed these views in a letter written to the American minister in Spain on 28 Apr. 1823; they are quoted at length in Chapman, Charles E., A History of the Cuban Republic: A Study in Hispanic-American Politics (Westport, Conn., rep. 1971 [c. 1927]), 51.Google Scholar

67 For Foronda's last years, see Smith, “Valentín de Foronda,” 432-35.

68 François Crouzet, “America and the Crisis of the British Imperial Economy, 1803–1807,” in McCusker and Morgan, eds., The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, 278-315, highlights Great Britain's difficulties in enforcing a restrictive trade policy during the Napoleonic years. See Silvia Marzagalli's article in this issue of the Business History Review for an analysis of increased French trade with former British colonies.

69 See the works and their bibliographies cited in note 30, as well as Ryden, David Beck, “Does Decline Make Sense? The West Indian Economy and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (Winter 2001): 347–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

70 Murray, David R., Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar, and Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, cited above in note 1.

71 Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944)Google Scholar, and Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York), 1985.Google Scholar