treaty, Spanish vessels began stopping British ships in the area, to search them and at times seize crews and merchandise, regardless of the actual contents of the ships. In addition, the Spanish king sent officers to the Americas that he hoped would be particularly harsh on contrabandists.119 As early as 1715 the governor of Jamaica, Archibald Hamilton, wrote to Secretary of State James Stanhope of the disheartening situation for Jamaican merchants, that “Many of our trading vessels have of late been attacked & taken by Spaniards, pretending to have commissions for guarding the coast, whereby our merchants are so discouraged that I look on our trade to Cartagena and Porto Bello to be now entirely over.”120 Some confusion existed as to which of the Spanish ships were guardacostas authorized by the government and which were simply pirates claiming that name without any governmental permission. Only a few months after the first complaint, Hamilton was compelled to write again, alerting the secretary to the “frequent … robberys & hostilitys committed on the subjects of his Britanick Majesty … by Spanish Vessels said to have commissions for guarding their coasts.”121 The British government replied by authorizing Jamaican settlers to launch their own ships in order to capture the pirates. Shares of the vessels captured by these British ships or recaptured from the Spanish would be divided among the owners of the ship and those that captured it.122
The illegal detention and seizure of ships was not a Spanish project alone. The Spanish in the Caribbean complained of both the British ships authorized by the king to sail from Jamaica in order to recapture goods and ships taken by the Spanish, and the many unauthorized British vessels that continued to attack Spanish ships unprovoked long after the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht.123 Even Hamilton, in his letter complaining about the depredations of the Spanish, conceded that “restitution ought to be made to the subjects of his Catholick Majesty, for their losses sustained by hostilities committed on them by the subjects of his Brittanick Majesty since the first suspension of arms.”124 British ships could not continue to pursue unauthorized Spanish prizes if the peace and the valuable asiento treaty were to be maintained between the kings of Spain and Britain. Both British and Spanish empires were finding it difficult to curb the actions of subjects who were for so long accustomed to disliking and doing damage to those affiliated with the opposing empire.
Those living in the area found the striking contrast between the legal peace and the situation on the ground (and on the water) in the West Indies quite evident. Colonel Peter Heywood of the British forces wrote to the governor of Havana in 1716, noting the gap between official policy and enactment. Both sides, he observed, acted unjustly and contrary to the orders of their respective crowns. In fact, wrote Heywood, referring to the unjust taking of several English ships in the area of Trinidad and Cuba, “their majestys subjects here in the Indies seem to be at open war … whilst there is so perfect a union and good understanding at home which must certainly reflect on their respective governours to avoid which I wish your excellency would take such measures as [will] put a stop to all such illegal proceedings hereafter.”125 Any “understanding” on paper did not translate seamlessly into “understanding” among groups in the West Indies. In many ways, the Peace of Utrecht created a convenient fiction that the subjects of Britain and Spain were sudden friends, an attempt to overcome the years of conflict and continuing theft of goods and ships through agreements made in Europe. Despite these attempts, enmity persisted between these two groups.
The stuttering progress of the trade—the movement of slaves through Jamaica and Barbados en route to the Spanish settlements, yet the persistent interruption of this traffic—brought complaints from the free inhabitants of those islands. Certainly the unreliability of shipping caused problems for both the supply of the island and the merchants and investors who lived there. Jamaican residents observed that the move to crack down on piracy caused a panic among the sailors, many of whom, Jamaican Thomas Onslow explained, felt pushed into the illegal activity. Complaints sprang too from the effects that the legal portions of this trade had on the Jamaican economy. The price of slaves went up due to the company’s control of large portions of the trade, and the movement of goods from Jamaica to New Spain had “ruin’d all commerce” in the eyes of many Jamaican planters and traders. While smuggling might certainly continue from the Jamaican coast, the South Sea Company trade opened up the possibility of shipping goods directly from Britain, removing Jamaica from the equation altogether. Previously, the French, Portuguese, and Spanish asiento holders had relied heavily on Jamaica for slaves and supplies, but with a direct link to the metropole, the company was not so dependent on the island. Many of the planters and sailors who lived in Jamaica were leaving. They contributed much of the money made on the island to the economy of Great Britain in the form of remittances, and they needed security. As the Spanish periodically became more aggressive toward Jamaica, the dangerous conditions in the West Indies kept many from engaging in their normal trade; indeed, Onslow informed the secretary, “The Spaniards &c watch us so, that there is no stirring in safety out of the island.”126 The increased interaction with the Spanish, instigated by the establishment of the asiento, created considerable discomfort among many of the British colonists and merchants in the region and made the treaty widely unpopular in Jamaica.
The Jamaican case illuminates the large variety of hopes and expectations for empire among British subjects, and makes clear the ways in which shifts in the organization of empire could leave some who profited from previous iterations without opportunity. Various groups held interests, sometimes in harmony but often competing, in the establishment of empire, and in the asiento project. These groups included the crowns of Britain and Spain, the South Sea Company, merchants and planters in Jamaica, merchants in Liver-pool, Bristol, and London, local Spanish American officials, South Sea Company factors, and Spanish colonists among others.127 The wealth of some Jamaican merchants during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century arose from the proximity of a massive rival empire, the Spanish, to which they could trade clandestinely or at times legally. Their success arose from their access to the goods and ships of the English empire, which the Spanish could not directly tap into. Once the British Empire became stronger in the area and exercised its right to monopoly, however, the benefits of being British diminished for those who had long engaged in the interimperial trade. As empire became more efficient, it also became less useful to certain interest groups. At the same time, this very opportunity to hold a monopoly on what they largely intended to be a new trade stood at the center of the South Sea Company and its agents’ excitement in moving into the area. Once factors had spent significant time in the Spanish Americas, they would form their own ideas of how their position within the British and Spanish empires could benefit their own interests. As with the Jamaica merchants, these interests would not always be in line with larger imperial hopes for expansion in trade, land, and population.
Renegotiating the Asiento
In response to the difficulties of the early trade, the Spanish and British crowns agreed to negotiate once again. George Bubb Doddington, the envoy to Spain from the British court, laid before the Spanish ministers the many difficulties that the company and its agents had faced during the early years of the trade, and secured some concessions in a new treaty signed May 27, 1716. This agreement maintained many of the stipulations established by the original asiento treaty of 1713. Bubb’s main concerns, addressed in the 1716 revisions, were the chronological terms of the treaty, the variability of the annual fairs, and the sometimes inevitable transfer of excess goods to the West Indies. Bubb himself had not supported the original treaty, and resented having to do the company’s bidding in bettering their position, especially given the frustrations of working in Philip V’s court. He complained repeatedly to Stanhope, then secretary of state, that he had always considered “the assiento as an affair that we cou’d never be gainers by” and that “the Assiento business puts me entirely beyond all temper.”128 Even with these misgivings, Bubb successfully renegotiated the treaty, taking into account the difficulties of the early trade.
The British South Sea Company had gotten off to a slow start with the late departures of the factors to Veracruz, Cartagena, and Panama. Concerned that this delay would not allow them to enjoy the entire thirty-year term of the asiento, the company appealed to the Spanish king, who agreed that both the payments
