control if only British forces could seize Potosí and Zacatecas, they feared that such riches would stifle their own empire’s productivity and create distinctively Spanish moral dissipation among the people.52 At the same time, the South Sea Company might be a particularly easy way to access some Spanish silver through trade, which both sides agreed would benefit the nation.53 This conflict between a model of imperial expansion and national success based on land and one based on trade was not necessarily so dichotomous for some in Britain and particularly on the ground in the Americas; the agents of the South Sea Company would often end up taking the most pragmatic approach to profit, personal, and if convenient, national, rather than considering the ideals being argued in London. While some of those who lived in the West Indies would in later years champion the idea of expanding the British Empire into territories held at the time by the Spanish and even provide crucial strategic information about Spanish lands, those trading to the West Indies before the South Sea Company’s monopoly resisted these changes in policy, which would inevitably damage the legal and illegal trade they were already conducting in the region.54
Arguments for the trade largely focused on the opportunities it might present, rather than the guaranteed profits. Other European nations had considerable success in the Spanish American trade. One pamphleteer reminded readers of the French accomplishments in the area, which included ships “loaden with the Riches of America, but principally with Gold and Silver.”55 Undertaking this trade themselves, the author urged, would allow Britain to enrich not only its merchants, but also its manufacturers and farmers. Given the possibilities, and the opportunity to seize this trade from their French rivals, the contract seemed a clear benefit to the nation at many levels.
Among those engaged in the arguments surrounding the South Sea Company, Daniel Defoe wrote particularly passionately, and in addition to encouraging Harley in establishing the company, he acted as a prolific propagandist for the trade. He noted the advantages that commerce with the Spanish Americas provided to the French before and during the war, pointing out that taking over that portion of Spain’s trade would weaken the other major Catholic power in the West Indies by depriving it of profits. Long before the crash a decade later, he imagined that the availability of stock would benefit many Britons, just as the trade would be lucrative for the South Sea Company. By establishing areas of trade on the Spanish American coasts, Defoe expected that wealth would flow to Britain, and that new opportunities for selling British manufactures would be opened. He imagined new employment for the poor and for mariners, an increase in land values, and a revival of the struggling Royal African Company, which for a long time had the official monopoly on the slave trade in West Africa.56 In a 1712 pamphlet, he decried the focus of many on the shortcomings of the trade, arguing that the unfortunate restrictions should not be enough to justify abandoning the possibility of a trade that was “well worth all the Hazard, Adventure, Expence, and Pains of the Undertaking.” Attention must be given to possible gains rather than limitations, Defoe wrote, “that we may not presently argue our selves out of all the Trade, because we have not the Gates of Mexico opened to us.”57 If organized correctly, Defoe hoped, English settlements nestled among the Spanish American claims, like the one they had already established at Jamaica, could supply the Spanish Americas without the long-required expensive stop in Cádiz.58
A major component of Defoe’s excitement over the South Sea Trade, in addition to the profits he anticipated, lay in the possibilities he saw for the establishment of British trading and settlement to expand into other areas of the Spanish empire. As he saw it, the asiento would offer a perfect opportunity to “find out or discover some Place or Places in America, where we may fix and settle a British Colony.” This implies both the collection of information on the Spanish empire that would suddenly be open to Britons legally trading with and living in the Spanish Americas, and the subsequent opportunity to carve out parts of that empire for British “Planting, Settling, Inhabiting, Spreading, and all that is usual in such cases.” Regardless of the technical restrictions on unsanctioned trading between the Spanish and British subjects, Britons’ presence would have to be advantageous; “let the English get a good Footing on the South-Sea Coast of America, and let them and the Spaniards alone for Trading with one another, let the King of Spain prevent it if he can.”59 In contrast to writers like the Secretary of State Lord Bolingbroke, who felt that trade and conquest could not be undertaken at the same time, Defoe saw them as part of the same approach to overseas profit.60 England could be expected to thrive even where the Spanish had not been successful, with its North American colonies positioned to support the newly developing settlements.61 Defoe’s extensive publishing in support of establishing a colony in South America, along with the detailed maps of cartographers like Moll, alerted the British public to the possibilities that lay across the Atlantic.62 The company’s Court of Directors shared these aspirations, in their words, to be able to make both “a trade to and settlement in the South Sea,” establishing bases from which English influence and economic advantage could expand.63 Here the aims some Britons had not only to trade with but to settle and control large parts of the Spanish empire, and to take advantage of the productive mines and large markets in those parts of the Americas, become clear. During subsequent periods of interimperial unrest, Britons with firsthand experience of Spanish America once again championed specific seizures of land, as Lionel Wafer and William Dampier had done in decades past.
Unfortunately for the Court of Directors and stockholders of the South Sea Company, those who opposed the company saw the future more clearly than Defoe. Repeated problems arose in the factories and with the conduct of trade, and the company had ample cause to complain during the tenure of the contract that they were not achieving the profits they expected.64 It is likely that the contract most benefited those who engaged in contraband trade under the guise of bringing slaves or goods to the ports or fairs of Spanish America.65 Indeed, the opportunity that this officially limited trade to the Spanish Americas provided for Britons to bring contraband into the region was a major reason for some to support the asiento.66 The nature of the Spanish American ports into which the British South Sea Company factors moved lent itself to both unusual levels of personal contact between members of each empire and opportunities for corruption and smuggling. At the level of individuals, the empires, and their success, became increasingly entwined. During the course of the asiento, some Britons would find this closeness to the Spanish tempting, and even challenging to their imperial loyalty. As the nations implemented the agreement laid out in the 1713 treaty, the benefits and dangers of trade became more fully realized.
Implementation
In 1714 Queen Anne authorized two South Sea Company ships to travel to the Spanish Americas. The Warwick, captained by Henry Partington, sailed to Buenos Aires with Thomas Dover and his fellow employees on board. Robert Johnson captained the Anglesea, bringing Chief Factor Gilbert Grimes and his fellow company agents to Cartagena.67 Scandal surrounded the project almost from the start. Johnson reported that he had been asked by Arthur Moore, an agent of Bolingbroke, to stop in Cádiz to collect the viceroy of Peru and the new governor of Panama for transport across the Atlantic. In addition, Moore proposed smuggling a large cargo onboard the Anglesea, though when he reported Moore to the court of directors Johnson insisted that he had rejected Moore’s plan out of consideration for his own reputation. The Spanish American officials in Cádiz ultimately had to find a different way to travel to the Americas, and the viceroy, Carmine Caracciolo, the Prince of Santo Buono, spent much of his short administration in Peru working against the sort of contraband traffic Moore was proposing.68 In response to Johnson’s accusatory letter, the South Sea Company court found that Moore, from his position of power in the company, had “encouraged a design of carrying on a clandestine trade, to the prejudice of this corporation.”69 Even before agents arrived to establish their factories, individuals at all levels of the company’s organization were attempting to take their own advantage of the Spanish American connection, even when it might damage the company’s position.
In a less scandalous but still troubling case, Captain Partington wrote to the company repeatedly about the difficulties he faced in having the agents on board;
