language; it is possible that they neglected both their language learning and their duties to keep their superiors in London appraised of their lack of progress.105 Many factors joined the company’s ranks without having already learned Spanish, making this repeated instruction necessary. This linguistic knowledge held importance for the company, which was made clear in the stress some individuals placed on their proficiency in petitions for employment or advancement. A petition from Elizabeth Davidson on behalf of her son’s promotion explains that her son spent more than five years in the West Indies, less than two of them in the service of the company, “to get Master of the Spanish language, which he now speaks, Reads, and Writes” fluently.106 The company could not take for granted that its employees would be able to communicate with their Spanish counterparts.
While repeated instructions to the factors to learn the Spanish language might indicate that they were not interacting with the inhabitants of these port cities extensively enough, later instructions to the American factories suggest they might have been having—and enjoying—too much interaction with these Spanish subjects for the comfort of the British company. Some made close Spanish friends, many through a shared interest in revelry, trade, or natural science. Dover and some other company physicians corresponded heavily with prominent British men of science like James Petiver and Hans Sloane, sending specimens and observations from Spanish American shores for their collections. Petiver encouraged factors to make Spanish Jesuit contacts, as that religious order had a well-known proclivity for scientific pursuits.107
Even when factors did not purposefully set out to make Spanish contacts, they did employ Spanish servants, who may have lived in or near these factories. The presence of these servants and the dinners that the factories would host for local officials meant that all the British factors regularly came into contact with Spanish subjects, as masters, equals, and subordinates.108 It appears that the court of directors feared that this constant interaction with the Spanish, along with the dearth of British women in the Spanish Americas, would lead to unacceptable pairings. They wrote to the Veracruz factory, “We conceive it very inconvenient for our service, that any of you should marry any of the natives or other inhabitants of America, lest by that means our effects under your management should be hazarded.” Beyond being a threat to the company’s goods, marriage to Catholics could threaten the factors’ souls. The employees were instructed that if any one of them chose to marry Spanish women, “or depart from the Protestant religion, the rest are to take our effects out of his or their hands, and dismiss him or them from our service.”109 In 1723 the factory at Cuba had just such a case, and the court of directors instructed the other factors to relieve a Mr. Walsh of his duties, as he “is married to a native of that Island, and is a Roman Catholick himself.”110
The instructions provided to the factors of the South Sea Company, and the dismay of the court of directors on discovering a Roman Catholic in their employ, reveal the simultaneous desire for positive relationships between the British and Spanish for trading purposes and the fear of contamination and blurring of identities that might occur in such close contact with the opposing empire. While interactions had long happened between British merchants and the residents of Spanish port cities such as Seville and later Cádiz, in the Americas this contact could be particularly damaging, as it occurred geographically far from the center of the empire and could lead to the transfer of critical knowledge about an empire’s resources and defenses to a potential future enemy. Factors could expect to interact with the Spanish, but the court of directors cautioned them not to become too close. The very proximity required to create long-term, profitable trade endangered both sides of the commerce; as individuals became closer, and trade relationships intensified, the opportunity for fractures in these relationships to disrupt international relations grew. This in turn endangered those individuals and interest groups most deeply involved in the interimperial trade.
While the instructions sent to the South Sea Company’s factors said a great deal about the Spanish, and contained detailed explanations of how they were to proceed with the importation and trading of slaves as merchandise, they said almost nothing about the interaction that factors were to have with slaves as human individuals. These documents do not reflect on the shared experience of mastery common to the British and Spanish, which shaped the development of their empires. Despite this omission in the official correspondence, the constant presence of African slaves and their interactions with British and Spanish colonists at both the individual and imperial levels could not fail to influence the formation of Anglo-Spanish relationships and the situation in the West Indies. As slave populations grew in both empires, the threat of slave insurrection, together with smaller-scale and more individual acts of resistance, would repeatedly challenge European hegemony in the Americas. This, together with external troubles, would shake the British and Spanish empires throughout the course of the trade.
Trouble Begins
Very early during the asiento period, the South Sea Company encountered problems with the complexities of the logistics of a massive interimperial organization such as that authorized by the asiento. Finding and organizing factors to travel abroad took the Court of Directors a significant amount of time. Though the trade was scheduled to begin immediately in 1713, the Court sent factors to Panama and Cartagena only by late 1714.111 Factors were not dispatched for Veracruz until months later.112 Once they arrived in the New World, some encountered further problems with local officials. When the British factors arrived at Portobello, the Royal Hacienda ministers objected that, because the peace was not yet proclaimed in the area, the contract was not valid. Only the president of Panama’s insistence that the factors be allowed to enter and begin their business kept them from being stranded outside of Portobello until the arrival of a ship with royal orders.113 In April 1715 the Spanish king issued official commands that allowed the assigned factors to enter his kingdoms in order to conduct their business.114
As these factors set out on their assignments, the first of many British ships sailed to bring supplies and slaves to their new bases of operation in Spanish American ports. The Bedford and the Elizabeth, British men of war on loan from the crown to the company, sailed in 1715 for Cartagena and Portobello, carrying both legal and excess goods. The Spanish king sent word not to hinder the ships in their business and to allow them to freely leave the ports, though he prohibited them from selling more than the treaty-allotted five to six hundred tons of merchandise.115 The annual permission ships did not depart as quickly, as problems within the company led to a delay of the first of these until late in 1716. This, at least, did not improve much as trade continued. That ship, the Royal Prince, was one of only seven annual permission ships to travel between Great Britain and the shores of Spanish America during the course of the asiento.116 This was only the beginning of the troubles Britain would face in implementing the contract, including both internal problems within the company and international conflicts that delayed ships and interrupted trade often during the asiento period.
British traders, both those working for the South Sea Company and for private interests trading in the West Indies, immediately began overstepping the bounds of the trade outlined in the treaty. The asiento contract prohibited British ships from trading any goods to the Spanish Americas except in the case of the annual permission ship. The factors quickly found ways to circumvent these rules. Ships traveling to the ports of Spanish America with slaves would also bring flour and other goods, ostensibly as supplies for the factories, but in fact in such large quantities that they were actually intended for sale. The South Sea Company managed to supply the substantial flour market in Cartagena and elsewhere, to the detriment of merchants from inside the Spanish empire.117 In 1715, James Pym, a Cartagena factor, shipped illegal goods on the permission ship the Bedford on his own account, bribing local officials to allow him to land his cargo. While initially the Spanish government seized the majority of merchandise from the ship, noting that its weight far exceeded the five hundred tons allowed in the treaty, over a year later a Madrid court ruled in the company’s favor.118 Individual traders unaffiliated with the Company also continued to sail illegally to the Spanish coast.
In order to
