Defoe's "South-Sea" and "North-Sea" Schemes: A Footnote to A New Voyage Round the World

Defoe's "South-Sea" and "North-Sea" Schemes: A Footnote to A New Voyage Round the World P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens In May 1711, shortly after Robert Harley had put forward in Parliament a plan for a South Sea Company, he asked Daniel Defoe to let him have his thoughts about it. It would form part of the charter of the Company that, under the Grand Alliance treaty of 1701, England had the right to take possession of some part of the Spanish dominions; and Defoe responded by proposing the seizure of an area in Patagonia (largely unpopulated and not under Spanish rule) as a step towards establishing a colony on the other side of the Andes, at Valdivia,1 in Chile. The land around Valdivia was, he said, very fertile; the climate was ideally suited to the English; and the region abounded in gold. Defoe's purpose was to give some definite and practical substance to the new Company's plans, though without encouraging the (to him) absurd notion that Spain could be made to allow an open trade throughout her dominions. Whatever trading relations were to spring up between the new colony and its Spanish and Indian neighbours would, as he pictured it, be unofficial; and meanwhile a valuable exchange of products might be set in train with England's colonies in New England and the Caribbean. 1 There was disagreement about the spelling of this name, which sometimes appears as "Baldivia" or "Baldavia " According to Defoe, in his letter to Harley, the place was founded by the Spanish general Pedro Valdivia ([1500]-1553). See The tetters ofDaniel Defoe, ed. George Harris Healey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 345^9. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 13, Number 4, July 2001 502 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Defoe told Harley he hoped his scheme would be no less acceptable for having been formerly proposed to King William, "Since I can Assure your Ldpp No Eye Ever Saw the Drafft Except his Late Majtie and The Earle of Portland, and The Originalls were allways in My Own hand; Till my Lord Nottinghams fury forced me to Burn Them with Other papers to keep Them Out of his hands."2 A discreetly veiled version of this Valdivian proposal appeared in the Review for 19 July and 7 August 1711, and a further one in An Essay on the South-Sea Trade (September 1711), where Defoe again claims to have presented "these Schemes" to the King at the beginning of the war and says that they were "so approved of both by himself, and several of those whom his Majesty was pleased to communicate them to, that nothing but the unhappy Death of that Glorious Prince prevented that this Attempt, (instead of that which has proved so fatal at Barcelona,) had taken up the last Seven Years, with the Blood and Treasure of this Nation."3 From now on, this project became a favourite theme with Defoe. He gives an extended version of it in chapter 22 of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725-26; the emphasis here being primarily on Patagonia), and a briefer one in A Plan of the English Commerce (1728);4 and meanwhile in A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course never sailed before (1725 [for 1724]) he had devised the fictional narrative of a voyage to the South Seas,5 designed to show that his Valdivian and Patagonian projects were a practical possibility. The imaginary voyage, a circumnavigation of the globe, begins late in 1713, that is to say not long after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Part of its aim is to see if inroads might be made on the French trading hegemony in the South Seas, and for this purpose it is planned to sail under a variety of colours: French, English, or Imperialist as best suits the particular circumstances. The English captain, who narrates, wants to attempt an eastward circumnavigation, and after many vicissitudes, including an abortive mutiny, the ship's company adopt his scheme. They 2 Defoe, Letten, p. 345. 3 An Essay on the South-Sea Trade (1711), in Political and Economic Writings of...