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3. The First Reglamento del Comercio Libre (1765)
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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After innumerable conferences, calculations, and tables, we have agreed and propose that the government should pursue this general plan for the development and prosperity of our trade and navigation to America. “Consulta original” (1765) Free trade from all of Spain to America is a chimera. G.-T.-F. Raynal, Histoire philosophique (1783) In the Wrst quarter of 1765, Madrid seemed committed to reviewing its policies toward the overseas empire. The views of Esquilache’s Special Junta, its “Consulta original” of 14 February 1765, and the carefully formulated instructions that followed a month later to José de Gálvez, the visitador general dispatched to New Spain, should all be seen in the context of the challenge of responding to the English occupations of Havana and Manila; pressure from Cantabria and from Basques in New Spain; and the opposition of anxious Cadiz and colonial merchants, whose advice Madrid avoided. The consulta had its origins seven months earlier, in July 1764, when Prime Minister Grimaldi had asked Los Llanos to handpick four members to serve on a junta, to be chaired by him, to “review ways to address the backwardness of Spain’s commerce with its colonies and foreign nations.” Los Llanos was Wrst directed to draft an initial report (pre-informe), which has not been located. This was followed by a formal order for an in-depth consulta.⁄ The charge was treated soberly. At preliminary meetings, the junta resolved Wrst to isolate the “más esenciales puntos,” and, one presumes, to rank them; in mid September, Grimaldi advised the members that he had reviewed their agenda with Charles III, who had warmly approved it. Much encouraged, the junta assigned high priority to those factors and policies of most immediate eVect.¤ 3.The First Reglamento del Comercio Libre (1765) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The Special Junta presumably realized that decades of memoranda, both solicited and unsolicited, but rarely published, had preceded its consulta, and that it behooved it to come up with feasible recommendations. There is no denying that the “Consulta original,” prepared in only Wve months, is an impressive model of the genre: an extracto, or précis, of the main report; elaboration of eight factors of backwardness (atraso); and analysis of seven areas where change was both imperative and possible, all buttressed by thirteen appendices, some statistical and others exemplifying proposed recommendations . Presumably, the Special Junta’s members intended no open confrontation with Cadiz’s commercial interests. Instead, they focused on the systemic Xaws in Spain’s transatlantic trade that accounted for the country’s inability to proWt like France and Britain from the human and natural resources of its overseas possessions: the convoy system, the need to purchase ship licenses from Madrid, and the tonelada and palmeo (cubic) measurement fees introduced in the Proyecto of 1720.‹ In the introduction to the “Consulta original,” one is struck by the way in which structures and needs shape both the approach to a national problem and proposed solutions. The growth of domestic trade (“the foundation of a state’s well-being in the development of its agriculture and crafts, the real way to abundance, independence, and population growth”) would bear fruit, but gradually. As for foreign trade, the issue was that the export trade of Spain’s European competitors was so much more developed “por su economía, perfección y poder” that Spanish competition required prior improvement of the economy’s basic sectors, agriculture, craft industry and, of course, shipping. Such time-consuming formation of infrastructure, however, might be bypassed. If national policy demanded quick results, policy emphasis might have to shift from metropole to colonies, to “the trade and navigation with our colonies . . . so that [the] vast continent’s rich mines, goods, and materials may stimulate our merchants, employ our workers, expand our shipping, and over the long run absorb the output of our agriculture and crafts.” The reference to “ricas minas” must reXect data available to the junta. Between 1755 and 1761, the proportion of precious metals to total imports from the colonies on private account unloaded at Cadiz topped 78 percent.› In addition, the greater part (85 percent) of the duties collected at Cadiz was generated not by exports (and reexports) but by colonial products.fi In brief, the most eVective locus of metropolitan economic growth would have to be overseas in Spain’sAmerican colonies, rather than at home. Los Llanos’s junta was, by indirection, challenging the order of priorities in 70 • Stalemate in the Metropole [54.235.6.60] Project MUSE...