Fortificaciones y tropas: El gasto militar en Tierra Firme, 1700-1788 (review)

Throughout the Bourbon century, military expenditures constituted the major cost borne by His Majesty in the American empire. Crucial were the transfers of revenues from interior treasuries to the coastal strong points, where they supported garrisons and built and maintained fortifications. The pioneering works of John TePaske for the northern Caribbean, Juan Marchena Fernández for Cartagena, and Alfredo Castillero Calvo for Panama defined the general contours of these transfers. The present volume takes that analysis an important step forward for New Granada.

This workbegan as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Seville. Directed by the distinguished catedráticos Julián Ruiz Rivera and Luis García Navarro, the dissertation won the "Nuestra América" prize for 2002, leading to its publication. Researched in the account records deposited in the Archivo General de Indias, its sources principally derive from the sections for Contaduría and for the Audiencias of Panama and of Santa Fe. A select bibliography of published material reinforces the archival documentation. The geographic scope encompasses the northern rim of New Granada's defenses, which stretched from Panama City on the Pacific to Cartagena in the Caribbean, and from there eastward to Santa Marta and Riohacha. The Panamanian plazas fuertes, which included Portobelo on the Caribbean, derived their outside funding from Lima, while the treasuries of Quito and Santa Fe supported the Commandancy General of Cartagena. Serrano begins his analysis with the reign of Philip V and records the monetary transfers on an annual basis on through the death of Charles III. The situados, when properly understood, represented the funds sent to support the fixed garrisons, and regulations prescribed those amounts. Other transfers included the monies for fortifications and beyond that the catchall, "gastos irregulares."

The most innovative aspect of this book is the treatment of expenditures (datas). These disbursements drew upon the outside transfers, local income (rentas), and loans and donations. Serrano's analysis of this extremely complex, confounding documentation also helps to clarify the income (cargos) side of the ledger, another formidable challenge. Statistical information abounds throughout the text, with twenty-eight tables and thirty-two graphs. During the period under consideration, Serrano shows that the military accounted for over seventy percent of government disbursements—approximately the same as in the peninsula—and that transfers from Lima, Quito, and Santa Fe defrayed two thirds of those expenditures. Despite these huge totals, however, the devil lay in the detail. Communications were exceptionally difficult and the transfers habitually arrived late or incomplete. Success in stabilizing the system thus depended significantly on local resources and on the ability of the military authorities to improvise. Loans from the commercial community played a critical role.

Salaries accounted for the majority of military spending, but important differences arose in the outcomes for the individual garrisons. For Cartagena, where local income accounted for some forty percent of that cost, loans to manage shortfalls afforded a tolerable cushion. Panama, by contrast, wanted for local income following the decline and collapse of the Portobelo fairs, and it thus depended overwhelmingly on distant Peru. The garrison withered in rough proportion to the inevitable delays and shortfalls. The sack of Portobelo in 1739 provided a telling example of this reality, but no satisfactory long-term solution could be found for the isthmus. Santa Marta, and by extension Riohacha, enjoyed a separate subsidy, although the scarcity of local resources left it chronically vulnerable to smugglers and to hostile Indians. Serrano concludes, nevertheless, that despite its many shortcomings the system of military finance succeeded reasonably well over the century.

This impressive study has already nurtured renewed discussion in meetings held at Cartagena during 2003 and 2005 sponsored by the Banco de la República and directed by Adolfo Meisel. The challenging questions that now arise concern, first, why did the infusion of silver into New Granada's coastal economy accomplish so little to foment the sort...