At the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (review)

In the second half of the eighteenth century the Spanish Bourbons, alarmed at Russian and British expansion into and interest in the Pacific coast of what is now the United States and Canada, initiated a series of expeditions of exploration, discovery and delimitation – or extension - of imperial frontiers, launched from the naval department of San Blas in the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) to claim that coast for Spain, and so protect the still enormous Spanish imperial presence in the Americas. These activities culminated in the Nootka Sound incident of 1790, when war looked almost certain between Spain and Britain following the seizure of British ships and destruction of a British trading post there (on what is now Vancouver Island) by one of those many Spanish expeditions. One of those who settled the crisis for Spain was the naval officer, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who played a leading part in this cycle of Spanish imperial expansion in North America. Born in 1744 in Lima, the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, the younger son of a merchant father who had emigrated from the Spanish Basque Country, Juan Francisco studied first in Peru before crossing the Atlantic to enter the Academy for Naval Officers (Escuela de Guardiamarinas) at Cadiz. Having graduated, he joined the navy as an officer cadet, or guardiamarina, in 1762, gradually rising through the naval hierarchy, and receiving his final promotion, as ship's captain in 1784. Bodega y Quadra's promotions – which also included an habito in the prestigious Military Order of Santiago – were due very largely to his part in the expeditions referred to above. His participation in these adventures was almost entirely fortuitous. He was not a first choice candidate for men to go on the expedition which set out from the naval department of San Blas in 1775, and on which – as commander of an inferior vessel – he took possession in the name of king Charles III of Spain of the ports of los Remedios and Bodega. This success brought various rewards, including another expedition, that of 1779. Further voyages of this sort were rendered less easy by the outbreak of war between Spain and Britain (1779-83), Bodega y Quadra passing to Havana and to Spain, but in 1789 Charles III ordered him back to the Pacific coast of New Spain, as commanding officer of San Blas naval department. There, as Spanish commissary, working with the British representative, George Vancouver, he was responsible for the implementation of the Nootka Sound convention agreed at the Escorial by the British and Spanish governments in October 1790, on his third and final expedition, that so-called " of the Limits" (1792). Bodega y Quadra died in 1794, aged 50. Clearly an important figure, unfortunately Bodega y Quadra did not leave much by way of private papers with which the historian can reconstruct his private life, such that much of the latter must remain obscure. Fortunately, however, the remarkable administrative machine that was Imperial Spain provides sufficient material to piece together his career and the expeditions he played such an important part in; so too do Bodega y Quadra's own diaries or journals of the voyages of 1775, 1779, and 1792. Freeman Tovell has drawn on these latter and the correspondence between Bodega y Quadra and his superiors in Spanish America and Spain, now housed in various repositories – including the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Archivo Historico Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo General at Simancas, the Huntington Library and the Bancroft Library - to good effect. In doing so, Tovell outlines for an English-reading audience the biography, career and achievement of an ambitious and energetic Spanish creole naval officer who played an important part in the exploration by the European states in the...