1
Micromilitarism and the Eclipse of the Spanish Empire (1858-1868)
Stephen Jacobson
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
ROUGH DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE
Within the field of world history, scholars have been more interested in
the rise of the Spanish empire than its eclipse. According to the traditional “rise
of the west” thesis, the conquest and colonization of the Americas was due to
the precocious modernization of the state, early religious unity, and the
superiority of western navigation, military technology, information, and
bureaucracy. Renaissance, the printing press, and the scientific revolution are
at the center of the story.1 With the advent of the “great divergence” thesis,
geography and germs complement this narrative. New World genetic defenses
were unable to combat Old World disease, triggering an unintentional genocide
that devastated the human and institutional foundations of native civilizations.
The discovery of silver in the mines of Potosí (Peru) and Zacatecas (Mexico)
filled the coffers of the Habsburg kings and their German and Italian bankers,
providing resources for colonization on the model of southern Spain and the
Canary Islands.2 World historians have long emphasized that Spain was one of
a number of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century gunpowder empires, including
Portugal, England, Russia, Ming China, Japan, and the Ottoman, Safavid, and
Mughal empires.3
Less attention has been paid, however, to the empire’s eclipse. In the
spirit of Gibbon, many have asked why the empire lasted so long rather than
exploring what it became. Henry Kamen, for one, attributes this longevity to a
geo-political equilibrium. In the seventeenth century, European powers – Britain,
France, and the Netherlands – propped up the Spanish empire in order to
maintain a balance of powers in the Caribbean, and to ensure the steady flow of
1
For a relatively recent (but already outdated) reinterpretation version of the “rise of the west
thesis,” see David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and
Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1998).
2
For the translation of Kenneth Pomerantz’s “great divergence” thesis into Spain’s imperial
history, see John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
(London: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), 56-65. Darwin’s account, in turn, is reliant upon: J.H. Parry,
The Spanish Seaborne Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969). For his part, Pomerantz hints
at this explanation in The Great Divergence, China, Europe and the Making of the World
Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4-5. .
3
See, for example, Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage,
1987), 20; and Darwin, After Tamberlane, 47-100.
2
Peruvian and Mexican silver into European and Chinese coffers, hence
maintaining a worldwide currency. By the late seventeenth century, Spanish
America had become a permeable trade zone, from which various countries
could profit. Spain did not have a large or powerful enough fleet to enforce its
monopoly effectively, and routinely negotiated accords facilitating legal and
illegal commerce by foreign merchants. Kamen argues that the survival of the
empire during the eighteenth century depended on the military might of France,
who allied with the Spanish Bourbons in a series of “family pacts” with the goal
of countering the ascent of Britain.4
From this vantage point, the empire’s disintegration reads as a chronic of
a death foretold, the return of an impoverished and disjointed country to its
socio-economic and geo-political original position. The story is well known and
oft-repeated. The Napoleonic occupation (1808-1813) of Iberia spurred
revolutionary movements in the Americas, leading to the independence of most
of the Spanish colonies by 1824 and the forfeiture of North America territories.
In the wake of the humiliating defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898,
Spain ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and a number of Pacific islands to the
United States, whilst Cuba became nominally independent. In the early
twentieth century, Spain expanded its presence in northern Morocco,
establishing a “protectorate” in the Rif region. In 1956, however, France and
Spain recognized Moroccan independence (save the Spanish cities of Ceuta
and Melilla).5 In 1968, Spain’s last colony, Guinea (in western Africa), became
independent.
The British historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto has likened this errant
historiographical tradition to a dog that walks on its hind legs. The rise of Spain,
a peripheral and poor country, seems improbable, the result of a coincidence of
serendipitous factors. Once wealthier countries defeat it on the battlefield,
punish it in treaties, strip it of its territories, and exclude it from diplomatic
councils, Spain disappears as a world power. The saga of decline reads as a
string of lost wars (Thirty Years’ War, the War of Spanish Succession, and the
4
Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 (London: Penguin,
2002).
5
For the end of empire, see Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923(
Oxford: OUP, 1997), and Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
3
Seven Years’ War), lost battles (Manila, Havana, Trafalgar, Ayacucho, Santiago
de Cuba), and punishing treaties (Westphalia, Utrecht, Paris, and Paris). The
Peninsular War against Napoleon, known in Spain as “War of Independence”
(1808-1813), was the sole exception to the litany of military disasters. Yet, the
heroics of the “guerillas” did not generate diplomatic dividends. At the Congress
of Vienna (1815), Metternich excluded Spain from the Council of Europe, which
included the anointed “great powers” of Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and
Austria.6 In the next major pan-European diplomatic affair, the Berlin
Conference (1884-85), Spain also played a minor role. In the end, the dog
returns to all fours.7
There are good reasons, though, for abandoning this narrative of
exceptionalism. In the first place, the heady, chaotic, and serendipitous
acquisition of territory and minerals during the age of discovery radically altered
the futures of various states in unpredictable ways. The histories of all
European countries were partially – or in the case of Spain and Britain – largely
determined by the lands and peoples they came across. The second reason is
simply that it would be a mistake to equate the decline of Spain with the eclipse
of empire. The fact that Spain became a second-rate military power with limited
international influence did not mean that its empire entered a downward spiral
toward impoverishment and fragmentation. Rather, the history of the empire –
like the history of the state – paralleled that of other European countries. In the
eighteenth century, the monarchy formulated policies and instituted reforms with
one eye on its own colonies and the other on its competitors’. When compared
to others, there was nothing particularly exceptional or paradoxical about the
history of the Spanish empire.8
6
Spain’s limited influence was due to a number of reasons. Spanish Bourbons had originally
allied with the Bonapartes against Britain- In addition to this reasons, the early twentiethcentury historian Jerónimo Becker noted that that the Spanish representative to Vienna, Pedro
Gómez Labrador, prioritized the defence of the interests of the Bourbons over those of Spain.
His principal goal was the restoration of the house in Naples and Parma. For his part,
Metternich’s manoeuvres to exclude Spain from the Council of Europe stemmed from the rivalry
between the Bourbons and Habsburgs in Italy. See Jerónimo Bécker, Historia de las relaciones
exteriores de España durante el siglo XIX (Madrid: Jaime Ratés, 1924), v. 1, 371-389.
7
Felipe Fernéndez-Armesto, “The Improbable Empire,” in Spain: A History, ed. Raymond Carr
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 116-151 [116]. Fernández-Armesto, for his part, does
not accept this interpretation: despite vacillating, he appears to comes down on the side of
“precocious modernity.”
8
These points are made in J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in
America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale, 2006). He emphasizes that Spain and Britain’s imperial
4
The assumption that the decline of Spain as a great power prompted a
corresponding decline of the empire is misleading. Indeed, enlightened and
liberal reforms of the overseas “crowns” had the effect of increasing rather than
decreasing the presence of the colonies in metropolitan life. The Monarchy of
Charles III (1759-1788) borrowed British and French ideas and administrative
models: Enlightened ministers rationalized a creaking system of Habsburg
colonial administration according to modern principles of Bourbon statecraft.
They implemented a massive fiscal and military reform to improve defenses
following the British conquest of Havana and Manila during the Seven-Years
War (1756-63). In 1778, they annulled the monopoly of Seville and Cadiz,
obviated the old system of licenses, and allowed Spanish ports to engage in
free trade with the Americas. Following the loss of the Spanish colonies in 1824,
the constitutional regime again overhauled of the fiscal, military, and
administrative foundations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. By the
mid-nineteenth century, the remaining colonies possessed a workable fiscalmilitary system. The “overseas provinces” financed their own administrations
and defenses, and even came to produce surpluses. Of course, the empire was
hardly an exemplar of good governance. The Captain Generals possessed
dictatorial powers, colonial rule was arbitrary, subjects had few formal rights,
and the persistence of slavery brought unconscionable human suffering.
9
An
unbleachable stain, it stifled the emergence of a cogent ideology of tutelage or
civilization.
To the eyes of many comparative scholars, enlightened and liberal
reforms appear as belated efforts provoking or prolonging the inevitable. For
this reason, they are ignored. Spain ordinarily disappears from the world history
of empire once the story of conquest and colonization has been told.10
However, such reforms were much more transformative than many have
strategies had much in common, despite the fact that these countries encountered different
realities in the New World. On the last page of the book (p. 411), Elliott asks would have
happened if Henry VII had taken Columbus up on his offer before he went to Ferdinand and
Isabel. Would have New World silver filled the coffers of the English crown, reduced the role of
parliament, obviated the need to disentail the monasteries, and prompted the building of an
absolutist state?
9
For the reconstruction of the Spanish empire in the nineteenth century, see Josep M.
Fradera,a Colonias para después de un imperio (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2005).
10
To cite one revealing example, Spain is absent from C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern
World, 1780-1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
5
realized. During the early modern period, the empire had been the enterprise of
the monarchy, had brought tremendous changes to the demography and urban
landscapes of Madrid, Seville, and Cadiz, and had caused great reverberations
throughout the Peninsula and Europe (The Low Countries, for example, felt the
full brunt of the military might that New World silver could purchase).11 In the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, however, fiscal-military reforms transformed
metropolitan society in equally consequential and even more visible ways.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in Barcelona, Spain’s most rapidly
growing urban area and the center of its industrial heartland, Catalonia. During
the mid-eighteenth century, the city’s agrarian and proto-industrial economy had
been tied into European markets. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, its
commercial activity had shifted toward the colonies, former colonies, and the
cotton-exporting ports of Brazil and North America, accessed through the
colonies.12 What is more, Barcelona was not alone. Along the coast, other port
cities such as Valencia, Alicante, Málaga, Cádiz, Vigo, La Coruña, Gijón,
Santander,
and
Bilbao
also
underwent
similar,
though
less
radical,
transformations.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Spain still governed the most profitable
and populated formal overseas empire in the world, save that of Britain. The
jewel of the crown – or the “pearl of the Antilles” as it was called – was Cuba,
where slave plantations, modeled on those of the British West Indies, produced
seventy percent of the world sugarcane supply by the 1870s.13 Havana, the
center of the sugar trade, and Barcelona, Spain’s most industrialized city, were
the two most frequently visited ports on a plethora of “triangular” trade routes
linking the Peninsula with the Americas. A typical mid-century route was one in
11
For an interesting discussion of the devastating affects of New World silver, see Dennis
Flynn, “El desarrollo del primer capitalismo a pesar de los metales preciosos del Nuevo Mundo.
Una interpretación anti-Wallerstein de la España Imperial,” Revista de Historia Económica, 2,
no. 2 (1984): 29-57.
12
For example, statistics from the port of Barcelona for the years 1845 to 1847 indicated that
some 50 percent of exports and 43 percent of imports involved the colonies of Puerto Rico and
Cuba; another 11 and 6 percent involved trade with South and North American countries; the
bulk of the rest was with Britain, France, and Portugal. Other than salt cod, cotton was the most
commonly imported good. These statistics are a bit off, since Brazilian and United States cotton
was usually calculated as either a Cuban or Puerto Rican product. For these figures and for
Barcelona’s colonial commerce, see Josep M. Fradera, Indústria i mercat. Les bases comercials
de la indústria catalana moderna (1814-1845) (Barcelona: Crítica, 1989), 236-241.
13
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio complejo económico social cubano de azúcar
(Barcelona: Crítica, 2001), 536.
6
which a ship left Barcelona loaded with wines and liqueurs, Catalonia’s chief
export. Sometimes it carried little cargo or nothing, given that its first stop was a
port on the west coast Africa where it picked up slaves. The ship would then
continue to the Río de la Plata region or proceed directly to Cuba, where it
would exchange its cargo for sugar and rum to be delivered in the United States
cities of New Orleans, Charleston, and Mobile. It returned to Barcelona with
cotton to feed Catalonia’s textile industry, one of Europe’s largest.14 The Antilles
were not the only partners. Ships regularly left Spanish ports for the Philippines.
Spanish investors were major purchasers of shares in the Suez Canal
Company in 1858.15
The purpose of this description is not to trumpet the virtues of Catalan
industry or Spain’s lamentable role in promoting and prolonging the institution of
slavery in the age of abolition. It is, however, to stress that the presence of the
empire in metropolitan life was growing rather than diminishing. As was the
case of Great Britain, the loss of the American colonies in the early nineteenth
century, had not caused a crisis of conscience or a loss of confidence.
According to liberal discourse, American independence had been one of the
many consequences of the multiple failings of the absolutist state. Bankers and
merchants were not the only ones conscious of the importance of the colonies;
novels, plays, monuments, history books, and celebrations ensured that the
empire remained embedded in the popular imagination.16 The most
conspicuous representative of the empire was the indiano, the Spanish
equivalent of the British nabob, a nouveau-riche who returned to the metropole.
Emblematic of such persons was Antonio López, a poor peasant from
Santander, who emigrated as a young man to Cuba, where he became a rich
14
For these routes, see Pere Pascual, Agricultura i industrialització a la Catalunya del segle XIX
(Barcelona: Crítica, 1990), 196-97, and César Yañez, “El perfil ultramarí de l’economia
catalana,” in Josep M. Fradera et. al., Catalunya i ultramar. Poder i negoci a les colònies
espanyoles (1750-1914) (Barcelona: Museu Marítim Drassanes de Barcelona, 54-76 [61-62].
15
Albert Garcia Balañà notes that as of 31 December 1858, Spain had purchased some 4,046
shares. This number was considerably below that of France (207,111) and that of the “Ottoman
Empire” (96,517 shares). However, it was higher than that of Holland, Belgium, or Prussia.
British and Austrian shares had yet to be announced. See Albert Garcia Balañà, “‘El comercio
español en África’ en la Barcelona de 1858. Entre el Caribe y el Mar de China, entre Londres y
París,” Illes i Imperis 10/11 (1998): 167-186 [186].
16
There has been little work on this. For historiography, see Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, The
Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century
(Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006). As of yet, there is no equivalent in Spain to
Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-67
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
7
merchant and slaver. In the 1850s, he settled permanently in Barcelona, where
he obtained the title Marquis de Comillas after founding the Transatlantic
Steamship Company, the Hispano-Colonial Bank, and the Philippines Tobacco
Company.17 Spain was littered with numerous, though less wealthy indianos, in
much the same way that Spanish America and the Philippines remained
populated with men and women who had emigrated in search of profit and
personal fulfillment. In the mid-nineteenth century, many of these traders,
slavers, coolie traffickers, missionaries, merchant bankers, settlers, diplomats,
and soldiers would solicit the help of the government and the army in opening
markets and pursuing new imperial ventures.
In the rest of this paper, I will argue that the eclipse of the empire
occurred during the late 1850s and 1860s, when the government, in concert
with others Europe, took up various of the many offers of such “men on the
spot” in an attempt to renew its imperial mission. However, this wave of micromilitary initiatives proved disastrous. Spain entered into the phase of “informal
empire” or “new imperialism.” Unlike the experience of other countries, though,
the end result was contraction rather than expansion.
The New Imperialism of the Liberal Union
On 1 December 1858, Queen Isabel II inaugurated the new
parliamentary session. The government was led the Liberal Union, a relatively
recently born party which had only once tasted power for a few months in 1856.
Led by General Leopoldo O’Donnell, it comprised politicians and army officers
previously associated with the leftist Progressives and the rightist Moderates.
Unionists came to power under the banner of a “national government”
committed to overcoming rivalries, pursuing economic development, and raising
the prestige of a country devastated by civil war for much of the first half of the
century. When the Queen came to the foreign-affairs section of the speech, she
addressed a number of issues: The government would seek to solve diplomatic
problems with Mexico, would do everything in its power to avoid violence in
Morocco, and would pursue commercial opportunities in its Gulf of Guinea
possessions (islands off the west coast of Africa). She also informed the
17
For a biography of this interesting person, see Martín Rodrigo y Alharilla, Los Marqueses de
Comillas, 1817-1925 (Madrid: LID, 2000).
8
Congress of a recent Franco-Hispanic landing in Vietnam; a few hundred men
had been sent to resolve a diplomatic dispute instigated by the judicial
beheading of three Catholic missionaries, one Spanish and two French.18 To
most listeners and newspaper readers, this agenda might have seemed
somewhat ambitious, but these issues had been stewing for a while. The
opposition later badgered the foreign minister over the dubious constitutionality
of deploying troops without first seeking parliamentary approval, but few paid
much attention. Nobody foresaw that this “long government” (1858-1863) would
embroil the army and navy in conflicts in Vietnam, Morocco, Mexico, Santo
Domingo and the Pacific.
Scholars have disagreed over how to interpret this brief but aggressive
new age of empire. To some, the Liberal Union’s foreign policy was slavishly
faithful to the wishes of Napoleon III. The Second Empire manipulated and
dragged a naive but reckless government into a series of military expeditions
and occupations to the benefit of France and to the prejudice of Spain.19 In the
background, French financing of the Spanish railway boom tightened diplomatic
links. To others, this “imperial dream” was another risible episode of quixotic
Spanish nationalism, a desperate attempt to unify the country, torn apart by
periodic civil war during the first half of the century, around bombastically
celebrated military victories and memories of the fallen.20 Others have argued
that the goal was to support and expand the lucrative sugar economy of Cuba,
threatened by the looming presence of the United States, and, given low life
expectancies in the Caribbean, in constant need of slave and indentured
labor.21 All these perspectives are helpful, although none fully explains why
Spain embarked on this plethora of diverse imperial enterprises at this particular
point in time. A complementary way of understanding them is to focus on global
developments. To be sure, imperial dynamics taking place on the ground and
around the globe reverberated in Madrid. In consonance with others, the
Spanish empire lurched toward expansion.
18
Diario de las Sesiones del Congreso, 1 December 1858, p. 2.
Nelson Durán, La Unión Liberal y la modernización de la España isabelina. Una convivencia
frustrada, 1854-68 (Madrid: Akal, 1979), 229.
20
José Álvarez Junco, Mater Dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus,
2001), 509-31.
21
Francesc A. Martínez Gallego, Conservar progresando: la Unión Liberal (1856-1868)
(Valencia: Biblioteca Historia Social, 2001), 117-64.
19
9
What were these episodes? The first was nothing less than the maiden
European invasion of Vietnam. It began on 1 September 1858 when a FrancoHispanic expeditionary force of some 2000 men, 500 of whom were
“Spaniards,” landed in Tourane. The official justification was to avenge the
deaths of a number of Dominican missionaries, executed by forces loyal to the
emperor Tu-Duc in Hué. By early 1859, the troops concentrated their efforts in
Saigon and eventually abandoned Tourane. One partial account insists that
over half the 1200 soldiers who first landed in Saigon were “Spanish.”22 All in
all, Spain set some 3000 men, contributed a number of ships, and allowed the
French fleet access to the Philippines for supplies and Tagalog manpower. A
few hundred troops from Spain’s Army of the Philippines remained in Vietnam
until 1863. On one level, the invasion, which aroused little pubic enthusiasm,
best fits those theories that attribute such episodes to the government’s
subservience to the Second Empire. During the mission, Spanish generals
essentially followed orders from the French, in spite of the maintenance of
formal mechanisms of independent command. In the Treaty of Peace,
Friendship, Commerce, and Indemnity between Spain, France and Annan,
signed in June 1862, Spain received no territorial concessions. As part of the
negotiations, France promised to lobby for the inclusion of Spain into the
Council of Europe, an effort that did not prove successful. On another level,
economic interests were also important. The Treaty facilitated the trafficking of
“Cochin-Chinese” indentured servants to Cuba. Between 1853 and 1874, some
125,000 coolies arrived in Cuba, principally from Shanghai and Canton, but also
from southeast Asian ports of Macao, Amoy, Pivatao, Wampoa, and Saigon.23
The second episode, in contrast, unleashed a wave of patriotic
enthusiasm. In October 1859, the government declared war on Morocco with
the blessing of France and the permission of Britain (who forbade the
22
Francisco Gainza, Campaña de Cochinchina (Manila: 1859), 181. Cited in Sara Rodicio
García, “Una encrucijada en la historia de España. Contribución hispánica a la expedición de
Cochinchina.” 3 vols. Ph.D. thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1987, p. 326. My
information is reliant on Rodicio García’s thorough work. For a less academic and more patriotic
history of Spain’s participation in Vietnam, see Luis Alejandre Sintes, La Guerra de la
Cochinchina. Cuando los españoles conquistaron Vietnam (Madrid: Edhasa, 2006).
23
José Báltar, “Bibliografía, estado de la cuestión de las investigaciones sobre la presencia
china en Cuba,” in El Extremeño-Oriente Ibérico. Investigación histórica, metodológica y estado
de la cuestión, ed. Francisco de Solano (Madrid: CSIC, 1989), 323-36.
10
acquisition of territory or the occupation of Tangiers). Emulating the script that
the French had used in Algiers and Vietnam, the official reason for the invasion
was to demand retribution for violations of international law. The Spanish
alleged injuries and vandalism (including the desecration of the flag) in the
environs of two Spanish prison-colony fortresses, located in the North African
ports of Ceuta and Melilla. The head of the government, General O’Donnell, led
the Army into battle. During the war, Spain sent approximately 40,000 men, 466
of whom were volunteers recruited from revolutionary militias in Barcelona and
other Catalan towns. The capture of Tetuán in February 1860 signaled the end
of this short but brutal war. The two sides signed the Treaty of Wad-Ras in April.
Even though some 16,000 Spaniards died in the campaign (some 7000 in
combat and almost 9000 from disease), the “War of Africa” was a propaganda
success. The Sultan of Morocco was the contemporary face of an ancient
enemy who had once ruled Spain, the Caliphate of Al-Andalus. Troops received
rousing sending-off and welcoming-home parades. Spaniards celebrated a
victory against “a race of slaves” in the age of the War of Crimea. It channeled
the patriotic energies of revolutionary militiamen toward the exterior and raised
the prestige of the Army, which, having been engaged in civil war for much of
the first half of the century, had not celebrated a victory over a foreign enemy
since the age of Napoleon.24
The third episode – the annexation of the Dominican Republic – began a
year after the victory in the War of Africa when patriotic fervor was at its height.
In March 1861, the Republic solicited reincorporation into the mother country.
Led by General Pedro Santana, the Dominican government feared an imminent
invasion by Haiti and preferred to turn to Spain before the United States. In
Spain, this raised expectations that other struggling former colonies, wracked by
revolution and civil war, might either emulate the Dominicans, or, in the
alternative, turn to relatives of the Bourbon house for political stability. In order
to quell British and Haitian concerns, the annexation decree of May 1861
stipulated that Spain would not re-establish slavery on the island. From a geo24
For two fine analyses of the patriotic dimensions of the War of Africa, see Albert Garcia
Balañà, “Patria, plebe y política en la España isabelina. La guerra de África en Cataluña (18591860),” in Marruecos y el colonialismo español, 2859-1912, ed. Eloy Martín Corrales (Barcelona
:Edicions Bellaterra, 2002); and José Álvarez Junco, “El nacionalismo español como mito
movilizador,” en Cultura y movilización en la España contemporánea (Madrid: Alianza, 1997),
ed. Rafael Cruz and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Alianza, 1997), 35-67.
11
strategic standpoint, the control of the Samaná Bay further served to protect
Cuba from a U.S. invasion. From 1861 to 1863, this was a micro-military affair.
Some 3500 to 4000 troops from the Army of the Antilles arrived on the island. In
July 1861, Spain sent a fleet to Porto-Prince, threatened bombardment, exacted
a small retribution (200,000 dollars), and dissuaded the Haitians from mounting
an invasion. Initially, Spanish authorities proceeded without much resistance.
Using Cuba and Puerto Rico as a model, they implanted colonial systems of
administration, justice and governance, although they renegged on the promise
to amortize Dominican paper money. However, in 1863, things began to go
badly. Rebels rose against the occupation,
prompting Spain to deploy some
25,000 troops amid a population only ten-times the size. With the end of the
United States Civil War, Spain could no longer afford leave Cuba and Puerto
Rico so poorly guarded. In 1865, the Spanish government, then led by the
Moderate Party, withdrew the Army, devastated by disease and having suffered
some 27,000 deaths.25
The fourth episode – the invasion of Mexico – had a long diplomatic
prelude. At various points in the 1850s, a number of Spanish governments had
contemplated, or had used the threat of, invasion in order to negotiate a series
of agreements addressing the payments of debts owed by the Mexican
government to various creditors claiming Spanish citizenship. On 31 October
1861, Spain, France, and Britain signed an accord in London, in which the three
countries agreed to send in troops after Mexico’s left-liberal government, led by
Benito Juárez, had announced the permanent suspension of debt obligations to
foreigners. After coming to power in a civil war, Juárez had expelled the
Spanish ambassador, Francisco Pacheco. During the civil war, popular violence
had resulted in the murder of various Spanish residents. The decision to deploy
the Army of the Antilles was taken amid a time of patriotic euphoria when Spain
was positioning itself as a candidate for great-power status. It had emerged
victorious from the War of Africa, had annexed the Dominican Republic, still
maintained a small presence in Vietnam, and was pressuring for entry into the
25
For the annexation of the Dominican Republic, see Eduardo González Calleja and Antonio
Fontecha Pedraza, Una cuestión de honor. La polémica sobre la anexión de Santo Domingo
vista desde España (1861-65) (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 2005), and
Cristóbal Robles, Paz en Santo Domingo (1854-65): El fracaso de la anexión a España (Madrid:
CSIC, 1987).
12
Concert of Europe. In the early 1860s, the government had other projects on
the table, including the colonization of the Gulf of Guinea possessions, of the
southern Philippine island of Mindanao (populated by Islamic natives), and of
territory in northern Vietnam.26 The London agreement stipulated that the
purpose of the invasion was to help the Mexicans organize a stable
government.
Of the three belligerent countries, Spain was first to land. On 10
December 1861, some 6000 troops arrived in Veracruz, twice the number sent
by France. The British contribution, for its part, consisted of a few hundred men.
Led by General Juan Prim, the former Captain General of Puerto Rico and the
hero of the capture of Tetuán, Spain had naively hoped to play a leading role in
determining Mexico’s political future. General Prim was married into a wealthy
Mexican family, had spent much time in Paris in the company of powerful
Mexicans from various sides of the political spectrum, had good contacts in
Second Empire, and possessed an in-law in the Juárez cabinet. These
ambitions, though, proved exaggerated – so exaggerated that the French
accused Prim himself of posturing for the Mexican throne. This episode also
ended badly. France soon augmented it troop levels, and began to orchestrate
the accession of the Habsburg Prince Maximillian to the throne. In protest,
Spanish and British armies abandoned the Yucatán in April 1862, after war had
already broken out between Mexico and France. Proving to the British once and
for all that Spain should not be considered a great power, the Captain General
of Cuba, Francisco Serrano, in protest to Prim’s decision to quit Mexico, refused
to send ships. The British Navy deposited Prim and the Army of the Antilles in
Havana.27
The fifth episode – the “War of the Pacific” (1864-1866) – was the final
fiasco. Like the annexation of the Dominican Republic, it represents another
instance in which Spain embarked upon an overseas enterprise without the full
26
See, for example, “Colonización del Mindanao,” Diario de Barcelona, 9 August 1860, pp.
7422-24. This article, reprinted from the Madrid newspaper, Iberia, refers to the colonization of
Mindanao as one of many projects, including the colonizations of “Balaback, Fernando Póo and
Cochinchina.”
27
For the diplomacy leading up to and Spain’s participation in the invasion of Mexico, see
Antonia Pi-Suñer, El general Prim y la cuestión de México (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1996).
13
support of France and Britain.28 In August 1862, the Liberal Union government
sent out a “scientific expedition,” escorted by two frigates and a gunboat. The
expedition also had the unadvertised mission to “negotiate” treaties granting
Spain special trading privileges (if not most-favored-nation status), similar to
that signed with Morocco two years previously. Perhaps some Spanish
politicians harbored the idea that tiny monarchist parties in the Pacific countries
would ask Spain for help, hence emulating the French experience in Mexico or
the Spanish experience in Santo Domingo. In order to provoke an outbreak of
hostilities, the government entered into a diplomatic row with Peru over the
judicial treatment of a number of Basque emigrants, accused of murder, who
lived and worked in an agricultural colony. Initially, the mission proved
successful, even though the scientists abandoned it upon realizing that they had
been used as a front. In April 1864, Admiral Luis Pinzón seized the Chincha
islands, where the Peruvian government derived a large part of its income.
Leasing harvesting rights and charging customs duties on guano (fertilizer from
seabird droppings) was a multi-million dollar business.29 After the arrival of three
additional
frigates,
Pinzón
blockaded
the
port
of
Callao,
threatened
bombardment, and negotiated a treaty in January 1865. Spain received three
million dollars as retribution, and Peru promised to “negotiate” a follow-up treaty
in Madrid favorable to Spain’s commercial interests. A few months later, the
Peruvian government paid the stipulated amount and Spain abandoned the
Chincha Islands.
Initially, the War of the Pacific appeared to be a less-bellicose naval
version of the War of Africa. The conquest of Tetuán was like the seizure of the
Chincha Islands. In both cases, Spain returned these territories after negotiating
a favorable treaty. Given the success of Peru, the Pacific fleet moved on to
28
One historian has described Britain’s and France’s position with respect the annexation of the
Dominican Republic as that of “tacit consent.” Charles C. Hausch, “Attitudes of Foreign
Governments Towards the Spanish Reoccupation of the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic
American Historical Review, 27, no. 2 (May 1947): 247-68.
29
Historians differ over what percentage of national income was due to guano. For thirtypercent, see Pablo Lacoste, “Americanismo y guerra a través de El Mercurio de Valparaíso
(1866-1868),” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 54, n. 2 (1997): 567-91. For seventy-five
percent, see William Columbus Davis, The Last Conquistadores: The Spanish Intervention in
Peru and Chile, 1863-1866 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1950), 52. This book is highly
reliant on Chilean and Peruvian press accounts, in addition to those of the London Times.
Although it reads as an attack on the Liberal Union government, it is by far the best narrative
account of this incident.
14
Chile with the intention of repeating the script. This time, however, things went
wrong. The Chilean government refused to negotiate over reparations, and
instead took reprisals against Spanish residents. In November 1865, a
revolutionary government came to power in Peru and renounced the recently
signed agreement. This led to war, in which the Spanish fleet, augmented by
the arrival of an additional frigate and a schooner, attempted to blockade a
number of Chilean ports. Further complicating matters, other Pacific countries –
Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia – sided with Chile, and refused to allow the Spanish
fleet access to their coasts. While Spain made plans to send additional
warships and frigates, Latin American governments placed orders with British
shipbuilders on British credit.30 Unable to carry out a successful blockade, the
Spanish squadron, after giving notice, bombarded the unfortified port of
Valparaíso on 31 March 1866, causing tens of millions of dollars in damages
with little loss of life. It then moved on to Callao where Peruvian defenses easily
repelled the attack on 2 May 1866. Facing diplomatic pressure from Britain and
the United States, and having suffered significant casualties and damages in
Callao, the Spanish fleet hobbled home. Although survivors received a heroes
welcome, Spain had lost the War of the Pacific. For the remainder of the
century, Spain renounced expansion. With the outbreak of the Ten Years’ War
in Cuba in 1868, the empire entered its eclipse.
Existing Interpretations of Spanish Overseas Expansion
As stated previously, historians have put forth various interpretations to
account for this renewed imperial zeal. One such theory was that the Liberal
Union paid dearly for its adulation of Napoleon III, whose diplomats cunningly
dragged their Spanish counterparts into a number of doomed overseas
escapades. The explanation, however, represents more of a reflection of
criticism present in the republican press of the period than an accurate historical
depiction. Instead, it is best to characterize Franco-Hispanic relations as
mutually beneficial, given that Spain demonstrated ample ability to pick and
choose when and where it collaborated. To be sure, geo-politics, in addition to
30
The Spaniards believed that the British were surreptitiously aiding the Chileans. Estanislao
Reynals y Rabassa, “Las amistades inglesas,” Diario de Barcelona, 1 February 1866, pp. 99698.
15
historic ties, pulled these two countries together. Both countries sought to
counteract the influence of Britain in various parts of the globe. In spite of
alliances in the Crimean and the Arrow wars, the rivalry between France and
Britain was patent. Madrid also had a strained relationship with London.
Conflicts often arose over the enforcement of the treaty abolishing the slave
trade. The British Navy pursued the Spanish merchant marine in the Caribbean
and off the west coast of Africa, causing diplomatic incidents on occasions
when the Spanish felt that Britain overstepped its mandate. From 1819 to 1861,
Britain brought 244 slave ships, 182 of which carried the Spanish flag, to trial in
the Court of Sierra Leone.31 The French support of Spanish ambitions in
Morocco was also part of the attempt to halt the march of Britain, whose
presence in Gibraltar (another open sore with Spain) was a potential point of
departure for north African expansion.
In many respects, Franco-Hispanic collaboration extended out from the
Caribbean. Here, the trade in slaves and indentured servants was big business.
Experts have calculated that some 60,000 Africans arrived in Cuban ports from
1856 and 1860. During the 1850s and 1860s, about 140,000 “Chinese” coolies
disembarked in Cuba, mostly from French and Spanish vessels. As mentioned
previously, one of the principal reasons that Spain decided to collaborate with
France in Indochina was to create a new supply stream of indentured labor,
independent of British- and Portuguese-controlled ports in China. At the time,
Britain had been clamping down on coolie traffic from Canton, and, in
collaboration with the Portuguese, from Macao. Like France, Spain also sought
to open an avenue into China independent of British vigilance and control.32 In
the end, both France and Spain mutually benefited from the traffic of coolies,
from French financing of the railways, and from geo-political strategies aimed at
curbing
British
and
North
American
expansion
in
Asia,
Africa,
the
Mediterranean, and the Caribbean.
31
See Arturo Arnalte, “El Tribunal Mixto Anglo-Español en Sierra Leona: 1819-1865,”
Cuadernos de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea, 6 (1985): ?? - ??.
32
This discussion of coolie trafficking and the coincidence of French and Spanish interests in
southeast Asia and the Caribbean is largely dependent upon Garcia Balañà, “‘El comercio
español en África.’” For figures concerning African slaves, he relies on Laird W.Bergad, Fe
Iglesias García and María del Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market, 1790-1880
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 26-31. For Chinese coolies, he cites: Lisa Yun
and Ricardo René Laremont, “Chinese Coolies and African Slaves in Cuba, 1847-74, Journal of
Asian American Studies, 4, no. 2 (2001): 111 (table 5).
16
There is another reason why it would be wrong to depict these imperial
experiments as the result of an unequal alliance with France: It is easy to point
to many instances in which the two countries did not collaborate, and to others
in which their interests were at loggerheads. Spain barely consulted France
before annexing the Dominican Republic and waging war in the Pacific. The
abandonment of Mexico, moreover, caused a diplomatic fallout. Finally, Spain
refused to support France in the largest military enterprise of the 1860s, the
wars of Italian unification. Despite steady diplomatic pressure, the Liberal Union
did not entertain requests to come to the aid of Napoleon III in his support of
Piedmont and Victor Emmanuel. Instead, it remained neutral so as to remain on
good terms with the Vatican, and to placate Catholic-integrist rebels, who had
risen up in civil war as recently as the mid 1850s. All in all, the Liberal Union
demonstrated ample ability to decide when military and diplomatic collaboration
was beneficial and when it was not. 33 After all, everyone was well aware of the
perils of dealing with Napoleon III. The Diario de Barcelona was one of the most
pro-government dailies, yet this is how it depicted the Second Empire in March
of 1861, even before the abandonment of Mexico and the spurning of Spain in
the Treaty of Annan:
What does France want? We do not know. Under the Second Empire,
the politics of this nation is a mystery for the entire world, even the
diplomats. The Second Empire pretends to stand aloof, yet it is ready to
get involved in everything. When it speaks of peace, the world prepares
for war... It destroys its allied nations and overthrows the thrones it
protects.34
The advent of nationalism constitutes a second explanation for this new
imperialism. Some scholars contend that these “imperial dreams” sought to
promote national pride, to boost the reputation of the Army, and to rally support
for the Liberal Union. The diplomatic onslaught aiming to gain entry into the
Concert of Europe was also part of this overall plan.35 There is certainly much
33
For an analysis of Spanish and French diplomatic relations concerning these imperial
adventures, see Juan Antonio Inarejos Muñoz, Intervenciones coloniales y nacionalismo
español. La política exterior de la Unión Liberal y sus vínculos con la Francia de Napoleón III
(1856-1868) (Madrid: Sílex, 2007).
34
J. Mola y Martínez, “Asuntos de Siria,” Diario de Barcelona, 9 March 1861, p. 2214.
35
Britain blocked Spain’s entrance, arguing that admission would upset the religious equilibrium
of the group by favoring Catholic countries, and that it would cause problems with Sweden and
17
truth to this explanation. After all, it would be a critical error to decouple British,
French, Spanish, and Dutch overseas expansion from Prussian and
Piedmontese projects of German and Italian national unification. Nationalism
was an engine of new imperialism, and, in this respect, Spain marched to the
same tune as others.36 The Liberal Union stoked the fires of patriotic pride to
generate enthusiasm for the War of Africa. In a like manner, multiple political
parties and newspapers appealed to national honor in a ferocious campaign to
convince the government to accept the annexation petition of the Dominican
Republic. Unionists also used patriotism to mask defeat, as evidenced by the
delightful welcoming-home celebration for the “heroes of Callao.” Yet, other
overseas ventures received scant attention. Few persons cared about the
goings on in Indochina, plans for exploiting the Philippines, or the colonization
of a number of obscure islands in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa.
What is more, patriotism was a double-edged sword. Overseas debacles began
to affect public opinion adversely beginning in 1861. Spain withdrew from
Mexico in 1862, received few rewards in the Treaty of Annan in 1862, and
engaged in a “dirty war” in Santo Domingo in 1863. Unionists were well aware
that unpopular wars were risky. The pro-government press was engaged in
maximizing the propaganda effect of military victories and minimizing the
damage of defeats, inhumane tactics, and blunders.
A third interpretation emphasizes that economic factors were paramount.
It is true that wars in Indochina, Mexico, Morocco, Chile, and Peru had the goal
of closing favorable treaties of friendship, commerce, and reparations. Policies
and strategies in Asian and Africa aimed to secure a reliable source of forced
and indentured labor to Cuba and sought to open up an avenue for the
penetration
of
China.
Pro-government
newspapers
and
pamphleteers
continually made reference to an abundance of natural resources in the
Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Mindanao or other places. With the exception of
the taboo subjects of coolies and slaves, economic motives did not “belie”
military enterprises but featured heavily within propaganda campaigns. The
Unionist press rolled out stories describing the riches that renewed international
Portugal who could also argue for inclusion. See J. Mañé y Flaquer, “Las grandes potencias”
Diario de Barcelona, 19 August 1860, pp. 7707-08.
36
For this argument, see Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 228-33.
18
prominence would bring: Cuba and Puerto Rico would profit immensely once a
Canal was opened in Nicaragua or Panamá; the Suez Canal would reconvert
the Mediterranean into the emporium of bygone times. Mindanao and Vietnam
promised rice, tobacco, spices cotton, coffee, gold, pearls, mercury, ebony, and
other valuable commodities. The fertile lands and the Dominican Republic were
rich in timber and could be used for cotton production.37 Securing a new source
of cotton was on the minds of industrialists in the early 1860s, given that prices
were soaring due to the U.S. Civil War. Like other European countries, Spain
was desperately looking for a place to promote cultivation.
Still, as studies of France and Britain have shown, evaluating the
economics of empire is tricky.
38
In 1860 and 1861, monetary transfers from
Cuban customs to the Spanish treasury were at an all-time high. To be sure,
one of the primary goals of foreign policy was to protect and fortify the Cuban
sugar industry, the fulcrum around which the imperial system revolved.39
However, the question of whether these micro-military enterprises would have
been cost effective even if they had been successful is debatable. Indeed, the
government was only able to undertake such costly operations because, for the
first time in decades, the treasury was in buoyant state. In 1855 and 1856, the
country had received a windfall of 766,722,902 reales (29,902,193 dollars) from
the sale of church, communal, and municipal lands.40 Adding to this spirit of
bonanza, the victory in Morocco raised the expectation that wars would pay for
themselves or even generate profits. The government reported spending some
200,000,000 reales (6.1 million dollars) on the War of Africa, while receiving
double the amount in promised reparations.41 Even so, such fiscal hopes
deflated quickly. By 1860, twenty percent of the state budget was going to
37
See, for example, Diario de Barcelona, 28 December 1858, pp. 11904-907 (publication of a
letter that first appeared in the Eco Hispano-Americano on the canal projects in Nicaragua and
Suez); Diario de Barcelona, 9 August 1860, pp. 7422-742 (publication of an article for Iberia
entitled “Colonización de Mindanao”); J. Molá y Martínez, “La Isla de Santo Domingo. III y
ultimo,” Diario de Barcelona¸ 24 April 1861, pp. 3699-3701.
38
In the case of Britain, this debate continues to rage. For the latest word, see P.J. Cain,
“Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context” and B.R. Tomlinson, “Economics and
Empire: The Periphery and the Imperial Economy,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire:
The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 31-52, 5374.
39
Fradera, Colonias para después de un imperio, 568.
40
For these figures, see Simón Segura, “La desamortización de 1855,” Economía Financiera
Española, 19-20 (1967): 119.
41
Durán, La Unión Liberal, 238.
19
service the debt.42 The annexation of Santo Domingo possibly ran up a bill of
twenty-five million dollars.43 The Pacific War was also expensive. Even though
Spain received three-million dollars from Peru in 1863, the estimated cost of
keeping the fleet in the Pacific by 1865 was around six million per year.44 By
then, public finances were on the verge of collapse. The economic boom of the
late 1850s and early 1860s gave way to a slump, partially caused by the rising
price of cotton and partially caused by rampant speculation. In 1866, railway
shares plummeted and the stock-market crashed. In 1868, a revolution sent
Isabel II into permanent exile and war broke out in Cuba, ending expansionism
once and for all.
Given the difficulty of pinpointing a single “root cause” or “driving
motivation,” it is tempting to recur to multi-causality. A confluence of factors led
Spain to embark on these enterprises, and the same factors led it to abandon
them. If an informal alliance with the Second Empire, the quest to boost
Spanish patriotism and international prestige, and hopes of economic riches
prompted the government to enter new overseas theatres, then the breakdown
of relations with France, a string of military failures, and the high cost of keeping
troops in the Dominican Republic and a fleet in the Pacific convinced it to retreat
from them. This analysis, though helpful, has one major flaw. It gives the
impression that new imperialism was a top-down and planned initiative coming
from Madrid, when, in reality, the government was reacting to phenomena
taking place on a global scale. By focusing on world developments, it is possible
to gain another perspective.
A New Perspective on Spain’s New Imperialism
Another way to analyze this stillborn “empire project” – to borrow the
words of John Darwin and Adam Smith – is to situate it within comparative
42
José Doménech y Coll, “Presupuesto de obligaciones generales del Estado,” Diario de
Barcelona, 6 August 1860, pp. 7375.
43
For this figure, see Manuel García Arévalo, “Presentación” in Una cuestión de honor, p. XVIII.
Although he does not cite the source of this figure, it is plausible. Fradera notes that a Spanish
Overseas Minister estimated that the costs of the military operations alone in Mexico and the
Dominican Republic came to 14 million pesos (11 million dollars). This figure presumably does
not include other costs of annexation. Fradera, Colonias para después del imperio, 658.
44
Davis, The Last Conquistadores , 242.
20
history.45 After all, Spanish overseas expansion was due to similar forces
driving other countries to embark on parallel endeavors. Yet, while France and
Britain later expanded from their beachheads and enclaves – also amid a string
of “successes” mixed with blunders and miscommunications – Spain, for better
of for worse, floundered. With this in mind, three additional observations should
be explored. First, “men on the spot” were the propellers of European
expansion, and Spain harbored an abundance of these creatures in its
extensive overseas territories. The second observation is that many of these
enterprises were made possible by a single development – the outbreak of civil
war in the United States in 1861. The limited international influence of the
United States, and doubts over its future, opened up previously uncontemplated
opportunities in the Caribbean and Pacific. The third is that the Liberal Union
experimented with a host of imperial strategies. By exploring these factors, it
becomes clear that impulses for expansion originated not only in the offices of
Madrid, but also from within the empire itself.
With regard to the first factor, Spain’s well-established and territorially
rich empire bred thousands of “Spaniards on the spot” in the Atlantic, Pacific,
Caribbean, and South China Sea. On one level, the Liberal Union digested and
reacted to events taking place in the colonies; on another level, the government
itself was a product of the empire. The head of the government had once been
such a man on the spot. General Leopoldo O’Donnell had been the Capitan
General of Cuba from 1844 to 1848, an expansive time for the sugar industry
due to a comparative edge gained by the use of slave labor. Along with a
number of other generals later involved in the foundation of the Liberal Union,
he was well integrated to networks of plantation owners and slavers.46 This
observation is no mere anecdote. For it would be difficult to name another head
of any nineteenth-century European state who had been a colonial governor.
The rise of O’Donnell begs the question of whether Spain was governing the
empire or the empire was governing it. It was no secret that Cubans contributed
heavily to the military enterprises of the late 1850s and 1860s.47 The question
45
John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. XI.
46
For this observation, see José Cayeula, “Estrategias político militares y sistema defensivo de
la isla de Cuba (1854-1859),” Estudios históricos 1 (1990): 553-557.
47
For this claim see, Martínez Gallego, Conservar progresando, 128.
21
could also be posed whether O’Donnell’s pronunciamento of 1854 – supported
by two other prominent generals with vast experience in Cuba – could have
been partially financed with Cuban capital.
O’Donnell cast his initial foreign-policy objectives with the interests of
Cuban plantation owners in mind. In 1858, he agreed to join the invasion of
Indochina, which, as previously explained, held out the possibility of providing
an additional source of indentured labor to Cuba. The other project made public
in 1858 concerned slave labor. In December 1858, a royal decree announced
the imminent colonization of the islands of Fernando Póo, Annobon, and
Corsico, and the Cape of San Juan in the Gulf of Guinea, over which Spain had
claimed suzerainty since 1778. The preamble contained typical language
emphasizing the mission to deliver natives into the “civilized world.” It expressed
regret that they “neither professed the national religion, nor waved the flag, nor
spoke the language, nor observed its customs.”48 However, Cuban planters
were definitely behind this endeavor. As noted by Albert Garcia Balañà, Spain’s
plans in west Africa emulated those of France. In the 1850s, the Second Empire
was embarking upon the colonization of Senegal, building from Saint-Louis and
the island of Gorée. In the case of both France and Spain, the goal was to use
these “old colonies” as an entrepôt for the recruitment of “free” Black labor from
the continent. In reality, though, recruiting “free” labor, and transporting these
unfortunate souls along the African coast, was a way to mask the movement of
slaves to the Caribbean.49 Interestingly, the incipient colonization of the Gulf of
Guinea islands proved to be the only “successful” imperial enterprise
undertaken during this period. Yet it received barely a mention in the press.
Cuban planters were the most powerful “men on the spot” in the empire,
and they had the government’s ear. However, they were not alone. In southeast
Asia, for example, military men, commercial houses, and missionaries also
sensed opportunities and petitioned Madrid for help. Even before the FrancoHispanic invasion of Vietnam in 1858, Dominican missionaries in Macao had
been compiling information and pressuring authorities in Manila for armed
48
For a reprint of this decree, see Diario de Barcelona, 16 December 1858, pp. 11713-17.
Garcia Balaña, “’El Comercio Español en África’,” 172. For France, he relies on Martin Klein,
Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 19-36. For similar perspectives, see Martínez Gallego, Conservar progresando, 122-24.
This is also explained in Ibrahim K. Sundiata, From Slavery to Neo-Slavery: The Bight of Biafra
and Fernando Po in the Era of Abolition, 1827-1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1996).
49
22
support of Christian-friendly rebels in
northern Vietnam (“called Tonquin”),
faithful to an alternative dynastic house. In their communiqués to the Captain
General in Manila, they appealed to religion and morality, but they did not
ignore the potential economic fruits. They boasted of easily exploitable natural
resources and easily proselytized Vietnamese labor, which could be sent to the
Antilles and used to colonize the island of Mindanao, then populated by Islamic
“enemies of the faith.” The Macao missionaries influenced the Captain General
of the Philippines, Fernando de Norzagaray, another man on the spot, who,
upon receiving permission from Madrid, coordinated the Spanish end of the
Vietnam invasion of 1858.50
The Macao missionaries, surely in cahoots with coolie traffickers,
continued to pressure the government to broaden commitments and amplify its
ambitions. In February 1860, the commander of the Spanish troops in
Indochina, General Francisco José Palanca, took off to Madrid to lobby for
reinforcements in order to undertake territorial conquests on behalf of Spain. He
found the time for this journey because offensive operations had been put on
hold in Saigon due to French commitments in the Arrow War in China. Still, his
departure from the battlefield – or his abandonment of troops – exemplified how
soldiers often converted themselves into imperial entrepreneurs. Later in the
year, he traveled to Macao to meet with the missionaries, where he became
convinced that Spain should offer military support to the Tonkin rebels. As part
of his travels, Palanca also found himself in Alexandria and Hong Kong, talking
to others with similar ideas. In the end, nothing came of these plans. Yet they
represented one of the many proposals arriving from different corners of the
world to the desks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid.51 If the United
States had not descended into civil war, and Spain had not been presented with
opportunities in the Caribbean, it is probable that O’Donnell would have
undertaken further operations in southeast Asia.
It is easy to trawl through other campaigns and find additional men on the
spot. In the decades before the invasion of Mexico, a clutch of creditors – some
50
The “ideological justification” for the invasion of Vietnam came from a Philippine missionary,
who, in any case, was reliant on the information received from Macao: Manuel de Rivas, Idea
de Imperio de Annam o de los Reinos Unidos de Tunquin y Cochinchina (Manila: Imprenta de
los Amigos del País, 1858). This is explained in Rodicio García, “Una encrucijada,” 605.
51
Palanca later recounted his experiences: Carlos Palanca Morales, Breve reseña histórica de
la expedición española a Cochinchina (1858-1863) (Cartagena: Montells, 1869).
23
of whom with shady pasts, dubious commercial interests, and bogus claims to
Spanish citizenship – continually pressured Madrid to adopt a more aggressive
stance. At times, the government shunned them, while at others, it listened. 52 In
the Gulf of Guinea, missionaries appear to have been behind the production of
palm oil, an export notoriously used as a front for the slave trade.
53
In the
Pacific War, the key man on the spot was a histrionic fellow named Eusebio
Salazar y Mazaredo. As the diplomatic representative for the scientific
expedition, he intentionally and singlehandedly provoked a serious incident with
Peru by asserting that Spain never recognized its independence. According to
Admiral Pinzón, Salazar’s megalomaniacal fantasy was to seize the Chincha
Islands as a way of purchasing Gibraltar from Britain.54 After abandoning the
Pacific fleet, Salazar ratcheted up tensions by claiming to have been the target
of a series of foiled assassination attempts by Peruvian agents in Callao and
Panamá. With respect to the Dominican Republic, it is easy to hypothesize the
existence of various men on the spot who convinced General Santaná to
petition for reincorporation.
In sum, the launching of these bold initiatives did not follow a stated plan
with the goal to boost the economy, to promote patriotism, to raise international
prestige, or to follow the lead of the Second Empire. No grand imperial blueprint
has come to light in the archives in Spain or any other country. What is more,
there was no great theorizer of new imperialism anywhere in Europe. Micromilitary expeditions responded to stimuli coming from various parts of the globe,
instigated
by
soldiers,
missionaries,
merchants,
and
other
imperial
entrepreneurs. The Liberal Union took on some suggestions and discarded
others, using a variety of criteria – nationalistic, diplomatic, and economic. Of
course, the government could have discarded all such petitions. The more
cautious and conservative successor of the Liberal Union, the Moderate Party,
was a candidate to do just this. It came to power in late 1864, and began to
formulate plans for withdrawing from Santo Domingo. Its leader, General
Ramon María Narváez had never served in the colonies, and had long opposed
many (though not all) of O’Donnell’s enterprises. Yet, he too became caught up
52
This story is told in detail in Pi-Suñer, El general Prim, 31-59.
For this reference see Ángel Bas, “La crisis algodonera,” Diario de Barcelona, 16 September
1863, pp. 8404-05.
54
Davis, The Last Conquistadores, 53.
53
24
in events. Seeking to build upon successes in the Pacific, he replaced the
cautious admiral Pinzón with the reckless José Manuel Pareja, a native of Peru
from a royalist family that emigrated to Spain following the wars of
independence. Pareja escalated matters by engaging Chile in war. In the end,
even politicians disinclined to overseas adventurism became victims of imperial
dynamics.
The second observation, generally ignored in the literature, concerns
geo-politics. As perhaps seems obvious, Spain’s ambitions in the Caribbean
and Pacific took form just as the United States was descending into civil war. As
evidenced by press accounts, the legacy of the U.S. – Mexican War (1846-48)
partially explains the motivation behind the occupations of Santo Domingo and
Mexico. As a result of the war, the United States acquired vast amounts of
territory and amplified its presence in the Gulf of Mexico. Both France and
Spain claimed that they intended to endow these countries with stable
governments capable of warding off a future U.S. threat. No doubt, these
reasons were disingenuous. Like the United States, both countries were thirsty
for territory and influence, and Mexico was a lucrative prize. In the initial years
of the Civil War, many European commentators felt that either the South would
definitively separate, or, even if the North won the war, the U.S. would be
engulfed in internal divisions for years and would be unable to exert influence
abroad.55 In January 1861, the Diario de Barcelona reminded its readership that
a United States Army of 12,000 men succeeded in marching into Mexican City
in September 1847 in order to impose a peace. No doubt, European powers
had these numbers in mind when they sent a similar quantity of troops into
Mexico.56 It is also no coincidence that both countries, Spain and France,
withdrew from Santo Domingo and Mexico once the Civil War ended and the
United States commenced an aggressive re-assertion of the Munroe Doctrine.
This power of the U.S. was made clear in the Pacific War when the commander
of the Spanish fleet, Admiral Pareja, committed suicide in November 1865 a few
hours after meeting with a U.S. consul from Veracruz.57
55
See, for example, J. Mañé y Flaquer, “Conflicto Americano,” Diario de Barcelona, 8
December 1861, pp. 1184-86.
56
J. Molá y Martínez, “La espedicion Española en Veracruz,” Diario de Barcelona¸ 21 January
1862, p. 621.
57
For this story, see Davis, The Last Conquistadores, 245-61.
25
The final observation was that the Liberal Union experimented with a
variety of strategies. Like other countries, it embarked on micro-military actions
without a clear plan, but with the intention of destabilizing regimes and then
weighing options. Outright colonization was employed in the Gulf of Guinea and
Santo Domingo. In the case of Morocco, it established a foothold with the goal
of future enlargement. Follow-up agreements allowed Spain to put merchants
and missionaries on the ground, a proven formula for future trouble and armed
intervention. One commentator suggested that Spain should open up Ceuta and
Melilla to Jews and Arabs to foment commerce and agriculture – in short, to
create an “Arab state” on the model of French Algeria.58 In the case of Mexico,
the government mulled over various options. Its minimalist plan was to
collaborate with France and Britain in the limited objective of seizing the
customs office at the port of Veracruz in order to satisfy debt obligations. At
times, the countries seemed to be moving toward gaining control of the treasury
much like France and Britain later accomplished in their dealings with the
Ottoman Empire. Spain also lobbied France to place a Bourbon – rather than a
Habsburg – prince on the throne. In Indochina, Spain contemplated providing
military support to an independent client state of an alternative monarchical
house in the region of Tonkin. In the Pacific War, Spain attempted a version of
gunboat “informal imperialism,” emulating a course pursued by Britain in South
America.
It is worth dwelling on the subject of “informal empire.” Since the seminal
article of Robinson and Gallagher, this term has become a catch-all phrase
describing the phase of mid-nineteenth century imperialism where, for the most
part, countries avoided outright colonization but exercised influence through a
variety of means: gunboat diplomacy; support of client states; control of the
treasury; loans; and the imposition of free-trade and other commercially
favorable treaties.59 In many of the above cases, Spain appears to have been
58
N.S. y M., “Tanger. III y último,” Diario de Barcelona, 17 April 1861, pp. 2249-50.
There is obviously an extensive literature on this. For Latin America, see John Gallahger and
Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 6, no. 1 (1953):
1-15; H.S. Ferns, “Britain’s Informal Empire in Argentina, 1806-1914,” Past and Present, 4
(1953): 60-75; Andrew Thompson, “Informal Empire? An Exploration in the History of AngloArgentine Relations, 1810-1914 ,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 24, no. 2 (May 1992):
419-36; Alan Knight, “Britain and Latin America,” in Oxford History of the British Empire: The
Nineteenth Century,, 122-45; and Mathew Brown, ed. Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture,
Commerce and Capital (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
59
26
striving to develop a species of informal imperialism. However, in many
respects, its micro-military incursions served to foment Britain’s informal empire.
In Morocco, the Sultan turned to the City of London in order to help pay
reparations.60 In the Pacific, the Chilean government was able to convince the
Baring Brothers and other British lenders to provide funds for rebuilding the port
of Valparaíso in the aftermath of the Spanish bombardment. This initial wave of
loans inaugurated a long era of fiscal “collaboration.” As a result, Chile fell into
line behind Argentina, Peru, and other countries.61 All this helps explain British
tolerance for Spanish recklessness. It could simply wait to occupy imperial
spaces that Spain had opened but could not fill.62
To conclude, the focus on global events helps understand this
experiment in “informal” and in some cases “formal” empire. On the one hand,
the Liberal Union inaugurated its long government (1858-63) with the promise to
maintain domestic peace and promote economic development. At the top of its
agenda was the construction a nation-wide railway network and an expansionist
foreign policy. Taking advantage of a fiscal windfall from the sale of church and
municipal lands, General Leopoldo O’Donnell came to power with the intention
of colonizing the Gulf of Guinea, waging a short war in Morocco, solving the
problem of supplying slave and indentured labor to Cuba, and addressing the
ongoing situation of unpaid Mexican debts. As a formal Captain General of
Cuba, his priorities derived from his and his cohorts’ experiences and contacts.
Yet, he was also drawn into these and other enterprises by men on the spot
who strove to exploit opportunities made available due to an informal alliance
with France, the virtual withdrawal of the United States from the Caribbean, and
the destabilization of many governments around the world as a result of
renewed European imperial zeal. The force of these worldwide events pulled
the metropole toward expansion.
The reason that these micro-military affairs ended badly are evident. Any
measure of “development” –kilometers of railway63, the size of the economy64,
60
Omar Rodríguez Esteller, “La intervención española en las aduanas marroquíes (18621885),” in Maruecos y el colonialismo español, 79-131 [80-81].
61
See Luis Ortega Martínez, Chile en ruta al capitalismo. Cambio, euforia, y depresión
(Santiago: LOM, 2005).
62
For a similar point, see J.M. Fradera, Colonias para después de un imperio, 675.
63
For example, in 1856, Spain had only had 578 kilometers of rail, fewer than that of one of its
colonies, Cuba, with 578 kilometers. Compare this to the United States (20,552 kilometers),
27
the amount of customs revenues65, the size of the navy66 – demonstrates that
Spain did not have the resources to either compete with European rivals or to
carry out complicated enterprises for extended periods in foreign lands. As
demonstrated by outcomes in the Dominican Republic and the Pacific, Spain
was forced to retreat once a micro-military mission turned into a macro-military
debacle. As demonstrated in Vietnam, Mexico, and Morocco, France and Britain
had the power to curtail the extent of Spanish activities. The end of the United
States Civil War definitively terminated ambitions in the Caribbean and the
Pacific. Of course, Liberal Union leaders were conscious of many of these
limitations. But they hoped that the empire would generate riches, and that
Spain was still strong and clever enough to play the role of an expansive,
though lesser, imperial power. On one level, Spain learned the lessons of
others – namely that empire would not pay for itself and that financial gains
would rarely fall into the government’s hands. On another level, leaders also
showed poor decisionmaking. This was partially a result of the failure to realize
that the country, though still maintaining an imperial mentality, needed to adjust
ambitions to fit its resources and influence. In the end, Spain was drawn into
many overseas theaters by the inertia of its own empire in much the same
manner that France and Britain conquered the world in “an absence of mind.”
The results, however, were markedly different. While France, Britain, and the
United States inaugurated an era of new imperialism, the Spanish empire
moved toward eclipse.
Britain (14,017 kilometers), France (6211 kilometers), or Prussia (2911 kilometers). Due to the
railway boom, by 1863, Spain had 3569 kilometers of rail. For the 1856 figures, see “Estado de
los Ferro-Carriles del Mundo de 1856,” Diario de Barcelona, 19 Mayo 1857, pp. 4041-4042. For
the 1863 figures, see Durán, La Unión Liberal, 170.
64
In 1864, Spain had a population of 16 million people, had an agricultural sector valued at 7
billion reales (273 million dollars) per year, and registered a total of 3.29 billion reales (128.3
million dollars) in exports and imports. The corresponding numbers for France, were 37.4 million
people, 24 billion reales (936 million dollars) in agriculture, and 21.8 billion reales (850.2 million
dollars) in imports and exports. For these figures, see Ángel Bas, “Presupuestos,” Diario de
Barcelona, 19 May 1864, pp. 4812-4815.
65
In 1861, Spanish customs collected approximately 247 million reales (9.6 million dollars) in
duties per annum, while England collected 2.3 billion reales (89,7 million dollars), and France
666 million reales (26 million dollars). For these figures, see Durán, La Unión Liberal, p. 195.
66
The Spanish fleet grew from 31 vessels with 172 canons in 1856 to 83 vessels and 712
canons in 1862. This was still a far cry from the size of the British and French navies. For these
figures, see Martínez Gallego, Conservar progresando, 130-131.