Trade and Navigation between Spain and Its Colonies

Trade rivalry between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Habsburg regime during the Eighty Years’ War was fierce and concerns expressed by Spanish officials with respect to illegitimate trade in which English, French and Dutch privateers participated and Portuguese merchants assisted in trade between Spain and its colonies were omnipresent in reports sent from Tierra Firme and Hispaniola. In the Preface to The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580–1680, Goslinga (1971) notes that the documentation on the role the Dutch played in the Caribbean region and along the coast of Tierra Firme during the seventeenth century derived mostly from accounts of their foes. To explore the extent and nature of the tobacco contraband trade in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century we will therefore depend to a large extent on Spanish and Portuguese accounts and records most of which are found in the Archives of Seville and Lisbon. Besides a discussion of the Engel Sluiter Historical Documents Collection as a source of information for the study of the tobacco contraband trade in the early seventeenth century, this chapter will thus present a brief discussion about the early history of trade and navigation between Spain and its colonies which was subjected to a strict set of rules and for the most part excluded foreigners. The records of the Casa de Contratacion in Seville reveal the extent of illegitimate trade as documented by Spanish officials responsible for reporting on trade and navigation to and from the colonies. In addition, in the reports sent by the Audiencias to the Crown and Council, there is frequent mention of interlopers and foreigners interfering in Spanish maritime interests and about efforts made by the officials to control colonial trade in particular as it involved Dutch merchants and mariners during the Eighty Years’ War.

Trade and navigation between Spain and its colonial possessions was dominated by the Seville monopoly; the Casa de Contratacion. The first Royal ordinances for the Casa de Contratacion were issued in 1503 and officials were appointed by the Crown to administer the possessions and issue licenses to trade but it was soon clear that strict schedules and regulations did not work.

Introduction

In the last section of his 1948 article “Dutch-Spanish Rivalry in the Caribbean,” Sluiter concludes that the policies implemented in 1606 by the Spanish Crown to inundate the Araya salt pans, to prohibit tobacco cultivation along the coast of Tierra Firme, and to depopulate coastal areas and relocate residents of Northwestern Hispaniola, were meant to chokeoff the smuggling going on in their territories. The documents analyzed in the previous two chapters illustrate the process by which this took place. In both Tierra Firme and on Hispaniola, Portuguese residents were key to the contraband trade with Dutch merchants who sailed along the coasts and up the rivers in Tierra Firme and along the shores of Hispaniola to drop anchor and to take tobacco on-board in exchange for cloth or woolen and silk goods, implements, and arms in high demand among coastal populations. From the documents presented we learn that among the crew on Dutch vessels were Portuguese merchants or pilots likely related to or linked in trade with Portuguese resident merchants on shore. In a Cedula issued by the Crown on October 28, 1606, the expulsion of all Dutch and Flemings was ordered in Tierra Firme and in the case of Hispaniola 10 merchants from the Dutch Republic were being rounded up. On November 10, 1607, the Council of the Indies recommended and the King approved that a branch of the Holy Office be erected in Hispaniola which suggests that the Portuguese were suspected of Judaizing. Sluiter (1948) does recognize that in the meantime the first negotiations for a truce between the Spanish and the Dutch had begun and that ports of the Iberian Peninsula would open again for Dutch trade to resume which would take away the incentive to haul salt or tobacco, pearls, and hides from the Caribbean. So, the stick and the carrot approach was applied, apparently, but it did not end the contraband tobacco trade.

In fact, the ban on tobacco cultivation and relocation of coastal populations encouraged tobacco smuggling and invited mariners and merchants to come on shore and bribe officials and both the Dutch and English mariners continued to trade, raid, or barter.

The story of the tobacco trade in the Atlantic world in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is a story of entanglement among different merchant groups embedded in trans-imperial connections which transcended political or state boundaries and ethnic associations. The different participants in trade included European colonial settlers, native and indigenous people, run-away slaves, and merchants of various kinds and backgrounds and formed part of a network of contact that had developed over time engaged in tobacco cultivation, trade, and smuggling. In the story, I will focus on Portuguese merchants who straddled the Portuguese, Spanish, and North European maritime Atlantic world and Sephardic or Portuguese Jewish merchants who traded on behalf of the Dutch after they resumed Jewish identity with residency in the Dutch Republic. In some instances, the Sephardic merchants were the key link facilitating Dutch trade in particular in Amsterdam. A good example is Simon de Herrera, a Portuguese Jew who had connections and associations with both English and Dutch merchants and smugglers. He was captured in Hispaniola by the Spanish in 1596 and during the court case against him following his arrest it was discovered that he held documents which implicated him with Dutch interests and contacts as he was offered safe passage to Holland or Zeeland in the Dutch Republic. Being Jewish and charged with trading for the Dutch he became a target for the Inquisition. The Dutch were at war with Spain at the time which did not improve his chances to be let free. He was taken for trial in Mexico and executed in 1604. Herrera had likely been a factor or agent for a Dutch merchant who traded illegally with the Portuguese and Spanish in the Caribbean. Hispaniola had by then become a regular transfer point for Dutch, English, and French privateers engaged in the tobacco trade.

Contraband trade and war is all too familiar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the case of the Dutch Republic, it were the circumstances dictated by the Eighty Years’ War with Habsburg Spain that explain how trade or exchange was conducted.

Contraband and Trade Rivalry in the Eighty Years’ War

As described in the first two chapters, Dutch–Spanish and Dutch–Portuguese trade relations in the early seventeenth century were determined to a large extent by the ebb and flow of battles, embargoes, and trade protection measures in effect during the Eighty Years’ War when the Dutch were at war with Habsburg Spain from 1568 to 1648 the time at the end of which the Dutch established hegemony in the Atlantic economy. Only during the Twelve Years’ Truce between the warring parties from 1609 to 1621 did some order of normalcy return to Iberian-Dutch commercial exchange but trade with Tierra Firme and the Spanish Caribbean islands remained off limits to Dutch merchants as Spanish trade and navigation rules and prohibitions remained in effect. For much of the time, trade rivalry between Habsburg Spain and the Dutch Republic continued unabated and sea battles occurred at regular intervals. At entry points to major rivers where the Spanish held sway over self-declared territorial rule, embargoes and blockades were imposed by both parties and thus trade and navigation was regularly obstructed. Along the coasts of Tierra Firme and the Caribbean islands Dutch merchants tried to undermine Spanish control and intrude upon Spanish territory with some resolve but often only temporarily. Brazil was a Portuguese possession but as Portugal was united with Spain from 1580 until 1640, Spanish territorial control and trade restrictions affected Brazil as well even though Portugal continued to trade on a semi-autonomous basis. In any event, all Dutch trade as well as trade conducted by Sephardic merchants resident in the Dutch Republic was illegal trade as far as the Spanish were concerned and therefore, typically, not recorded contractually. So, in effect, we have only incidental evidence of the Dutch–Spanish and Dutch–Portuguese tobacco trade from official freight records in the Notary Public records in the City Archive of Amsterdam for the early seventeenth century as discussed in the previous chapters.

Dutch mariners were trespassers and illegal merchants in the Iberian colonial world and in the traditional carrying trade with the Iberian Peninsula, including Portuguese ports, which were officially blocked from 1580 until the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621).

Introduction

According to Simon Schama in The Embarrassment of Riches (1987): “… The smell of the Dutch Republic was the smell of tobacco.” Describing the Dutch Golden Age, he referred to accounts by visitors to the Netherlands who were struck by the omnipresence of tobacco smoke in inns and towing barges and the common sight of men and women smoking in public. I am not sure if this was a general situation at the time, but it was certainly true that in depictions of hearth and home in Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century, tobacco pipes and smoking were prominent features. Tobacco consumption in Europe in the seventeenth century experienced a remarkable growth and provided substantial profits for merchants engaged in the tobacco trade. Yet, we know very little about its very beginnings and, in fact, you could say that compared to the sugar trade, the tobacco trade is terra incognita. In part, this is because the tobacco trade was contraband trade in the early seventeenth century when Portuguese and Sephardic merchants became engaged in exchange with the coastal regions of South America and the Caribbean islands under Spanish and Portuguese rule where Dutch merchants including Amsterdam’s Sephardic merchants were considered “interlopers”; foreign merchants with no license to trade. Furthermore, they were considered enemy merchants as the Dutch Republic was at war with Habsburg Spain during the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). Whereas we know the broad outline of various aspects of the tobacco contraband trade in the later part of the seventeenth century, we know very little about why and when Amsterdam became the European—or you might say—the global marketplace for tobacco or where tobacco was first traded for profit. Here, we need to delve into the history of Amsterdam as a staple market and the role Portuguese and Sephardic merchants played in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial trade. In the sixteenth century, Antwerp in Flanders (the Southern Netherlands) had been the main market place for colonial goods exchanged in Northwestern Europe, but toward the end of the century, Amsterdam replaced Antwerp in that role.

Political, Economic, and Geographical Context

In A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea, Studnicki-Gizbert (2007) shows us repeated evidence of the role Portuguese New Christian merchants and their foreign partners played in smuggling activities and in bribing officials. As members of the Portuguese Nation they promoted and conducted “free trade” and brought the wrought upon them by cultivating an elaborate system of working within the system and accumulating and circulating wealth outside the realm. Operating within and outside the Spanish system they extended partnerships with merchants in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean region and with the various merchant communities in the Spanish American colonies. In the 1620s, prominent members of the Portuguese Nation formed a key group in the efforts to install Count-Duke of Olivares as Prime Minister under King Philip IV of Spain who promoted the imperial commonwealth of Spain and Portugal. Within the realm the Canary islands and Hispaniola were integral parts of the inter-locking system of trade which merchants of the Portuguese Nation promoted and served. The islands were points of contact where cargo was transferred and where foreign merchants engaged in contraband trade thrived.

In a World on the Move, Russell-Wood (1992) reminds us of the connections, interactions, and movement of goods and people in the early modern Atlantic world. Perhaps more than any place Hispaniola exemplified that characterization and Portuguese merchants were the most prominent examples. Commercial success depended on regular and sustained personal contact and circulation of goods via the transatlantic networks of merchants and mariners which provided a steady stream of information about supply of products, market prices, routes to sail, and people to stay in contact with. The breadth of such merchant networks expanded significantly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as Spain’s imperial reach widened and engaged Portuguese merchants and bankers after the unification of 1580. However, the role of Portuguese merchants in the Atlantic trade had been evident for some time before the unification as evidence from the slave trade and sugar trade demonstrates. Furthermore, slaving and smuggling often went hand in hand and Portuguese merchants were omnipresent where slaves were in demand, plantations emerged, and export of staple goods became the life blood of the colonial administration.