Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (67 page)

Exasperation in London went hand in hand with relief at the inability of increasingly prosperous and independent-minded colonies to join together in a common endeavour that might conceivably be one day directed against the mother country itself. At present, the very danger posed by the French and the Indians was an inducement for them to stay in line. But at the same time the inability of the colonists to set aside their differences in the face of this danger persuaded the Duke of Newcastle of the need for more direct and consistent intervention from London. Already he had decided to appoint a commander-inchief for North America, and this was to be followed by the appointment of two superintendents for Indian affairs, for the northern and southern colonies respectively, to bring some order and uniformity to the anarchic American scene.18 The failure of the Albany congress was confirmation, if any were still needed, that colonial defence was too serious a matter to be left to mere colonials.

First-hand experience during the course of the war did not enhance the admiration of British officials and military commanders for the attitude and behaviour of these provincial Americans. `The delays we meet with in carrying on the Service, from every parts [sic] of this Country, are immense', wrote the commander-in-chief, the Earl of Loudon, in August 1756. `They have assumed to themselves, what they call Rights and Priviledges, totally unknown in the Mother Country, and [these] are made use of, for no purpose, but to screen them, from giving any Aid, of any sort, for carrying on, the Service, and refusing us Quarters.'19

Collaboration would improve considerably as Pitt took over the direction of the war and introduced a system of reimbursement for the military expenses of the colonies. But the haggling and procrastination of the colonial assemblies, and the indiscipline of provincial troops who had little use or respect for the rigidities of European military professionalism and hierarchies of rank, gave rise to constant complaint. The exasperation of the British authorities was further compounded by the systematic disregard shown by colonial merchants for the regulations prohibiting trade in Dutch, French and French-Caribbean commodi- ties.20 `It is not easy to imagine', wrote Governor Clinton of New York in 1752, ,to what an enormous hight [sic] this transgression of the Laws of Trade goes in North America. 121 The inhabitants of the British colonies displayed a positively Spanish American enthusiasm for the smuggling of enemy goods.

The conquest of Canada added further complications to the logistical and practical problems of defending the British empire of America. A vast new area of territory had been added to the king's dominions, and more would be added with the transfer of Spanish Florida to British rule by the peace settlement of 1763. The French threat might for the moment have been eliminated, but France would certainly be seeking revenge. The Spain of Charles III, too, was a far from friendly power, and the Indian nations along the borderlands were a continuing preoccupation. By the later stages of the war 32 regiments containing over 30,000 British regular soldiers were serving in the Americas, at enormous expense to the British tax-payer, who was paying 26 shillings a head for imperial defence, as against a shilling a head paid by the colonists.22 If some of these regiments were to remain on American soil after the return of peace, it would be necessary to devise ways of financing them.

George III, guided by the Earl of Bute and imbued with all the enthusiasm of a novice king, took a direct personal interest in the question. By the end of 1762 he had reached the conclusion that a large British army would have to remain in the colonies. His ministers endorsed what they called `his majesty's plan', and prepared to present it to the House of Commons. Under the plan, as outlined to the House in March 1763, 21 battalions, totalling some 10,000 men, were to be permanently stationed in North America in order to maintain authority over the Indians of Canada, `not familiaris'd to civil government', as well as over `90 thousand Canadians'. The American colonists were to assist with the upkeep of these troops, although the method and quantity of their contribution was, for the time being, left open.23 When the great Indian rebellion, led by the Ottawa war leader, Pontiac, broke out in the spring of 1763, and one after another of the British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio valley fell to Indian attack, the wisdom of `his majesty's plan' could hardly be contested.

While George III and his ministers were grappling with the consequences of victory, Charles III and his ministers were grappling with the implications of defeat. The naval construction programme undertaken by his predecessor had given Charles III a relatively strong fleet, and his government, dominated at this early stage of the reign by two Italians, the marquises of Esquilache and Grimaldi, pressed ahead with the shipbuilding programme on both sides of the Atlantic, turning to the French for technical expertise.24 But the most urgent task facing the administration was a radical overhaul of the whole system for defence of the Spanish Indies. A secret junta, consisting of Grimaldi, Esquilache and the secretary for the Indies and the navy, Julian de Arriaga, was set up late in 1763 to consider not only questions of defence, but also of government and revenue in the American viceroyalties, and the Indies trade. By early 1764 the junta was ready with its proposals for the improvement of American defences, while another junta was entrusted with the task of preparing proposals for increasing trade and revenue.25

The fortifications of the American Atlantic ports - Vera Cruz, Havana, Campeche and Cartagena - were to be massively strengthened, at great expense. But, as with George III's plan, the principal recommendation was for the sending of metropolitan forces to improve the security of the American territories. The existing permanent garrisons and the urban and provincial militias had both proved themselves largely useless. The solution appeared to lie in the professionalization of the military in America, with the formation of well-trained and wellequipped regiments, established on a permanent footing. If only on grounds of cost, the new field army, however, would be much more dependent on colonial participation than the British army in America. It was to consist in large part of units of volunteers, recruited in the Indies, but commanded and trained by Spanish officers. These `fixed' units, as they were called, would be reinforced by peninsular regiments sent out to the Indies for a maximum of four years' service. Their presence would provide, or so it was hoped, a model of modern military methods in time of peace, and the nucleus of a professional army in time of war. At the same time, the old colonial militias would be augmented, reorganized and professionally trained by a cadre of Spanish officers, to furnish an auxiliary force for use in emergencies.26

The captain-general of Andalusia, Lieutenant-General Juan de Villalba, arrived in New Spain in November 1764 at the head of two regiments, carrying with him instructions to implement the programme of military reforms. Predictably he soon found himself in conflict with the viceroy, jealous of his own prerogatives as captain-general of New Spain. Moreover, as in the British colonies, differences of attitude and approach created endless possibilities for misunderstanding and antagonism between professional soldiers sent out from the metropolis and the colonial population. The Spanish officers, like their British counterparts, looked down on the creoles and were frustrated by the inadequacies of the militias they had been sent to reorganize. Their presence, therefore, increased the already existing tensions between creoles and peninsulares. Although the Spanish authorities were haunted by fears of a rebellion supported by the militiamen, just as the British authorities were perturbed during the Seven Years War by manifestations of `a general disposition to independence''27 the creoles in fact showed very little inclination for military activities and resisted calls to enlist. Villalba's high-handed approach did not help his cause. He affronted creole sensibilities by mixing whites and castas in the infantry companies, and found that members of the creole elite were unwilling to apply for commissions.

The military reform programme in New Spain therefore got off to a rocky start. Although, on Villalba's figures, the viceroyalty had an army of 2,341 regulars and 9,244 provincials by the summer of 1766, only one of the six provincial regiments was properly armed and uniformed, and the quality of the recruits was low. Yet at least the structure of the army of New Spain was now in place, and the pattern established in the viceroyalty would be followed across the continent. By the end of the decade it was estimated that some 40,000 men, in different categories, were stationed across Spanish America .21

Spanish officers brought a new military professionalism to the Indies, with encouraging results. In 1770, for instance, the governor of Buenos Aires was able to expel the British from the Malvinas - the Falkland Islands - where they had established a fishing and naval station. For diplomatic reasons, however, his success was to be short-lived. In the following year a British ultimatum forced Charles III to abandon the islands, since the French, whose alliance with Spain was essential for successful defiance of England, were unwilling to come to his support.29

Over the next two or three decades, as Spanish America acquired a permanent military establishment, creole attitudes to military service changed. Madrid had always hoped that military titles and uniforms would prove a magnet to a creole elite hungry for office and honour. But its hopes were dashed when young men of good colonial families showed themselves unwilling to serve under Spanish officers. Service in the militia, however, began to look rather more attractive when - as in New Spain in 1766 - full privileges under the fuero militar were extended to officers in provincial units, and partial privileges to enlisted personnel.3o Traditionally, in the corporate society of metropolitan Spain, the military, like the clergy, constituted a distinctive corporation, possessing the right or fuero of jurisdiction over its own members. By extending immunity in criminal and civil cases to officers serving in the provincial militias, the fuero militar effectively set them apart from the mass of the population. Across the continent, from Mexico City to Santiago de Chile, the sons of the creole elite, resplendent in their uniforms, would constitute just over half the veteran officer corps of the army of America by the last decade of the eighteenth century.31 The first seeds of the militarization of the states of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America were sown by the Bourbon military reforms of the late eighteenth century.

The contemporaneous reforms in the system of British imperial defence were destined to have an opposite effect. The British government's decision to provide an army for America composed of regiments sent from the home country arose out of a perception of colonial realities that failed to factor colonial sensibilities into the equation. There were vast territories to be defended, and their experiences with provincial units during the Seven Years' War had left British commanders with a low opinion of American fighting capabilities. The authorities in London were therefore inclined - unwisely as it later transpired - to write off the militias as being of little value, and particularly those of New England which had been most heavily involved in the Canada campaign.32 Where the Spanish author ities - driven more by financial stringency than by any high regard for the fighting qualities of the creoles - chose to integrate reorganized and retrained local militias into the new system of imperial defence, their British counterparts, with large numbers of unemployed soldiers on their hands after the signing of the peace, saw the solution to their domestic and American problems in a standing army imported from England .31

The very notion of a standing army, however, smacked of continental tyranny to a colonial population that took for granted its entitlement to English liberty. During the war it had seen for itself how the argument of military necessity could ride roughshod over rights.34 For the time being, Pontiac's rebellion made them grateful for the continuing protection afforded by the redcoats. But grounds for apprehension already existed, and the subsequent actions of the ministers in London would do nothing to assuage them.

The problem of security was to be the precipitant of change in both the British and the Spanish empires. Increased security meant increased costs, as ministers in Madrid and London were painfully aware. Britain emerged from the war saddled with an enormous burden of debt, and it now had to find an estimated £225,000 a year35 to maintain an army in America. It seemed reasonable to expect the colonists, whose current contribution to the costs of empire came from inefficiently collected customs dues, to take a fair share of paying for an army intended for their protection. Ministers in Madrid were moved by similar considerations. The defences of outlying and exposed regions, like the Caribbean islands or the central American coast, represented a continuous drain on the resources of hardpressed treasuries, and if the Indies were better administered they could surely do more to meet the costs of their own protection. Fiscal and administrative reform therefore appeared to follow naturally from the requirements of a modernized system of imperial defence.

Other, and related, considerations were also impelling British and Spanish ministers in the direction of a general reassessment of their colonial policies. There was, in particular, the question of territorial boundaries. For Britain the acquisition of New France and Florida meant the addition to its American empire of large new territories with their own distinctive legal and administrative systems, and with Roman Catholic populations. How could they be satisfactorily incorporated, and what rights could their populations be safely allowed at a time when English Catholics were excluded from participation in political life? The defeat of the French also meant the removal of the most effective barrier to trans- Appalachian expansion by a land-hungry population hemmed in along the Atlantic seaboard. Were the colonists now to be permitted to swarm into the Indian interior, thus provoking new Indian wars, with all the additional strain on financial and military resources that this would involve? The Spaniards, too, were faced with difficult boundary problems. The long northern frontier of New Spain was only thinly settled. Should it be extended still further northwards to form a barrier against the English, thus provoking further conflict with the Indians, and again adding to the costs of defence? The dilemma that confronted both Britain and Spain was that of an empire too far.