The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century | Page 4

Clarence Henry Haring
the trade of the colonies was to be reserved to the mother
country. Spain on her side undertook to furnish the colonies with all
they required, shipped upon Spanish vessels; the colonies in return
were to produce nothing but raw materials and articles which did not
compete with the home products with which they were to be exchanged.
The second principle was the mercantile doctrine which, considering as
wealth itself the precious metals which are but its symbol, laid down
that money ought, by every means possible, to be imported and
hoarded, never exported.[4] This latter theory, the fallacy of which has
long been established, resulted in the endeavour of the Spanish
Hapsburgs to conserve the wealth of the country, not by the

encouragement of industry, but by the increase and complexity of
imposts. The former doctrine, adopted by a non-producing country
which was in no position to fulfil its part in the colonial compact, led to
the most disastrous consequences.
While the Spanish Crown was aiming to concentrate and monopolize
its colonial commerce, the prosperity of Spain itself was slowly sapped
by reason of these mistaken economic theories. Owing to the lack of
workmen, the increase of imposts, and the prejudice against the
mechanic arts, industry was being ruined; while the increased
depopulation of the realm, the mainmort of ecclesiastical lands, the
majorats of the nobility and the privileges of the Mesta, brought
agriculture rapidly into decay. The Spaniards, consequently, could not
export the products of their manufacture to the colonies, when they did
not have enough to supply their own needs. To make up for this
deficiency their merchants were driven to have recourse to foreigners,
to whom they lent their names in order to elude a law which forbade
commerce between the colonies and traders of other nations. In return
for the manufactured articles of the English, Dutch and French, and of
the great commercial cities like Genoa and Hamburg, they were obliged
to give their own raw materials and the products of the Indies--wool,
silks, wines and dried fruits, cochineal, dye-woods, indigo and leather,
and finally, indeed, ingots of gold and silver. The trade in Spain thus in
time became a mere passive machine. Already in 1545 it had been
found impossible to furnish in less than six years the goods demanded
by the merchants of Spanish America. At the end of the seventeenth
century, foreigners were supplying five-sixths of the manufactures
consumed in Spain itself, and engrossed nine-tenths of that American
trade which the Spaniards had sought so carefully to monopolize.[5]
In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy
was its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to
the interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from
barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to
encourage such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish
the growing colonies with those articles which they could not produce
themselves, and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they

justify their monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. The same
test, indeed, may be applied to every other nation which adopted the
exclusivist system. Queen Isabella wished to carry out this policy,
introduced into the newly-discovered islands wheat, the olive and the
vine, and acclimatized many of the European domestic animals.[6] Her
efforts, unfortunately, were not seconded by her successors, nor by the
Spaniards who went to the Indies. In time the government itself, as well
as the colonist, came to be concerned, not so much with the agricultural
products of the Indies, but with the return of the precious metals.
Natives were made to work the mines, while many regions adapted to
agriculture, Guiana, Caracas and Buenos Ayres, were neglected, and
the peopling of the colonies by Europeans was slow. The emperor,
Charles V., did little to stem this tendency, but drifted along with the
tide. Immigration was restricted to keep the colonies free from the
contamination of heresy and of foreigners. The Spanish population was
concentrated in cities, and the country divided into great estates granted
by the crown to the families of the conquistadores or to favourites at
court. The immense areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were
submitted to the most unjust and arbitrary regulations, with no object
but to stifle growing industry and put them in absolute dependence
upon the metropolis. It was forbidden to exercise the trades of dyer,
fuller, weaver, shoemaker or hatter, and the natives were compelled to
buy of the Spaniards even the stuffs they wore on their backs. Another
ordinance prohibited the cultivation of the vine and the olive except in
Peru and Chili, and even these provinces might not send their oil and
wine to Panama, Gautemala or any other place
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