Bienvenido To The Spanish Empire

Under the Treaties of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), the European powers decided what the fate of Spain would be, in terms of the continental balance of power. The new Bourbon king Philip V retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria; Sicily and parts of Milan to Duchy of Savoy; and Gibraltar and Minorca to the Kingdom of Great Britain.


The Battle of Cape Passaro, 11 August 1718.The disastrous showing in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, 1718–20, exposed the level of weakness and dependence it had fallen to. Moreover, Philip V granted the British the exclusive right to slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so-called asiento, as well as licensed voyages to ports in Spanish colonial dominions, openings, as Fernand Braudel remarked, for both licit and illicit smuggling (Brudel 1984 p 418). Spain's economic and demographic recovery had begun slowly in the last decades of the Habsburg reign, as was evident from the growth of its trading convoys and much more rapid growth of illicit trade during the period, though this growth was slower than in her northern rivals who had gained increasing illicit access to her empire's markets. Critically, this recovery was not translated into institutional improvement because of the incompetent leadership of the unfortunate last Habsburg. This legacy of neglect was reflected in the early years of Bourbon rule in which the military was ill-advisedly pitched into battle against the Quadruple alliance. The poor performance of the demoralised Spanish military is well illustrated by the Battle of Cape Passaro, when a Spanish fleet was captured by the British. The British navy found the captured ships in such a rotten state that their best use was to be broken up. Following the war the new Bourbon monarchy would take a much more cautious approach to international relations, built upon a family alliance with Bourbon France, and continuing to follow a program of institutional renewal.

With a Bourbon monarchy came a repertory of Bourbon mercantilist ideas based on a centralized state, put into effect in America slowly at first but with increasing momentum during the century (see Enlightenment Spain). The Spanish Bourbons' broadest intentions were to break the power of the entrenched aristocracy of the Criollos in America (locally born colonials of European descent), and, eventually, loosen the territorial control of the Society of Jesus over the virtually independent theocracies of Guarani Misiones: the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767. In addition to the established consulados of Mexico City and Lima, firmly in the control of local landowners, a new rival consulado was set up at Vera Cruz.