American Globalization, 1492–1850

Trans-Cultural Consumption in Spanish Latin America

Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Ilaria Berti, Omar Svriz-Wucherer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000422580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Following a study on the world flows of American products during early globalization, here the authors examine the reverse process. By analyzing the imperial political economy, the introduction, adaptation and rejection of new food products in America, as well as of other European, Asian and African goods, American Globalization, 1492–1850, addresses the history of consumerism and material culture in the New World, while also considering the perspective of the history of ecological globalization.

This book shows how these changes triggered the formation of mixed imagined communities as well as of local and regional markets that gradually became part of a global economy. But it also highlights how these forces produced a multifaceted landscape full of contrasts and recognizes the plurality of the actors involved in cultural transfers, in which trade, persuasion and violence were entwined. The result is a model of the rise of consumerism that is very different from the ones normally used to understand the European cases, as well as a more nuanced vision of the effects of ecological imperialism, which was, moreover, the base for the development of unsustainable capitalism still present today in Latin America.

Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, and 13 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

Part I
The Political Economy of the Spanish Empire and the Introduction of Eurasian Goods in the New World

1 Trans-Imperial, Transnational and Decentralized

The Traffic of African Slaves to Spanish America and Across the Isthmus of Panama, 1508–1651

Alejandro García-Montón¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781003168058-2

Introduction

Spanish America was the destination of the first and the last ships loaded with slaves that crossed the Atlantic between the early sixteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. Recent studies estimate that this traffic was responsible for the forced migration of at least two million people from Africa to Spanish America, the Spanish colonies being the second most important American destination after Brazil (Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat 2015). The effects of the slave trade varied widely in Spanish America. They led to the diversification of the population of the American continent and the appearance of new groups of hybrid origin, as well as the emergence of new social identities, cultural forms and consumer behavior. From an economic point of view, we still lack a study that concerns itself with measuring the commercial impact of the African slave trade compared to the trade of other products or goods in the Spanish empire, or estimating the effects of the arrival of forced labor on the colony’s economy. It is not our purpose here to resolve such matters; nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that the Spanish colonization of the Americas was viable thanks to the contribution of populations of African origin. In this sense, the colonization of America also turned out to be a process of Africanization of the continent (Wheat 2016).

The trafficking of African slaves to Spanish America remains largely unknown today by comparison with the trade in goods and merchandise that developed between Spain and its American colonies through the Carrera de Indias, or the slave trafficking systems set up by other empires of the Atlantic world. This chapter traces the main lines of the political economy of the African slave trade to Spanish America and its specific characteristics as a commercial endeavor. Three elements characterized the slave trade in comparison to the regular Atlantic trade in goods and merchandise to Spanish America through the Carrera de Indias system. First, the routes that supplied slaves to Spanish America were of a trans-imperial nature. Second, the merchant networks controlling this infamous trade had a strong transnational component. Third, the shipping of slaves was highly decentralized with respect to Spain. These three key elements underpinned the structure of the slave trade to Spanish America for more than three centuries (Mendes 2008; Borucki 2012; Delgado Ribas 2013). A focus on these three aspects should help us better understand the various distribution mechanisms set up in the “New World” for the introduction of enslaved people, new products and goods, whose conditioning factors tended to vary considerably.

The following pages concentrate on the period that runs from the early sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century and represents the golden age of the Iberian empires’ slave trade in the Atlantic. During this period, the Portuguese and Spanish empires laid the foundations for the transatlantic slave trade and were its main protagonists, both in terms of the supply of African slave labor and in relation to market demand from America. With the Isthmus of Panama as its main geographic reference, this chapter is divided into three sections. First, we present the irreplaceable role played by the African population in the conquest and colonization of this Isthmus of Panama, which was the main route connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean in the framework of the Spanish empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Next, we explain the commercial structure surrounding the importation of African slaves to this area. The third section analyzes in detail the decade of the 1640s, which registered an unusual fall-off in the volume of African slaves officially arriving in Spanish America and a major restructuring of the trafficking routes. An analysis of the reasons for these changes and the way in which different cities of the colonial sphere, such as Panama, reacted to the diminished supply of slaves sheds light on two issues that often go unnoticed. Firstly, the importance of trans-imperialism, transnationalism and decentralization in fashioning the African slave trade to Spanish America; and secondly, the distinctive characteristics of this traffic within the overall framework of the Spanish empire’s political economy in the Atlantic and in comparison to trade in other goods or products.

The Africanization of the Isthmus of Panama

Unlike other trades destined for Spanish America, the demand for African slaves manifested itself very early on, as it was linked to structural changes in the economy from the time of the conquest. African slaves were the involuntary protagonists of a transatlantic trade that decisively transformed the Americas. So much so that, in the words of David Wheat, the population of African origin operated as “surrogate colonists” in Spanish America (Wheat 2016). From the slaves to the free blacks, including the local population of African descent (known as criollos), these social actors carried out a multitude of tasks that were vital for the conquest of Spanish America and the viability of the colony (Vinson 2001; McKnight and Garofalo 2010; O’Toole 2012; Restall 2013; Bryant 2014; Borucki 2015). The region of Panama provides one of the best examples of the importance of the African forced migrants in taking control and developing a Spanish imperial presence in the Americas.

The first African slaves possibly were brought to the Isthmus of Panama in 1508 with the expedition of Diego de Nicuesa (Tardieu 2009, 42). During the twenty years following the foundation of the first Spanish settlements on the isthmus, Nombre de Dios (1508) and Santa María del Darién (1510), the indigenous population was almost entirely wiped out due to violent clashes with European settlers and the arrival of new pathogens. The first expeditions organized from Panama City to Nicaragua and Peru also transported indigenous slaves, thus contributing to the decline of the native Panamanian population. In the opinion of Governor Francisco de Barrionuevo, by 1533 there were only 500 indigenous people left in the area surrounding Panama City (Mena García 1984, 78).

The shortage of indigenous slave labor on the Isthmus of Panama was already evident during the early 1520s, and created a strong demand for forced labor to the area. That demand was met by developing an inter-American slave trade from Nicaragua to the Isthmus of Panama, with indigenous people enslaved as victims (Radell 1976; Sherman 1979; Newson 1982). However, as the demand for slave labor was much higher than the existing supply in Central America, the transatlantic slave trade quickly became the main source for enslaved workers. In 1523 a ship with a cargo of five hundred African captives landed and in 1525 an additional thousand African slaves were brought to the isthmus (Ward 1993, 35). In 1531 the Panama City Council asked the Crown for privileges so that more African slaves could be sent to the region in order to support the colonization process (Jopling 1994, 113–15).

The demand for African slave labor in the region of Panama was especially strong in comparison to other parts of Spanish America. At first, the implementation of systems known as encomiendas, for organizing indigenous labor to support the Spanish settlers, was an incentive for the conquistadores of the Isthmus of Panama. However, the number of natives integrated into the Panamanian encomiendas was low by comparison with other areas. This meant that, for example, the Panamanian encomenderos (those granted control of the encomiendas) never reached anything like the power or the control of such large native workforces as their peers in the valleys of Peru. From the mid-sixteenth century the influence of the Panamanian encomenderos was in decline, while local government officials and traders stood out as the main local power group (Mena García 1984, 176–245). Moreover, according to some authors, the suppression of indigenous slavery in the mid-sixteenth century did not have any pronounced influence on the local economy and the productive sectors of the colony; nor did the taxes paid by the natives have any notable importance on the tax revenue of the Panamanian Audiencia (Mena García 1984, 324, 325). All these factors show the extent to which African slaves had a prominent role in the establishment of the first colonial structures on the Isthmus of Panama and their subsequent development.

The strong demand for slave labor on the Isthmus of Panama during the first decades of colonization led to an important upsurge in the trade in African captives, which affected the demographics of the isthmus. In a few years the population of African origin had superseded the indigenous population as the main human group in areas under Spanish influence. In 1575 it was estimated that there were about 6,000 African slaves within the Audiencia of Panama. Nearly 2,500 of these were concentrated in Panama City (Mena García 1984, 91). By 1607 the slave population of the city had increased to almost 3,700. Together with the free blacks – about seven hundred and fifty – the population of African origin represented almost eighty percent of the total inhabitants of the city.² These numbers registered a steady increase over the years. At the end of the 1620s and the outset of the 1630s, there were several accounts of 14,000 African slaves in the region.³ By the 1640s, the figure was estimated to be have reached 17,000 (Vila Vilar 1976, 175).

African slaves sustained the transport and service sectors, which were the main industries of the area of Panama. The importance of this region in the geopolitics of the Spanish empire was largely due to its role as a junction connecting Spain and the Atlantic trade routes to South Pacific America. The strategic value of the Isthmus of Panama was inestimable as the first stop for Potosí silver from Bolivia on its global journey to Asia via Spain, whose circulation gave rise to one of the most incisive processes in the emergence of globalization (Flynn, Giráldez, and Von Glahn 2003). In 1561, the Crown and the Seville merchants’ guild established an annual convoy, known as the fleets and galleons system, connecting Spain with Cartagena de Indias, the Isthmus of Panama and Veracruz. The fleets and galleons system brought stability to the trade fairs celebrated in Nombre de Dios and subsequently, following the destruction of the town by Francis Drake in 1596, at the new settlement of Portob...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Political Economy of the Spanish Empire and the Introduction of Eurasian Goods in the New World
• Part II Food and Empire
• Part III America and the Eurasian Products in a Global Perspective
• Afterthoughts
• List of Contributors
• Index