Europe And the Americas: State Formation, Capitalism And Civilizations in Atlantic Modernity...

Europe and the Americas

InternationalComparativeSocial Studies

Series Editor

Wil Arts

Editorial BoardDuane Alwin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

Wil Arts, Tilburg University, The NetherlandsMattei Dogan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,

Paris, FranceS.N. Eisenstadt, Hebrew University Jerusalem, IsraelJohan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies, France

Linda Hantrais, Loughborough University, UKJim Kluegel, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

Chan Kwok-bun, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, ChinaFrank Lechner, Emory University, Atlanta, USA

Ron Lesthaeghe, Free University Brussels, BelgiumOla Listhaug, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,

Trondheim, NorwayRubin Patterson, University of Toledo, USA

Eugene Roosens, University Leuven/Louvain, BelgiumMasamichi Sasaki, University of Tokyo, Japan

Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, New York, USAJohn Rundell, University of Melbourne, AustraliaLivy Visano, York University, Toronto, Canada

Bernd Wegener, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, GermanyJock Young, London, UK

VOLUME XII

Europe and the Americas

State Formation, Capitalism and

Civilizations in Atlantic Modernity

by

Jeremy Smith

With an Introduction by

S. N. Eisenstadt

BRILLLEIDEN • BOSTON

2006

ISSN 1568-4474ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15229 8ISBN-10: 90 04 15229 6

© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic

Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior writtenpermission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to

The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.

Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Jeremy.Europe and the Americas : state formation, capitalism and civilizations in Atlantic

modernity / by Jeremy Smith.p. cm.—(International comparative social studies, ISSN 1568-4474 ; vol. 12)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15229-8 (alk. paper)ISBN-10: 90-04-15229-6 (alk. paper)1. Europe—History. 2. Europe—Civilization. 3. Europe—Colonies—America.

4. State, The—History. I. Title. II. Series.

D208.S57 2006940—dc22

2006044002

For Bronwyn

CONTENTS

Introduction by S. N. Eisenstadt ............................................ xi

Chapter One Atlantic Modernity and Its Dimensions ...... 1

Chapter Two Civilizational Sociology and the Atlantic .... 23

Chapter Three Absolutism and Post-absolutism in

Europe’s Empires .......................................... 37

Chapter Four Civilization and Pre-colonial Traditions ...... 74

Chapter Five ‘Discovery’ in the West ................................ 105

Chapter Six Mercantilism, Slavery and the Part Played by

the Transatlantic Empires in the Formation

of Capitalism .................................................. 140

Chapter Seven Communities of the Colonial Order .......... 193

Chapter Eight War and Imperial Re-Division between

Utrecht and the Seven Years War ............ 233

Chapter Nine ‘Raising the Decibels’: Republican

Revolutions of the Colonial Order ............ 251

Chapter Ten The Atlantic’s Distinct Modernity .............. 292

Bibliography .............................................................................. 315

Index .......................................................................................... 333

These voyages have not only confuted many things which had beenaffirmed by writers about terrestrial matters, but besides this, they havegiven some cause for alarm to interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, whoare accustomed to interpret those verses of the Psalms in which it isdeclared that the sound of their songs had gone over all the earth andtheir words spread to the edges of the world, as meaning that faithin Christ had spread over the entire Earth through the mouths of theApostles: an interpretation contrary to the truth, because since noknowledge of these lands had hitherto been brought to light, nor haveany signs or relics of our faith been found there, it is unworthy to bebelieved, either that faith in Christ had existed there before these times,or that so vast a part of the world have never before been discoveredor found by men of our hemisphere.1 (Francesco Guicciardini, 1538)

It is surprising that for so long a time so little should have been knownof the new world, even after it was discovered. Barbarous soldiers andrapacious merchants were not proper persons to give us just and clearnotions of this half of the universe. It was the province of philosophyalone to avail itself of the information featured in the accounts of voy-agers and millionaires, in order to see America such as nature hathmade it, and to investigate its affinity with the rest of the globe.2 (abbeRaynal)

The great distance of our colonies is not an inconvenience that affectstheir safety; for if the mother country, on whom they depend for theirdefence, is remote, no less remote are those nations who rival themother country, and by whom they may be afraid of being conquered.3

(Charles de Montesquieu, 1748)

Nosotros ni aun conservamos los vestigios de lo que due en otro tiempo;no somos europeos, no somos indios, sino una especie media entre lasaborigines y los espanoles. Americanos por nacimento y europeos porderechos, no hallamos en el conflicto de disputar a los naturales lostitulos de posesion y de los mantenernos en el pais que nos vio nacer,contra la oposicion y de los invasores; asi nuestro caso es el mas extra-ordinario y complicado.4 (Simon Bolivar, 1819)

1 Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, ed. and trans. Sidney Alexander(London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 1504.

2 abbe Raynal (Guillaume-Thomas-Francois), A Philosophical and Political History ofthe British Settlements and Trade in North America (Glasgow: Angus & Son, Aberdeen; &E. Wilson, Dumfries, 1782), pp. 11–12.

3 Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1958), vol.38, p. 171.

4 Simon Bolivar, “Discurso pronunciado por el Libertador ante el Congreso deAngostura el 15 de febrero de 1819, dia de su instalacion,” in German CarerraDamas, Escritos Fundamentales (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1982).

INTRODUCTION

S. N. Eisenstadt

J. Smith’s book on Europe and the Americas: The Atlantic Modernity ofState Formation, Capitalism and Civilizations constitutes a distinct contribution

to comparative historical and sociological analysis. This contribution

is a triple one, to three distinct arenas or dimensions of comparative

historical analysis and perhaps above all in the combination thereof.

The first such dimension is the emphasis on the importance of

the Atlantic experience in the formation of early European state,

economic and culture formations, i.e. of early European modernity.

Several works have already pointed out that the crystallization of

early modern states and economic formations was influenced by the

colonial expansion and by the European colonization in the Americas—

as for instance the influence of the extraction of gold from the

colonies on early modern Spanish economy—and on its ultimate

decline, or as C. H. R. James has pointed out earlier on that slave

trade and slavery were the basis of the French Revolution. Other

researchers have pointed out that the colonial experience—as for

instance the experience of the British raj in India has been of crucial

importance to the formations of the British modern state and society.

But Smith’s analysis goes beyond such important indications. He

shows that it is not enough to point out that the political, economic

and cultural formations of early modern states was influenced by the

colonial experience—but that basically the colonial formations were

part and partial of crystallization of political, economic and cultural

formations in Europe, that the two processes constitute part of the

one common broader process. Or in other words he shows that the

European and the Atlantic formations were constitutive of one another,

or perhaps more precisely that they constitute components of one

process—that of constitution of Atlantic modernity or modernities.

This type of analysis is also in principle highly attuned to these

works which attempt to put different “local” “state” or “national”

developments in the wider context of “world historical” developments—

such as for instance the analysis of the formations of the Qing dynasty

xii introduction

in China in the framework of Eurasian global developments1—a

mode of analysis which points to possible reformulation of the rela-

tions between “national” and world historical processes.

The second distinct innovative dimension of Smith’s work is the

analysis of the patterns of early modernity as they crystallized in the

different Atlantic countries—both in Europe and in the Americas.

As against the relatively wide-spread view to be found, even if mostly

implicitly, especially in the many theories of modernization that the

European modernity is the natural model thereof – according to

which others have to be judged, Smith shows that not only even in

Europe—or to be more exact—in the framework of Atlantic moder-

nities—there developed in different historical contexts not one, but

several patterns of multiple modernities, i.e. the Atlantic modernity

or modernities is only one of several patterns of multiple moderni-

ties which develop in different historical contexts.

The third contribution of Smith’s analysis is, following recent devel-

opments in social and historical analysis2—i.e. the emphasis on the

importance of civilizational institutional and cultural frameworks,

encompassing different political and economic formations in shaping

the self-understanding and collective identities of Atlantic countries.

But perhaps above all the distinctive contribution of Smith’s analysis

is the combination of all these dimensions—as they converge in the

formations of multiple modernities in their historical and civilizational

contexts. It is this combination which provided important indications

for new directions in a comparative historical research.

1 See for instance Struve, L. A. (ed.) 2004, The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

2 See for instance Arjomand, S. A. and Tiryakian, E. A. (eds.), 2004, RethinkingCivilizational Analysis. Sage Publications.

CHAPTER ONE

ATLANTIC MODERNITY AND ITS DIMENSIONS

Renaissance Europe’s encounter with the American New World

inspired doubt. Reports of Columbus’ voyage in 1492 had little imme-

diate impact. But they were the first moments in an ongoing cross-

Atlantic relationship between continents that both shaped and troubled

Western Europe for the next three centuries. The relationship brought

a growth of European state and economic power. This was a vital

juncture in which an Atlantic prospect came into view. It was as

much metaphor as reality. Initially unsure of what might be found

there, Europeans had no immediate new paradigm of what to expect

and depended on old ones. Certainty that the new landmass was a

protrusion of the Asian continent prevailed until even the 1570s.

Monstrous races listed in ancient accounts were said to exist there.

Where romantic optimism shadowed interpretation, the natives were

cast as child-like innocents inhabiting a lost Garden of Eden that

had once also been the condition of Christians. Early metaphorical

flourishes did not fade as the forces of colonialism further penetrated

the continent, but were complimented by further bewilderment. The

Atlantic vista was disconcerting. It unsettled, and then became the

locus of coalescing forces of economic and imperial state power. It

also disturbed reputable assumptions about the mundane world and

the larger cosmos.

In a way, doubt came readily. Humanism had gestated in Western

monasteries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its principal thrust

was that an autonomous conscience existed and was capable of moral

agency and therefore doubt. More far-reaching contact with Islamic

cultures in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries returned unavailable

classics of Ancient thought. A new nexus with the declining Byzantine

Empire also prompted meditation on the Greeks.1 Knowledge of

another landmass sent scholars scurrying for references amongst the

Greeks and the Romans to an antipodean land. In a short sixteenth

1 Johann P. Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions(Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 144–45.

2 chapter one

century, the existence of a further land became apparent and con-

sequently the size of the globe known to Europeans grew dramatically.

Uncertainty about how different lands were peopled appeared.

The existence of stateless societies and stratified empires hitherto

unaccounted for in the annals of European thought confounded scrip-

ture and the Church’s interpretation of it. Where had the other peo-

ples come from? Could they be really considered human? Or were

they pre-social or pre-civil? Should they be enslaved? Such per-

plexities circumscribed the Junta de Burgos (1512) and the famous

Dispute of Valladolid (1550) between Bartolome de las Casas and

Juan Gines de Sepulveda. The theological debate raged around the

humanity of the indigenous of the Caribbean. It was not settled at

that time. These turned out to be the early hesitant steps of an ency-

clopaedic imagination which pre-dated anthropology and that aimed

to catalogue and describe other non-European peoples comprehen-

sively. Where America’s indigenes should fit in the annals of Western

knowledge remained unclear. There is ample evidence of uncertainty

continuing to linger in the eighteenth century. The inhabitants of

the New World acquired a romantic prominence. By this time, the

continent as a whole was again a source of quixotic fascination,

much as it had been in the sixteenth century.

Most contemplation of this New World marked its supposed

extremes, rather than its actual diversity. America was rugged, un-

domesticated and alien. Yet it could be considered untainted by the

vices of the old world: it was untouched, free and a place where

Utopia could be contemplated. It was wild, but it also awoke older

myths of humanity’s Golden Age. The utopian imagination had been

stirred in the sixteenth century by reports of the New World and

its echoes could still be heard loudly in the eighteenth. Here was a

perceived antithesis of Europe that called upon utopians to examine

existing forms of social organization and devise new ones.2 The

Americas served as a contrast in the mind to the Mediterranean

world. It was a kind of mental category to aid moral and political

judgment of familiar European societies and hence was easily given

2 J. C. Davis, “Utopia and the New World 1500–1700,” in Roland Schaer et al.,Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2000). On utopian experiments in the Americas, see Silvio Zavala, NewViewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968),chap. 10.

atlantic modernity and its dimensions 3

to representational excesses that instructed Europeans about the differ-

ence of their civilization.

In the first century of reconnaissance and intrusion, the new lands

seemed an enigma. Relations with Islamic and Asian societies had

brought Spanish, English and French into conflict with established

powers. The encounters inaugurated by transoceanic imperial rule

would be greatly different.3 Mesoamerica confronted the coercive

face of European power. Conquistador intrigue and force established

the rudimentary extensions of the Spanish presence through the out-

right extermination or subordination, marginalization and reconstructive

study of indigenous civilizations. The establishment of immigrant

settler societies accompanied the armed intrusion. Western states may

have attempted to replicate and extend European institutions in the

state forms that were exported to the non-European world. But these

were then conditioned by regional political, economic and cultural

circumstances in ways so profound that it is feasible to speak of dis-

tinct civilizations.4

3 Elizabeth Mancke, “Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of OceanicSpace,” Geographical Review 89 (1999): 2, and “Negotiating an Empire: Britain andits Overseas Peripheries c. 1550–1780,” in Christine Daniels and Michael Kennedy,eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas 1500–1820 (London andNew York: Routledge, 2002).

4 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “The Civilizations of the Americas: The Crystallizationof Distinct Modernities,” Comparative Sociology 1, no. 1 (2002): 43–61; Luis Ronigerand C. H. Waisman, Globality and Multiple Modernities: Comparative North American andLatin American Perspectives (East Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2002). In my view,this point is not drawn out to the fullest possible conclusion in Eisenstadt’s mainwriting on the civilizations of the Atlantic. His dominant argument is that the reli-gious divide in Western culture between Latin and Protestant states spills over intothe cultural premises of colonial formations in the Americas. Surprisingly, he hasonly a little to say of the interaction of religions within the Americas, particularlywithin Hispanic America and the Caribbean. His tempered analysis can be easilyexplained. For Mesoamerican cultures there was no cultural breakthrough leadingto a monotheistic consolidation of world orientation. An adaptation of Catholicismto Meso and Andoamerican cultures occurred. Otherwise, bodies of spiritual beliefwere forced into segregated coexistence. The absence of world religions prior toEuropean colonialism prompts Eisenstadt to overlook one side of the interciviliza-tional dimension of the Americas. The European invasion brought powers thatrelated to cultural cataclysms that occurred in Greece and were re-founded in thethirteenth century coalescence of humanism. They were proselytizing forces, but didnot encounter known world religions. Eisenstadt treats civilization in the plural, butplainly his notion of Axial transformation, which privileges religions connected toempires, obstructs the conception of Amerindian cultures as a significant part ofthat plurality. What is more, any prospect of theorizing the Euro-American empiresas truly groundbreaking offshoots of the West fades.

4 chapter one

The invasion and colonization of the Western hemisphere established

two civilizational complexes. One was with Amerindian peoples. The

other was with nascent colonial communities that were of European

extraction, but which, from their inception, had their own character.

With regard to European encounters with Amerindian societies, some

distinction of the three powers can be made. The near-genocidal

conquest of indigenous civilizations in the Caribbean and the destruction

of the Mesoamerican and Andean empires launched a new sort of

domination unexperienced by the Spanish before, even though it was

based on previous patterns of warfare and occupation of territory.

The French or English that followed conquered the northern continent

by expanding limited colonies. North American aboriginal societies

were pushed steadily westwards of Lake Ontario and the Alleghony

Mountains by their advancement. Their advance was slowed by

Indian nations that preserved their strategic power through resistance,

diplomacy and trade.

For good reasons, the historical intrusion of the British, French

and Spanish is remembered today as an era of destruction and loss.

However, there was also continuity in some regions and even renewal

in the indigenous civilizations overcome by European expansion and

not only in the sheer fact of physical survival of aboriginal cultures.

During the era of imperial rivalry, some North American nations

showed themselves to be effective strategists in the episodes of open

warfare between the French and British. Their control of the inte-

rior made them participants who could trade their allegiance with

one side or the other. For the time being, the confinement of French

and British colonies to the geographically limited eastern estuaries

helped the tribes to keep alive their form of warrior organization,

their confederal alliances and the cultural premises of their spiritu-

ality. In the Spanish Indies, the fortunes of indigenous peoples var-

ied more wildly. Closer to mining, trading and ranching centers,

they found themselves trapped in the quasi-enslavement of encomiendaand repartimiento modes of social relations. Paternalistic domination

constrained their ability to revolt, escape or, indeed, to conserve the

fabric, identity and leadership of their ethnic groups. Miscegenation—

a widespread practice of colonists—broke down their previous social

associations further. Elsewhere, a comparative isolation from Spanish

colonial centres permitted the perpetuation and reconstruction of cul-

tural and social forms. Endurance was more exceptional in these

areas, suggesting a greater level of civilizational survival.


The other civilizational relationship lay in the creation of Creole-

American communities. Neither the American colonies nor the

European homelands were passive parts of the empire in terms of

polity, economy or culture.5 The foundation of colonial societies and

new forms of government did not simply produce submissive and

dependent territories. Instead there was a tension-ridden nexus between

metropolitan centres and colonial realms. In this context, the self-

image held by Europeans differed palpably from the identities that

sat in contrast. American views of the wider imperial dominion of

Spain, France and England started to appear in the late seventeenth

century. Divergence, but also profound dependence, was a recurring

condition for peripheral communities that could trace their founda-

tions to a formative colonial period.

Many historians have re-examined the application of notions of

‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ in Atlantic history.6 The American colonies

had been cast as dependent peripheries of metropolitan centres, espe-

cially in the histories generated out of the dependency and world

systems theory traditions. Atlantic scholarship has re-worked these

categories to accentuate the manner in which some peripheral zones

functioned as lively centres in their own right. The current reconstructed

historical sociology of empire state formation presumes a developmental

logic that is autonomous in important respects. As an expression of

the relations of the American colonies to their respective governing

imperial powers, I like the phrase ‘mutual dependence’ to describe

the transatlantic empires. It captures well the manner in which the

home countries, indeed the whole of Europe, relied on the Americas,

as indeed the colonies depended on imperial support and protection.

‘Mutual dependence’ encapsulates precisely the extent to which colonial

centres constituted themselves as self-governing entities. This feeling

5 See, for example, Silvio Zavala, The Political Philosophy of the Conquest of America,trans. Teener Hall (Mexico: Editorial Cultura, 1953).

6 Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires; Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Centers:Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States1607–1788 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Jack P. Greene, NegotiatedAuthorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottsville, VA:University Press of Virginia, 1994); Donna S. Guy and Thomas Sheridan, ContestedGround: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998). For a sociological perspective thatexamines these comparative issues in light of the Japanese expenerience, see theintroduction to Johann Arnason, The Peripheral Centre: Essays on Japanese History andCivilization (Melbourne: TransPacific Press, 2002).

6 chapter one

of shared dependence echoes through the written record of colonists’

views from the time of conquest through to the republican revolts and

is present in the philosophy of empire variously espoused by the

proponents of imperial rule. It underpins the basic relationship between

the European homes of imperial formations and their colonial settlements.

What were the contours of mutual dependence? Spain, France,

England and others furnished the colonies with governors, councils,

soldiers, markets, and more immigrants and, of course, slaves. The

benefits were tangible. The colonies developed harbours for imperial

navies to compete for greater influence in the Atlantic or in regional

fisheries or the Caribbean trade. They were fresh commercial out-

lets for European manufactures. Religious and criminal outcasts could

find a haven in the North American colonies. America gave Europe

an unprecedented volume of common goods, such as specie and the

products of its immense fisheries. It also produced new commodities

that revolutionized consumption: tobacco, chocolate, sugar and coffee.

The exchange between continents was not limited to resources.

The flow and counter-flow of ideas evinced original American per-

spectives as well as ongoing deep connections with established philo-

sophical and scientific traditions. Dependence was unbroken for all

colonies, until the 1776 Revolution and the Napoleonic occupation

of the Iberian Peninsula. The lasting settlements reflected Spanish,

French and English cities, towns and villages in their organization,

if not their architectural design. The steady growth of the colonies

was possible because of military and naval protection, especially in

the rapidly developing Spanish Indies. French forts in North America,

naval patrols in the Caribbean and the force represented by con-quistador armies secured the safety of colonial towns, ports and cities

from rivals and real or perceived local threats. The elite classes of

the colonial communities were ever concerned about unrest from

within. Spain’s peninsulares (the Spanish born) and English and French-

born administrators and traders were quite a distinct and visible class

onto themselves. Colonial communities shared their language and cus-

toms. But other divisions between local Creole societies and imported

administrators served to highlight the latter’s dependence, and feel-

ings of dependence, on imperial protection.

At the same time, the isolation of settlements right across the con-

tinent compelled colonists to rely on their own resourcefulness, a

condition that fostered autonomy as well as a sense of vulnerability.

Circumstances forced self-reliance. The body of trade regulations and


ordinances along with firm imperial direction in government implied

tight control. However, all could be relaxed in response to rebellion

or the threat of it or indeed simply for short term expediency. It

was habit for the administrations of colonial and imperial govern-

ment to interpret directives from the centre pragmatically. The eco-

nomic value of American resources, trade and markets gave colonists

some power to influence the application of imperial law as imper-

ial bodies were reliant on colonial cooperation.

Mutual dependence colored the regard that Europeans and Ameri-

cans had for each other. Creole views of the local representatives of

European representatives fluctuated. In some periods they were

ambivalent, at others spiteful and resentful. They also varied according

to position in colonial society. The ambivalence of colonial affinity

was the most pronounced in the British Empire. Divisions between

loyalists and early republicans in the home countries were replicated

in England’s North American colonies. In fact, there was a direct

connection, as colonists absorbed the leading philosophical and

scientific works in circulation. English Americans took European

thinkers as their own. The long century of revolution in England

generated political traditions that they read and understood. The

language of virtue and corruption appealed to their understanding

of British public life, although it could be appropriated and turned

into a critique of imperial domination and indeed eventually was.

Americans too contributed substantial works of philosophy to

Europe’s political cultures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bolivar, Miranda, Viscardo, Jefferson, Paine, Adams were interlocu-

tors of sorts in an intercontinental traffic in ideas. Mutual depen-

dence also meant the expansion of Western political and moral

discourse. That growth was unprecedented in the era of colonial

revolt, as some colonists re-wrote philosophy in light of their common

understanding and in light of collusion with one another. It then

peaked as revolutionary thinkers came to the fore in the new repub-

lican governments.

Sentiments of loyalty and defiance were therefore transformed over

time, as the colonies built up more robust economic and other rela-

tionships with each other. A firmer nexus between British North

America and the Caribbean and increased trade between the vice-

royalties of the Spanish Indies are two instances of this. Although

dependence on imperial administration continued, additional devel-

opments were creolizing American societies.

8 chapter one

Three Dimensions of Atlantic Modernity

This book elaborates the above themes in connection with an exam-

ination of the process of imperial state formation, an emerging con-

ception of Western Europe as a discrete civilization and the coalescence

of capitalism. An early Western modernity of the sixteenth to eight-

eenth centuries can be re-conceptualized in two ways.7 Firstly, the

trajectory of Western civilization is one among a number. In fact,

the civilizational unity so often presumed of the West, if found any-

where, is found mainly in the twentieth century. Europe itself con-

tained three civilizations at the beginning of the era under discussion:

Occidental, Byzantine-Slavic and Ottoman.8 These inhabited and

fought over the European continent, although it should be noted

that different struggles had different chronologies and there was no

time in which all three were contemporaneously engaged in conflict.

Secondly, the West’s longue duree should be re-evaluated against a

growing body of analysis of multiple modernities.9 Two conclusions

can be taken from this perspective. Firstly, states do not preside over

closed and self-contained societies or even neat imperial centers and

peripheral territories. They oversee cultural, economic and political

syntheses that result from inter-societal and inter-civilizational contact

7 I do not propose to explore political modernity here, except in the final twochapters. In contrast to the general arenas of social life that can be characterizedas modern, political modernity can be understood as a modern culture of self-reflexivity, agency and historicity (that is, a historical sensibility). See Peter Wagner,Theorizing Modernity (London: Sage, 2001).

8 Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (London: Macmillan, 1995).9 Johann P. Arnason, “Multiple Modernities and Civilizational Contexts: Reflections

on the Japanese Experience,” in The Peripheral Centre; Eliezer Ben-Rafael and YitzhakSternberg, eds., Comparing Modernities: Pluralism Versus Homogeneity, Essays in Homage toShmuel N Eisenstadt (Leiden: Brill, 2005); S. N. Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations andMultiple Modernities (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schlucter,“Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities: A Comparative View,” Daedalus 127, no.3 (1998); Francois-Xaviar Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias: Ensayos sobre las Revoluciones(Madrid: Fundacion Mapre, 1992); Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and ShmuelN. Eisenstadt, Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations(Leiden: Brill, 2002); Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, Constructing Collective Identitiesand Shaping Public Spheres: Latin American Paths (Brighton: Sussex University Press,1998); Sanjay Subramanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards Reconfigurationof Civilization of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997); andGoran Thernborn, “Entangled Modernities,” European Journal of Social Theory 7, no.3 (2003). Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000) is a special issue on multiple modernities. Seealso Roniger and Waisman, Globality and Multiple Modernities.


and flow. The forces at play are not entirely under their control,

however; indeed, they transcend the empires that took possession of

the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Next, the notion of the universal spread of the generic elements

of a single model of modernity should be abandoned in favour of a

more discerning picture of interactive formations. When applying

this to the relationship of Europe and the Americas, there is a man-

ifest complexity. However, firm conclusions are still not hard to

deduce. There can be little dispute that the Americas came to share

in the Western heritage. The point, however, is that the idea of mul-

tiple modernities can undercut completely the proposition that America

was simply subject to the long colonial project of reproducing Western

societies in a different climate.10 It can do so by problematizing the

widely held sociological presumption that Western Europe instigated

a universal logic of modernization and more-or-less reproduced its

key societal features in a New World environment. Instead, it becomes

possible to bring to light the ways in which north-western European

societies and states interacted with embryonic social formations in

the Americas—which they, of course, encompassed, but did not

exhaustively determine—and those that Europeans conquered. The

societies that emerged were quite distinct and were shaped by a vari-

ety of Amerindian, immigrant-settler and Creole traditions. Critically,

they drew on flows and influences from three continents and did

not merely extend the reproduction of societies from Atlantic Europe

to the American mainland. In this context, it then makes better sense

to talk about an Atlantic modernity of three continents, many soci-

eties and many states engaged in dynamics that modified all involved,

rather than an outgrowth of the Western impulse to modernity.

This early modernity that encompassed the sixteenth to the eight-

eenth centuries is better thought of as Atlantic in its geographical

and social-historical scope and character. The view that I am fol-

lowing has implications for the conception of Western modernity that

has dominated the social sciences. Instead of searching for endoge-

nous factors that may explain Western European exceptionalism—a

common strategy in the social sciences—I propose to look at how

internal dynamics were inseparable from the expansionary thrust of

10 See, for example, Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourtand Brace, 1964).

10 chapter one

north-western states into the Atlantic zone during this period. In fol-

lowing this line of argument, I refer to the growth in European and

American historical scholarship of a current of trans and circum-

Atlantic study. Historians initiated a turn to Atlanticism in the 1980s

and 1990s. This approach has crystallized as a species of compara-

tive history. Its appeal lies in the transnational activities and relation-

ships that it gives visibility to. It incorporates large-scale geographical

or environmental histories of the kind prized by Braudel and Fernandez-

Armesto without being bound to their assumptions. Truly, it deserves

the attention of scholars from other disciplines working in inter-

disciplinary fields also.11 The original insights of Atlantic History

emerge from making connections between different points of the

Atlantic nexus, by exploring transatlantic activity as an area in its

own right, by regarding national histories as, in some part, regional

11 Its major works include the following titles. Note also that a journal, AtlanticStudies, commenced publication in 2004. See Ida Altman and James Horn, ‘To MakeAmerica’: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1991); David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World1500–1800 (London: Palgrave, 2002); Bernard Bailyn, “The Idea of Atlantic History,”Itinerario 20 (1996) was a formative essay; Nicholas Canny, “Writing Atlantic History,or Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America,” Journal of American History86, no. 3 (1999); Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic:Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993);David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the EnglishAtlantic Community 1735–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); DanielW. Howe, American History in an Atlantic Context: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before theUniversity of Oxford on 3 June 1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); WillKaufman and Heidi Slettedahl MacPherson, eds., introduction to New Perspectives inTransatlantic Studies (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002); John J.McCusker and Kenneth Morgan, eds., The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000); Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-AtlanticPerformance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) (an Atlantic history thatavoids Transatlantic scope in order to accentuate disaporic patterns of performance);David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1991); Ian Steele, The English Atlantic 1675–1740 (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1986) is an early work in Atlantic history that startedout as a study in transatlantic communications; John Thornton, Africa and Africansin the Making of the Atlantic World 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1999). John H. Elliot admonishes the current trends in Atlantic history forits overwhelming focus on the British world. He calls in a positive way for morework on the Hispanic and French Atlantic in “Afterword: Atlantic History: ACircumnavigation,” in Armitage and Braddick, The British Atlantic World. However,see Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999) for some sketches of possible lines of inquiry into theFrancophone and Iberian empires. This issue is dedicated to the concept of Atlantichistory, as is no. 20 of the same journal. American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (1999)is also a thematic issue, dealing specifically in this case with the British Atlantic.


histories and by restoring Africa and African contributions to a more

proper place after decades of historiographic suppression. So, British

history is reconstituted as a history of the British Isles.12 Ireland,

Bristol and Liverpool are seen as more integral to life in the Caribbean

and New England. Migration patterns in Central Europe and France

are connected with the movement of peoples across to the New

World. The cultural and economic impact of slavery is accentuated

by circum-Atlantic study that brings movements in Africa and America

into the frame simultaneously. The significance of the formation of

the Canadian nation is re-cast in a framework of imperial and inter-

imperial histories. These are some of the patterns revealed by the

broader scope of scholarship. It is less of a comparative history of

empires that runs along a north-south axis and more of a zonal his-

tory that ventures into an examination of east-west interactions.

Where historians have regarded the Atlantic as a zone of histor-

ical scholarship, and variously reached the above conclusions, I pro-

pose to explore it as a form of multidimensional modernity. This

strives for a degree of abstraction or overview in comparative analy-

sis that is not necessarily the goal of historical scholarship. Capitalism,

civilization and empires are the three dimensions. They are inter-

related, but mutually irreducible. They exhibit separate though over-

lapping patterns that can be analysed in isolation from others.

Moreover, each encompassed the specialized disciplines of distinct-

though-intersecting institutions. I can illustrate this point tangibly.

The public banks and chartered companies formed by states are

involved in capitalist expansion in ways that vice-regal administra-

tion is not. Scientific associations in the colonies are vehicles, per-

haps unwittingly, of civilizational thinking but are not direct partners

in trade. Aside from their incarnation in institutions, imperial states

and early capitalist enterprises elicit cultural presuppositions in the

guise of formalized patterns of behaviour, established values and

philosophies of government and political economy. These too are

independent, but share considerable affinity with one another.

12 J. G. A. Pocock, “The New British History in Atlantic Perspective,” AmericanHistorical Review 104, no. 2 (1999); and “The Atlantic Archipelago and the War ofthe Three Kingdoms,” in Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill, eds., The BritishProblem c. 1534–1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (London: MacMillan,1996).

12 chapter one

The approach in Europe and the Americas is to examine each of these

dimensions separately, whilst being attentive to the nexus between

them. Instead of new empirical, historical and archival research, in

the manner of Atlantic Studies, a re-theorization of this path of

modernity highlights and addresses lingering conceptual issues in the

social sciences to do with capitalism, civilization and state formation.

This can be seen in even a brief synopsis of the course of European

intrusion into the Americas. The nature of the westerly opening of

Europe is itself important. Western powers were drawn beyond the

Mediterranean in a slow incremental movement towards western

Atlantic islands that soon became familiar, and then beyond them.13

The launch into the Atlantic Ocean favoured deep-sea maritime

trade and opened up inter-oceanic connections for commerce. It

linked the heavily populated European landmass to a hemisphere

not occupied by recognized powers. Taking one step beyond this

view, it becomes clear that this was not merely a geo-political expan-

sion of borders or an incorporation of hemispheric conditions into

the life of the major civilizations. It was the opening action of an

early modernity that was transatlantic in its dynamic. A rapid qual-

itative advance took place in the creation of a western Atlantic zone

that opened up the longer-term possibility of an alteration of the

existing global configuration of powers. The momentous historical

potential is self-evident in the case of the Iberian powers; it is true

in other ways of France and England’s empires also.

Each of these three—civilization, imperial state formation and cap-

italism—constitutes a dimension of Atlantic modernity. A short dis-

cussion of states and capitalism commences in the passages below.

Before proceeding to this first point, I want to draw attention to a

potential pitfall in dealing with the notion of ‘civilization.’ A clarificationof terminology and some remarks on the politics of the word ‘civi-

lization’ itself is called for. There is a risk as the word is not inno-

cent, given its historical connotations. It is associated with colonialism

and not only European versions of it.14 The standing claim that civ-

ilizations analysis has not fully assimilated the consequences of colo-

nialism needs to be repeatedly answered. My response is a critical

13 See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Civilizations (London: Macmillan, 2000), chap. 15.14 For Japanese genealogies of the term, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Rewriting

History: Civilization Theory in Contemporary Japan,” Positions 1, no. 2 (1993).


hermeneutical one, or one of interpretation if you will.15 It involves

the danger of uncritically taking on the language of civilization, which

brings with it a legacy of self-belief in Western superiority. This is

a heritage internal to the very notion of civilization and is evident

from an etymological study of the word.16 A hermeneutical strategy

foregrounds the concerns of the present when it comes to evaluat-

ing the legacy of the notion of civilization. That legacy includes the

modern construction of the concept in the context of colonialism. It

also incorporates the classical writings of civilizations analysis that

endeavored, through synthesized world histories, to connect reflections

on civilization with the human sciences. While the broad body of

15 Contemporary critical hermeneutics is a pursuit of meaning through a com-bination of interpretation and ideological disclosure of the major societal influenceson ideas. Its aim is simultaneous reflection on the sources of socio-cultural under-standing and the specific intended contents of texts and practices. Put simply,hermeneutical thinkers are explicit about their own purposes. Concepts and actionscan be critically evaluated on this basis, not in the manner of a deconstructioniststrategy of positing absences and excesses of discourse, but by bridging the histor-ical distance between symbolic meanings inherited from the past and values thrownup by the modern condition. Hans Georg Gadamer’s notion of the “fusion of hori-zons” captures this intention well. He argues that the most we can hope for interms of “objective” grasp of meaning is to maximize the reconciliation of (a) oftenseemingly foreign interpretations either authored in the past, or whose originalmeaning is blurred, that come to us as objectified artifacts or texts and (b) currentperspectives of our more familiar present.

A hermeneutical method of this sort has some suitability in the application ofcivilizational sociology. However, it needs to be absorbed critically and be awareof a hermeneutics of suspicion that can also establish an analytical distance, a healthysuspicion if you will. To examine the problematic notion of civilization, we needto not only get close to its past meanings, but also—at the same time—keep a cer-tain kind of detachment. To put this another way, distance from the concrete socialstructures and forces that have produced the ethnocentricity of accepted civiliza-tional beliefs is required if that ethnocentricity is to be correctly identified. Bringingthe principles and positions of the present to bear on sociologies of non-Westernsocieties, on analyses of intercultural interaction and on time-honored perspectivesin the human sciences can simplify what is valuable and what needs revision orrejection in civilizational thinking. This calls for keen critical sensibilities that arealert to ideological influences on concept formation. The concepts of ‘civilization’and, as we see in chapter five, ‘discovery’ are suitable candidates to undergo suchcritical sociological scrutiny that emerge in civilizational sociology.

See Zymunt Bauman, Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding(London: Hutchinson, 1978); Josef Bleicher, The Hermeneutical Imagination: Outline of aPositive Critique of Scientism and Sociology (Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982), chap. 8;and Hans Georg Gadamer, Theory and Method (London: Sheed & Ward, 1975).

16 John Rundell, “From Indigenous Civilization to Indigenous Modernities,” inSaid Arjomand and Edward Tiryakian, eds., Rethinking Civilizational Analysis (London:Sage, 2004).

14 chapter one

writing in World History is open to the charge of Eurocentrism,17

careful scrutiny of the contemporary social science turns up critical

currents and a general attempt to problematize the very European-

centredness that is the object of post-colonial critique. There is ample

countervailing critique of Western modernity in the mainstream of

social theory.18 Marx, Freud, Simmel, Weber, Mauss, Durkheim and

earlier even Montaigne and Rousseau were all alternative and inquir-

ing voices that brought the idea of civilization into question. The

hermeneutical approach calls for the kind of reflection on civilizational

thinking that enlists current standards of critique along with detached

insights of classical social theory in order to produce a reconstruction

of formative ideas. In other words, the notion of ‘civilization’ cannot

be taken at face value, as it often has been within civilizational his-

tories in the Western human sciences. Rather than abandoning it,

the better alternative is to subject it to contemporary critical crite-

ria and methodical analysis. This is risky and the risk must be explic-

itly stated if the pitfalls so amply highlighted in post-colonial criticism

are to be avoided. But the prevailing opinion here is that, on the

whole, it is worth it as the hazards can be circumvented through a

critical sociological reconstruction of the best of civilizational sociology

that, in a way, ‘rescue’ the concept from aspects of its own heritage.

The second dimension under discussion is state formation. There

is a vast literature in historical sociology on states and empires. No

risk is taken in suggesting that modern European state formation is

the single greatest preoccupation of this field. Some of this body of

research informs my approach. However, there are three premises

of the manner in which the problematic of state formation is handled

in Europe and the Americas.The first is that the scope of analysis is expanded to cover the

full reach of actual modern north-western European states. A good

number of substantive histories of European state formation paid

insufficient attention to the imperial character of Western states, at

least prior to the rise of Atlantic history. This partial occlusion of

17 See for example, Edward Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985);and Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge,1990).

18 J. P. Arnason, “Social Theory and the Concept of Civilization,” Thesis Eleven20 (1988); and Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute, chap. 5.


the inter-continental expanse of states emerges in the self-limitation

of history and historical sociology to either the European or American

theatres of imperial formations. The assumption suggested by an

exclusive focus on one continent or the other is that the develop-

ment of the Atlantic empires involved two isolated processes of state

formation. However, the events and developments in both arenas

were often related and were superintended by overarching imperial

states. Casting state formation in the inter-continental frame, rather

than an exclusively European one, opens up its internal tensions as

they are played out on both sides of the Atlantic. The similarities

and stark distinctions between European and American spheres of

imperial states invite comparison and suggest an enlargement of the

field of study under examination. In the Atlantic zone, grander forms

of statecraft were induced. The creation and consolidation of the

modern centralist institutions of state rule was an empire-building

process in this era.19 Furthermore, the empires that were constructed

were oceanic, rather than mainly land-based. A zone of imperial

rivalry developed in which states opposed one another on the seas,

jealously guarding strategic and territorial interests.

Previous experiences of colonizing furnished Europeans with models

or exemplars to bring to America. In turn the colonization of the

American world fed a paradigm for the consolidation of territories

in Europe and elsewhere. Regal authorities had, in the amalgamation

of Spanish territories, a conquistador experience, which was very much

contemporary, to reflect on in their encroachments on the Caribbean

and South America. Similarly, the English had mutually transform-

ing experiences in the conquests in Ireland and the incursion onto

the northeast coast of America. State formation in both the Spanish

and British empires was a process of different theatres. However, it

produced supra-provincial and imperial bodies that governed at an

Atlantic level and addressed trans-territorial problems. The thrust of

the analysis of processes of institutional formation undertaken here

is to work on this inter-continental and imperial plane.

The second feature is comparison of absolutist states that were also

empires with Britain after its historical experience of Stuart absolutism.

‘Absolutism’ itself deserves more penetrating definition. Can France

19 Anthony Pagden, introduction to The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the EuropeanUnion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

16 chapter one

and Spain be fruitfully characterized as, in some sense, ‘empires of

absolutism’? In a sense they can and not because absolute monarchs

administered them, arguably a myth created by nineteenth century

historians.20 Nor is posthumous characterization of these regimes as

absolutist grounds for more far-reaching study. As empires of absolutism,

France and Spain can be distinguished from Europe’s empires of the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which were built on nation states.21

More importantly, for comparative purposes, the principal feature of

their existence was an internal conflict of elites over the terms and limits ofpower.22 In this regard, there clearly is something in common between

the two empires of absolutism and Britain. This was a conflict in

the European territories of all three states between provincial and

municipal elites.

A comparable, though not simply analogous, tension embroiled

imperial and colonial elites. Colonialism involved a sort of compact

between colonial and imperial elites during an era of early modern

state building when the resources and legitimacy of state power were

insufficient to effect an outright domination of distant and remote

colonies. Indeed, outright domination was not a pattern that Western

Europe’s rulers were accustomed to in dealing with provincial privileges

20 Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early ModernEurope (London and New York: Longman, 1992); and K. A. Stanbridge, “England,France and their North American Colonies: An Analysis of Absolutist State Powerin Europe and in the New World,” Journal of Historical Sociology 10, no. 10 (1997).

21 For a helpful typology of European empires see David B. Abernethy, TheDynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415–1980 (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2000), chap. 3.

22 I analytically differentiate the dynamic of this conflict from early modern classstruggles. Historically, to varying degrees in different cases, the two over-lapped.The European-based conflict that most clearly combined the internal clash of elitesand separate classes was the long English revolution. This involved class-based revoltsand the contests of elite interests, which effected a decisive transformation of thecountry. It wasn’t only a collision of class forces, however; it was also a matter ofacting out the rivalries of elites within the more powerful contending classes. Themulti-faceted nature of the long revolution is well captured in Christopher Hill, TheCentury of Revolution 1603–1714 (Berkshire: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980). For classanalyses of absolutist state formation, see Perry Anderson, Lineages of the AbsolutistState (London: Verso, 1974); Rodney Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism(London: Verso, 1985); and Colin Mooers, The Making of the Bourgeoisie: Absolutism,Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France, and Germany (London: Verso,1991). Mooers’ analysis is most interesting as it considers the separate dynamics ofclass and elite in play on pp. 50–52 (in regard to the Fronde) and in chap. 4 (withregard to the Civil War).


and municipal corporations. All three powers generated national and

imperial institutions in response to internal and inter-continental

tensions and struggles. Imperial government embodied and effected

the routinization of tension between central monarchical and imperial

authority, on one side, and regional and colonial bodies, on the other.

The third feature of the way that state formation is handled here

is a metatheoretical view about processes of state formation in them-

selves. In Max Weber and Norbert Elias’ sociologies of the state,

power is captured in the monopolies of violence, law and legitimacy

held by the ruling apparatus.23 This image of state formation as a

steady process of the monopolization and rationalization of power

has been easily interpreted in a functionalist frame. Against this view,

I see state institutions as creations out of the internal tension between

rival spheres. The metatheoretical stress falls on the creative innovation

of new institutions that governed on a supra-provincial and transatlantic

plane and, in the case of the non-contiguous clusters of domains, a

trans-European plane. The new monarchies’ corps of state did draw

upon existing monopolies of authority in the bodies of jurisprudence,

city administrations and in mercantile-regulatory organisations. But

they also invented new positions of command and a layer of institutions

that confronted the basic problems of ruling larger and more diverse

territories. These were the vehicles of the abstraction of governmental

power and they embodied the qualitative advance of the principles

of monarchical sovereignty. Surviving bases of power were not simply

absorbed. In fact, these state powers continued to fight against provin-

cial and urban elites that contested its authority at various junctures.

They forged another supra-provincial level of rule that predominated.

The distinguishing feature of absolutism was the complex relationship

of tension with other institutional constellations, most notably the

church and provincial and urban powers. It pulled these together in

managing social order, but it also conflicted with them. Its conflictual

orientation was directed towards clerical, urban and provincial elites

as well as the subordinated classes. Out of intra-class and elite conflict,

new governmental bodies were forged.

23 Norbert Elias, State Formation and Civilization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982);and Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 223–31, 904–10. For one critique of Weber’s approach, see Michael Braddick,“The Early Modern English State and the Question of Differentiation from 1500–1700,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 1 (1996).

18 chapter one

Concentrations of military and administrative resources were nec-

essarily accompanied by a re-expansion of the horizon of power itself.

Power was organized into national and imperial matrices. The forms

and images of power were evident in the ensemble of symbols and

identities associated with the institutional apparatus of the monar-

chies and post monarchical states. These enabled not only the exer-

cise of power, but also its active extension, especially in the form of

colonization and conquest that is its symbolic objectification. Institu-

tional forms contained more than the coercive resources available to

ruling elites. The institutions and counter-institutions of rule symbol-

ized power and generated the identities of those who executed it.

The establishment of the monarchical apparatus was a series of inven-

tions of new authority. Their efficacy had to go beyond the exer-

cise of sheer force or of ideological device. The symbolization of

authority became part of the reach of governmental sovereignty.

Indeed, it was the representation, or rather re-enactment, of the rit-

uals, customs, semiotics and objects that signified and expressed the

condensation of state authority and the abstraction of its power.

The third dimension is capitalism. A glance through the historio-

graphy of capitalism gives the impression that this should be a

familiar story. But, it is still the subject of significant disputes. What

are the origins of capitalism? Do they lie in the feudal pre-history?

What significance can be accorded to Protestantism? The English

agrarian revolution of the seventeenth century? Proto-industrial devel-

opment? Industrialization in the nineteenth century? The political

revolutions? The growth of trade? A more recent dispute revolves

around doubts about European exceptionalism.24 These questions are

not addressed directly, but this book is also not silent on the mat-

ter either. The historical connection of the economic worlds of

Western Europe and their cultural focus with Caribbean trade and

production, pre-existing networks of trade in Africa, the northeast of

America and the hinterlands of Central and South America has not

received its due in twentieth century political economy, despite the

observations of contemporaries that attested to the dynamism of early

24 See Andre Gunder Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1998); and Jaroslav Krejcí, Before the European Challenge:The Great Civilizations of Asia and the Middle East (Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press, 1990).


capitalism. One contribution of this book is to revive and test ear-

lier insights in a framework that is alert to political and civilizational

influences on the formation of capitalism.

Mercantilism should be regarded as a crucial component in this

analysis. The historical debate about mercantilism—whether it was

‘real’ in some sense or an invention of economic historians—is

unsolved. The mainstream view in economic history is that the sum

of local and national institutions of economic regulation makes up

mercantilism. While that is accepted here, a more broad-sweeping

analysis redefines it as the economic infrastructure of transatlantic

imperialism. The transformative effects of the imperial superstruc-

tures reached further than the territories held by any of Western

Europe’s powers. Bernard Bailyn’s observation that the British Empire’s

“economic involvement in the Atlantic world radiated through the

entire inter-hemispheric system”,25 applies equally to Spain’s and

France’s empires. The reach of all three empires extended beyond

recognized jurisdictions. The economic matrices of production, sup-

ply and distribution of goods and services overlapped with one

another. Imperial economic coordination reached levels that were

not possible for the feudal polities of the Middle Ages. It patterned

early modern trade and so-called primitive accumulation as suggested

by Marx. It also reveals a consolidation of the cultural premises of

economic action and economic relationships characteristic of early

modern capitalism. The increased velocity of trade movements

prompted mercantilist policies throughout the European continent.

In turn, they bound the Atlantic world together as an economic zone

through the various laws and instruments applied by metropolitan

elites to the regulation of colonial production and trade. These demar-

cated the patterns of trade and accumulation that were the dynamism

of capitalist development in the Atlantic zone.

Slavery was a vital component of this formative phase of capital-

ism and orthodox economic history has failed to appreciate this in

the past. It established a wide-ranging set of social relations across

three continents involving merchants, insurers, commodity produc-

ers and slaves. Its impact reached deep into many spheres of the

European economy, but was also cultural inasmuch as it sharpened

25 Bernard Bailyn, preface to Armitage and Braddick, The British Atlantic, p. xv.

20 chapter one

the kinds of modern rationality associated with capitalist production

and trade.26 Culture also shaped the conditions in which colonies

were integrated into Atlantic trade. Widening the appreciation of

historical capitalism to the larger Atlantic zone brings the overarching

role of states and unfree labor into the frame. This returns the vital

pre-history of industrial capitalism to its proper place and not only

as a consideration of the transition from feudalism in Europe, but as

the creation of an international system with global possibilities.

Conclusion

The book is structured in two ways. Firstly, the narrative unfolds

more-or-less chronologically. The historical sociology of state formation,

capitalism and civilization spans the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

This choice of era is easy. It is marked out discretely by the main

lives of the Atlantic empires from the beginning through to their

fragmentation. In the main, however, the argument tracks the three

dimensions of Atlantic modernity. Of course, the three dimensions

all exceed the lifespan of each empire and cannot be reduced to the

cumulative activity of each. This is true also of imperial state formation

with its pre-history of continental conquests. Nonetheless, for heuristic

purposes, the formal Euro-American empires provide a frame for

exploring the three dimensions. There is no exclusive nomothetic

approach presumed here, but nor is this a pure ideography either.

The actual flows and interactions of each dimension and between

each empire can be examined without being forced to choose decisively

between the dilemma of nomothetic and ideographic explanation.

Examining capitalism, state formation and civilizational comprehension

within the frameworks of empire does bring to attention institutional

patterns. Each is elaborated separately in different chapters with

intersecting themes receiving simultaneous treatment at times.

Chapters three and seven through to nine concentrate on imperial

state formation. They pick up in explicit terms the problems of mutual

dependence and distance as they are expressed above. Additionally,

26 This is the core argument of Robin Blackburn’s The Making of New World Slavery,from the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London: Verso, 1997). See also the pro-logue and epilogue to Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries ofSlavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).


state formation is historicized through the categories of absolutism,

provincial power, empire and colonial edifice. Chapter three pre-

sents an overview of all four categories. Sociological images of abso-

lutism and monopolies of power are problematized. In their place,

the aristocratism of provincial government and the command of cities

over their own jurisdiction are offered to counterbalance the one-

sidedness of assumptions made in some currents of historical sociol-

ogy. Early modern states were intrinsically tension-ridden polities in

their domestic and overseas realms. This figuration is dealt with in

detail and alludes to a like-though-unalike relationship between impe-

rial authorities and colonial organs, an analysis that commences in

the third chapter and is rejoined in the seventh. It was similar in

all three empires inasmuch as the struggle between contending forces

was mostly subdued, though it was occasionally vivid, taking the

form of negotiation over jurisdiction and the implementation of met-

ropolitan commands. The overseas domains were distinguished by

the efficacy of the colonial order, the intervention of distance and

the fragility of royal clientage. Chapters seven to nine describe the

development of the colonies’ political edifice. They explore how

colonists came to put into question—through reinterpretation of their

own political and cultural traditions—the imperial structures that

ruled over them to which they had remained largely loyal. The last

substantive chapter argues that the final revolt of Creole and Anglo-

American republicans can only be understood in terms of the breadth

of possibility given by prevailing social structures, inherited traditions

and by the limited capture of the sphere of politics by institutional-

ized power.

Capitalism is discussed in chapter six only. The chief aim is to

re-problematize the early era of capitalist social relations by drawing

attention to the multifaceted involvement of states in its formation.

It is impossible to fully appreciate this without taking the Atlantic

perspective and without exploring Western Europe’s premier powers

as empires and not just nation-states in the making. Mercantilism

was a sine qua non of the dynamism of early capitalist relations, as

it provided the infrastructure and coordination that could not be

achieved by private interests alone. Equally, slavery was a vital form

of labor that spurred the outgrowth of capitalism. It was the centerpiece

of tri-continental trade and the object of experiments in rationalized

production. Its products, apart from their extraordinary profitability,

helped to transform consumption. These aspects of early capitalism

22 chapter one

have been the lacunae of the historical sociology of its development.

They have a place here as they relate directly to state formation

and the Atlantic zone as a crucible of civilizational interaction.

Civilization is an especial problem. It defines Atlantic modernity

in one respect; namely that the opening of the Atlantic world to

Europeans and their continent and to Africa made it a zone of civ-

ilizational exchange where there was no precedent of the external

influence of another major empire. The impact of Spanish, British

and French colonialism on the Americas that occurred as part of

this long historical process is well documented. However, interest in

the civilizational consequences of continual interaction on Europe

has been, on the whole, secondary. Chapters four and five deal with

this problem of how the expansion of Atlantic states into the American

world altered the terms in which the world was known, interpreted

and pictured by Europeans. One of the most profound shocks was

ethnographic: it lay in the knowledge of cultures and societies that

were not accounted for in the canons of wisdom. Europeans’ basic

sense of Self and Other was thrown into flux in the confrontation

with human diversity in a way that it wasn’t elsewhere. How per-

sistent cultural transaction with the Americas sharpened modern civ-

ilizational self-consciousness is the principal problem pursued in those

two chapters.

The institution of centralist imperial states and the formation of

capitalism were allied processes that connected with the broadening

of northwest Europe’s civilizational horizon. The comparative frame-

work developed here makes one assumption. The presupposition of

this framework is that a civilizational awareness emerged without

being fully and clearly uttered until the late eighteenth century. To

best understand how the pre-text of identity of modern Europe

formed, the conceptual tools of recent civilizational sociology need

to be reviewed and some further theoretical work done. The next

chapter sets in motion a realignment of the sociology of civilizations

in order to establish the theoretical ground on which Europe’s his-

torical consciousness can be substantively explored.

1 This facet of civilizational sociology cannot be developed in these pages butsee Gregory Melluish, “The Clash of Civilizations: A Model of Historical Develop-ment?” in Arjoman and Tiryakian, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis.

2 Sources on the sea change in thinking in comparative sociology include Arjomandand Tiryakian, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis; Johann P. Arnason, S. N. Eisenstadt andBjorn Wittrock, eds., Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Arnason,Civilizations in Dispute; and Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities.See also Thesis Eleven 62 (2000), which is a reference point for the current work.

CHAPTER TWO

CIVILIZATIONAL SOCIOLOGY AND THE ATLANTIC

Civilizational sociology is a branch of the social sciences that has

come together at the cusp of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

It has a strong sense of its own historicity in two respects. Firstly, it

self-reflects on the conditions of its development, that is, on the post-

Cold War context. The conditions are political, cultural and global.

The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the rivalry of super-power

blocs and removed an axis of inter-state conflict that the world was

preoccupied with. Large-scale migration and the rise of multicultur-

alism have challenged monocultural conceptions of ethnicity. The

comparative success of developmental states in East Asia and Latin

America—although that success was fragile and uncertain and remains

so at this time—along with the formation of the European Union

suggests that the world is still comprised of regional blocs and is

therefore multipolar. A new attention to the idea of civilization makes

some sense in light of these developments. Above all, the opening

for this kind of thinking exists because of the widely held opinion

that the new context is post-national. To be sure, neo-liberal theses

of the end of History and the clash of civilizations feed on this con-

text also. However, the civilizational sociologies identified here have

joined the sharp, critical response to the chief advocates of those

theses, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington’s views.1 In my

view, these are the most far-reaching as they challenge the histories

of the West that Fukuyama and Huntington depend on.

Secondly, civilizational sociology is a body of critical revision of

earlier traditions of civilizations analysis and classical social theory.2

Reflecting on the theoretical heritage of Weber, Durkheim and Mauss

24 chapter two

is a hermeneutical exercise, as indicated in the opening chapter. It

emphasizes their scholarship of the many diverse cultural, religious

and political orders that went against the grain of those who defined

civilization in the singular as the attainment of a standard of eco-

nomic, political and moral development.3 Earlier Western sociology

produced valuable observations on diversity and plurality when it

developed in an open-ended ethnological mode, although insights

were sometimes forestalled and underdeveloped. Regrettably, their

twentieth century heirs have not followed their richest insights through

and the idea of civilization all but disappeared from the Western

social sciences.4 Civilizational sociology is a revival of that idea, but

one that is keenly aware of the limitations of earlier schools of

thought. The paths of civilizations analysis and to some degree social

theory were constrained by the ethnocentricity that was co-present

in their own frameworks and existed uneasily with other theoretical

and empirical findings. The hermeneutical method evident in much

current civilizational sociology combines contemporary perspectives

with reinterpretation of classical social theory and civilizations analysis.

Civilizational Sociology in Short Summary

Some of the most well known latter day comparative and macro-

sociologists are contributors to the reconstruction of civilizational theory:

Shmuel Eisenstadt, Johann Arnason, Benjamin Nelson, Marcel Gauchet,

William McNeill and Louis Dumount to name only a few.5 There is

3 Johann P. Arnason, “Civilizational Patterns and Civilizing Processes,” in Arjomandand Tiryakian, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis; and Praesenjit Duara, “The Discourseof Civilization and Decolonisation,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004).

4 There are some exceptions in thinkers that emerged after the First World Warwho worked at the margins with notions of civilization. Pitiram Sorokin, NorbertElias, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Franz Borkenau, Karl Jaspers, Alfred Weber andthe Chicago School of sociology are notable. Antonio Gramsci could also be addedon the grounds of his reflections on Americanism. Well-known historians ArnoldToynbee, Oswald Spengler and Lewis Mumford waxed a conservative agenda duringthe interwar years that, nonetheless, conceptualized multiple civilizations. Laterfigures who were solitary though prominent sociologists and anthropologists whocontributed during the reign of American functionalism include Eric Voegelin,William McNeill and Pierre Clastres. See Bjorn Wittrock’s essay, “Cultural Crystalli-zation and Civilization Change: Axiality and Modernity,” in Ben-Rafael and Sternberg,Comparing Modernities, for a realignment of cultural and historical perspectives.

5 Louis Dumount, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1980); Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, The Origins and Diversityof Axial Age Civilizations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), European

civilizational sociology and the atlantic 25

neither the space nor the need to rehearse their perspectives in full.

For my purposes, a review of this synthesising body of comparative

analysis can be taken in two stages. Firstly, some general comments

about the presumptions of the field draw out generic insights that

can be applied to a study of the civilizational dimension of Atlantic

modernity, with particular attention paid to the inter-relationships

developed between more-or-less cohered cultural regions. Then, a

closer and more detailed inspection of particular perspectives will

flow into an elaboration of my own approach.

The sociology of civilizations offers includes important pointers for

this study of transatlantic colonialism, even though its general han-

dling of colonialism is insufficient. It overturns any proposition that

traditional societies were isolated and unconnected. The agenda is,

by necessity, reorganized around encounters between societies. Flows

of goods, ideas, people, capital, armies and beliefs become the priv-

ileged material of investigation. The intensity and types of contact

between societies comes into focus, even where different societies

regard each other with great hostility. Civilizations rarely clashed

pure and simple, but were and continue to be deeply embedded in

a variety of external relationships that sometimes involve warfare.

They can be characterized by inter-societal and inter-civilizational

contacts that are ongoing and that compel internal change. Post-

functionalist historical sociologies formulated in this vein presuppose

that human societies of the past were interactive and porous, more

than they were closed, defensive or remote. The formation of states

and the modern system of capitalism are social processes that are

revisited here with this civilizational interactivity in mind.

The general lessons of civilizational perspectives have a good deal

to offer an examination of Atlantic modernity and yet civilizational

thinkers have been surprisingly subdued on the Americas. The conclu-

sion most salient to the current work that can be drawn from the

recent scholarship is that the level of inter-cultural contact from

the High Middle Ages to the early modern era between the major

Civilization in a Comparative Perspective: A Study in the Relations between Culture and SocialStructure (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1987), introduction to vol. 1 of Patternsof Modernity (London: Francis Pinter, 1987), and “The Civilizational Dimension inSociological Analysis,” Thesis Eleven 62 (2000); Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantmentof the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Toby E. Huff, ed., On theRoads to Modernity: Conscience, Science and Civilizations: Selected Writings of Benjamin Nelson(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981); and William McNeill, “The Rise ofthe West after Twenty-Five Years,” Journal of World History 9, no. 2 (1998).

26 chapter two

civilizational centers of Islam, Western Europe, Eurasia, China and

India is still underestimated. I would add that this is the case also

with the intercontinental traffic passing through the Atlantic empires.

Indeed, in the context of the progress made in this genre of com-

parative social science towards an understanding of the intercourse

of civilizations, the conspicuous absence of the Atlantic zone and the

modern Euro-American empires suggests that there is a space to be

filled. To this point, civilizational sociologists have not really addressed,

much less assimilated, the work of historians of the region.

This general review of the field now narrows to examine those

conclusions that are germane to the current project’s purpose. I want

to briefly canvass the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and

Johann Arnason in order to establish the argument that civilizations

are zones of interaction and exchange. This will also set the scene

for an effective conception of civilization for suitable for study of the

old worlds of Europe and America.

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss can be put together as they

experienced a confluence of ideas that produced an original synthesis.6

Durkheim’s early sociology stressed the functional division of labor

in self-contained national societies. His later turn to anthropology was

a move to a plane of cultural comparison. The border-bounded soci-

ety became a problematic unit of analysis, as did a notion of civili-

zation that privileged the unity of societies in symbolic representations.7

This met Mauss’ own anthropological insights which concentrated

on the cultural fabric that exceeded societies but also linked them

in a civilizational constellation. Consequently, it can be seen that

they generated two salient notions of civilization. Firstly, civilization

is a cultural form subject to ‘rationalization’, that is to national appro-

priation, modification and abuse by states. It cannot, however, be

completely confined to any particular state. Indeed, state-less societies

can also be attributed a cultural unity-of-sorts, a move supported to

some degree by ethnographies of their day.8 This implies that civilization

can only be understood in the plural, as delineable cultural unities.

6 Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, “In Between Sociology and Anthropology:Note on the Notion of Civilization,” Social Research 38, no. 4 (1971).

7 John F. Rundell and Stephen Mennell, eds., introduction to Classical Readingsin Culture and Civilization (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 20–21.

8 On the uses of power in stateless societies and anthropology’s mistaken esti-mation of archaic societies as pre-political, see Pierre Clastres, Society against the State:The Leader as Servant and the Humane Uses of Power among the Indians of the Americas (NewYork: Zone Books, 1987).


It also indicates that they recognized the complexity of the cogni-

tive systems that anthropology was studying.

Secondly, their neglected writings established the first principles of

critical civilizational sociology through their focus on symbolism. The

attention paid to the symbolic dimension paved the way for a notion

of civilization that did not bind itself to the project of nationalism

of any one state. To Durkheim, this was a conscience collective, or a

fabric of taboos, representations and symbols that sacralized mean-

ing across pre-industrial societies. Mauss too accepts the conscience col-lective as the definitive feature of civilization. It surpasses existing

nations and is widely recognized as a broader and, in most respects,

de-territorialized form (notwithstanding the nationalist mobilization

of the term by Mauss’ contemporaries). In more general terms, the

conscience implied that the proper domain for the study of civilization

is not the range of emblems of progress, but rather the symbolic

realm in which social intercourse is made meaningful. To re-phrase

this in a manner more in keeping with the tone of this work, the

symbolic realm is the set of inherited and emergent premises that

can be activated in a zone of intercultural and dialogical exchange.

This approach is not confined to neglected insights of classical

sociology. Johann Arnason’s post-Weberian perspective infuses the

best insights of Durkheim and Mauss with those of Castoriadis,

Elias, Marx, Luhmann and Said.9 The outcome is a re-conception

of the inter-linkage of ‘culture’ and ‘power’ in which neither is seen

as inert and both are mutually modifying. The institutions of power

that emerge in the process of state formation are inseparable from

complexes of meaning that, in turn, are interpreted through the

objectification and wielding of power. However, the richest of his-

torical studies which inform civilizational sociology suggest that com-

plexes of meaning and interpretation—often taken in Weberian

sociologies as the world religions—mainly thrive in the crucible of

civilizational encounter with each other. Instead of ‘power’ and ‘cul-

ture’ appearing as juxtaposed ‘things’, both can be seen as varying

9 Johann P. Arnason, introduction to Social Theory and Japanese Experience: The DualCivilization (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998). For a comparison betweenArnason and Eisenstadt, see also Jeremy C. A. Smith, “Theories of State Formationand Civilisation in Johann P. Arnason and Shmuel Eisenstadt’s Comparative Sociologiesof Japan,” Critical Horizons 3, no. 2 (2002).

28 chapter two

across history and across different civilizational bases, according to

the post-Weberian view. If this is so, then there seems to be little

reason to view civilizations as sealed formations that were more-or-

less remote from each other until the modern age, rather than

dynamic and self-transforming over a much longer period. Arnason’s

theory and his actual historical sociologies submit that it is through

cultural, religious, political and economic exchange, contact, deriva-

tion and connection often encompassed by expansive empires that

cultural self-transformation occurs. His conceptual reworking of

Weberian schools of thought clears the ground for a comparative

sociology that stresses civilizational interaction over the longue duree,instead of isolation prior to the modern epoch of globality.

The process by which Arnason clarifies and synthesizes Weberian

sources sharply focuses the conception of civilization on meaning.10

This alludes to the shared background, or substratum, that provides

the assumptions behind competing ideologies within a discrete, nor-

mally multi-societal, region.11 Similarly, in economic and political

spheres where power is exercised, that very exercise of power is

framed by a common store of meaning. His three categories of multi-

dimensional analysis are wealth, meaning and power. The inter-

connections and dissonances between them single out civilizations

from each other. They can be used in comparative analysis to high-

light civilizational patterns and identify the terms on which civiliza-

tions engage and interact.

On the face of it, the three categories suggest affinity with the

three dimensions of Atlantic modernity discussed here. To be sure,

there is much in common. However, the points of connection and inter-

penetration between wealth, power and meaning are not the same

as the articulation of state power, capitalist formation and civiliza-

tion that is theorized here and in chapters to follow. There is not

the space to set out Arnason’s argument and hold it up for comparison,

nor would this be really necessary. However, one feature will serve

to illustrate a major point of departure. How cultural principles frame

the parameters within which states negotiate confrontation with one

another, conduct their foreign exploits and how they define the terms

of recognition, non-recognition, misrecognition and appropriation of

10 Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute, chap. 4.11 Ibid., pp. 205–207.


other societies is treated differently in these pages. To put this another

way, civilizational confrontations of the kind that occurred in the

Americas have be theorized in a framework that is more sensitized

to the extreme differences that Europeans could perceive in the inter-

facing social formations of the Western hemisphere. Arnason’s own

classification of civilizations privileges only those clearly connected

to imperial and national states. The status of non-stratified, stateless

civilizations is not considered in enough depth. In fact, outright dis-

missal of non-imperial cultures is implicit in post-Weberianism and,

in this regard, Arnason’s civilizational theory falls short of fully con-

cluding the direction of Durkheim and Mauss’ incomplete, but deeply

insightful, formulations.

This has a pressing importance for consideration of the Atlantic

as a crucible of civilizational exchange that was contextualized by

colonialism, given the prominence of non-imperial pre-Colombian

civilizations that coexisted with the Mesoamerican and Andean empires

on the American continent and in the Caribbean. Their part was

not inconsiderable and while the European impact was devastating,

their counter-reaction on the civilizational order and sense of identity

of Europeans influenced the reconstruction of theological, ethnological

and scientific assumptions, as argued in chapter five. In addition, the

colonized survivors were able to variously mark out a civilizational

space (in both a sociological and geographical sense) for preservation

and for modern forms of ongoing engagement. Notwithstanding these

critical comments, there can be little doubt that Arnason has gone

further than any other social theorist in revitalizing the cultural

insights of civilizational analysis and the classical heritage of sociology

and anthropology.

This class of theorists offers the most salient historical understanding

of the formation and flows of civilizations. Two notions of civilization

are at work here. While they are compatible, they are not used in

equal measure. Comparative sociologists draw a potent image of civi-

lizations as geo-cultural clusters that embody unity-in-tension for con-

stellations of discrete societies. Together, these make up a useful

heuristic guide for the current approach. They spell out how civilizations

have been harmonized by an overarching cultural imagery, but have

also been demographically, ethnically and economically diverse. Global

history has demonstrated that such clusters are frequently found to

encompass a rich diversity of peoples, migratory movements, ideas

30 chapter two

and styles.12 Historical civilizations were open to internal alterations

prompted by contact, exchange and war with other societies and

geocultures; such inter-connections are arguably more influential today

than ever before.13

There is a second notion. If understood as unified by shared pre-

sumptions—though still containing conflicting ideological, institutional

and structural patterns—then it can be admitted that civilizations do

not simply generate functional requisites of ethnic, economic, polit-

ical or linguistic homogeneity. In this sense, they are not just units

of analysis for historians and comparativists. They are also the sym-

bolic and, sometimes, material means through which intercultural

encounters become meaningful, especially those of the kind involved

in the colonization of the Americas. They establish the terms of iden-

tity and difference between peoples, societies and places. Thus, in

the second notion of civilization, the distinctive trait for compara-

tive purposes is the assemblage of cultural suppositions that provide

the background to trajectories of development.

Rethinking Civilizational Sociology in the Atlantic Context

This is a careful and purposeful selection of civilizational sociology.

Bearing its main precepts in mind, I propose the following working

schema. It is designed to raise the best theoretical platform for the

following discussion, which privileges the second over the first notion.

The civilizational sociology constructed here examines:

1) The forms of engagement in intercultural encounters amongst

Europeans and between Europeans and Amerindians.14 Engage-

ment should be taken here in the broadest sense: dialogue,

12 See, for example, Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross Cultural Contacts andExchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

13 This is a perspective distinct from Samuel Huntington’s understanding of civili-zational clash and indeed is at odds with it. In that version, civilizations seem tobe great historical entities that are immunized against external influences and endurelong periods with their essential cultural traits preserved. Here they are re-conceptualizedas symbolically thickly bordered rather than automatically equated with eitheralliances of discrete state powers or seemingly stable supra-state forces. In this regard,they also encompass stateless cultures or indeed may be constituted by them. Comparewith Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). See, for contrast, Subramanyam, “ConnectedHistories.”

14 Some space is devoted to the experiences of enslaved and freed Africans, thoughadmittedly this is an under-explored aspect of this exposition of Atlantic modernity.


study, representation, diplomacy, treaties, alliances, trade, as

well as the modes of conquest, violence and warfare.

2) The emergence of a self-consciousness of ‘civilization’ amongst

Europeans. Civilizational difference was posited by Europeans

in the Atlantic zone in ways that it was not elsewhere. The

confrontation with the American world and its ethnic plurality—

which colonialism added European and African identities to—

fuelled a conception of radical otherness that coincided with an

awareness of diverse civilizations. It can be gauged in the grow-

ing comprehension of cultural juxtaposition of the societies of

Western Europe and the social imaginary of the Amerindian

world. This consciousness is evident well in advance of the

appearance of civilizational discourses of the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries.

3) The signs of civilizational interpretation. Europeans made sense

of the American world through a variety of modes: maps and

topography, travel literature, art and scientific works, the use

and translation of language and urban and village architecture

that reflected known traditions and New World conditions.

These produced a materiality, or material expression, of par-

ticular civilization identities that were mostly European, but

could also be mestizo, Creole and African-American. Some of

these circulated widely adding to the common fund of Atlantic

meaning, for example maps and books. They enhanced a feel-

ing of civilizational particularity that developed in Europe in

the eighteenth century.

This civilizational theory that is part of my overall conception of

Atlantic modernity is developed in detail in chapters four and five.

It centres on a sharpening European awareness of different civilizational

forms or, in other words, a capacity to ‘map’ the world as a place

of civilizations. Inter-civilizational interaction in the Americas involved

the collision of universes of meaning. The transformation of cultural

understanding that took place across three centuries of transatlantic

exchange involved a complex combination of the mobilization of tra-

ditions and incorporation of innovations. One way to understand

this as a civilizational process is to conceptualize it in the terms of

Cornelius Castoriadis’ theory of the social imaginary.15 Civilizational

15 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MA: MITPress, 1987).

32 chapter two

thinking was not central to Castoriadis’ concerns. However, it is pos-

sible to view the major thrust of his work as a parallel and perti-

nent development.16 Instead of searching out intercultural applications,

his philosophy revolves more explicitly around the root meaning that

human societies construct to explain existence in both ontological

and societal terms. Another way of expressing this is to pose it as

forms of image making through which the universe, the world and

society are interpreted. As a body of work, his theory is distinctive

and subject to substantial reception.17 The principal interest for the

current argument lies in the specific notion of the ‘instituted’ and

‘instituting’ imaginary. The distinction is between:

. . . on one hand, given structures, ‘materialized’ institutions and works,whether these be material or not; and, on the other hand, that whichstructures, institutes, materializes. In short, it is the union and the ten-sion of instituting society and of instituted society, of history made andof history in the making.18

Symbols, language, ideas, rules, conflicts and structures are created

by humans and order the social world. However, they are both

“made” in the sense that they are received from the past and in

flux or they are in the process of “making” in the sense that they

institute what is new and thereby bring about change.

To render this key principle of the theory of the imaginaire suit-

able for the civilizational sociology I am proposing I will highlight a

minor thread of Arnason’s reception of Castoriadis, one in which he

deals with this precise question. The formation of meaning can be

re-worked and re-presented as, in his words, a process of “creative

transformation of earlier cultural orientations.”19 All social formations

variously develop dynamics of transformation based on inherited

16 See Arnason’s reading of Castoriadis as a contributor to the metatheory ofcivilizational forms in Civilizations in Dispute, pp. 226–32.

17 See, for example, Fabio Ciaramelli, “The Self-presupposition of the Origin:Homage to Cornelius Castoriadis,” Thesis Eleven 49 (1997); Hans Joas, “Institutionaliza-tion as a Creative Process: The Sociological Importance of Castoriadis’ PoliticalPhilosophy,” American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 5 ( Jan–May 1989); Kanakis Leledakis,“An Appreciation of Cornelius Castoriadis: Theorist of Autonomy and Openness,”European Journal of Social Theory 2, no. 1 (February 1999): 95–98.

18 Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution, p. 108.19 Johann P. Arnason, “The Imaginary Institution of Modernity,” Revue Europeenes

de Sciences Sociales 27, no. 86 (1989), p. 22. Arnason develops this line of argumentabout the place of traditions in deeper and more general terms in “Culture andImaginary Significations,” Thesis Eleven 22 (1989). Later publications build on these


beliefs, ideologies and visions. The emphasis in Arnason’s evaluation

is quite different: there is not, for all comparative intents and purposes,

overriding creation of institutions ex nihilo, that is, a distinguishable

side of utter creation. Where Castoriadis places the accent on the

novelty of world-historical cultural breakthroughs—such as the Greek

invention of democracy—Arnason acknowledges the weight of tradition

that falls heavily on the makers of history (who are at the same time

interpreters of the past). The implication of this view is that the inven-

tiveness of imaginary creations is exaggerated by Castoriadis and that

the development of symbols, language, ideas and rules always depend

upon given traditions in acts of reinterpretation. However, Castoriadis’

point is that the instituted imaginary should not be conceived of as

an unshakeable burden. Historical agents are engaged in processes

of creative change of ideal conditions (and, for that matter, material

ones). There is never a complete moment of absolute determination

of anything social by the past; there is always an element of inde-

terminacy or flux through which other possibilities can be exploited.

This is a helpful reformulation in which social and cultural change

is conceptualized in terms of accessible traditions derived from the

past that can be mustered to make particular events, developments,

structures and symbols meaningful. To put this another way the formsof intercultural engagement make sense in the context of frames of tradition.

At the same time, it accounts for creative agency mobilized in the

present in the invention of modes of interpretation that incorporate

the novelty of what is discovered in inter-societal settings. The central

image becomes one of collective arrangement and reorganization

based on an inherited order and a creative horizon. Implicit in this

conclusion is the supposition that societies are anything but closed

entities and civilizations as ‘families of societies’ (to borrow Mauss’

phrase) are likewise porous. If societies have ‘boundaries’ set by tradi-

tions, they are also ‘movable’; that is, they are subject to creative

transformation. Civilizations have symbolical borders too that are

arguably even more mobile, especially if we accept the second notion

of civilizational detailed above. The broader cultural context is more

visible in this kind of understanding of societal and civilizational

processes.

insights through application to substantive cases, although the phrase ‘creative trans-formations’ does not figure prominently in them. See Social Theory and Japanese Experience,and The Future that Failed.

34 chapter two

However, there are still outstanding questions about the relation-

ship between specific inherited traditions and general civilizational

transformation—particularly as it occurred in the Americas—that are

not solved in Mauss’ sketch of theoretical principles or Arnason’s

elaboration. If we accept Mauss’ definition of civilization, we are still

left with traces of particularistic traditions that often take ‘society’ or

‘nation’ as their referent. Intercultural transmission can be comprised

of the opposition of distinct constellations of societies. However,

specific traditions are also carried into such encounters. More to the

point, specific traditions or national traits can be captured and trans-

nationalized in the civilizational exchange. I can illustrate this point

by abridging an important argument that is elaborated in chapter

five. Spanish, English and French approached Amerindian cultures

in a variety of ways that mirrored their own national preconceptions

of ethnic difference and ‘savagery’. However, there was also a com-

mon basis for specific ethnological beliefs that derived from Christianity,

the writings of the Ancients and, indeed, from medieval myths and

legends. With a common background, Europeans could agree on the

juxtaposition of ‘civilized’ and ‘barbaric’ nations and on cultured

society against the State of Nature. Particular interpretations devel-

oped against that common background did circulate, however, in

the form of travel writings, philosophical, theological and scientific

works, and graphic representations of indigenous American cultures.

Circulation trans-nationalized approaches to Amerindian cultures that

had a Europe-wide appearance. What I characterize in chapter five

as inter-civilizational encounters, therefore, involves modification on

all sides, so to speak, and not just the confrontation of two clusters

of societies that are assumed, mistakenly, to be harmonized. More

flexible and open-ended comparison of particular cases of civiliza-

tional exchange can advance confidently on this basis.

The outline of general approaches carried out in this chapter clears

the ground for a historical sociology of Atlantic encounters involving

European and native powers, Caribbean-based stateless societies and

North American indigenous proto-federations. There were a num-

ber of societies engaged in this many-sided upheaval of the Americas

and the kind of mutual modification involved in creative transformation

is readily evident. At the outset, we can identify two overarching

patterns. One involves the conflict of European and indigenous civ-

ilizations. The other is a juxtaposition of particularistic European


and American traditions that accumulated in cross-Atlantic encounters

within a universalizing Western civilization. A substantive discussion

of these two different patterns of Euro-Atlantic civilization takes place

in chapters four and five. The emphasis there falls on the always-

current mobilization of traditions and creation of original institutions

that occurred in the creative transformation of the Atlantic. For ana-

lytical purposes, chapter four outlines the traditions, or inherited

imaginary to use Castoriadis’ terminology, while chapter five focuses

more on expressions of new civilizational perceptions (the emergent

or ‘instituting’ imaginary).

Further Questions

Several questions are untreated to this point about the relationship

of Atlantic modernity and civilization. One should be sharply put at

this point. In the opening chapter, a multidimensional notion of

modernity was elaborated that encompassed state formation, the

development of capitalism and ideals—or ‘myths’—of civilization.

The expansion of new and self-transforming kinds of administrative

and economic power need no general theoretical preamble in advance

of more detailed discussion that will occur in the chapters that follow.

The same cannot be said of the problematic of civilization. This

chapter’s goal has been to set out a procedure for rethinking views

within civilizational sociology to generate a framework that is applicable

to the Atlantic scenario. Progress in setting out the case for the specificityof the historical-civilizational experiences of the Americas awaits the

detail of chapters four and five. Some further questions about Atlantic

modernity have to be highlighted ahead of that however. The con-

cluding chapter will advance a summary judgment following the

detailed examination of the three-century history of the Americas.

If Atlantic modernity was the historical breakthrough that produced

the Euro-American world and realigned the place of Western Europe’s

premier powers, then what can we define as ‘civilization’ in relation

to it? This book is largely, although not completely, silent on the

indigenous survival and self-renewal after Conquest and focuses on

civilizational currents that originated in the European incursion into

Amerindian worlds. This is to facilitate the examination of complex

questions. Is civilization Atlantic? Spanish, British, French? Or is it

Western? On the schema I’ve established here, civilization is the

36 chapter two

variety of intercultural engagements, the means of making American

worlds meaningful (to Europeans) and the broad consciousness that

Euro-Americans developed out of immigrant-settler colonialism. In

short, it is a sort of European consciousness actualized in a variety

of social practices that set broad multi-societal formations apart from

one another in the Atlantic. It should be regarded as Spanish, British,

French and ultimately Creole, Anglo-American and French Canadian;

that is, as specific. However, it translates into Western and European

or, properly speaking, Euro-American realms at the same time; that

is, it should be thought of as universalizing in its thrust. How partic-

ular traditions that later informed nationalisms should be analysed

with respect to the common core of the Western tradition is a chal-

lenging question. But civilization reconceived as a general consciousness

is certainly too open-ended to be restricted to specific empires. In

other words, it is obviously too simplistic and reductive to posit the

Spanish, British and French empires as the self-contained vehicles of

their own integral civilizations (and, by extension, the logical unit of

analysis for sociology). The volatility of civilizational encounters in

the historic Atlantic zone is too great to go down that path. That

much can be concluded on the basis of this chapter. However, this

draws us only a little closer to a more satisfactory explanation of the

question of the relationship between the general context of European

universalism and particular carriers of Europe’s civilizational pre-

conceptions and transformed beliefs about the Atlantic. The main

body of this book sheds more light on this matter. The Conclusion

then returns to the general problem to summarize.

The next chapter begins the substantive discussion of the three

dimensions of Atlantic modernity. It begins with imperial state for-

mation, which had ‘absolutist’ and post-‘absolutist’ logics. Then, it

establishes the tension of state formation and explains how its domes-

tic iteration can be compared to a colonial or imperial form and

where the two varied. This is a launching pad for the elaboration

of civilizational themes in chapters four and five.

1 Definitions vary amongst the following sources: Perry Anderson, Lineages of theAbsolutist State; William Doyle, The Old European Order 1660–1800 (New York: OpenUniversity Press, 1978); Elias, State Formation and Civilization, and The Court Society(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); John H. Elliot, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,”in Past and Present 137 (November 1992); Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan:Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997); Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge:Polity Press, 1985); Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603–1714; Henry Kamen, EuropeanSociety 1500–1700 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1984); Victor G. Kiernan, State and Societyin Europe 1550–1650 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982); Helmut G. Koenigsberger,“Dominium regale or dominium et regale? Monarchies and Parliaments in EarlyModern Europe,” in Johan Goudsblom, Human Figurations: Essays for Norbert Elias

CHAPTER THREE

ABSOLUTISM AND POST-ABSOLUTISM

IN EUROPE’S EMPIRES

This chapter profiles the intricate composition of the British, French

and Spanish empires. The structures and world views of embryonic

absolutist centres, as well as those that had superseded absolutism,

spread across the Atlantic. Modern state building on both sides of

the Atlantic occurred in synchrony, but did not necessarily entail

identical processes. While the Spanish, the French and the English

were establishing colonial settlements in the Americas and setting up

governmental bodies to administer imperial affairs, they were also

consolidating the core institutions of state power. The paths to cen-

tralized and institutionalized power differed vastly, although they also

shared common features that invite comparison. Examination of this

pattern of historical variation throws into relief the underlying capac-

ity of each state for institutional self-innovation. The ability of state

leaders to work up the institutions of government was forged in both

metropolitan and imperial settings.

Most explanations of absolutist state formation lend little insight

into this transatlantic nexus of early modern European states. A com-

parative analysis that draws out the transatlantic character of early

modern states, in fact, hinges on a re-examination of the idea of

absolutism. There has been considerable dispute over the precise

nature of absolutist states.1 Much of it dwells on the terminology.

How did early modern states acquire this label? It was not because

38 chapter three

they were administered by centralized and autocratic monarchies,

arguably a myth created by nineteenth century historians.2 Yet, in

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europe’s absolutist states

were seen as despotic, and not only in Europe. Those states had

also established outposts in the Americas and could be viewed from

there as oppressive inasmuch as they sought to structure colonial life

around the needs of the metropolitan centres.

Of course, for some time historians have understood this view as

an oversimplification of the institutional make-up of early modern

states. It also underestimated the gap between the formal structure

of imperial institutions and the actual capacities to govern effectively.

To view absolute monarchies, or their immediate successors in the

case of the United Provinces and Britain, as proto-bureaucratic states

in which royal dynasties exercise masterly control over aristocratic

and urban elites is to efface their complexity. The reach of the

empires’ transatlantic bodies was never so complete. Back in Western

Europe, autocracy was not possible and was rarely desired.

(Amsterdam: Amsterdams Sociologish Tijdschrift, 1977); Roger Mettam, Power andFaction in Louis XIV’s France (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988); Mooers, The Making ofthe Bourgeoisie; Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde1643–1652 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); David Ogg, Europe of theAncien Regime 1715–1783 (Glasgow: Collins, 1965); Donald H. Pennington, Europe inthe Seventeenth Century (New York: Longman, 1989); and Gianfranco Poggi, TheDevelopment of the Modern State (London: Hutchinson, 1978).

2 Nicholas Henshall argues that ‘absolutism’ is a modern myth. His case rests ontwo versions of earlier historical views. Firstly, the literature overestimates the strengthof monarchical rule. Monarchs incorporated local powers and elites extensively.Rather than aggressively subsuming them, monarchical authorities pursued co-opta-tion. Rulership was therefore more a strategic than conflictual matter. It was onthe strength and presence of pre-existing apparatus and not new institutions thatthis type of state was built:

Some commentators refer to a royal power which was absolute and limited atthe same time. Royal power was absolute and limited in the entirely logicalsense of relating to different areas of a king’s activities. His people were ‘sub-jects’ in relation to his prerogative: he commanded and they obeyed. As mem-bers of Estates and corporations they were ‘citizens’, upholding their rights andparticipating in affairs. The two elements were held in balance—and some-times in tension. (The Myth of Absolutism, p. 144)

Secondly, and less importantly, ‘absolutism’ is not a figuration to be studied, but anineteenth century prism of historiographical interpretation. It was ideologically-weighted notion in the charged atmosphere of Europe’s and America’s republicanrevolts. Henshall’s genealogy of the term seems sound, but I take issue with thefirst claim, or at least its emphasis on the continuities with the feudal figuration. Itoverlooks the qualitative development of the states as conglomerations of nationalinstitutions, that is as distinct and novel formations. Furthermore, he understatesthe fissures in relations between municipal and patriciate elites. Variance of interests

absolutism and post-absolutism in europe’s empires 39

An image of internal provincial tension accords better with the

historical shape and internal shifts and self-alterations in the com-

position of the early imperial states. Domestically, the absolute states

were European-based court societies, in Norbert Elias’ terms,3 and

a figuration of institutional capacities, symbolic intrigue and ritual.

At court, patronage—the lifeblood of absolute monarchical rule—

was the means by which strategies were enacted to manage the ten-

sion with provincial and urban independence. There is a remarkable

similarity in the pattern of integration that it generated in states on

the continent and indeed in Britain.4 Aristocratic status was determined

through court society and the cultural centres in Madrid, Lisbon and

Versailles drew all in. Even the most peripheral elites figured in the

world of the court and had to in order to achieve essential legal and

and perceptions were more pervasive and did not always manifest themselves openlyin revolt. See Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism. See also Mark Greengrass, Conquest andCoalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1991).

3 Elias, The Court Society. In institutional terms, the growth in the administrativeand military bodies of the state is worth detailing, even if only briefly. FernandBraudel’s reading of the historical literature on bureaucracy gives two examples ofthe modest dimensions of the French and Spanish bureaucracies. In 1500, he esti-mates that France had around 12,000 in public offices. By comparison Spain hada bureaucracy numbered at 70,000 by 1624. It had a smaller population thanFrance, but, of course, a larger empire to govern. Many of the Western monarchieshad the shell of a bureaucracy in place at this time, but few had the vast resourcesof the modern nation-state. See Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce (London:Fontana, 1985), pp. 549–50; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (SanDiego: Academic Press, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 136–37, especially fn 16; and Kamen, EuropeanSociety, p. 301. Nevertheless, states’ apparatuses did grow. The spread of offices inFrance was symptomatic of the expanse of the French apparatus. It is alleged thatLouis XIII alone created 50,000 new offices during his reign. However, it was underLouis XIV that the French bureaucracy was substantially expanded, with very littleresistance from the nobility. These are simple illustrations of the extent of the statein France. The English did not lag either, although their pattern of bureaucratizationreflected constant refinement. Henry VII ensured that the English state was a power-ful and penetrating apparatus: by the time of his death, receipts for revenue hadtrebled. As Wallerstein notes (see The Modern World System, vol. 1, pp. 232–33) theHenrician Reformation brought in its wake an administrative reorganization andstrengthening of this apparatus during the course of the sixteenth century. TheEnglish also expanded their bureaucratic apparatus during this period; however, thiswas an expansion primarily of its influence rather than its quantitative size. See Pen-nington, Europe in the Seventeenth Century, p. 241; Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence,pp. 102–103; Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolute State, pp. 100–101, 119; and Ogg,Europe of the Ancien Regime, pp. 28, 34.

4 Samuel Clark, State and Status: The Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in WesternEurope (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995).

40 chapter three

public recognition in the cosmos of aristocratism. The web of clientele

relations was an indispensable medium of control for monarchical

heads and an obligatory commitment for nobles. Aristocratic motives

for involvement often reflected clan, friendship and factional interests

and this had an impact on the form of their agency.

Court society embraced such counter-strategies as well as the

monarch’s program of centralizing influence. Provincial leaders were

bound by a grave dilemma in enacting such strategies. They were

so often torn between the interests of their own power bases and

obligations to higher authorities. They depended on patronage from

above, just as they did on support from below. Clientage was the

mode of life in what can be characterized as the baroque state,5

which gave the appearance of strength and solidity, but masked the

flux of monarchical and provincialized elites. The courts of Spain,

Portugal and France encompassed institutional constellations that I’ve

described above: these might be called a provincial and municipal order.Similar networks connecting elites are evident in the British and

Dutch cases, where absolutism had been overthrown. Local and

urban bodies did not simply transmit the rule of peak governmen-

tal bodies, but they did share identification with the greater state

power.

There are now ample historical studies of the absolute regimes

that illustrate how the court society of regional aristocratic potentates

curbed monarchical rule while, through patronage, the royal cadre

were able to contain provincial and corporate factions. What they show

up is the state’s internal fragility, particularly in France and Spain. In

French historiography, revisionism has opened up new lines of enquiry

into absolutism. A number are relevant to the current study. In mid-

seventeenth century France, Bourbon prerogative was precarious.6

A strategy of compromise and cooptation adopted in the face of the

fronde undoubtedly strengthened it.7 Nonetheless, provincial and urban

bodies sustained a remarkable and sometimes conflictual resilience

5 Peter R. Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France 1720–1745 (London:Routledge, 1996).

6 Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s France.7 William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth Century France: State Power and

Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); andJames B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995).


within a more general pattern of regular cooperation.8 The intendancy

was introduced by the Bourbon monarchy to curtail this indepen-

dence. However, it was also compromised by the nexus of patron-

age, which could be the only basis for the King’s men having any

authority. In the study of baroque Spain, there are some discerning

histories that drew into relief the provincial character of monarchi-

cal rule. The Spanish Habsburgs inherited a territory unified through

dynastic marriage. While the monarchy was unquestionably absolute,

its centralist control over Castile was not assured, much less that of

the other regions. It was thus guided to seek cooperation with provin-

cial nobility. Even so, Castilian dissatisfaction with the Union erupted

in 1520 in the comunero rebellion.9 The revolts in Catalonia and

Portuguese more than a century later revealed the limits of monar-

chical integration in Spain’s peripheries.10 In its old world territo-

ries, Spanish royal authority was greatly constrained. Apart from its

long campaign to hold on to the Netherlands, it was limited, to vary-

ing degrees, to observe long-standing local laws in its Italian terri-

tories. In Sicily, in particular, royal authority had to compromise the

monarch’s will consistently.11 This was, arguably, the zone of the

Habsburg Empire in which Spanish authorities were compelled to

the most extreme type of adaptation.

A more nuanced depiction is evident in these revised views of

absolutism. It is echoed in the current argument and it is possible,

at this point, to take stock of it. Early modern states encompassed

the monarchy and those around it, and other relatively independent

spheres of provincial and colonial government and administration.

The latter restrained the former often through resistance or, alter-

natively, collaboration or indeed outright allegiance with monarchi-

cal authorities. In all cases, a relationship of tension prevailed.

Overarching and superintending institutions of government issued

from it and monarchies sustained limited rule through them. Provincial

limitations did not militate against the main power centres in those

8 Julian Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy1661–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

9 L. F. Martin, El Movimiento Comunero en Los Tierra de Campos (Leon: Centro deEstudios e Investigacion San Isidoro, 1979).

10 John H. Elliot, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain 1598–1640(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964).

11 Helmut G. Koenigsberger, The Government of Sicily under Philip II of Spain: A Studyin the Practice of Empire (New York: Staples Press, 1951).

42 chapter three

states that can be characterized as ‘absolutist’; they were, in fact, its

central characteristic.

Through their opposition to various court measures at certain his-

torical junctures, the Church, provincial nobilities and urban asso-

ciations were also able to generate new institutions or re-vitalize old

ones that checked the growth of monarchical power. Their actions

sustained the conflict over which decision making organs could legit-

imately govern in various spheres of power. Signs of this tension in

north-western Europe included a low-level war of attrition and open

conflict as well as the routinized engagement of monarchical and

local or municipal elites. Social struggles for power that began later

in the mid-sixteenth century and peaked in the mid-seventeenth cen-

tury emerged from this tension. A number of these are watersheds

in Western European national histories, as both dramatic class strug-

gles and conflicts amongst the elites of Europe’s ruling classes. The

elites of state produced a capacity to create and mobilize an insti-

tutional edifice—albeit unevenly—and could exercise an ability to

expand spheres of control and regulation under many circumstances.

In their efforts to establish the regulatory and infrastructural apparatus

of central government, they encountered the recurrent resistance of

city-based associations, the Church and provincial forces. Monarchical

cadres were able to ‘autonomize’ their own positions even within a

web of networks of patronage that brought all aristocrats.

The noteworthy conflicts of the early modern period were clashes

of different forces within the dominant classes and a form of inter-

class war. They include following: the Dutch Revolt against the

Spanish monarchy, the English Civil War, the comunero rebellion and

Catalan revolt, and the fronde. Each manifested the tension between

monarchies and the provinces and the cities and assumed the spirit

of provincial insurrection.12 In the Dutch and English cases, the rebel-

12 Perez Zagorin sees provincial rebellion during this period as resistance to exter-nal rule. Provincialism and localism presented themselves in all rebellions. However,provincial rebellion has a particular character. It was comprehensively provincial andencompassed all classes. A number of revolts can be classed in this manner. Zagorindiscusses three of the four revolts I’m concerned with as ‘revolutionary civil wars,’to distinguish them from ‘provincial rebellions.’ The process of state formation, ifseen as a tension of absolutism, brought out provincialism in all four conflicts, butnot only as a local identity proffered to strengthen local autonomy, but also as ameans of identifying centers vital to the provincial and municipal order. Parliament,the comunidades, the parlement courts and the states-general became the recognizedcenters for the provincial and municipal order. Similarly, through a provincial


lions successfully instigated new states that advanced political principles

of representation.13 They were realizations of a wider re-composition

of social relations. The other two revolts also prompted a re-dis-

persal of power with the result that the monarchical state was shored

up as a self-limited form. The surviving absolute monarchies could

only be effective where relatively independent spheres of the state

were compelled to orient to the central court apparatus. Spain and

France came out of rebellious episodes retaining a monarchical form

that was reconfigured in two ways. Firstly, both monarchies were

compelled to accommodate the routine expressions of corporate and

provincial interests. Secondly, both developed additional resources

for government through separate royal institutions.

The tumultuous early modern history of England warrants some

brief notes because the manner of its revolutionary settlement shaped

its early modern imperial path. England assumed a constitutional

monarchy after the Cromwellian interlude and brief Stuart recovery.

The state that was embroiled in the seventeenth century conflicts

had a composite character. The wider British dimension of England’s

long civil war oriented the regimes that replaced the Stuart monarchy

to the problem of multiple kingdoms.14 The long revolution was

fought on the frontiers of the state and in different theatres of war

on the island. After 1689 this tension within Britain continued—in

some ways, resembling the tension of state formation that delimited

the exercise of absolute rule—and encompassed the American territories

in a particular way. The principle of dominium politicum et regale con-

fronted the central government in Scotland. It also confronted the

outlook it was possible to distinguish the regency in Brussels, the Stuart Dynastyand the new Catholic monarchy in Madrid as other centers associated with thecourt state. For Zagorin’s definition of provincial rebellion and his analysis of theDutch Revolt, the English Civil War and the Fronde, see Rebels and Rulers 1500–1660(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol. 2.

13 Christopher Hill’s analysis in The Century of Revolution best frames the EnglishCivil War in a context of religious, political and economics movements across alonger period than the one often carried out in histories of England. See also AlanHouston and Steve Pincus, “Modernity and Later-Seventeenth Century England,”in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001). On the United Provinces, see Helmut G. Koenigsberger, Monarchs,States-General and Parliaments: The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Geoffrey Parker, The DutchRevolt (London: Penguin, 1977).

14 Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War: The Ford Lectures Delivered inthe University of Oxford 1987–1988 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

44 chapter three

monarchy when it came to governance of the American territories.

This embodied a compact between England’s rulers and local poten-

tates in their dominions comparable to many composite absolute

monarchies.15 The benefits of a wider association with the empire

were available to the elites of England’s kingdoms and colonies, while

local self-government remained in place. The extension of dominiumpoliticum et regale to the colonies in America and to Scotland was an

outcome of the overthrow of Stuart rule. Meanwhile, the status of

Ireland remained a vexed problem. There was therefore a vital anal-

ogy between the tension-ridden figuration of local and central author-

ity in England and the imperial-colonial divide that straddled the

British Atlantic.

In wake of this modified view of the absolute and post absolute

monarchies, it becomes possible to vary the scope of analysis in a

way that is more alert to the discordant character of imperial state

formation. The Americas can then be brought into view and the

trans-continental dimension of the figuration of tension can be under-

lined. A dynamic of non-contiguous colonial extension was initiated

with the founding of American colonies. Western states were breaking

new ground in the way in which they consolidated national institutions,

when they turned to transcontinental state building. Indeed, domestic

and imperial developments are best understood in relation to each

other, where they exhibited a similar dynamic and, more importantly,

where they diverged. In many instances, supra-provincial organs of

authority had to govern both single territories in which they were

domiciled and imperial provinces abroad. Relations with remote colo-

nial elites were complex and amplified by distance. Many governors

and high administrators based in the colonies were removed from

the immediate presence of the court and the representative and juridi-

cal bodies of the imperial state. Provincial and urban elites back in

France, England and Spain had a nearer presence and influence and

15 Michael Braddick presents an image of early modern English state formationthat also casts it as a battle of local and central authorities fought over the terms ofcivility as much as anything else. See his State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). See also John H. Elliot “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992); and Helmut G. Koenigsberger, “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the AmericanRevolution,” Historical Research 62 (1989): 135–53, on the character of the compositestate.


were bound by the strong links of patronage, while settler communities

and colonial governors of one sort or another were often more remote

and had little access to the privileges and influence of metropolitan

location. This is not to say that metropolitan-based imperial elites

would pay no heed to colonial interests. Officials mindful of the

internal discordance of early modern states drew up imperial directives

carefully. Not only would they have to consider the weighty influence

of military commanders, leading manufacturers and parliamentary

or judicial factions; they had to take account of the views of colonial

authorities and leading merchant groups. However, for officials sta-

tioned in America, who were responsible for colonial administration,

it was the communities of colonists that were even more potent con-

stituencies. The colonies were far removed from the baroque state

of court society (or parliamentary government in the British case)

and depended on separate networks of influence and sponsorship.

Distinct sets of American interests coalesced early and were, in turn,

reflected in colonial administration. Where the staff of organs of colo-

nial government objected to imperial cadre or simply defied them,

or even where they merely performed the formalities of passing guber-

natorial or vice regal ordinances, they distinguished themselves as

leaders of structures that were separate from the metropolitan apparatus.

Sheer distance conditioned these terms of imperial rule, and I turn

to this aspect of colonialism now.

Ruling Over Continents

As European states advanced into the Americas another dynamic of

imperial extension was set into play. Many of the difficulties faced

by imperial and colonial administrations stemmed from the tyranny

of distance. To a great degree, distance dictated the terms on which

the supra-colonial authorities of Spain, France and Britain could

capably superintend their domains. The problem of government from

afar consistently confronted imperial bodies responsible for settlement,

trade and regal representation. Furthermore, consolidation of a single

locus of command that arched over dissimilar social and ecological

environments furthered the strain on government. The result was a

dissonance of de jure authority and de facto power.

Donald Meinig’s geographical typology of transoceanic empires is

useful as a point of departure when it comes to the relationship of

46 chapter three

distance and control.16 His work on the North Atlantic has a special

salience here. Its relevance lies in his premises more than his con-

clusions. He starts from the premise that commonly used categories

of core and periphery or metropolis and frontier do not adequately

capture the strategic range of points in the transatlantic transect; a

premise now shared by other historians.17 Colonization did not estab-

lish cores and peripheries so much as a zone of interaction. Interaction

is defined by the character of the dominant colonizing activities:

exploration and gathering lead to casual contacts, while establishing

outposts and imperial colonies leads to articulation of different areas

and stratification of new nuclei settlements. Casual links between

different points in the Atlantic transect develop more formal attach-

ments: “the axis between port and court.” The number of transoceanic

connections multiplies and “thickens” until numerous sites on both

sides of the Atlantic, and on the islands in it, are involved. The sites

are characterized by Meinig as types: hinterland, Indian core area,

outpost, frontier entrepot, colony, port and Atlantic port.

These sites were political, economic and migratory sites in a dozen

or so geographical transects and cannot be reduced to categories of

metropolis/frontier or core/periphery. Apart from a concern about

Spanish mercantile monopoly, Meinig mostly confines his analysis to

the British Empire. I will set this typology against the Spanish expe-

rience to illustrate the problems that confronted the Habsburg and

Bourbon monarchies in establishing an absolutist empire, in a way

that deepens Meinig’s point about the governmental problem of

distance.

The consequences of distance were well defined for the Spanish

Indies.18 Spain’s centre seems to be obviously Madrid. Arguably,

however, Seville and Cadiz were also centres due to their privileged

near-monopoly status as the conduits of trade, as well as ports. Seville

housed the Casa de Contratacion and was subsequently subject to impe-

rial regulation, although this was often breached.19 The hinterland

was less important compared to English regional production, as Dutch

16 Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 yearsof History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 258–67.

17 Greene, Negotiated Authorities.18 Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World: 1492–1700 (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press), chap. 11.19 Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, pp. 152–53.


merchants freely brought goods into Spanish ports, albeit through

agents. In addition, the existence of different layers of trade brought

many locations of supply into the trade networks. Slavery and con-

traband diversified economic activity. Administratively, this could

undermine the Crown’s regulatory regime and it frequently did. The

Canary Island trade was itself another layer. Without doubt, it was

an outpost, as Meinig would have it. But it also traded directly with

the Caribbean and was governed by a separate body of regulations.

Colonial ports were many and more widely spread. Havana and

Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, Veracruz in New Spain, Cartagena

on the north coast below the Central American isthmus, Panama to

its northwest and, later, Buenos Aires in the La Plata region were

major economic centres in their own right. Many were also seats of

colonial administration. The colonial outposts were mostly mining

zones, although these too were another kind of centre.20 Potosi and

Zacatecas were the main ones. They utilized a variety of forms of

labor. Indians were either freely engaged or paid a debt in the repar-timiento system of communal labor. Slavery was widespread from the

seventeenth century onwards. The outposts fed Mexico City and

Lima as frontier entrepots. The production hinterland was comprised

of communal economies working according to subsistence values, but

delivering surpluses to Spanish or Creole agents. The Colombian

Choco was also this type of mining zone, although its combination

of African and indigenous slave labor was quite unique.21 Unlike the

North American hinterland, it was not incorporated into Atlantic

trade. Instead, it was part of interregional exchanges.

This gives some insight into the limitations of Meinig’s typology.

Applying it to the geography of Spain’s Atlantic system begs a

different, and more differentiated, classification. I am not proposing

to generate one here. But a few comments on the problem of dis-

tance are called for. Links across space in the Spanish Indies were

tenuous, more so than even for the English colonies to the north.

A greater proportion of trade had to go through Caribbean ports,

which were subject to extensive piracy. The great landmass of the

20 Lyman L. Johnson and Susan Migden Socolow, “Colonial Centers, ColonialPeripheries, and the Economic Agency of the Spanish State,” in Daniels andKennedy, Negotiated Empires.

21 William F. Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombian Choco 1680–1810(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976).

48 chapter three

southern continent was under Spanish and Portuguese jurisdiction.

But much of it was not as thoroughly exploited as the St Lawrence

delta or the hinterlands east of the Appalachians. Indeed, it could

not be before the nineteenth century. Also, European settlement was

sparse compared to the Caribbean, the British North Americas or

the St Lawrence Valley. Put simply, Spain’s colonies were further

removed. Traffic to and from them had to negotiate the Caribbean

much of the time. Moreover, the major production zones on the

southern continent were remote and their hinterlands produced far

less for world markets. The connections between miners and local

merchants in the outposts to regional agents and officials in the fron-

tier entrepots and to transatlantic commerce conducted from Havana

or Vera Cruz were more threadlike.22 On this basis, it is argued

here that the bearing that geography had was more deeply felt in

the process of Spanish imperial state formation than in the north.

The argument to this point has momentarily stressed divergences

between Spanish possessions and those of the French and British.

Nevertheless, the similarities are also startling. The distance of the

New World from Europe routinely undermined imperial rule, as the

apex of power was separated from the realms of its exercise in two

ways. Firstly, the sheer stretch of space between the continents proved

to be a barrier to the limited existing capabilities in transportation,

military manoeuvre and communication. Space and time in combi-

nation governed the conditions under which the Spanish, French

and British could govern their own dominions. Absolutism in the

states of Western Europe was a figuration that juxtaposed the European

monarchical court and the provincial and municipal order. In the

imperial context, this tension reached a third institutional cluster:

that group of institutions that settlers maintained hegemony over.

This was a tension between the high ministerial apparatus concerned

with imperial affairs and the colonial order. In all cases, it was

amplified by distance. Ideals and legislative enactments that were

based on a remote continent often conflicted with the real and per-

ceived institutional needs in the colonies. The conditions of European

life, polity and economy could not therefore be simply reproduced

in the colonial setting. In many areas, the institutional ambitions of

empires often ran ahead of their organizational capacities or even

22 Ibid., pp. 326–37.


their real control over their colonies.23 To a large extent, it can be

affirmed that imperial perceptions that guided decisions were for the

consumption of Europeans in the metropolitan centres, far removed

from the harsh New World. Distance not only problematized the gov-

ernability of the Americas, it also skewed imperial perceptions of it.

Distance across the Atlantic also amplified difference separating

Western Europe and the Americas. British, French and Spanish

colonists confronted a physically distant and thoroughly unfamiliar

environment. They endeavoured, in the context of civilizing goals,

to forge American social structures, administrative and economic

forms and patterns of consumption and fashion that approximated

the European world. To the extent that this was held as a goal, it

was a naïve one. A complex relationship existed between the aspi-

rations of French, British and Peninsula settlers and their experi-

ences of migration. The complexity involved the distance from the

homeland cultures that immigrants came from and the colonial towns

and frontiers of the lands that they occupied. Many of these emigrated

with settler communities and underwent a process of substantial alter-

ation to suit the new climate. Of course, the presence of anything

that seemed European represented a reduction of the social distance

and difference between the two continents, a kind of comforting asso-

ciation with their place of origin. Identification with the cultures of

empire—whether it took the form of French aristocratism in Montreal,

Hispanicism in cities of the south or reclaimed ancient English lib-

erties—hedged against the impositions of America’s diverse environ-

ments. However, in the New World, such familiar traits were regularly

complemented, if not supplanted altogether, by new ones that had

instituted themselves as the fabric of American life.

The exploration and then colonization of far off American places

entailed an invasion of a world of Amerindian civilisations that were

completely unfamiliar. This ‘unknown’ could only be understood,

mapped and conquered by the cultural and institutional means that

Europeans were acquainted with, and that were accessible to them.

These means were derived from a ‘known’ set of practices. Inter-

civilizational contact in the removed American environment set some

fundamental conditions in which colonial societies and an imperial

23 Jack P. Greene, “Transatlantic Colonialism and the Redefinition of Empire inthe Early Modern Era: The British-American Experience,” in Daniels and Kennedy,Negotiated Empires.

50 chapter three

state edifice could develop. Features common to the three enterprises

of colonialism can therefore be distilled from the specific figurations.

The ‘known’ institutional practices were applied to three problems

of colonizing, if we identified by David Fieldhouse.24 Firstly, Atlantic

expansion was colonization “in its true sense.”25 The early waves of

conquest and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants dissolved these

social formations and implanted settler-colonial institutions. Furthermore,

they had to be populated on a significant scale. This lent them the

character of immigrant societies that can be distinguished from later

occupied states of Asia, the sub-continent and Africa that were more

common in an era of so-called High Imperialism.

Secondly, the Atlantic empires encompassed vast territories that

they could never fully administer. The means through which the

problems of distance could be tackled did not develop easily in the

Americas, or at least could not be developed under the auspices of

vice-regal and gubernatorial authorities. Some imperial bodies were

extended and modified to suit the new demands of cross-Atlantic

government; for example, the Council of the Indies was a body akin

to other consejos responsible for other Spanish domains. Others were

invented afresh to tackle the transoceanic character of the burgeon-

ing Atlantic empires. However, these were not always successful.

Local institutions with a Creole or settler influence were more operative

in the organization and regulation of colonial life. The urban cabildoin the Spanish provinces, the town-based meetings of British North

America and the Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture in the

French Caribbean all represented organized colonial interests. To

the extent that they exercised autonomy from vice-regal representatives,

it was partly due to the distance from the centres of monarchical

authority. Consequently, through to the nineteenth century, cross-

Atlantic distances would always trouble the European administrations

of the five empires.

A third feature can be delineated from the first two and relates

to the early development of modern capitalism. The transatlantic empires

created spheres of mercantilist regulation intended to augment the

benefits that accrued to states from accumulation and trade. All five

24 David Kenneth Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from theEighteenth Century (London, Macmillan, 1982), chap. 16.

25 Ibid., p. 372.


imperial contenders in the Atlantic zone jealously guarded different

types of monopolies in shipping, trade and finance, especially as they

found themselves in the unusual situation whereby the only powers

operating in this vast region were European. The economic forms

particular to each empire gave rise to different administrative prob-

lems and, consequently, different regimes of mercantile governance.

The extractive economies of the Spanish Indies promoted an annual

traffic of gold and silver carried by large flotillas. They were orga-

nized out of Seville by the Casa de Contratacion as a monopoly and

required significant naval protection. Slavery was a major feature of

mining and African slaves were acquired and used more and more

under the instrument of the asiento (that is, the legally sanctioned

contracts to trade slaves). The great imperial trades coexisted with

an intra- and inter-colonial commerce. Contraband was an abiding

feature of this other economy and could not be tackled effectively

by either imperial or municipal authorities. Without question, dis-

tance hampered efforts to halt trade with other colonies or, indeed,

other European powers. The two coeval economic forms made piracy,

smuggling and the asiento significant issues in treaty negotiations with

other powers.

There is a further feature. Europe’s American empires were inter-

continental and oceanic. Mastery of the Atlantic and its trade routes

was the prize sought by the Euro-American empires. The control of

sea-lanes was a great challenge and this stimulated the development

of maritime imperial expansion. The American territories, on the

other side of the ocean, were remote and non-contiguous. The

Spanish, British and French attempted to structure their colonies as

imperial territories domains. As inter-state relations became the subject

of more complex negotiation—after Westphalia—the international

dimension figured more in domestic politics. Political life in the

colonies, especially in Anglo-America, acquired an acute awareness

of domestic developments on the other side of the Atlantic as a result.

The imperial capture of the Americas by European states can be

summarized as follows. Through conquest and expansion, European

states transformed themselves into conflict-driven empires marked by

a more pronounced structural tension between European bases and

the colonies. In the metropolitan perspective, institutional primacy

lay mainly with imperial bodies. However, the license to govern was

diffused by the distance between different regions of rule and by the

colonial autonomies that emerged in New World settings and from

52 chapter three

the structure and shared understanding of power. Mediating institu-

tions that were either created or captured by the colonial order were

recurrently at odds with the rule of imperial bodies.

The next section turns to the formation of colonial societies and

the impact that foundational patterns had on the trajectories of insti-

tutional development. To this point of the chapter, I have general-

ized the traits of the Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish and British

empires. The focus here is on France, Britain and Spain. Crucial

comparisons between them highlight not only the differences in their

respective figurations of power, but also the similarities in the ways

in which each reproduced the central tension of European state for-

mation. The beginning of each represents critical divergence.

Foundations and Trajectories

Although English-American colonies were established during the reign

of the Stuarts, they were private corporate ventures with little direct

involvement of the court state apparatus. The Stuarts were, however,

continuing a pattern set by Elizabeth that was continued after the

Civil War. Companies and colonies chartered by the Crown did not

involve the state in their founding, but were instruments of foreign

policy.26 Hispanic claims to hegemony over the Atlantic were not

openly contested until the mid-seventeenth century. Until then, missions

of reconnaissance and exploration under the auspices of chartered

companies and the consolidation of existing claims to settlements on

the northeast coast of the continent constituted a more subtle challenge.

The early colonies were therefore a part of a greater strategic set of

interests that were very much the domain of the court state apparatus.

Parliament did endeavour to oversee their development, but was

blocked by Charles I and later by Charles II.27 The colonies were legiti-

26 Elizabeth Mancke, “Empire and State,” in Armitage and Braddick, The BritishAtlantic World, pp. 188–89.

27 From the 1620s to well after the Seven Years War, control over crown landsin America was a battle between the monarchy and Parliament, then the monar-chy and the Privy Council and then the Privy Council, the Board and Trade andsettlers. On the status of Crown lands, see Elizabeth Mancke, “Negotiating anEmpire: Britain and Its Overseas Peripheries c. 1550–1780,” in Daniels and Kennedy,Negotiated Empires, pp. 255–57.


mated by monarchical grants of charters. Crown land in America

was considered part of a royal largesse. The last granted was

Pennsylvania, to William Penn in 1681. After the 1688 Revolution,

the Privy Council and Parliament took over the supervision of Crown

lands. Until that time, many colonies were established as acts of

direct patronage. The trajectory of colonization was set early. The

private and fully corporatist character of the first colonies—exemplifiedin the failed Virginia Company—instituted a principle of colonial

autonomy that would remain an enduring feature of Anglo-American

colonization from inception until the American Revolution.

These origins set the manner in which colonial settlers established

and shaped New England. The seventeenth century inaugurated a

condition of exile that underpinned the historical experiences of

migration to colonial North America. Moreover, private and corpo-

rate origins continued to inform the radical independence of the

colonial order’s strategic location. In this regard, the nascent colonies

were remote from the structure of the island empire governed by

the Stuarts.28 The non-state origins of English colonialism were

matched culturally by fiercely independent versions of Protestantism.

The settlements of farmers bound by the Covenant struggled to sur-

vive in the early decades. But colonies did last and would receive

far greater attention later from the post-revolutionary British state.

Values of possession and an ethos of industry emerged as the cul-

tural settings of the colonies. They were shaped according to exist-

ing models of social organization that stressed integration of families

into a wider colonial unit. With these values, colonists began to trans-

form the land by posting fences and tending gardens and agricul-

tural plots. English law was unique in that it did not mandate a

procedure for acquiring land that involved written title of any sort.

Instead, the act of enclosure symbolized ownership and was sufficient

to claim property.29 The values that inhered in the land that was

now worked—where it had previously lain ‘idle’—were the sign of

possession. Private colonies sub-divided into private farms that fitted

28 Compare with the argument developed by Nicholas Canny in The ElizabethanConquest: A Pattern Established 1565–76 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1976).Canny draws strong parallels between patterns of colonialism in the UK and theAmericas.

29 Patricia Seed, American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), chap. 1.

54 chapter three

into an integrated colonial matrix. When corporate colonies gave

way to royal sovereignty, this blueprint of private possession remained.

The small farmer appeared the archetypal character of English colo-

nial society who embodied colonial and personal autonomy. A notion

of private property unique to the English underpinned the arche-

type. It survived the transfer of colonial authority to the Crown. The

Empire that developed after the Stuarts and the constitutional set-

tlement of 1689 inherited the North American colonies that were

on this trajectory.30 Culturally, imperial agents and agencies drew on

similar imagery as the settlers, one that animated agrarian industri-

ousness and notions of discrete ownership.

John Locke’s intervention at the end of the seventeenth century

consolidated conceptions of property.31 He counselled colonists to uti-

lize methods of enclosing land. Arguing against government concepts

of aboriginal sovereignty and against the opponents of colonial plan-

tations, he claimed that natural right to the land inhered in its

‘improvement’ through tilling, laboring and planting and in subse-

quent settlement. This championed a notion of private ownership

through agricultural cultivation and the use of money. In turn, this

is bound up with the lack of recognition of the proto-federative char-

acter of northern aboriginal political societies. In Locke’s interpre-

tation, the two go hand in hand: English property is made possible

by the eclipse of ‘idle’ aboriginal forms. Native Americans repre-

sented a lost past, in Locke’s eyes, one that England shared as its

autochthonous origins.32 However, colonists could take comfort from

the knowledge that they were bearers of an inevitable progress revealed

to them as Providence.

The cultural character of the empire that claimed sovereignty in

Atlantic America was, by necessity, tolerant of competing variants

30 H. V. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire 1688–1775(London, MacMillan, 1996), chap. 2.

31 Barbera Arneil, “‘The Wild Indian’s Venison’: Locke’s Theory of Property andEnglish Colonialism in America,” Political Studies 44 (1996): 60–74; Anthony Pagden,“The Struggle for Legitimacy and the Image of Empire in the Atlantic to c. 1700,”in Nicholas Canny, ed., The Origins of Empire, vol. 1 of The Oxford History of the BritishEmpire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and James Tully, “RediscoveringAmerica: The Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights,” in An Approach to PoliticalPhilosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Comparewith Herman Lebovics, “The Uses of America in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government,”Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 567–79.

32 Seed, American Pentimento, pp. 40–42.


of Protestantism and with it, a broad and diverse spectrum of views.

The agencies of the Great British state had to be especially lenient

towards those remote colonies whose foundation and trajectory dur-

ing the seventeenth century were based on flight from England. This

is not to say that all American colonies were founded on religious

pluralism. The original Puritan colonies were as remarkably intoler-

ant as any in the Americas.33 But, by the beginning the eighteenth

century a different pattern had emerged: a patchwork of alternative

Christian creeds made up the British North Americas. The imper-

ial apparatus showed a laissez-faire attitude to this unmovable diver-

sity. It asserted an overarching institutional authority to the extent

that it realistically could. Meanwhile, the colonies were left alone to

enjoy the general principle of religious liberalism, even though it was

not wholly realized.

Where British America incarnated a degree of autonomy, Spain’s

colonies had different origins and directions. The Columbian ven-

tures and other explorations were financed and completely supported

by the Crown. Colonialism built on extensive participation in the

reconquista unification of the state. Although Spanish unity was mainly

dynastic in its early years, it did embody monarchical ambition that

reached beyond the range of possibilities for fifteenth century Spain.34

The ideal of the ‘Universal Monarchy’ provided legitimacy to the

Crown’s efforts and to its legal pronouncements. Its laws revolved

around its economic goals to control labor and generate mineral

wealth. Where the British were preoccupied with land and property,

the Spanish looked to mobilize communal labor during the early

years of colonization.35 As a result, Spanish conquerors had the clos-

est interface with Amerindian civilizations of the three Western states.

The theological, strategic and legal debates that this interface pro-

duced pitted the Crown and the clergy against the encomienderos. Inthe Spanish territories, indigenes were an issue of division between

the Royal Government and settler forces. Consequently, Spanish

powers were well versed in the practices of cultural confrontation.

33 See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas: The History of a Hemisphere (London:Weidenfeld and Nicholson), 2003, p. 52.

34 M. A. L. Quesada, Los reyes catolicos: La coruna y la unidad de espana (Valencia:Association Francisco Lopez de Gomara, 1989).

35 Seed, introduction to American Pentimento.

56 chapter three

The form was centralist, but the Spanish were accustomed to inde-

pendent self-administration also. In the Americas, Spanish coloniza-

tion imperfectly copied the Castilian figuration of the court centre

and its opposing provincial and municipal order. The colonial order

was a self-appointed encomiendero elite that, despite its Hispanicism,

was embroiled in low level conflicts with the vice-regal governor.

Compromise and mutual recognition of an arena of joint rule was

less evident in the Spanish state’s American reinos, then it was in its

domestic realms. In this manner, the institutions of imperial and

colonial rule echoed the tension of the Spanish state, while centralism

marked attitudes to those outside the Castilian world, whether Muslim,

Jewish or American. This divergence between private English and

royal Spanish colonization prevailed until the mid-seventeenth century.

The French-American Empire issued from intense competition with

England.36 French reconnaissance in the 1580s led to the early devel-

opment of the fur trade and consequently a strong interest in the

northern continent. Both English and French vessels were fishing offthe northeast coast and up the St Lawrence River at this time.37

French colonialism suffered a series of ‘false starts’ in this region,

many of which were Huguenot initiatives.38 An experiment with an

agricultural colony at Acadia in 1604 failed. In 1608 Quebec was

established and although its early years were difficult, miserable and

precarious, it did survive. For the French, as for the English, this

was a period of tentative steps. Huguenot persecution, civil conflict

and then the Thirty Years War preoccupied France’s rulers. As the

expanses of American continent became apparent, a scramble for

colonial possession began.

The impact on the French was profound and has, perhaps, been

underestimated.39 The French empire at the core of imperial com-

petition was a Colbertian regime and remained one after Colbert’s

demise. There was certainly French interest in the Americas, particularly

in the vielles colonies of the Caribbean, in the sixteenth century as well

36 Jonathan Hart, Comparing Empires: European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansionto the Spanish-American War (London: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 86–87.

37 A. N. Ryan, “France and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century,” in John B.Hattendorf, ed., Maritime History (Florida: Kriegar Publishing Co, 1996), vol. 1.

38 William J. Eccles, France in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), chap. 1;Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 25–27.

39 Robert Aldrich and John Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992), pp. 14–15.


as Huguenot interest in Spanish Florida and Portuguese Brazil.40

However, it was Colbert who began the development of French

imperial institutions. This regime confronted American possessions

with its own particular dynamic. Private settlements in Canada and

most of the Antilles predated Louis XIV’s reign. Henri IV had shown

interest in colonization by chartering a company at the end of the

sixteenth century. Cardinal Richelieu went further by establishing a

charter colony in 1627. However, royal resolve superseded private

efforts. Colbert ended charter colonialism beginning with the char-

tered Company of One Hundred Associates that had barely sus-

tained the settlements in New France. It became a royal colony and

he brought other colonies under the auspices of the Crown with his

compact colony policy.41 Cardinal Richelieu’s earlier efforts had great

ambition, produced modest achievements and were, in a way, “refined

. . . and amplified” by Colbert.42 The stated goal was not only the

glory of the monarchy, but the profitable exploitation of the new

colonies. Consequently, the mercantile regulation of shipping associ-

ated with the pacte colonial began. In all, the state apparatus from the

mid-seventeenth century directed its energies, fairly aggressively,

towards the consolidation of a transatlantic imperial nexus. Its success

in doing so was greatly tempered by the institutional autonomies of

its colonies. It was, I have argued elsewhere,43 a deliberate imperialism.

The results of the foundation of the colonies can now be briefly

summed up. The minimal administration of non-economic colonial

affairs by the English state sanctioned by default an autonomy that

40 See comments by La Popeliniere and Richard Hakluyt on the possible benefitsof colonization for France in John H. Elliot, The Old World and the New 1492–1650(Cambridge, Canto, 1970), pp. 83–84, 91. See also Olive Patricia Dickason, TheMyth of Savage: And the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas (Alberta, Universityof Alberta Press, 1984), pp. 125–27. Compare with Brian Slattery’s “French Claimsin North America 1500–1559,” Canadian Historical Review 59, no. 2 (1978).

41 Pierre H. Boulle, “French Mercantilism, Commercial Companies and ColonialProfitability,” in L. Blusse and F. Gaastra, Companies and Trade: Essays on OverseasTrading Companies during the Ancien Regime (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981);William J. Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV 1663–1701 (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1964).

42 Mathé, French Colonial Policy in America and the Establishment of the Louisiana Colony,PhD diss., University of South-West Louisiana, 1984, p. 36.

43 Jeremy C. A. Smith, “A Deliberate Imperialism: France in the Americas inthe Eighteenth Century,” in Michael Adcock, Emily Chester and Jeremy Whiteman,eds., Revolution, Society and the Politics of Memory: Proceedings of the Tenth George RudeSeminar on French History and Civilization (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1996).

58 chapter three

was similar to its existing provincial and municipal order. However,

colonial institutions in the Thirteen Colonies were based on principles

of representation rather than those of urban association. In all, this

contrasts with the situation in the Hispanic and Franco-American

empires.44 In the Spanish Indies, the early municipal cabildos were

often corporatist societies. Likewise in the French Antilles, the Chambers

of Commerce and Agriculture represented corporate interests. British

North American institutions exercised some legislative powers that

gave settler communities some control of the executive of the imperial

state. Although this effect was unintended, it amounted to limited

regional authority. This was a spectacular instance of the tension

between colonial autonomy and imperial jurisdiction that can be found

as a generic feature of all three states.

British, French and Spanish States in the New World

In an alien New World, the Spanish, English and French attempted

to develop states and societies by using the cultural, economic and insti-

tutional means that they were familiar with. Each empire, drawing

on a general set of socio-cultural conceptions, made and re-made its

own particular structures and forms of the tension of state formation,

although they did not do so without constraint. English, Spanish or

French states themselves bore the particular marks of their own pasts.

Each empire grappled with its own particular structures inherited

from these foundational experiences. Formal arrangements posited

peak bodies as the decisive nodes of economic and administrative

exchange. It was the needs and demands of imperial authorities that

were, to varying degrees considered to be the chief imperative. More

generally, the tension of European state formation, the character of

the colonies’ origins and trajectories and the types of social relations

that prevailed in Europe, set the circumstances in which the Spanish,

English and the French projected their extant structures into empires

and ensured that colonial realities did not resemble imperial ideals.

It was the structures of the Spanish Empire that most faithfully

mirrored this general figuration. Spain constructed an imperial

apparatus that endeavoured to replicate the society and culture of

44 John H. Parry, “The English in the New World,” in K. R. Andrews, N. P.Canny and P. E. H. Hair, eds., The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland,the Atlantic and America 1480–1650 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978).


Castile. Spain’s colonies were its patrimonies during the Habsburg

era, and remained its realms after the Bourbon reforms. The cen-

tralist impulse of Hispanic absolutism was imported with conquest;

it was a product of Castilian statecraft and administrative precision.45

The Habsburg Empire that colonized America was a sixteenth cen-

tury amalgam of Spanish, Austrian and other European kingdoms

united under six vice-regal councils.46

The Council of the Indies was exceptional amongst these inas-

much as it commanded its own administration. In theory, it repre-

sented and assisted the monarchy in management of the colonies,

whilst more practically it was granted more authority than other

councils. A distinctly Spanish executive coalesced around the Council.

At its head was an aristocracy-dominated chancellorship supported

by a large bureaucracy of letrados, attorneys who had extensive pow-

ers and a crucial social role. Clerks, secretarial staff, geographers and

treasurers filled out the ranks below. In collaboration with the monar-

chy, the Council legislated in all major spheres of imperial-colonial

life. It was meant to subsume a number of responsibilities under its

auspices: legal enactment, jurisdiction, taxation, ecclesiastic appoint-

ments, papal responsibility, trade duties and government of indige-

nous peoples.

This ideal structure was destined to be modified in its practices.

The priorities of the large composite monarchy would see to that. The

wealth extracted from South American mines in the sixteenth century

underwrote the Habsburgs’ domestic strategies.47 Wars in Central Europe

and against France, the Ottomans and the Dutch were possible because

of the flow of precious metals. The monarchy endeavoured to spread

the stability of rule that it enjoyed in Castile to its Iberian kingdoms

and to the remainder of its European territories and it used the

wealth hauled out of its American inheritance to do it.

Spanish mercantilism was designed to render the economic sphere of

the Americas an instrument in this fight, especially the mining sector.48

It was institutionalized in the Casa de Contratacion. With these two

45 This is Claudio Veliz’s main thesis in The Centralist Tradition of Latin America(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

46 See H. G. Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–1660 (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1971).

47 Richard Herr, Spain (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971).48 R. D. Gonzalez, “El monopolio estatal del murcurio en Nueva Espana durante

el siglo XVIII,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 4, pp. 685–718.

60 chapter three

bodies, the council and the Casa, the Spanish absolutist monarchy

could, ideally, rule the Americas through the media of a hierarchy

of offices: viceroyalty, general captaincy, provincial governorships,

district judges (oidores), audiencias (viceregal courts), town councils (cabil-dos) and town mayors (corregidores). The last three institutions were

the only ones in the structure in which regional representative auton-

omy was invested. Only they could acquire a relative independence

from the central court state. The rigidity and size of the viceroyal

bureaucracy generated its own dynamic of centralization.

Habsburg rule in Spain collapsed at the end of the seventeenth

century. The succeeding Bourbon dynasty was determined to restore

Spain to its former position. The institutional edifice bestowed the

Bourbon regime was remodelled over a period of seventy years. New

offices decreed with greater powers replaced some older ones. But

the logic of a centralist regime confronting a corporatized urban

order in the Americas remained. In fact, the Bourbon regime vig-

orously pursued centralism. In doing so Madrid’s letrados and func-

tionaries broke with Habsburg methods, especially in the philosophy

of government. However, in the purposeful quest for effective direction

of the empire, they were consistent with their Habsburg forebears.49

A detailed discussion of this complicated transformation follows in

later chapters.

The structure of the British Empire differed clearly from the

Spanish case. The initially non-monarchical projects of English colo-

nialism gave way to imperial involvement, as charters were ceded

and unofficial colonies incorporated into constitutional ones. However,

there was significant indeterminacy and uncertainty before consolidation

occurred. The Cromwellian Protectorate faced great domestic instabi-

lity and was incapable of fully aiding English Americans. Colonists

were divided over the Civil War to some extent. A web of interests

had linked many planters in the Caribbean to the parliamentary

cause, while others had allied with the King. Moral hesitancy about

the foundation of enslavement plagued the interregnum, which in

turn created uncertainty amongst planters in Barbados, Jamaica and

Virginia.50 The Restoration appeared to confirm greater independence

and increased security for the Thirteen Colonies. Accordingly, this

49 See Brian R. Hamnett, The Mexican Bureaucracy Before the Bourbon Reforms 1700–1770:A Study in the Limits of Absolutism (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1979).

50 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 243–49.


event was received with cautious relief on the American continent.51

Colonists perceived that they were less impeded by subordination to

direct British needs. Their observations were belied by their ongoing

economic, political and cultural dependence on England.52 Dependence

could favour colonial interests and it did through the codification of

slavery and the acceleration of slave trading.53

English imperial interest and involvement in the American colonies

began in earnest after the Restoration. It was increasingly recognized

that colonies were essential to the economic vitality of the wider

commonwealth. This meant more intensive settlement, a mercantilist

orientation to trade and a new engagement with existing Anglo-

American communities. An increase in the rate of emigration along

with diversification of its sources, the failure of American joint-stock

companies and the abandonment of colonial charters cleared the

way for greater English regulation of colonial affairs. The institu-

tional refinement of the Empire was a set of tasks left mostly to the

post-1689 constitutional state. A national division of powers between

the executive and legislature loosely connected structures of national

and imperial government. In the Restoration, Anglo-Americans had

foreseen greater independence for themselves and their institutions.

Aside from these concerns, the colonists had to act prudently in rela-

tion to events in England in order to be seen not to commit themselves

too heavily to the monarchy’s cause. The absence of real represen-

tation of colonial interests continued, even though it was lessened by

British constitutional measues that engendered stubborn colonial auto-

nomies. Imperial governance rested on an assertive English parliament,

51 On Anglo-American conceptions of imperial and colonial rule before and imme-diately after the 1689 Revolution, see David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution inAmerica (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). Lovejoy places the accent on localconditions in which interpretations of the imperial order were shaped. He sees inthe rebellions in New England the portents of republicanism where Sosin sees anideology shared with the gubernatorial and imperial elite. Sosin argues that theNew English rebels simply sought to consolidate representative colonial assemblies.See J. M. Sosin, English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and theStructure of Provincial Government (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).Whichever explanation one accepts, there can be little doubt as to the colonists’aspirations of autonomous self-direction.

52 This argument is elaborated at length by Robert Bliss, Revolution and Empire:English Politics and the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (New York: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1990); James Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion: TheOld Colonial Empire (London: Macmillan, 1943).


62 chapter three

as the Revolutionary Settlement brought a constitutional re-arrangement

of relations between Scotland, Ireland and England. The vision of

empire that emerged in the 1690s assumed a united kingdom.

Moreover, there was a turn in this outwardly oriented imperial admin-

istration to mercantile success and not the subsumption of colonial

autonomies per se.54

The institutional composition of the British Empire was more com-

plex than that of its French and Hispano-American counterparts.

The legislative corpus of this constitutional state included successive

Navigation Acts, the codification of customs and duties and the Acts

of Trade, and support for institutional regulation provided by the

Board of Trade and the Bank of England. In addition, the devolution

of different responsibilities to other ministries further decentralized

colonial affairs.55 The Treasury was notable for its role in collecting

(and, if need be, withholding) duties, excise taxes and postal revenues.

Secretaries of State accumulated greater authority after 1689, which

they duly shared with the Board of Trade. Parliament was well

known for its opposition to royal power. But in practice Parliament’s

role when it came to imperial affairs was minimal and limited to

mercantilist legislation. Its main contributions to the colonies’ affiliation

to Britain were additional Navigation Acts and the Acts of Trade,

both of which enhanced Britain’s economic interests. Constitutionally,

the Privy Council had executive jurisdiction over the empire that it

dispensed through a series of committees. Mercantile interests also

figured prominently in its deliberations. The most significant committee

after 1696 was the Board of Trade. In spite of the separation of

governmental functions between them, both Parliament and the Privy

Council endeavoured, in tandem, to engineer imperial activity to

British needs. Imperial rule in the British Americas was thus conducted

through a series of ministries and committees. Authority was thereby

entrusted, on paper, to a range of working institutions accountable

in principle to Parliament and the Crown. This arrangement was

geared to an empire that was simultaneously commercial and martial

in its enterprise.

France’s imperial structure was marked by a paradox. Centralism

reigned at the apex of the state apparatus, and in France manoeuvre

54 David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000), chap. 6.

55 H. V. Bowen, Elites, chap. 3.


against the rival powers was reckoned more strategically important

than colonial growth. Imperial officials felt caught between maritime

ambitions and aspirations suited to a land-based empire. Either objec-

tive was bound to be expensive. The cost of the American empire

to the royal purse was substantial and outweighed any real or prospec-

tive revenue returns. Even by questionable contemporary calculations,

it is clear that state revenues could not have been the motivation

for colonial enterprises. Fiscally, the Empire was expensive and a

direct burden.56 On top of this, colonial companies were consistently

able to shift some of their costs onto the state right up until the

nineteenth century.

Instead, it was the aristocratism and the strategic interests of the

European theatre that ruled the attentions of the court. “Dynastic

advantage was . . . thought to be the key to the New World.”57

However, at the furthest limits of the French sphere the state’s

influence was extremely faint. The arc of French presence reaching

from the mouth of the St Lawrence to the delta of the Mississippi

was more a network of colonial footholds than fully fledged posses-

sions. This is evident in the pattern of sparse, though deliberate,

peopling.58 Population figures for the whole course of French-American

history are instructive.59 New France by the mid-seventeenth century

was still thinly populated. Colbert resolved to boost emigration to

the fledgling colony and charged the Ministry of Marine with the

task of recruitment. The population doubled within ten years of it

being declared a royal possession.60 This optimistic interlude belies

a more general pattern, however. Seven out of ten settlers returned

to France disappointed, it seems, by the experience.61 Perhaps this

56 Catherine M. Desbarats “France in North America: The Net Burden of Empireduring the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” French History 11, no. 1 (1997), pp.1–28; and Boulle, “French Mercantilism,” in Blusse and Gaastra, Companies and Trade.

57 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 298–99.58 Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (London:

Macmillan, 1996), pp. 11–12; Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (Ithaca,New York: Cornell University Press, 1973), chap. 8; Leslie Choquette, “Recruitmentof French Migrants to Canada 1600–1760,” in Altman and Horn, ‘To Make America,’chap. 6.

59 Silvia Marzagalli, “The French Atlantic,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999), pp. 72–74.60 Frederick Quinn, The French Overseas Empire (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), p. 52.61 On returning emigrants, see Peter N. Moogk, “Reluctant Exiles: Emigrants

from France in Canada before 1760,” The William and Mary Quarterly 46, no. 3 ( July1989), pp. 463–505. Initially, they came from a number of different sources withinFrance. The French were accustomed to a high level of internal migration, so they

64 chapter three

is not surprising as state policies on population were quite directive.

French mercantilism cultivated a fear of domestic depopulation and

did not officially allow the colonies to become Huguenot refuges,62

nor did it encourage emigration in general. Instead a policy of fur-

ther populating the settlements with military men was enacted.63

Jesuit missions were organized early and the missionaries went to

great lengths to encourage emigration. After Louis and Colbert, a

distinct pattern of transatlantic migration becomes clear. French emi-

grants to Canada more typically hailed from France’s trading cities

and their immediate hinterlands and not from more sedentary rural

areas.64 They were more likely the embodiment of modernity and

not tradition, as has often been thought. The numbers emigrating

increased, but the growth was dwarfed by the spectacular flow of

migrants to the British seaboard colonies. Aside from Montreal and

Quebec, mainland Canada remained a series of thinly spread mili-

tary and trading outposts as much as a conglomeration of colonial

settlements. Furthermore, the spread of French Americans through-

out the continent over a long period of time, assumed a diasporic

character.65

French Guyana on the northeast coast of the southern continent

suffered worse fortunes, due to the presence of the small colonies of

other powers and impenetrability of the dense jungle. The Dutch

briefly overtook it. Conditions were poor. Two separate companies

established colonies there in quick succession in the mid-seventeenth

century failed dismally.66 A more concerted effort by the duc de

Choiseul after the Seven Years War brought an influx of settlers.

Their numbers suffered heavily from disease and the experiment was

plagued by a lack of social organization. Such sporadic attempts to

were anything but sedentary. Deliberate recruitment set the emigration pattern butresulted in a significant rate of return migration, especially amongst indentured ser-vants. See Peter Moogk, “Manon’s Fellow Exiles: Emigration from France to NorthAmerica Before 1763,” in Nicholas Canny, Europeans on the Move: Studies on EuropeanMigration 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

62 Hart, Comparing Empires, pp. 84–85.63 Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, pp. 48–52.64 Leslie Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of

French Canada (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).65 P. Anctil, “The Franco-Americans of New England,” in Dean R. Louder and

Eric Waddell, eds., French America: Mobility, Identity, and Minority Experience across theContinent (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

66 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 59–60.


bolster the colony met with little success and only a small founda-

tion that was heavily dependent on slavery was sustained.67

In economic terms, the French were not able to seriously control

the northern half of the continent. In many ways colonial strategy

sought a combination of economic forms, rather than a straight sub-

jugation of the indigenous economy, as occurred in the slave and

encomienda colonies. Colbert’s compact colony policy attempted to

limit habitation to the St Lawrence delta. The regime persevered

with this approach until Louis XIV claimed the interior of the north-

ern continent in 1701. At that time, the fur trade was a forceful

economic imperative. It called traders west into the hinterland and

drew them deeper into the interior. This seemed a necessity, but it

undermined Colbert’s developmental strategy.

The centrality of the fur trade to the colony’s economy had a

number of consequences. Its vitality depended on consistent trading

relations with established indigenous networks. The conquest of land

did not take place as it had elsewhere. Relations with the indigenes

were marked by an economy of exchange and by military alliances

punctuated by sporadic clashes, rather than by a brutal and genocidal

subordination.68 This was a matter of necessity for the French as the

Iroquois retained a powerful level of combat organization.69 Whilst

outright defeat of the Indian nations was not realistic, other colonial

activities weren’t neglected. The French did try to reconstruct the

indigenes in their own image. Attempts at conversion by Jesuits and

efforts to create reservations were extremely significant, but met with

only limited success in more remote regions. The fur trade stood in

place of the missions. It generated an economic alliance of traders

and trappers. Three zones of participation were evident by the mid-

eighteenth century.70 Around the banks of the St Lawrence River

surviving indigenes were greatly reliant on the colonial economy.

Beyond that, however, lay a region of articulation and inter-dependence

67 Aldrich and Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier, pp. 25–27.68 See Gilles Paquet and Jean-Pierre Wallot, “Nouvelle-France/Quebec/Canada:

A World of Limited Identities,” in Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, ColonialIdentity in the Atlantic World 1500–1800 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1987), pp. 95–115. See also Blackburn, The Making of Modern Slavery, p. 280; andFieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, pp. 34–49.

69 William J. Eccles “Sovereignty Association 1500–1783,” in David Armitage,Theories of Empire 1450–1800 (Hampshire, UK: Agate Publishing Ltd., 1998).

70 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 208–13.

66 chapter three

where the Micmac, Abenaki and Iroquois engaged in economic rela-

tionships established in common with one another and with French-

Americans. Where English colonists had a political economy based

on land and the use of money, the French accommodated the exist-

ing gift-giving economy in order to take advantage of the potential

trade.71 Mutuality did not assure symmetry of relations, but it meant

that colonists could not freely dictate terms. In a third area of

European participation and reverberation, the fur trade was most

lively. Around the Great Lakes and beyond, the alliance of trappers

and traders was at its starkest. The boundaries between the three

zones would eventually shift with calamitous consequences for the

indigenous nations. During the era of greatest imperial rivalry, how-

ever, this division was quite stable. In this context, the Iroquois

retained their independence and became a powerful strategic factor

right through to the Seven Years War in the 1750s.72

As a result of isolation, the relationship of colonists to the land

was less fixed than in other parts of the continent. A great and

neglected tradition of migration traveled with colonists to Canada’s

“river empire.”73 Those accustomed to movement across regions were

able to adapt to the mobility demanded by the fur and fishing

trades.74 Mobility sat in tension with a more sedentary lifestyle in

the settlements along the St Lawrence River. Until the Seven Years

War, it was mobility that dominated. Nomadism was less conducive

to a colonial reconstruction of space in both cultural and economic

terms as it was land that dominated the settlers, rather than the con-

struction of townships and forts that could dominate the landscape.

Where land in Europe was relatively scarce and highly valued, it

seemed endless in Canada. It was a wilderness land that did not

acquire the same social and economic meaning that it had in France.

71 Seed, American Pentimento, pp. 21–22.72 See William J. Eccles, “The Fur Trade and Eighteenth Century Imperialism,”

in Alan L. Karras and J. R. McNeill, Atlantic-American Societies: From Columbus throughAbolition 1492–1888 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 212–45; Eccles, France in America,chap. 4; and Arthur J. Ray, “The Hudson’s Bay Company Fur Trade in theEighteenth Century: A Comparative Economic Study,” in James R. Gibson, ed.,European Settlement and Development in North America: Essays in Honour and Memory of AndreHill Clark (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 116–36.

73 Eccles, France in America, p. 156; Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants.74 See Christian Morissonneau, “The ‘Ungovernable’ People: French-Canadian

Mobility and Identity,” in Louder and Waddell, French America, pp. 15–33.


The traits of rural life could not be simply transferred to this envi-

ronment.75 While a system of de jure seignoriality prevailed, the

material and social underpinnings that sustained it in France were

absent and so the unintended consequences of its introduction were

quite different.76 It was a means of clearing the land and not a repro-

duction of the social relations of the old world,77 although historical

evidence suggests that seignorial grants did not always lead to clear-

ing and development.78 Land was plentiful and free to till, placing

potential tenants in a strong position. Seignorial dues were low and

they were paid to the non-ennobled. The holders were as likely to

pursue the profitable trades of townships, which promised greater

returns than their landed rents.79 There were no taxes levied. A

unified legal system was the law of the land. Instead of producing

a country of villages clustered around local churches, seignoriality,

on one hand, opened up territory and, on the other, concentrated

settlement on the St Lawrence River, where economic traffic was

greatest. It also produced a sharp contrast between residential life

and the mobility of the fur trade. Therefore a colonial relationship

75 R. Cole Harris, “The Extension of France in Rural Canada,” in Gibson,European Settlement and Development, French America, pp. 27–46.

76 L. R. MacDonald develops a Marxist analysis of New France that departsfrom the fallacious ‘seignorial mode of production’ argument in “France and NewFrance: The Internal Contradictions,” Canadian Historical Review 52, no. 2 (1971). Iam following his analysis for the purposes of this argument. However, two otherviews should be acknowledged. Allan Greer takes a unique position on FrenchCanada based on a general reconsideration of post-medieval feudalism. He arguesthat New France from its inception combined a rural feudalism with urban com-mercial connection to the mercantile absolutist empire. This was feudalism, to besure, in Greer’s mind, and it was quite compatible with a nascent capitalist worldeconomy. See Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three QuebecParishes, 1740–1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985). I don’t see thatconceptualizing the internal social relations of colonial New France as ‘feudal’ addsmuch depth to the analysis of the overall mercantile figuration of the French Empire.However, Greer’s connection of colonial economic life to imperial economic move-ments, despite its internal patterns, is laudable. There is a larger controversy aboutthe feudal or capitalist character of New France, which I don’t want to assess infull here, although I am clearly expressing a view by endorsing MacDonald. Muchof the discussion about feudalism, seigniorial patterns and the economy follows thecontours of a historiographic debate over nationalist influences in history-writing.See Serge Gagnon, “The Historiography of New France 1960–1974: Jean Hamlinto Louise Dechene,” Journal of Canadian Studies 13, no. 1 (1978).

77 Allain, French Colonial Policy, pp. 61–68.78 Miguelon, New France 1701–1744, pp. 194–98.79 Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants, pp. 284–87.

68 chapter three

to the land remained undefined as long as the mobile industries of

fur and fishing led colonial concerns. This was the situation until

the nineteenth century.

The extremely limited re-shaping of the North American world

stood in stark contrast to the pattern of exploitation in the Caribbean.

The French Antilles were more deeply colonized. Although European

colonists were in a minority overall, they constituted a self-legislat-

ing colonial order. Largely, the French Caribbean corresponded more

to Spanish and British American models on the mainland than it

did to life in New France. In addition, the elites of French West

Indian colonies were acutely aware of the nearby Spanish presence

and exhibited deep anxiety about Spain’s movements.80 Of course,

what was exceptional about it was the “systemic slavery” that was

its predominant form of labor.81 Land and labor were everywhere

firmly in the hands of French planters. Here the thrust of imperial

possession was far more complete, partly because of the profitable

character of the slave and sugar trades of the eighteenth century.82

The French West Indies were the richest colonies in the world at

this time. Indeed, they surpassed their British rivals in efficiency.

This was largely because they were able to prosper without in any

way threatening French trading interests. But, due to the unparal-

leled productivity of the plantation economy, the merchant-planter

nexus constituted a formidable force in the French imperial structure.

The actual reach of French possession in the Americas was there-

fore fairly limited. Sovereignty was held in the huge Canadian wilder-

ness, but New France’s de facto reign was substantially curbed by

Iroquois power. In contrast French command in the Caribbean was

firm, though the possessions were small. Sovereignty was most closely

guarded in those colonies of great strategic and economic value. The

Franco-American empire generated transatlantic institutions that con-

centrated on these colonies. In the early seventeenth century, colo-

nial undertakings were jointly sponsored by private companies and

the marine de guerre.83 Over time the weight of responsibility was

80 Hart, Comparing Empires, pp. 93–100.81 See the introduction to Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery

1776–1848 (London: Verso, 1988).82 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, chap. 10; Doyle, The Old European

Order, p. 527.83 Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, pp. 281–83


assumed by the latter as the former subsided and then dissolved.

The reforms to the French government of the 1690s added consid-

erable numbers of new offices to the institutional edifice and stabi-

lized it until the Revolution.84 Together, these had the authority to

govern the empire. A Council of Commerce and Secretariat of the

Foreign Office were instituted, bringing greater superintendence to

colonial affairs. The Council was a vital body of the court state.85

It brought together merchant interests, representatives of the Crown

and leading administrators of the trading monopolies in a negotiat-

ing forum. The colonies were subject to its regulation of trading

companies and its resolutions on tariffs and trade policies. It lasted

only until 1716 and after a period of abeyance, its functions were

taken up by the bureau du commerce. The bureau dovetailed with the

interventionist tenure of Maurepas who took charge of the Ministry

of Marine in 1725. Maurepas acquired extensive responsibility for

the Atlantic colonies and developed a philosophy of commerce that

accorded colonial activity equal status within the mercantile system.

Many of his projects, launched with the support of Cardinal Fleury,86

drew heavily on this outlook that was so rare in the French polity.

Other changes had implications for the colonies. A Director-General

for fortifications was appointed. The admiralty was rendered an office

that was independent of the King. The reforms of this period were

a response to internal dynamics at court and in the bureaucracy,

although fear of an Anglo-Dutch alliance compelled the restructure

of the Marine.87

By the eighteenth century, overall responsibility for colonial affairs

had been handed to the Ministry of Marine. The Marine was in a

decrepit state by this time and was substantially restructured. The

new State Secretariat of the Marine was handed jurisdiction of trade

and colonial matters. The Ministry was subject to ongoing reorganiza-

tion during the early decades of the eighteenth century.88 The new

84 John C. Rule, “Royal Revisions of the French Central Government in the1690s,” in Adcock et al., Revolution, Society and the Politics of Memory.

85 Thomas J. Schaeper, The French Council of Commerce 1700–1715: A Study ofMercantilism after Colbert (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983).

86 Peter R. Campbell, preface to Power and Politics in Old Regime France.87 Donald G. Pilgram, “France and New France: Two Perspectives on Colonial

Security,” Canadian Historical Review 55, no. 4 (1974).88 Dale Miquelon, New France 1701–1744: ‘A Supplement to Europe’ (Toronto:

McClelland and Stewart, 1987), pp. 88–91.

70 chapter three

Minister, Jerome de Pontchartrain, created the bureau des colonies in

1710 to take specific command of colonial affairs. The Marine’s

authority in Canada was tenuous. Its efforts to close Western forts

provoked a serious response. It had to concede and cancel its deci-

sion. For much of the century, the lines of ministerial demarcation

remained unclear.

The level of effective centralism present in the Spanish consejo was

not paralleled in the French empire. Direct administration was the

dual responsibility of colonial governors, some of whom held the title

of intendant. Governors were military aristocrats appointed because

of their proximity to the King more than anything else. Some inten-dants were legal functionaries, but they also acquired their positions

as a reward for their loyalty. They were supported by a small num-

ber of officials, including ordonnateurs responsible for finance. At times,

there was friction between the offices of intendant and governor,

often a reflection of dissonance between royal government and its

colonial representatives. More typically, the governorship and the

intendancy simply remained distinct offices and not conflicting ones.

In this unique arrangement, governors focussed on affairs that would

concern the Crown, while the intendancy regulated legal institutions.

Gubernatorial powers were not open to challenge except by author-

ities in Paris. Some colonial assemblies were called, although none

were elected until 1787. Colonial government was firmly located in

the hands of French agents. However, their role was far from despotic.

In matters of taxation—an area of government that was a source of

great antagonism elsewhere in the Americas—the colonists were

largely left alone. The most onerous of taxes in France were not

levied in the colonies, nor was tithing practiced. Those taxes that

were imposed on the Caribbean possessions were only feasible after

a degree of indirect consultation. For the most part, the Crown was

reluctant to permit the influence of colonists to expand and therefore

made little effort to extract more revenue than it realistically could.

In Canada, royal taxes were waived to encourage emigration.89 In

other governmental matters, centralism reigned. Unlike the Spanish

Empire, colonial autonomy in legal matters was precluded, except

at the margins of colonial jurisdiction. The sale of administrative

89 R. Cole Harris, “The Extension of France in Rural Canada,” in Gibson,European Settlement, p. 40.


offices to local inhabitants never occurred; that avenue of enfran-

chisement that was important to Spanish-Creoles was not available

to New Frenchmen.

Conclusion

In the opening chapter, three premises of state formation in the era

under considered in this book are set forth. A transatlantic per-

spective is privileged in the place of national histories of colonialism

that have dominated historical scholarship, at least until the recent

advent of Atlantic Studies. A reconstructed notion of ‘absolutism’ is

marked as a concept that can provide some heuristic value for com-

parative analysis. The British configuration is more correctly considered

a post-absolutist state in this framework. Thirdly, a metatheory of

state formation as a process of institutional creation is preferred over

Weberian sociologies of the functional monopolization and rationali-

zation of power.

The analysis provided in this chapter supports four claims about

the character of early modern European state formation that are

derived from these premises. First of all, the argument for an Atlantic-

wide perspective on early modern state formation is profoundly com-

pelling. Analysis of the transatlantic expanse of European states calls

for comparison of the three main empires to seek similarities and

measure differences. What this draws into relief is the distinctiveness

of domestic and colonial theatres, despite the continuities between

them. Provincial and urban elites were drawn closer to the centres

of power through networks of patronage. Rebellions and low-level

and routine forms of resistance to monarchical rule provided the

impulse to internal changes in the Spanish, English and French

baroque states. However, clientage also acted to integrate more

secluded aristocratic forces into the regime. Colonial governments

were another matter. They were more remote and had to be self-

reliant. Moreover, they answered to a separate and additional set of

constituencies whose voice could, at times, sound loud to elites with

less influence to ply with imperial decision makers. There were, there-

fore, two types of tension within Western Europe’s imperial states:

a domestic tension between central and provincial elites, while the

other marked the imperial sphere and set imperial administrators

against colonial leaders.

72 chapter three

The second claim is that a re-theorized notion of absolutism has

some explanatory power in a comparison of the British, Spanish and

French empires. Traditional conceptions of absolutism have centred

on its allegedly autocratic nature. The work of historians has put

that idea to rest, suggesting that the only viable understanding of

absolutism must be based on its demonstrable divisions. As a category

of historical-sociological analysis, it is redefined as a tension-laden

monarchical figuration. This adequately captures the social character

of the regimes that governed France and Spain from the sixteenth cen-

tury. It also helps to explain the emergence of the British constitu-

tional monarchy and some of the particular features of its first imperial

state. However, examination of domestic conflicts makes it difficult

to avoid the glaringly obvious discordance in imperial arrangements.

The third contention is that the vastness of the expanding empires

stimulated exceptional relations of mutual dependence between metro-

politan administration and colonial societies. Distance set the terms

of government and it did so in the unique zone of the Atlantic where

the only oceanic powers were European. Categories of ‘core’ and

‘periphery’ are of little use in studying this aspect of state formation.

Thinking about how states confronted the problem of distance in

terms of multiple centres is far more helpful. It brings into play the

agency of local elites, economic patterns and partial autonomy of

colonial institutions. Of course, distance also magnified the frictions

between imperial bodies and American-based authorities. Comparatively

isolated colonies had to be self-reliant. At the same time, a sense of

vulnerability compelled colonists to look to martial and naval forces

for protection. In addition, abiding feelings of loyalty and identificationwith the Empire integrated communities. This is a dimension of colo-

nial existence that is detailed in a further chapter.

The final argument is that the colonies’ foundational patterns left

an ‘imprint’ on the trajectories of imperial expansion in each case.

The divergent circumstances confronting the English, Spanish and

French states are foregrounded in this discussion. Private and cor-

porate English colonies were founded on the ideals of a complete

autonomy. Their self-understanding was that they were re-enacting

the Exodus. Labor-centred acts of enclosure symbolized their colo-

nization of the land. The Spanish sanctioned colonies through regal

ritual, the charter of towns and the mobilization of labor for min-

ing and ranching. The nucleus of decision-making aimed to provide

standard methods of colonial development. Although this could not


achieve its own ideals in full, it put in place an enduring logic of

centralism. The French were deliberate in their colonial manoeuvres.

However, Europe consumed their attention and, up until the War

of Spanish Succession, they had little regard for their American

territories. Control of their continental and Caribbean possessions

was difficult and the response of the state was a far-reaching militari-

zation of colonial authority. Even the garrisoned and fortified colonies

were prey for the British, however.

It must be emphasized that the powers that faced one another in

the New World did not operate solely in a Hobbesian environment

of perpetual hostility. The states that vied for territory and occasionally

clashed shared something of a common cultural background that cir-

cumscribed their engagement. The process of territorial and imperial

state formation in Europe was informed by the growth of a conscious-

ness of Europe as a civilization apart. This did not assuage the inter-

nal or international conflicts of states. It framed them in an Atlantic

world where colonists had to be acutely mindful of the difference of

the physical environment of the Americas and the difference of its

inhabitants and their social forms. In the violent intercession into

America, European traditions were sharpened in some respects and

transformed in so many others. This transformation propelled the

crystallization of a self-awareness of civilizational difference.

CHAPTER FOUR

CIVILIZATION AND PRE-COLONIAL TRADITIONS

Imperial states were built across two continents by monarchies adapted

to tradition but ever adjusting to new conditions. Each enjoyed a

definite relationship to the medieval past. They were also oriented

to a constantly expanding Atlantic theatre. Perceptions of empire in

this historical process were therefore inherited and emergent. They

drew on collective memories or legacies of Rome that represented

an empire of highly condensed power. In turn, the inherited under-

standing of Europe’s ancient imperial past was an aid that helped

make sense of the new Atlantic nexus. Each would have been incon-

ceivable in their form without that common legacy of imperium, or

the historical experiences of conquest, or the impermanent unity pro-

vided by Christendom. The forward movement of Spanish, French

and English power was animated by these legacies. In encounters

with Amerindian societies and purportedly antipodean environments,

different facets of the conquering states’ heritage remained meaningful

to varying degrees for the conquering forces and the elite cadre of

the imperial apparatus. It also set the ways in which traditions were

transformed, relativized or even relinquished. The feudal and Christian

past was part of a conceptual apparatus that helped Europeans to

comprehend and describe the Atlantic world to Europe’s west. The

New World enlarged the civilizational self-perception of the apparatus

of states and forcefully influenced the decisions of rulers.

This chapter is the first of two dealing directly with the dimen-

sion of civilization. It looks at the civilizational inheritance with which

Europeans approached that astounding American horizon. This is a

matter of existing traditions that informed colonialism in the Americas.

Another way to present this that is consistent with the outline in

chapter two is to call it the instituted imaginary or the imagery of

tradition that creative transformation was infused with. Three kinds

of traditions influenced European entry into the Atlantic and arrival

in the American world. The turns in conception that emerged in

the Renaissance and that were coeval with the early voyages into

the Atlantic Ocean furnished a disposition to explore westwards.

Similarly, an early mercantilist orientation to extraction, production

and trade supplied motivation to expand. The Spanish, English and

French had their own traditions of conquest that contextualized the

movements of each state. Some were shared and others were unique.

One that was shared was the memory of the Roman Empire and

this endured in the idea of the monarchia universalis.These were all pre-existing factors. The emergent signs of a civ-

ilizational consciousness—the other side of creative transformation—

coalesced in the encounters with New World. Chapter five takes up

three aspects of the emergent imaginary. What is taken to be the legacy

of Europe’s past combined with the disposition to scientific inquiry,

a new continental and geographical imagination and an expanded

ethnological awareness. Some brief remarks made at this point fore-

shadow greater elaboration in chapter five. New science has a longer

and unexamined history in the rise of medieval rationalism. The break-

throughs to modern science depend less on the development of the

techniques of improved perception and observation associated with

the so-called Scientific Revolution and more on a discernible meta-

physical transformation.1 The twelfth century transformation of ratio-

nalistic philosophy altered the terms of intellectual thought for

Europeans.2 They set loose logic and dialectics as methods of inquiry.

The balance of faith and learning shifted. It was the late medieval

pre-text for the development of scientific approaches that would co-

exist with and could contest the sacred authority of the Church.

This early background of Western humanism won’t be explored

at length in these pages, but it is acknowledged. The argument here

is that the internal mutation of theology became more meaningful in

the context of the opening up and exploration of the American con-

tinent by Europeans. This has been understood as the process of

1 See Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute, pp. 280–87; and Toby E. Huff, ed., On theRoads to Modernity.

2 Benjamin Nelson’s distinctive history of civilizational developments is promis-ing. One of the pivotal moments in the life of European civilization is the criticalrenaissance in the thirteenth century in which the relationship between faith andknowledge began to alter. Rationalism enjoyed a good reputation in Christian Europeduring this period. This is the most decisive and comprehensive development onthe road to rationalized consciousness, according to Nelson. It is a breakthrougheither ignored or understated elsewhere and it serves to highlight the neglect ofmonasticism as an incubator of civilized subjectivity. The mutation of High Medievalscholasticism is the backdrop to Renaissance thought examined in this chapter.

civilization and pre-colonial traditions 75

76 chapter four

‘Discovery’—European and not universal discovery to be sure—and

there are several aspects of it. While knowing and inquiring as modes

of human endeavour had been problematized by medieval humanism,

the transformation of the precepts of Western knowledge took place

in the branches of cosmology, geography, natural philosophy and

ethnological disciplines that emerged in Atlantic and American explo-

ration. Indeed, the European breakout into the Atlantic had a pro-

found effect on the metaphysics of perception by encouraging doubt

of mind and a sharpened sensitivity to the visual. In other words,

the status of debate and dispute and the very contestability of authority

became meaningful in the long confrontation with the Americas.

A modern continental and geographical imagination formed rapidly

in the sixteenth century as the actual proportions of the Earth become

apparent to Europeans. The Western hemisphere pressed itself on

European minds more and more. Historians have now established

that it took much of the sixteenth century for the geographical prop-

erties of the American landmass to be absorbed, but after that initial

period, it began to gain more attention.3 By century’s end America

and Europe were increasingly thought of as continents. Western

Europe had entered the Renaissance entrenched in the Christian

mindset. ‘Christendom’ was a name and a racialized identity.4 It had

unified Europeans against Ottoman encroachment and established

the imagination of the Christian Empire. However, the late fifteenth

century inaugurated a shift in prospect as Europeans thought increas-

ingly in terms of ‘Europe’ and less and less in terms of Christendom.5

The name ‘Europe’ entered the vocabulary of literate Europeans

more frequently as the western prospect of their existence was disclosed.

By 1500 it was possible to imagine Europe balancing between eastern

and newly found western lands. It could be depicted as one of four

3 Oswalde A. Dilke and Margaret S. Dilke, “The Adjustment of Ptolemaic Atlasesto Feature the New World,” in Wolfgang Haase and Meyer Reinhold, The ClassicalTradition and the Americas (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1994).

4 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change950–1350 (London: Allen Lane, 1993), pp. 250–55.

5 Margaret Aston, The Fifteenth Century: The Prospect of Europe (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1968); Delanty, Inventing Europe, chap. 3; Barnet Litvinoff, Fourteen NinetyTwo: The Year and the Era (London: Constable, 1991); John Hale, The Civilization ofEurope in the Renaissance (London: HarperCollins, 1993), chap. 1. On the identity ofChristendom, see Pagden, The Idea of Europe, pp. 74–76. See also Denys Hay who,in Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968),chap. 5, stresses that earlier uses of the word ‘Europe’ were important, but restricted.


continents and not one of three bequeathed to the sons of Noah.6

A concept of Europe is illustrated in artefacts that survive. Renaissance

maps and their pictorial marginalia suggest such a specific conception.

So also do works of art that departed from Byzantine and Gothic

techniques to develop a High Renaissance style, particularly in rep-

resenting America. The reinterpretation of the classics helped to

induce this change of artistic representation as the immediate medieval

past was rejected in favour of a more remote Antiquity, whose

imagery could be used to valorise Europe’s conquest.7 Whilst the

classical heritage had been clearly preserved by Islamic scholarship,

it could be reflected upon as European in its civilizational origins.

The transformation of civilizational outlook was also evident in

ethnographic thought. The expanding fields of humanist and scientific

inquiry were fraught with tension—the classification of humankind

and the re-conception of Nature were especially contentious areas.

America’s peoples were variously subject to curiosity, to romantic

interpretation as the inhabitants of paradise and to theological debate

about their Noachic origins. These are hints of an early apprehension

of the astounding anthropological diversity of humanity.8 Ethnological

judgment and deliberation began to crystallize in the sixteenth century

as the cultural universe of Europe expanded. New ethnological knowl-

edge pressed the West’s re-evaluation of its conceptions of a multi-

civilizational and multi-continental order. This was the fluid consciousness

of otherness that vacillated between conception of other peoples as

similar and constructions of those same peoples as alien. It was pro-

duced and elaborated in the ferment of interaction with foreign

worlds, the Americas being the most momentous of these. Three cen-

turies of transatlantic engagement generated a self-ordering image of

civilization, even though the terms to describe it that became current

much later.

6 Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic andGeographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” The Williamand Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997).

7 Denise Albanese, New World, New Science (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996),pp. 24–39.

8 See Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediter-ranean to the Atlantic 1229–1492 (London: MacMillan, 1987), pp. 223–45.

78 chapter four

The Tributaries of Civilizational Orientation to the Atlantic

These three aspects that are detailed in chapter five are introduced

here to convey the novel and dramatic changes brought about in

the early Colombian era. They can be seen as an abiding contrast

to established traditions that guided Spanish, English and French

ventures into the Atlantic. Four sets of traditions oriented Europeans

to the western Atlantic: the conceptual realignment associated with

Renaissance thought; the economic or mercantilist regard for possession

and motion; pre-established models of conquest and colonization that

emerged out of Latin Europe’s late medieval expansion, Spain’s

unification and England’s plantations in Ireland; and the ideal of the

universal kingdom, the new Rome.

Exploration in the Renaissance Mind

The precepts of humanism stimulated and circumscribed naval explo-

ration and steady colonial possession of the Atlantic. They contained

the potential of adaptability and improvisation. Humanism involved

two movements: the division in philosophy between human-centred

and canonical authority and the growth of empirical judgement.9

The first and foremost preoccupation was with texts. The humanists

demanded disciplined exegesis. Ancient works thought lost entered

the body of philosophical thinking through more regularised and

thorough contact with Islamic sources and systematic searching of

the declining Byzantine heritage. As the volume of imported works

grew, the humanists insisted on thorough and scrutinizing examination

of the original sources of scripture. The new exegetes were preoccupied

with what first authors wrote, whether it was in Hebrew, Aramaic

or Greek. Scriptural interpretation was thereby relativized and opened

up to dispute.

This was the first and continuing impact of medieval humanism.

It forced a division between theology and philosophy as the latter

acquired a this-worldly and hence humanist orientation. A realignment

of schools of thought followed.10 Thomist and Averroist coalitions

9 Jaroslav Krejcí, The Human Predicament—Its Changing Image: A Study in ComparativeReligion and History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 99–110.

10 See Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of IntellectualChange (London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 487–90.


anchored a new spectrum of opinion and debate to which competing

versions of nominalism oriented. The institutional bases of competing

factions were also distinctive; papal appointments went one way, uni-

versity teachers another, while monarchical administrators and courtiers

were more typically of a humanist persuasion.11 They were rooted

in different centers also and enjoyed the patronage and protection

of different rulers. The fracturing of knowledge was forced by the

attention paid to scriptural reading that facilitated a climate of dis-

putation and disagreement. The interaction of new sources that came

from outside of Western Europe with the problematization of the

Church’s monopoly on knowledge which had already occurred in

the monasteries and universities encouraged the will to inquiry. While

the intricacy of late medieval and early Renaissance intellectual

milieux cannot be explored here, it is clear that transformation of

the terrain of orthodoxy provided a humanist impulse to an outward-

looking curiosity.

The second result of humanism is also relevant. The preoccupation

with textual interpretation induced an adjustment to the phenomenal

world. An enlargement of the scope of empirical sensibility relativized

more rigid conceptions of geography and anthropography. The change

in attitudes to sight was vital.12 Medieval Christianity had denigrated

vision and the visual senses. But vision as a sense found a differentiated

place in Western aesthetics. The thirteenth century recovery of Aristotlean

works that were sympathetic to the privilege of the senses helped to

create the cultural pre-conditions for perspectivism. It also generated

a tension between the theological Canon and the new authority

accorded to the senses that endured the early modern transformation

of European culture. The reputation of perception and the empirical

was itself up for grabs and was problematized in philosophical dis-

course. Europeans entered the sixteenth century and the American

hemisphere, trusting the witness of those who could give first or sec-

ond hand accounts. At the risk of over-simplification, the epistemological

tension of the Renaissance can be summarized as follows. Two kinds

of interpretation coexisted in Renaissance thought and was the basis

of judgement. The world could be ‘read’ through the texts of Holy

11 Ibid., pp. 497–501.12 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French

Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chap. 1.

80 chapter four

Scripture or comprehended through the lens of sensual experience,

direct interpretation, discovery and requestioning.13

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries both forms of comprehension

were accommodated in quite different combinations, often synthesized

in the new natural philosophy.14 Proto-scientific thinking was not eas-

ily distinguishable from the humanist endeavours of the day. Indeed,

specialized scientific inquiry disposed to an empirical epistemology

did not originate in the Renaissance; that is, it did not exist as a

separate activity. Scientia was closely allied with the arts, with trade

and with philosophy.15 It was cultivated in the milieux of major cities

and courts across Europe.16 Its appeal was tactile and aesthetic, where

the existing corpus of natural philosophy associated with monastic

knowledge was textual. In the cities and at court, secretaries, engineers,

physicians and philosophers lived in close proximity to the practitioners

of the constructive arts, that is, the painters, sculptors, instrument

makers, alchemists and architects. They mingled in inner-urban envi-

ronments that stimulated a cross-fertilization of ideas. Such networks

were the intersections of artisanal skill and technique, academy-based

instruction, natural history and naturalistic philosophy. They fomented

a mode of cognition characteristic of the world of artisans and traders,

one in which the senses were privileged. This generated a “vernacular

epistemology” easily given to naturalistic pursuits.17 Artists, seafarers

and merchants were observers and interpreters of the physical world.

Nonetheless, whilst theirs was an experience-based knowledge, it was

13 Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992).

14 Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Tradition of Scholarship in an Age ofScience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), introduction and chap. 1.

15 Owesi Temkin, “Science and Society in the Age of Copernicus”; in OwenGingerich, ed., The Nature of Scientific Discovery: A Symposium Commemorating the FiveHundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus (Washington: SmithsonianInstitution Press, ISA, 1975); Collins, A Sociology of Philosophy, chap. 10.

16 Pamela O. Long, “Objects of Art/Objects of Nature: Visual Representationand Investigation of Nature,” and Deborah E Harkness, “‘Strange’ Ideas and ‘English’Knowledge: Natural Science Exchange in Elizabethan London,” in Pamela Smithand Paula Findlen, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce and the Representation of Nature inEarly Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2001); Paula Findlen, “Courting Nature,”in Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and Emma C. Spary, eds., Cultures of NaturalHistory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also Margaret C. Jacob,“The New Science and Its Audience,” in Scientific Culture and the Making of the IndustrialWest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

17 Larry Silver and Pamela Smith, “The Powers of Nature and Art in the Ageof Durer,” in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels, pp. 46–47.


not closed off from the influences of humanism.18 Indeed, in the age

of exploring and colonizing, the boundaries of clerical scholarship

and nautical practice were porous. Moreover, these spheres of knowl-

edge were not unified in themselves and they contained ambiguities

and contradictions. At first sight, one appears scholarly and the other

experiential. However, both drew on ancient references, as well as

practical application in a manner that should defy over-simplification.

Canonical authority was tested by the epistemological weight accru-

ing to perception that resulted from the voyages of reconnaissance.

The disposition to set out from Mediterranean shores emerged from

the merchant culture that was not bookish, but which was influenced

by scholarship. It was also shaped by a number of nautical elements.

Merchant life involved calculation of profit and loss, the arithmetic

of a commercial mind. It also embodied debate between religious

and material concerns. The colloquial knowledge of merchants was

the knowledge of places. Their textual diet involved an adaptable

capacity to read maps as well as the Latin classics. Merchant lives,

like those of scholars, were pregnant with ideas received from Antiquity.

Those ideas were fed by the stories of travelers, which seemed to

confirm ancient myths. However, sailors and traders also drew from

a pool of experience that included what they saw. That acted as a

different mode of understanding.

Voyaging was followed by settler-colonialism, although this was

unintended in the fifteenth century and there was no necessary con-

nection between exploration and colonization. Nonetheless, the

Renaissance exuded a predisposition to voyaging. The technological

and economic means for deep-sea exploration had been developed

and available for some time.19 In the fifteenth century, however, the

practical experience of European mariners had been limited to the

Mediterranean basin and the trade routes of the Black Sea. Minor

incremental breakthroughs facilitated the expansion of navigation.

There were a number of important developments in cartographic

techniques, most of them Portuguese: the emergence of latitudinal

18 On English colonialism’s relationship to humanism and the infusion of its sea-faring milieux with humanist ideas, see Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America:An Intellectual History of English Colonisation 1500–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2003), pp. 9–19.

19 John H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement1450–1650 (London: Sphere Books Ltd, 1973), pp. 16–18.

82 chapter four

calculation, navigational innovations acquired from Arab sailors, the

production of new charts and improvements in compass technology.20

Advances in cartography steadily overtook Ptolemaic cosmography

without immediately displacing its authority. Indeed, the Ptolemaic

conception proved durable as it could easily accommodate the discovery

of new lands simply adding to existing maps.21 The establishment of

trading footholds on East Atlantic islands and on the North African

coast set the boundary of trade further to the West and began this

long process of testing European’s mental picture of the world.

Technological capacities and new maritime experiences merely

established potential. More was needed to propel oceanic exploration.

Some stories of distant places remained in the domain of the monas-

teries and academies. Others, however, emerged from the realm of

travelers’ tales to hasten nautical adventure. Stories told by Marco

Polo and Mandeville stimulated curiosity about distant realms that

were foreign to European experience, and perhaps inhabited by mar-

vels and monsters.22 Nearby eastern lands were enshrined in the social

memory of Christendom and in the journals recorded for the literate

by travelers. However, the western vista was more mysterious.

Reconnaissance in the eastern Atlantic prior to 1492 excited the imagi-

nation of a western Antipodes in humanist circles.23 The metaphor

of the Antipodes—a place at the foot of the world or on the other

side of it—hung over European perception of all unchartered regions.

Some of Columbus’ contemporaries took it literally.24 It had a general

influence on Renaissance perceptions of the Americas: freedom from

the tyranny of impassability that was associated in Ancient myth with

20 Patricia Seed, “‘A New Sky and New Stars’: Arabic and Hebrew Science,Portuguese Seamanship, and the Discovery of America,” in Ceremonies of Possessionin Europe’s Conquest of the New World 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995).

21 Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination inthe Age of Discovery, trans. David Fausett (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).

22 Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (NewYork: Clarendon Press, 1991), chap. 2; and Seymour Phillips, “The Outer Worldof the European Middle Ages,” in Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings:Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples inthe Early Modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

23 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp. 245–51; and Gabriella Moretti,“The Other World and the ‘Antipodes’: The Myth of the Unknown Countriesbetween Antiquity and the Renaissance,” in Haase and Reinhold, The ClassicalTradition.

24 Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas, p. 4.


the so-called torrid zones of the world turned European eyes to other

lands that could be navigated. Italian humanists were thus able to

entertain ideas of an unchartered western land.25 Ancient maps by

Crates and Macrobius circulated in Renaissance Europe supporting

the idea of a western hemisphere.26 Peter Martyr thought Columbus

had stumbled across it:

A certain Colonus has sailed to the western Antipodes, even to theIndian Coast, as he believes. He has discovered many islands whichare thought to be those of which mention is made by cosmographers,beyond the eastern ocean and adjacent to India.27

Martyr was not alone in this conclusion. With the possession of the

Americas, Europeans had confirmation of the existence of the unknown.

At this time, the Antipodes could signify either southern regions or

people. References to the Americas as the Antipodes were frequent,

especially with regard to the southern part of the hemisphere.28 The

mythical heritage was another necessary, though insufficient, pre-

condition of exploration. Incremental gains in technological capacity

and pre-existing expectations of what lay beyond the ‘Pillars of

Hercules’ extended the borders of the ‘known’ European world,

encouraged further exploration. Well-known lands lay elsewhere,

while beyond the Mediterranean and the closer islands of the Atlantic

the unknown was only just within grasp. For the Arab heirs of the

Ptolemaic conception of the universe, the Atlantic Ocean had rep-

resented a feared ‘green sea of darkness.’ However, for Europeans

a predisposition to set out for other centres had amassed out of cen-

turies of foreign exploits. Their fear of the Atlantic was not so great;

at the very least it did not restrain Renaissance explorers.

Up until the mid-fifteenth century, Latin Europe had looked east

for territorial and ecclesiastical expansion. Portuguese naval advances

disrupted this eastern gaze and then the Colombian breakthrough

25 Germán Arciniegas, “The Foreshadowed Continent,” and “Imago Mundi,” inAmerica in Europe: A History of the New World in Reverse, trans. Gabriela Arciniegas andR. Victoria Arana (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1986).

26 See James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Explorationand Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Thomas Suarez,Shedding the Veil: Mapping the European Discovery of America and the World (London: WorldScientific Publishing, 1992), pp. 29–60.

27 Peter Martyr, cited in John H. Parry, The Discovery of America (London: PaulElek, 1979), p. 77.

28 Peter Mason, Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other (New York: Routledge,1990), chap. 5.

84 chapter four

dislodged it.29 Christendom’s Eastern borders continued to front onto

Islamic states, but these were known civilizations. Its Persian and

Eurasian expanses were familiar. Entry into the Atlantic and the

Caribbean opened up a new domain for Christian and imperial ex-

pansion creating a Western aspect for it. Iberian experiences in con-

quering combined with the commercial seafaring talents of Venetians,

Genoese and Jews from the ports of the Mediterranean.30 Maritime

Hispanic culture welcomed newcomers, especially Italians and Basques.

It stoked enthusiasm for exploration and it was suggested that this

was a Christian, regal and economic enterprise all at once. The re-

orientation of Christianity’s sacred imagination to a new centre other

than Jerusalem or Byzantium hastened Iberian ambition. The new

centre was America and it was considered a place for material, strate-

gic and spiritual gain. A search for souls and wealth was the explicit

motivation for a deeper probe into the unfolding Atlantic world.

Economic and evangelical pursuits were one and the same in the six-

teenth century mercantilist projection of the world to Europe’s west.

Possession and Motion

Strands of the medieval Judeo-Christian heritage blended with early

mercantilist values. There are two sides to mercantilism that matter

in this discussion. Firstly, it set the pre-conditions of capitalist devel-

opment as Europeans began to trade extensively. Mercantilism involved

a set of values that were commercial, though they were often couched

in the language of virtue. Secondly, it was the creation of state mech-

anisms to coordinate economic activity and the construction of national

infrastructure. At the same time as Western Europe’s empires began

to develop such early forms of supra-provincial economic regulation

they were also being propelled into exploration. This second definition

will be dealt with extensively in the sixth chapter, while the first is

drawn out here.

Europe’s business with the rest of the world was conducted quite

differently. Trading alliances and joint stock or state-sponsored com-

panies of international trade were its main vehicles. European explo-

rations and colonial ventures were driven largely by commercial

29 Aston, The Fifteenth Century, pp. 41–47.30 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 43–46.


imperatives geared to mercantilist values.31 Colonization of the world

to Europe’s east, however, was not feasible. The sheer disparity of

power between the exploring states and other civilizations ruled out

attempts at occupation at this time.32 Many were also the nodes of

already existing networks of trade and had a good deal to offer

European merchants. Long-distance trade joined European networks

to established matrices of commerce and production, in particular

those dominated by China and Mogul India. The technologies,

resources and logic of colonial expansion beyond Europe could not

be mobilized for some time outside of the Atlantic domains of the

five empires. Elsewhere, commercial networks based on trading posts

and forts were developed by European states as the conduits of trade

and contact with the rest of the world.

Annexation of lands to the east was therefore unrealistic and pos-

sibly undesired. In contrast, a mentality of conquest characterized

the Spanish entry into the New World. It was based partly on mer-

cantile values. The exploratory ambitions of Iberian navigators and

merchants revolved around gold, spices, mobility, proselytizing and

land. Gold was a spiritual pursuit and conversion was an economic

matter. A close relationship between these can be found in the express

motives of explorers. Spiritual and economic goods were ideologi-

cally connected, even though each was the sphere of quite different

institutions. These objects of early conquest figured prominently and

in Spanish and Portuguese perceptions were associated with one

another. The lure of gold and the call to evangelize were well adapted

to trading and crusading.

Gold was especially important. In one sense its charm was illusory.

It fuelled the dreams of the non-landed Spanish nobility seeking

wealth and prestige. Their ambition for gold was sustained by a

long-standing awareness of trade around the West African goldfields.33

Moreover, the routes to that region were clearly navigable. Para-

doxically, there was a shortage of gold in the fifteenth century due to

31 John H. Parry, The Establishment of the European Hegemony 1415–1715: Trade andExploration in the Age of the Renaissance (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) and TheAge of Reconnaissance; Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money: 1450–1920 (London:Verso, 1991), chap. 7.

32 Abernethy, Global Dominance, pp. 184–85.33 Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, pp. 26–27.

86 chapter four

a fall in production.34 Hoarding ceased and states exported portions

of their gold reserves to realize high prices. In a century in which

the price of general commodities fell, it must have seemed that gold

was the most cherished of all goods, even though its actual financial

benefit often proved elusive.35

Notwithstanding the immediate effects of the influx of specie on

specific economic movements, gold had a wider symbolic or imagi-

nary value in Europe’s trade economy. It represented mobility and

ownership. Its portability and its seemingly universal identity lent it

enormous importance as a symbolic good and as a sign of posses-

sion.36 Its allure lay in its capacity to represent and enable motion

and exchange. This is supplemented by another signal that it imparted.

The pursuit of gold embodied movement in itself. Gold was a potent

mercantile symbol. It struck at the insular borders of the mindset of

Renaissance Europe by valorizing new sources of production and

new routes of trade.

It enticed Europe’s adventurers to the Western Atlantic and then

further. The growing urge to set out in motion is well captured by

Columbus. Columbus’ diary is replete with passages on gold.37 They

express more than his idiosyncrasy. Indeed they were carefully crafted

for a larger audience: the Catholic monarchy and its court. Portuguese

colonization of West Africa and Columbus’ ventures to the Caribbean

opened up the Atlantic nexus of trade in gold. Conversion and the

search for wealth went hand-in-hand in the extension of the west-

ern perimeter. Proselytizing, like gold, could be transported. It was

a forceful universalizing practice. The newly found landmass—so it

34 Peter L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (New York:John Wiley and Sons, 2000), pp. 109–11.

35 Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, chaps. 8–9.36 Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1993), pp. 26–27.37 Columbus constantly makes reference in his journal to the search for gold or

spices. In the first two voyages it is mentioned sixty-five times. What his diary indi-cates is an ever-present awareness of the need to make his ventures return somesmall fortune, or at least the prospect of one, to his regal benefactors. Bartolomede Las Casas also makes biographical notes of the Admiral’s pursuit of both met-als and other tradable substances in his Historia de Las Indias. S. Lyman Tyler drawsextracts from both and prefaces them with his own commentary, reading and con-textualization of these artifacts of exploration and conquest. See Two Worlds: TheIndian Encounter with the European 1492–1509 (Salt Lake City: University of UtahPress, 1988). Peter Hulme also pursues this line of thought in Colonial Encounters:Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492–1797 (New York: Metheun, 1986).


must have seemed—brought new opportunities for precious metals,

spices and souls. All of these contextual elements of early mercan-

tilism were the metaphorical cargo of Columbus’ voyages and the

ships of conquest that followed.

The lure of gold and new subjects was complemented by other

important pressures. Traditional land-based trade routes had been

disrupted at the end of the Middle Ages, especially for traders

connecting the Iberian peninsula to France and northern Europe.

The One Hundred Years War cut off routes to the northeast.38

Commercial openings from other regions were also constricted. By

the end of the fifteenth century a large part of the spice trade had

been captured by Islamic forces in India, along East Africa and

through the Southeast Asian archipelago.39 More importantly, the

Ottoman hold over Eastern Europe was growing. Trade with the

Ottomans and beyond was the speciality of Italian merchants who

consequently solidified monopolies in the Mediterranean trade for

competing city-states.40 The city-states benefited considerably from

their pivotal location and their economic self-organization. The sit-

uation facing Spain, Portugal and most of Europe at the end of the

fifteenth century was not so propitious. It was one of relative isola-

tion from the hub of the world economy. Great incentives therefore

existed to find either new routes by sea or new sources of spice. For

the Spanish and the Portuguese, spice assumed an immediate impor-

tance second only to gold. Both formed the economic basis for impe-

rial rivalry. In focussing on Africa, Portugal was able to win a share

of the Asian spice trade. Spain reconnoitred America instead with

a view to finding a westward passage to China and India and recon-

necting directly with the Asian centre. In fact, this goal was kept

alive well into the sixteenth century.41

The Spanish and the Portuguese therefore were drawn to establish

the transatlantic economy by the squeeze on trade to their east. In

doing so they built on a Portuguese, state-centred model of exploration

supplanting the Italian approach to long distance trade that brought

38 Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History (London and New York: Routledge,1997), pp. 6–8.

39 John H. Parry, Europe and the Wider World 1415–1715 (London: Hutchinson,1966), pp. 32–35.

40 Parry, Age of Reconnaissance, pp. 36–37.41 Parry, The Discovery of America, pp. 111–36.

88 chapter four

together consortia of interests.42 However, a fresh understanding of

the realities of world economic links pressed on the expansionists.

The mercantile propensity to explore and trade was also stimulated

by a growing awareness in Europe that Asia was a major, if not the

major, centre of economic gravity in the world economy.43 The goals

of exploration gained impetus from the constriction of trade to the

immediate east and interaction with the high tempo of the central

zone of the world economy in Asia. The switch in orientation from

east to west that emerged paradoxically from vigilance about Asian

centres acted as a further stimulus to exploration and an expansion

of the Renaissance perception of the world.

Closed trade routes and a honed mercantilist orientation were not

the only factors. Money itself facilitated greater European participa-

tion in trade as it was utilized more extensively. After Columbus’

initial passages to the Americas and the settlement of the first colonies,

the use of hard currency grew. The further development of mone-

tary exchange in the sixteenth century was bolstered by the influx

of bullion from West Africa and then the Americas. Minting and

coinage became industries in the Spanish Indies quite early.44 Money’s

role as an imaginary bearer of value was augmented by the increased

rate of circulation of specie and currency throughout Europe and

Asia. Gold and silver acted as a mercantile guarantee of debts. Over

time precious specie became the media of trade between Western

European states, Asian countries and the Ottoman Empire.45 These

developments enhanced the general circulation of economic inter-

ests, which could be embodied in currency or in notes of credit.

In later centuries, the connection between money and the circu-

lation of interests would be even closer and a higher level of social

interdependence stretched over greater real world spaces.46 In the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the circulation of money intensified

42 Helen Nader, “The End of the Old World,” Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992).43 See J. M. Blaut, “On the Significance of 1492,” Political Geography 11, no. 4

( July 1992); and Frank, Reorient. For a more generalized version of this kind ofargument, see also Jack A. Goldstein, “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World,”Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41 (1998).

44 McAlister, Spain and Portugal, pp. 240–41.45 Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, pp. 199–204.46 This is an important theme, which Marx provided a thumbnail sketch for in

the chapter on money in Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (RoughDraft) (Middlesex: Penguin, 1973). From this standpoint, money mediates the spheresof production and consumption. However, it acquires a force of its own through


institutional mercantilism, which both mediated and coordinated the

connections between economically significant communities in the

Atlantic sphere and beyond. This newfound mobility in exchange

hastened economic development. It was not only goods and services

that were being exchanged. It was a transfer of values also or rather

an outgrowth of mercantile values. In the sixteenth century those

values motivated further conquest of the American continent. In a

way they were ‘forward-looking’, a culture of capitalism that was still

forming. The movement of Spanish imperial power into the Atlantic

world also drew on a past that was two-sided. On one side, a received

imagery of a civilizational past conferred general purpose on Spain’s

historical move beyond the Mediterranean. In addition, specific Iberian

and Christian historical experiences also shaped European intrusion

into America. The next section delves into this second side.

Traditions of Expansion: Rome and Conquest

Colonization had historical precedents that served as paradigms for

the forward movement of states. There were three models: medieval

Christian colonization, the reconquista and England’s incursions into

Ireland.

The expansion of Christendom in the High Middle Ages brought

Europe’s warrior cavalries together in common ventures. This was

more than a just a forward movement; territory that was notionally

under control was properly consolidated. Medieval conquest involved

the decree of new lordships and towns, the organization of further

bishoprics and the advance of knightly forces. There is ample evidence

of an “expansionary mentality” that emerged from the system of col-

onization.47 The orders of crusaders that participated in the campaigns

in the Baltic, East Mediterranean, Jerusalem and the southern peninsula

the symbolic act of exchange and its impact on acting subjects. It plays a part inthe creation of interdependence not only by connecting differently functioning indi-viduals but through the simulation of social intercourse that emerges throughexchange. This isn’t solely functional interdependence. It symbolizes the social rela-tions of a complex system of capitalist production and trading and it captures themin a meaningful way every time actors reproduce them through the act of exchange.On Marx’ articulation of functional and symbolic acts of exchange and how eachis theorized in what are, for Marx, competing economic sociologies, see John F.Rundell, The Origins of Modernity: The Origins of Modern Social Theory From Kant to Hegelto Marx (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), pp. 178–82.

47 Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 90–96.

90 chapter four

came together in what was seen as civilizing missions.48 This received

widespread support from all corners of Western Europe and com-

bined diverse Christian constituencies. The orders themselves were

a fusion of monastic and warrior forces in which each modified the

other. They embodied uniformity in social organization that endowed

their members with the experience of seizing territory. They created

a powerful memory of the advancement of Christendom as well as

spreading the institutional nexus of monasteries. Other institutions

complemented the extended reach of the monastic orders. Chartered

towns with urban liberties completed the colonial movement. A

mother city, at the centre of a cluster of towns, would base settle-

ment on common legal privileges.49 Urban growth buttressed the

internal and external growth of Christendom. Like the military orders,

cities nurtured and extended uniformity in social organization.

Latin Europe therefore had methods of colonialism on the conti-

nent and some of its components could be emulated in the Americas.

As land was seized, ecclesiastical missions were started and new town-

ships and administration were chartered. Consequently, when the

Spanish conquered, colonized and converted they were exercising

already acquired collective habits. Safe traditions were vital in the

advance into the Western Atlantic. Thus, the 1493 Papal Bulls that

divided the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese

lent legitimacy, in a recognizable form, to the seizure of the newly

found islands in the Caribbean basin. It was a valuable gesture for

the Spanish because it demarcated new international lines of control,

even though they did not last. It provided continuity with the estab-

lished and respected approach to colonization. This was essential as

the daunting new situation brought about by Columbus’ voyage called

for oceanic and not only territorial expansion. The wider late medieval

growth of Christendom provided a necessary backdrop to the conquista.The Spanish edifice has been described as an empire founded and

continued on conquest.50 Spanish colonization was an inter-continental

re-run of the conquista. The original invasion of the Islamic south of

the peninsular was not a sudden movement, but occurred over

centuries. The method of conquest jelled during the long campaigns

48 Ibid., pp. 260–68.49 Ibid., pp. 172–77.50 James Lang, Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in the Americas (New York:

Academic, 1975); Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain,Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).


in the Iberian south. Successful expulsion or conversion of Jews and

Muslims established a religious despoblado. Hispanic Christians then

colonized the southern frontier.51 Many Islamic forms and rituals of

warfare and conquest were appropriated by the conquerors and com-

bined with Castilian traits. The result was a hybrid method of con-

quest that had no real equivalent in Christian traditions of warfare.

It was deployed in the Americas involving features that were Islamic

in origin. At its heart was the Requerimiento, the most ritualised and

elaborate protocol of conquest.52 It was a ‘summons’ to accept sub-

mission to a superior religion. Like the Arabic jihad, it did not require

belief, only obedience. Exposure to the Moors’ conduct of war over

a period of time led to direct assimilation of its key elements in the

Hispanic approach to subjugating peoples. This constituted a Hispanic

tradition that was taken quite seriously in the imperial polity, even

though it caused initial apprehension amongst theologians. This was

also a source of debate for Spanish clerics when it placed strain on

those theological interpretations of warfare belonging to the other

crusading tradition. When it was found not to conflict with biblical

script—as it was interpreted in non-Iberian theology—it was confirmed

that this tradition was compatible with other components of the

Spanish vision of war.

The Spanish conquest of the Americas was distinct in its reach

and ferocity. The French, Spanish and English all shared the mer-

cantilist impulse that led beyond the bounds of the old world. However,

Spain’s uninhibited drive spread the sphere of its possession from

the Antilles on to the continent, through the hinterland and to the

south and, they had hoped, beyond to Asia. The long historical expe-

rience of conquest imbued the conquerors with a specific outlook on

wealth, land and subjugated peoples.53 The singular tenacity of the

conquest did distinguish its project from English and French advances,

which were geographically confined to the north-eastern seaboard

and the Laurentine region. It was the enthusiasm for conquest that

stands out from 1492 through to the end of the sixteenth century,

notwithstanding important clerical reactions against its excesses.

The zealotry that propelled the Spanish reconquista over hundreds

of years was finally triumphant at the point of union of the Castilian

51 McAlister, Spain and Portugal, chap. 2.52 Seed, “The Requirement: A Protocol for Conquest,” in Ceremonies of Possession.53 John H. Elliot, “The Seizure of Overseas Territories by the European Powers,”

in Armitage, Theories of Empire.

92 chapter four

monarchy. Granada had been the hub of civilizational exchange.

Castile over-ran it, repopulated it and then cut short its previous

pluralism. Spain purged of ‘heresy’ bred a martial mood. It estab-

lished the monarchy as a serious power within and outside of Spain.

It brought the long period of continuous civil war to an end and

set about wresting control of the judiciary from local lords. It also

endeavoured to curb the independent power of the Church. However,

it was always challenged externally and from within and can be

regarded as a ‘weak’ state, despite its leadership on the European

continent,54 with coercive capacities that depended ultimately on vol-

untary coalitions of elites.55 The comunero and Catalan uprisings were

the main Iberian insurgencies and they were evidence of the con-

strained nature of Castilian integration. They emerged from provin-

cial institutions: the cortes with its fueros (liberties). Habsburg rule was

defeated externally in the arduous and exacting Dutch revolt. Its

other European consejos could hardly rule their respective territories

with impunity and were forced to adjust to prevailing legal and

administrative conditions. In the Americas, there were also limitations.

A self-ennobled class formed in America, part of Spain and yet

also separate from it. This was an eventual outcome that was not

anticipated. On one hand, in the strange Americas an ‘internal moti-

vational order’ united the conquistadores as the advance party of

the Castilian crown.56 On the other hand, the conquistadores were not

only a part of colonialism’s march, but also a force branching offindependently from it. Spain’s invasion was a distinctly mercantilist

action combining Christian goals, the subjugation of peoples and

their subsequent transformation into a labor force.57 While royal

sponsorship was essential it was on these grounds that the conquerors

claimed the land for themselves as the spoils of a ‘just war’:

They possessed this land not because they had bought it, or becauseit was ‘unoccupied’. They possessed it because their blood, in that hal-lowed metaphor, had literally flowed into the ground, and made themand their descendants its true owners and its true rulers.58

54 Herr, Spain.55 Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic, and

Sweden as Fiscal-Military States 1500–1660 (London: Routledge, 2002), chap. 3.56 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, p. 11.57 Ibid., chap. 1; Pagden, Lords of all the World, pp. 64–66, 92–93.58 Pagden, Lords of all the World, p. 93. On the Aquinan roots of the notion of a

‘just war’ and debates about the legitimacy of conquest, see Zavala, New Viewpoints,chap. 4.


Undoubtedly, they were boosting Spain’s world empire. But they

were also forging a Spanish-American identity in the blood spilt on

American soil. This produced a collective identity separate from

Castile. In this sense, the conquerors were both a power with origins

in the unification of the monarchy and a portent of future colonial

resistance.

The third paradigm of conquest is the English colonization of

Ireland. This is controversial and no overall consensus exists amongst

historians. The dispute is worth rehearsing briefly and some short

remarks are called for. Was Ireland really a colony? If so, was there

continuity between the process of colonization in Ireland and north-

east America?

The first question can be dealt with quickly. The first point to

note is that this was an issue of debate amongst Anglo-Irish settlers

in the sixteenth century.59 The English saw it as a civilizing process

on a shifting frontier. The spread of manners to a coalescing Anglo-

Irish and Scottish elite propped up English authority.60 However,

while Ireland may have been a frontier for civilizing experiments,

its status as either a kingdom or a colony is quite unclear. Undeniably,

it was a province of a widening composite monarchy. Indeed it was

declared a kingdom in 1541. But it assumed some of these charac-

teristics in name only; efforts to remake it to resemble other dominions

reduced it to a colony in many respects.61 Numerous waves of so-

called New English immigration regularly set the country into turmoil

until they stopped in the later part of the seventeenth century. At

this time, English hegemony was more complete, but the continuation

of religious conflict and the reinforcement of English administrative

policy attest to the instability of Britain’s Irish territory.

If judgment of Ireland as a kingdom or a colony is not conclusive,

then a question mark also hangs over parallels drawn with early

59 Nicholas Canny, “Ireland as Terra Florida,” in Kingdom and Colony: Ireland inthe Atlantic World 1560–1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).

60 Michael J. Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” in Armitage and Braddick, TheBritish Atlantic World. Canny suggests that there were limits to the civilizing processprior to Cromwell. Authoritarian models of plantation cultivated a shared mentalityamongst serving soldiers, a pre-disposition to the ‘savagery’ of locals. But there islittle evidence that the immigrating poor were imbued with the same outlook. See“The Permissive Frontier: Social Control in English Settlements in Ireland andVirginia 1550–1650,” in Andrews et al., The Westward Enterprise.

61 Karl S. Bottigheimer, “Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Westward Enterprise1536–1660,” in Andrews et al., The Westward Enterprise.

94 chapter four

English colonies. While comparison of contemporaneous processes of

colonization may be valuable, much of the recent historical literature

seems paradoxically preoccupied with identifying limitations to com-

parison. The strong proponents of this perspective are David Quinn

and those who have followed his scholarly path.62 On this view, the

parallel is a direct correlation. Some of English America’s most impor-

tant adventurers were also Ireland’s (or at least had experience of

life there to draw upon): Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, Ralph

Lane, William Penn, Viscount Faulkner and Thomas White.63 Their

experiences may not have traveled with them as enduring models,

but there can be little doubt that their past exploits influenced their

direction in settling America. For example, images of Barbary projected

onto America’s indigenes by these colonial founders had origins in

Ireland.

A less direct relationship is suggested elsewhere.64 The Atlantic zone

involved England in different colonial relationships that each shaped

an imperial mindset in distinct but comparable ways. Ireland was a

62 David Beers Quinn, The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert(London: The Hakluyt Society, 1940), Raleigh and the British Empire (London: Hodderand Stoughton for English Universities Press, 1947), The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590,Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America under the Patent Granted to WalterRaleigh in 1584 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), “Ireland and Sixteenth CenturyEuropean Expansion,” in T. D. Williams, ed., Historical Studies: Papers Read Before theSecond Irish Conference of Historians (Cork: Cork University, 1987); Nicholas Canny,The Elizabethan Conquest: A Pattern Established 1565–1576 (New York: Barnes & NobleBooks, 1976); “The Irish Background to Penn’s Experiment,” in Richard S. Dunnand M. M. Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1986). Quinn presents a historical survey of the Irish popula-tion of the Americas in Ireland and America: Their Early Associations 1500–1640 (Liverpool:Liverpool University Press, 1991). See also A. L. R. Rowse, The Elizabethans andAmerica (London: Macmillan, 1959).

63 Nicholas Canny, conclusion to Making Ireland British 1580–1650 (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001).

64 Jane E. Ohlmeyer, “Seventeenth Century Ireland and the New British andAtlantic Histories,” American Historical Review 104 (1999). Steven Ellis reverses thethesis to argue that American settlements were a model for colonies in Ireland. Inhis view, Spanish conquest of America served as a prototype for the Elizabethanconquest. It seemed to England’s colonizers that some features of Gaelic Irelandwere comparable to the equivalents in indigenous America and that this incitedtheir take-over. Where Ireland had been a borderland to be administered andpatrolled, it now appeared ripe for a fuller assault. Even the attempts at plantationsettlement were open to comparison with other European enterprises in the NewWorld, although for Ellis colonization of a land perceived to be populated wasanachronistic in sixteenth century Ireland. Irish conquest had been unintended,according to this account. Elizabeth’s reign brought about a change in Tudor dis-position towards borderland territories that precipitated English forward movement.


“near periphery,” while America constituted an “outer periphery.”65

The Atlantic zone provided examples of diverse efforts to transform

strange environments and those that inhabited them. Near and outer

peripheries were zones of learning for English colonizers whose own

doctrines were tested and altered as a result. Moreover, Ireland

became a conduit in the British Atlantic. From the late seventeenth

century there was a sharp increase in the rate of transoceanic

migration.66 At the same time, Irish ports began to service growing

demand in British trade, although often Irish traders did the carrying.

Ireland’s strategic location in the commerce with the West Indies,

Virginia and the Amazonian coast, in combination with the greater

flow of people into America, induced an Atlantic orientation.

There are further criticisms that bear on the question of models

of colonizing.67 The absence of intention to colonize Ireland raises

questions about the idea of a ‘model’ of colonialism implicit in the

Quinn-Canny approach. While plantation settlements were experi-

mented with in Ulster and Munster, they were not finished forms

in any sense and were not readily transferable to an uncharted envi-

ronment. Moreover, they encountered a very different reaction. The

military strategy of Gaelic warlords in response to English encroach-

ments transformed the Irish situation in fundamental respects: so

much so that comparison with the American colonies becomes unten-

able. Attitudes to the rebellious Irish may have resembled, and indeed

informed, subsequent dispositions to America’s indigenes. However,

both had more potent precedents to draw upon in the Romanesque

juxtaposition of Barbary and the ordered organization of urban life

and in Anglo-Norman traditions of conquest.

Evaluating these criticisms leads me to one conclusion: the rela-

tionship to Ireland did constitute a minor and fresh tradition in the

English expansion into the Atlantic. However, balanced comparison

To my mind, this suggests a comparison with the disinterest shown by the Stuartsand the Cromwellian Protectorate towards the American colonies. However, Ellis’position is open to dispute. Nicholas Canny is one who disagrees; see Kingdom andColony, pp. 9–11. See Steven Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447–1603: EnglishExpansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London: Longman, 1998).

65 This observation is credited by Ohlmeyer to Jack Greene in “SeventeenthCentury Ireland.”

66 Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eveof the Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1986), pp. 126–206.

67 See Hilary Morgan, “Mid-Atlantic Blues,” Irish Review 11 (1991/2); and Meinig,The Shaping of America, pp. 38–39.

96 chapter four

of the two theatres of colonial enterprise brings out the distinctions

more than urging the similarities. Ireland resembled a realm of a

composite monarchy far more closely than English America could.68

England’s promotional materials cast an optimistic view about the

opportunities in the American colonies, while views of Ireland were

shadowed by anxieties about civility’s movable frontiers. Its proxim-

ity set it apart from America, even though it was also part of the

greater English Atlantic. That proximity was not only geographic;

Ireland and England showed a history of partial and failed con-

quests. Each time England had left an invader-elite to struggle against

its insecurity. That struggle took place in more densely settled ter-

ritories in which close contact with the Irish was unavoidable; so

much so that a process of ethnic homogenization was possible for a

short time.69 Of course, long term implantation did not generate a

conquering, colonizing tradition. However, planting in north-eastern

America was carried out in a land in which there were no European

precedents. Coexisting plantations in Ireland (the ‘island in the

Virginian Sea’) were points of comparison, but North America was,

at the time, a barely reconnoitred proposition, while the Irish fron-

tier was more familiar. The ideal of civility that had emerged by

the end of the seventeenth century was more distinct and varied in

the North American settlements; it was “a form of local Englishness.”70

The civilizing enterprise in Ireland produced a sort of refinement

for America’s colonies that more closely resembled that of the English

ruling class.

The conquest of Ireland was a minor exemplar for America’s

colonies. The results of the colonial experience for Anglo-Americans

seem to confirm this in the distinctiveness and variation of American

societies in all dimensions. Most certainly, Ireland figured in the

background of the English advance into the Atlantic. But it was a

secondary inspiration and even then it was shadowed by the more

distant, but in some ways more potent, Roman past.

68 Karl S. Bottigheimer, “Ireland in the Westward Enterprise,” in Andrews et al.,The Westward Enterprise, pp. 55–57, 60–61.

69 A point granted by Canny as a difference between Ireland and America. SeeKingdom and Colony, pp. 66–67.

70 Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” Armitage and Braddick, The British AtlanticWorld, p. 107.


The universal monarchy: memories of Rome

Colonial expansion into the Americas reinvigorated a notion of uni-

versal monarchy. The latter was a cultural vessel for the memorial-

ization of Rome. The concept had survived the Middle Ages and

gained a new lease of life in the Renaissance. All three states under

consideration here embraced its legacy and were still claiming it in

the seventeenth century. At the beginning of this period, its association

with the Kingdom of Christendom receded. Nonetheless, Rome was

a memory that was frequently invoked in empire building. This mem-

ory had an institutional edifice in the form of the Church.

Beyond wider perceptions of a community of Christendom, however,

what Rome signified varied from one state to another.71 The Portuguese

believed that they succeeded the Roman heritage due to the size of

their empire and the excellence of their sciences. The French incor-

porated Roman art into sixteenth century ceremony and legal codes

into juristic theory. In turn Roman legal principles supported the

claims of lawyers that the monarch was imperator in regno suo. This

was not a rival bid for the emperorship or papacy, but a claim

designed to assert authority over aristocratic, provincial and urban

contenders for power. The English monarchy exercised a different

and more wide-ranging relationship to the legacy of imperium left

by Rome. English understanding of Roman colonial settlement

furnished leading adventurers with a paradigm of civilizing to follow

and experiment with.72 The establishment of white colonies abroad

draw in indirect and sometimes tenuous ways on a history of Irish

plantation that more powerfully echoed Roman precedents. For exam-

ple, Cromwell’s proposal to form a new Commonwealth based on

the seizure of Hispaniola was cast as the foundation of a new Western

Roman Empire.73 Rome’s legacy was not limited to the territorial

outgrowth of England’s imperium. It girded a whole world view.

English possession in the North Americas was legitimated by reference

to the literary classics. Milton’s works built on these by projecting

71 Patricia Seed, “The Habits of History,” Ceremonies of Possession; Armitage, TheIdeological Origins, pp. 29–36.

72 Canny, introduction to The Origins of Empire.73 David Armitage, “The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Language of Empire,”

The Historical Journal 35 (1992).

98 chapter four

an English vision of empire that was reminiscent of Rome, whilst at

the same time slighting the Spanish ‘Black Legend.’74

All built empires in the image of Rome as that image was variously

projected. All laid claim to the universality of their sovereignty over

land and sea on the basis of Roman ancestry. Yet it was Spain that

rigorously pursued this antiquity. Spain came to be identified as an

actual monarchia universalis by some in the Spanish court. It claimed

to inherit the entire legacy of Rome, viz. the custodianship of

Christendom. This particular outlook melded easily with the ‘philo-

sophical matrix’ of Spanish imperialism and was the general perspective

of the Habsburg dynasty.75 It represented an early attempt to manage

the tension between the Church, on one hand, and the Spanish

experience of conquest, on the other. Spain differed from English

and French ventures in its form of conquest, in the extraction economy

it developed and in the interpretation of the American world. These

distinctive features continued to inform the parameters of Spain’s

self-understood mission in the New World. Graeco-Roman tradition

was potent inspiration for the baroque generally. In the case of Spain

it led to a firmer embrace of the project of a universal monarchy.

Hispano-American colonies bore the mark of universalism. For

this and other reasons, its logic of colonial formation was distinctly

centralist. Culturally the Spanish Indies were enveloped by an

orientation to the authority accorded to the past. The early phase

of debate around the project of universal monarchy can be explained

as an episode in which universalism combined with an appeal to the

prestige of the Ancients to rationalize Spain’s imperium. Under Charles

V, the Habsburg historians labored a debate over the legitimate

reach of Spain’s jurisdiction. The 1493 Papal Bulls that conferred

the right of the Spanish and Portuguese to occupy the new hemisphere

74 John Evans argues in Milton’s Imperial Epic that there are themes in ParadiseLost that are reminiscent of America’s conquest. The epic form is conducive toimperial comparison. It is an anti-colonial text that speaks to the ‘Black Legend’perceptions of Spanish colonialism and a pro-colonial text that speaks for Englishattempts at settlement in Virginia and New England. Against other critiques ofParadise Lost, Evans argues that this is no indictment of English colonialism. SeeJohn Martin Evans, Milton’s Imperial Epic: Paradise Lost and the Discourse of Colonialism(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).

75 Colin M. McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas inInstitutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), chaps.1–2. For Timothy Anna, the main forms of Christian consociation emerged from


were taken immediately as license to extend the Western Empire.

Interpretation of the grant fed on the assumption of universal legitimacy

throughout the sixteenth century.76

Yet this remained an issue of contention in Spain and later in the

Italian territories. The notion of universal monarchy formed the con-

ceptual battleground for pamphleteers from both the camps of sup-

porters and opponents of Habsburg rule.77 The height of Spain’s bid

for universal sovereignty coincided with sustained efforts to consolidate

the monarchical hold over its immediate dominion. Universal monarchy

was the bedrock on which the legitimation of the Spanish state rested.

However, the actions of government authorities could be tested on

this basis also. Prior to the end of Spain’s comunero rebellion in the

1520s, the state’s claim to possession of the Americas provoked the

beginning of debate at court and mild resistance in Castile’s towns

and provinces. The debate outlived the revolt and took on renewed

concern with the legitimacy of Spain’s rule over the Americas and

its peoples.78 But both the comunero rebellion and the debate over

legitimacy were understood by authorities to be responses to the rule

of the Catholic monarchs to which they had to pay careful attention.

The Crown maintained a self-formulated obligation towards its subjects

that was continuously negotiated between cultural and political elites

in the nascent public sphere of the Habsburg court.79 The bid for

legitimacy was treated with suspicion by most of Spain’s theocratic

intelligentsia.80 This was a long-lasting and lively period of political

theorizing involving previously accepted beliefs. The limits of rule

and the moral duties of the Christian monarchy were the main point

of discussion in theocratic publics.

the potent, but more general, self-understanding of Spanish imperialism. See alsoTimothy Anna, “Spain and the Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos,” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 62, no. 2 (1989).

76 Pagden, Lords of all the World.77 Franz Bobach, “The European Debate on Universal Monarchy,” in Armitage,

Theories of Empire.78 Anthony Pagden, “Dispossessing the Barbarian: The Language of Spanish

Thomism and the Debate over the Property Rights of the American Indians,” inThe Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986).

79 Victor Perez-Diaz, “State and Public Sphere in Spain during the AncientRegime,” Daedulus 127, no. 3 (Summer 1998). See also Guerra, Modernidad e Indepencias,chap. 7.

80 Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination, pp. 5–6.

100 chapter four

More generally, the idea of the universal monarchy fuelled Spain’s

moral doubts at court and in the colleges. However, it also repre-

sented a resolution of the tension between the legitimation of rule

and existing jurisdiction in the Americas that was preferred by the

high apparatus—as opposed to Cortes’ images of a dominion of New

Spain.81 Of course French and English commercial activity suggested

that the aim of Charles V to establish a monarchia universalis would

be contested. Besides this, pamphleteers had captured the previously

medieval notion of universal monarchy and were using it for the

purposes of propaganda in international affairs.82 Other states opposed

Spain’s bid to universal legitimacy. Nonetheless, Spain’s command

of the Americas continued to preoccupy theological, legal and his-

toriographic debate at court long after any possibility of complete

colonization of the northern and southern continents had passed.

Two points of reference that informed Thomist and humanist per-

spectives sat in tension in the Habsburg court. The command of the

Ancients remained, but the fact and the principle of discovery inter-

rupted their prerogative. The power of tradition was unsettled, albeit

only slightly at first. The world of Rome’s civitas engendered a uni-

versalism that did not sit so easily with the competition of powers.

The relative immobility of the ancient city republic had formed a

different context for the ius perigrinandi, the archaic right to free pas-

sage. In contrast the world of the nautical Renaissance was transoceanic,

one in which the right of ‘access to nations’ of the high seas was a

point of debate.83 Humanism became more attuned to the mobile

exploration as it was open to a large body of texts and did not hold

to a conservative view of inquiry. This left the humanists more recep-

tive to the significance of the New World.84 The writings of Domingo

de Soto, Diego Covarrubias y Leyva and Fernando Vasquez de

81 See Victor Frankl, “Imperio Particular e Imperio Universal en las Cartas deRelacion de Hernan Cortes,” in Armitage, Theories of Empire. Cortes articulated uni-versal and limited images of empire. The latter found grounds for justification inthe system of vassalage that he was mindful of. In addition, he formulated a thirdvision based on appropriated Aztec myth (which in turn became a Hispano-Mexicanmyth). The Aztec pre-history was a foundation for a dominion of New Spain, inde-pendent of the monarchy, but which would set Charles V as an Emperor whoinherited the Aztec legacy.

82 Bosbach, “European Debate on Universal Monarchy.”83 Ibid., p. 61.84 Grafton, New Worlds, pp. 28–35.


Menchaca shifted the frame of interpretation from a notion of empire

grounded in the eschatological vision of Ptolemy of Lucca, Augustine

and Aquinas to the universal empire of human creation that should

be a limited dominion.85 The influence of ancient texts was rela-

tivized by the stubborn fact of new discoveries, but it was sustained

in the imagination of the universal monarchy.

Little of all this debate mattered outside of Habsburg Spain, as

Pagden points out,86 but Spain was the foremost power in the six-

teenth century. Over time, the project of universal monarchy slowly

faded from juristic and historical memory. The industrious thinking

it prompted did continue until the eighteenth century. The Habsburg

pretension to the rule of Christendom was finally supplanted in Spain

by the Bourbon vision of an empire made up of distinct and par-

ticular possessions. The universal monarchy was a vital component

of baroque culture. The other was the manner in which the clash

of the paradigm of discovery and scholastic orthodoxy was managed.

Conclusion

Instances of creative transformation are described in this chapter as

traditions brought to the inter-civilizational experience of colonial-

ism. That historical experience for the Spanish, British and to a

degree the French was one of brutal subordination, but also one of

newfound cultural interaction with different physical and social worlds.

Colonialism, in this sense, should be regarded as both a form of vio-

lence and an inter-civilizational mode of encounter. Four sets of tra-

ditions equipped Euro-Americans with the cultural apparatus of both

conquest and more general cross-Atlantic connections. In summary,

these include a growing elasticity of Western knowledge that more

readily allowed the assimilation of new phenomena; the mercantile

esteem of gold that stimulated Iberian exploration; long experiences

of colonialism accumulated in the crusades and in regional conquest

85 Pagden, Lords of all the World, pp. 53–59.86 Ibid., p. 40. Cecil Clough argues that the exploration of the New World ‘trun-

cated’ the Italian Renaissance as the center of humanist gravity shifted to Spain.See “The New World and the Italian Renaissance,” in Cecil H. Clough and P. E.H. Hair, eds., The European Outthrust and Encounter: The First Phase c. 1400–1700: Essaysin Tribute to David Beers Quinn on His Eighty-Fifth Birthday (Liverpool: Liverpool UniversityPress, 1994).

102 chapter four

and encroachment; and the enduring legacy of the Roman example

received as the ideal of the universal monarchy and reconstructed

in a modern Atlantic context.

In toto, this background contextualized the respective projects of

colonialism. I point out that it combines traditions that are held in

common, some that have national inflections and others that are

wholly Hispanic, French or English. I indicate this in order to con-

nect this chapter with the theses presented in chapter two. As argued

there, civilization has two axes. One runs from a general Western

heritage to outlooks confined to particular states. In other words,

where traditions are collective or circulate freely in Europe, they can

be depicted as Western and where they infer national or at least

bounded patterns, they exhibit specific civilizational features. The

other axis differentiates the instituted and emergent dimensions of

civilizational consciousness. At the risk of over-simplifying the more

detailed analysis in this chapter, I will try to relate each of its main

sections to way of thinking about civilization.

The transformation of modes of acquiring and constructing knowl-

edge associated with humanism is as well judged in terms of cen-

tres and networks as much as countries. The movement of knowledge

across Western, Southern and Central Europe fostered a public sphere

of philosophical, theological and scientific debate and common opin-

ions. The networks that made up this public sphere participated in

activities of flow and exploration. They privileged the physical, mun-

dane and empirical world and thereby incubated motives that encour-

aged voyaging and exploration. Europe’s powers were finding that

their access to countries to their east was increasingly crowded out

by the growth of the Ottoman Empire. Only the gateway to the

Atlantic and to the West African coastline remained easily accessi-

ble and even then it seemed open primarily to Atlantic coast states.

This figured in the instituted civilizational background that ordered

the forms of engagement with the Western hemisphere. Western

knowledge was sufficiently elastic to permit multi-faceted encounters

with American environments, people and social forms. The open-

ness to learning was robust enough to encourage a searching curios-

ity to coexist with other ways of knowing the New World. Moreover,

it endowed Europeans with a structure of comprehension of dissim-

ilar modes of life—that is, with otherness—although it must be

acknowledged that that structure often involved outright perplexity,

mis-recognition and miscomprehension.


The second section of this chapter deals with mercantile values

that seemed to compel exploration and colonizing. The prized sta-

tus of gold was foremost amongst these. While it circulated through-

out the European economy and was widely valued, it held an especial

worth in Spain. The worldview of the monarchy was a specific trait.

Early adventures in the Caribbean and the north-eastern coast of

South America privileged the pursuit of gold. It guided the Spanish

drive into the interior and dictated some of the terms in which the

conquistadores met Mesoamerican and Andoamerican powers and sought

to defeat them. While the conception of gold’s materiality was changed

by the experience of Conquest, it remained an instituted cultural

attribute that cohered Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic.

Habits of conquest during the crusades were the general property

of Christian Europe. They distinguish Western civilization from Islam.

Without them, Europeans would not have had the intricate and

developed armature of subjugation and colonial settlement that they

deployed in the Americas. Particular forms of conquering were equally

important, however: the Spanish blend of Christian and Islamic sym-

bols of defeating and founding that were learnt in the long recon-quista was a significant influence, as was the English record in Ireland.

In the latter case, one might add the pre-programmed attitude to

enclosure of land. The example of Rome’s Ancient greatness paral-

leled all other tributaries of Iberian, French and English imperial

self-understanding. It inspired the ideal of universal statehood and

just claims to empire, that is, those that were widely recognized by

competing sovereign states. A dialectic of universality and particu-

larity is most evident in the way that this concept figured in Spain’s

political imagination. It helped to set the conditions of entry into

the American hemisphere and subjugation of its lands, cultures and

societies, especially for the Spanish.

The traditions and established patterns of subordination that

Europe’s modern empires brought to America can be contrasted with

their colonial capture of possessions elsewhere around the globe prior

to the nineteenth century. Instead of simply engaging and trading

with contrasting societies, different economic networks and other state

powers (such as those civilizational centers in Asia), European states

inaugurated settler-colonialism as a form of empire building. Atlantic

encounters were therefore more focussed on expansion in lands that

seemed to promise a tabula rasa condition but in reality enlivened

European ideas about unknown worlds. America seemed to contain

104 chapter four

so many cultural opposites, interpretations of which invigorated

Europeans’ sense of civilizational difference. Modern colonial con-

structions of otherness were not confined to confronting the stag-

gering diversity of the human community. They encompassed a

number of areas of cultural experience. The next chapter canvasses

these within a framework of a critical hermeneutical reconstruction

of the notion of ‘Discovery’. In other words, the next chapter will

turn the mirror of European civilizational consciousness on itself by

looking at how the breakthrough to the Western hemisphere further

stimulated natural, philosophical and ethnological thought.

1 The literature drawn on in this chapter relies on the results of this research.Two works that, although quite different, are widely recognized are Arciniegas,America in Europe; and Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy,Territoriality and Colonisation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

CHAPTER FIVE

‘DISCOVERY’ IN THE WEST

This chapter picks up the thread of discussion of the emergent imag-

inary begun in the opening pages of chapter four. It continues the

application of a civilizational sociological perspective to Atlantic

modernity. The cultural impact of the opening of the Americas to

European expansion has been extensively researched.1 It is re-examined

in these pages as a process of emergence of a European perception of

civilizational particularity and an amplified awareness of the range

of human, environmental, cultural and societal forms. The impact of

intercultural experience is evident in different endeavours: the efforts

to ‘assimilate’ new phenomena; the rapid development of more exact

modes of science; debates about proto-evolutionist thought in the

eighteenth century; the development of the cartographical and con-

tinental imagination; the greater incorporation of the experiences of

travel into the realms of knowledge; and the changing conception

of the spectrum of America’s indigenous inhabitants. These are

explored in this chapter through the prism of a reconstructed notion

of ‘discovery’.

In the opening chapter I indicated that writing historical sociology

from the vantage point of a civilizational perspective risks mis-

understanding. This is due to the inherited understanding of the

notion in the human sciences that reflects the circumstances of

imperial domination in which it was formed. The term ‘discovery’

is similarly hazardous, perhaps even more so. I am acutely aware

of this danger, especially given that this study simultaneously ranges

across problems of growing cognition of civilizational difference and

of colonialism as a power and range of practices of conquest and

expansion. Some comments on discussions within American historio-

graphy on the language of discovery are therefore in order.

106 chapter five

The notion that Columbus discovered an uninhabited continent

in 1492 has been laid to rest.2 Forty years before the hemisphere-

wide Quincentenary protests of 1992, Edmundo O’Gorman critiqued

the fallacy that America was discovered.3 ‘Discovery’ suggests that

the intention to find unknown continents enveloped Columbus and

Vespucci’s missions. Columbus’ writings themselves indicate his belief

that he had discovered unknown lands on the eastern perimeter of

Asia and entitled them the Indies. This was a suitably vague name

that reflected Columbus’ cautious uncertainty about what he had

found.4 It is clear, however, that it was some years before it was

conceived as a continent apart from Asia. Then indeed it was not

until the late sixteenth century that the continent became widely

known as ‘America’. At that time it acquired a new significance. If

the ‘being’ of America is attributed and not innate, then it was

invented, not discovered, declares O’Gorman. Today the significance

of 1492 has been put into perspective as a formative period of

European colonization of an already inhabited world. Postcolonial

views on this matter are beyond serious challenge now, as is

O’Gorman’s main point. The proposition that Columbus discovered

America now finds no place in social scientific thinking.

Yet this can still be pictured as a time of discovery, if the term’s

connotation is modified and broadened.5 What was ‘discovered’ is a

subject that should be probed in greater depth. Vast regions of the

world that sat on the outskirts of European consciousness were charted

2 The literature on this subject is voluminous. A limited selection might includeKaren Ordahl Kupperman, ed., America in European Consciousness 1493–1750 (ChapelHill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mario B. Mignone, Columbus:Meeting of Cultures: Proceedings of the Symposium held at The State University of New York,October 16–17, 1992 (Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum, 1992); Nader, “The Endof the Old World”; and John Yewell, Chris Dodge and Jan Desines, eds., ConfrontingColumbus: An Anthology ( Jefferson, MO: McFarland and Co., 1992).

3 Edmundo O’Gorman, The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Natureof the New World and the Meaning of its History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1961).

4 Wilcomb E. Washburn presents a sustained critique of the significance ofColumbus’ own beliefs in “The Meaning of ‘Discovery’ in the Fifteenth and SixteenthCenturies,” American Historical Review 68, no. 1 (October 1962), 1–21. This essay is asharp critique of the histories of O’Gorman and Germán Arciniegas.

5 Peter Mason conducts an interesting discussion of the ways that examinationof the New World repeated classical motifs and problems. Ethno-anthropologicalnovelty emerged much later, on his account. See “Classical Ethnology and Its Influenceon European Perception of the Peopels of the New World,” in Haase and Reinhold,The Classical Tradition.

‘discovery’ in the west 107

for them. This set in train a series of internal discoveries Europeans

made about European worlds, which were not really discoveries about

wondrous America.6 ‘Discovery’ was, in a sense, primarily paradigmatic

in this era and involved a confrontation with the radical otherness

of a fourth continent. The realization of the existence of another

hemisphere and more divergent formations forced a change of ways

of thinking and opened a prominent vein of internal reflexivity in

scientific cultures in Europe. This was a process of cultural realignment,

that is, the questions that were being asked about nature, humanity

and society were paradigmatically altered.

Little of this had anything to do with the ‘real’ continent. In the

first instance, the study of America did not aspire to realist vigour,

as it would be seen in today’s terms. There was an extraordinary

paucity of knowledge of the Americas in the sixteenth century.7 Few

books discussed it.8 The initial impact did not stimulate empirical

inquiry. Interest was not lacking entirely, however. Curiosity drove

Europeans to more far-reaching exploration of the real fourth continent.

During the first two centuries of transatlantic history, the Americas

could still be classified and understood within Ptolemaic and Aristotlean

systems of thought, even though these were under challenge.9 The

oscillation of Renaissance thinking proved painstaking in the con-

frontation with the New World, as it did in physics and astronomy.

Prevailing views were modified by actual discourses and through

learned debates and discussion, but this was an uneven process.

American phenomena did not shatter long-established frameworks of

thinking for some time, as America made better sense when viewed

6 Arciniegas, America in Europe, preface and chap. 1.7 On the English reception, see Canny, “England’s New World and the Old

1480s–1630s,” in The Origins of Empire. See also John H. Elliot, “The Process ofAssimilation,” in The Old World and the New 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Canto, 1970);Sabine McCormack, “Limits of Understanding: Perceptions of Graeco-Roman andAmerindian Paganism in Early Modern Europe,” in Kupperman, America in EuropeanConsciousness.

8 On one count, there was little literary acknowledgement of the Americas.Between 1480 and 1609, books circulating in France on Islamic countries out-numbered those on America twofold, whilst pamphlets on Islam outnumbered thoseon America tenfold. According to Honour, Jean Bodin’s 1566 bibliography of historymentions only three works on the New World. See Hugh Honour, The EuropeanVision of America: A Special Exhibition to Honor the Bicentennial of the United States (Cleveland:Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975), pp. 83–85.

9 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins ofComparative Ethnography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

108 chapter five

through the classical and humanist heritage. The impact of the new

on the old world was tempered by the fact that Europeans sought

out what was common to both, although they did so by following

different national traditions.10 The matchless singularity of the Americas

was ignored or rendered in familiar form. Europeans were not looking

for reality, but “commonality (so) that they could secure the full

incorporation of the peoples of America into the human community.”11

10 There is a case for the view that the English had already developed a differentaffinity with humanism. Andrew Fitzmaurice diverges from Pagden, Elliot, StephenGreenblatt and others on the epistemological reasons why Europeans convertedimpressions of the New World into forms that were familiar. He highlights the caseof English colonization as distinctive. Classical and humanist rhetoric was employedin promotional materials to build support for American settlements through a “psy-chology of persuasion.” Those materials carried great weight in sixteenth and seven-teenth century England, while the categories of humanist understanding were situatedin different media in Spain and France. Extensive efforts to promote the coloniesstruck a chord by appealing not to familiar renderings of the Other, but throughaccommodation of the unfamiliar to audiences accustomed to rhetorical style. It isaccepted that Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences were aware of America’s differenceand the accent is placed on what is valued greatly in the Old World that can bedemonstrated to-be-present in the New. Persuasion to ‘adventure’ to the colonieswas truly an art form that pre-dated the deep intrusion onto the American continentand was a more potent factor in English assimilation than the epistemic shock of‘discovery,’ according to Fitzmaurice.

Promotional literature was historically far more influential in England, that muchis certain. Loren Pennington’s survey of English promotional literature builds up animpression of a more intricate intellectual engagement relationship with humanism.The images that informed it were less isolated than Fitzmaurice seems to suggestand more the result of contact with Spanish and French sources. Prior to 1590,Spanish translations of Martyr, Francisco de Lopez and Gonzolo Fernandez deOviedo y Valdes left their mark on early English adventurers, including RichardHakluyt, and the literature that they produced. After 1590, a more sanguine pictureof the indigenes emerges. It is only at this point that English sources become visibleas experiments with settlements began. Karen Kupperman takes this point one stepfurther. English writings in general stressed a similarity of civil form between theappearance of the natives and the colonials. The Indians could be admired in theirphysique, style of hair, attire and visible social hierarchy. The more time that writersspent in America, the closer the form, claims Kupperman. This was not only exem-plary, but could be seen as containing salutary lessons in the maintenance of orderin England. Her account places the accent on proximity to the subject and impliesa resemblance to Spanish and French writings highlighted by Pagden and Elliot.See Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Classical Rhetoric and the Promotion of the New World,”Journal of History of Ideas 58, no. 2 (1997), and the introduction to Humanism andAmerica; Loren E. Pennington, “The Amerindian in English Promotional Literature1575–1625,” in Andrews et al., The Westward Enterprise; and Karen Ordahl Kupperman,“Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation in the EarlyYears of Colonization,” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997).

11 John H. Elliot, “Final Reflections: The Old World and the New Revisited,”in Kupperman, America in European Consciousness, p. 398.


The originality of the New World was absorbed selectively into pre-

vailing categories of natural and enthnological thought.

Internal accommodation and adjustments led to the eventual prob-

lematization of the classical and humanist heritage. Many developments

of science were informed by what has been characterized as the

‘assimilation’ of the New World into the sum of knowledge of the

Old,12 which is an interesting though still unresolved subject of debate.

Instead of delving into it, I will draw a limit at two observations.

Firstly, there was a dynamic tension between medieval perspective

and the empirical persuasion encouraged by new experiences of

travel. This tension underscored the ordering of America’s peoples,

flora and fauna. Secondly, little was really ‘discovered’ in the strictly

empiricist sense about America in the first two hundred years of

colonialism, except perhaps by anonymous subjects in the new colonies.

There was no overall transparent inventory of things from the

Americas. However, the idea of novelty had to be grasped and this had

great ramifications for the conduct of cosmography, ethnology, biology

and botany. After the early sixteenth century flourishes of universalism,

general astonishment at the unfolding diversity of the New World

cultivated a deep feeling of particularity. A focus on particulars

emerged in the human sciences, in botanic studies of the microscopic,

in the preference for more exact cartographic representations of land

forms (rather than sensual and familiar depictions of important fea-

tures) and in the growing application of mathematics. Europeans’

civilizational self-definition was also stimulated by the accumulated

focus on particulars. The process through which a civilizational con-

sciousness amassed began with protracted efforts to account for the

fundamental distinctiveness of America. It then took shape as Europeans

searched the lands of the western Atlantic further. The next part of

this chapter takes up the forceful tensions within Renaissance human-

ism. A final passage examines the symbolic universe that Europeans

fashioned to understand the Atlantic New World.

12 A few scholars can be listed here, although the discussion amongst historiansextends further. John H. Elliot, “The Uncertain Impact,” in The Old World and the New,sparked an ongoing reconsideration of the history of Europe’s awareness of America.See also Michael Ryan, “Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981). John Mandalios reconsidersthese issues in the context of the breakdown of monogenesis and the emergence ofa European sense of “Otherness” in “Being and Cultural Difference: (Mis)understandingOtherness in Early Modernity,” Thesis Eleven (62) 2000.

110 chapter five

From familiarity to difference: the New World as a mirror for Europe

Humanism began with a complex and multifaceted interest in a clas-

sical age whilst rejecting the immediate medieval past. Translation

of ancient texts precipitated the challenge to faith, producing a kind

of scrutiny of existing patterns of belief. It posited other sources of

interpretation and popularized, to a degree, the thoughts of the

Greeks and the Romans. The widening spectrum of available ancient

philosophy was easily adapted to a variety of competing humanist

and scholastic perspectives. The texts were the basis of the fissures

of dispute within and between different schools of thought. With

respect to reflection on the New World, Spain was the first center

of dispute. Ancient texts and Holy Scripture had forceful and enduring

influence in the context of the Spanish Empire. Nonetheless, Spain

formed a focus for disputation over the significance of the unfold-

ing Atlantic world. Sixteenth century Spain has been pictured as a

Catholic fortress against the perils of heresy, but actually was a cru-

cible of doctrinal conflict and revision. The entry of lay thinkers into

universities and the diffusion of debate through a growing public of

courts, academies and printers steadily dislodged the clergy’s purchase.

The epistemological status of the canonized textual authority of the

Ancients had brought comfort and familiarity as props of the existing

order.13 ‘Discovery’ itself epistemologically unsettled this order and

over time led to a difficult condition of ongoing reinterpretation.

Grappling with what was found in the Americas set a new balance

of the phenomenal and unsettled scriptural interpretation. Retrospectively,

it is obvious that the New World contradicted the ancient texts. To

many contemporaries it seemed to confirm them. The transformation

of the prevailing modes of cognition was disjointed. Deeper exploration

of the New World animated scientific reflection, but ‘animated’ is

the operative word. The ferment of interaction with the Americas

relativized pre-existing epistemological self-confidence. Hence Europe’s

assimilation of the western Atlantic world was full of alternating and,

on the face of it, contradictory beliefs.

Approaches to Nature exemplify how fresh inquiry was stimulated.

Nature had been a prominent theme in Ancient Greece. It returned

13 Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that haveShaped Our World View (London: Random House, 1991), chap. 4.


as an object of dispute in the Renaissance controversies about the

attributes of the American kingdoms and their environs:

The discovery of America unquestionably acted as a powerful stimulusto naturalistic and anthropological enquiries. The effect on Europeanphilosophical thought was felt more slowly, beginning only toward theend of the sixteenth century, with Montaigne and Bruno. The philosophyof humanism was in fact already perfectly capable of accommodatingthe new geographical discoveries, which, in their inmost essence,belonged to the same spiritual current: the enlargement of the physicalworld beyond the Ocean was immediately paralleled with the expansionof the historical horizon resulting from the rediscovery of classicalantiquity.14

There was uncertainty about what to make of America. This was,

as German Arciniegas states, a “change of horizon” for Europeans

or a westwards orientation.15 This could also be called a new continental

imagination. The sheer size of the recognized world grew and along

with it the minds of Europeans.16 Between Columbus’ first voyage

and the turn of the sixteenth century, the sum landmass that Europeans

were aware of doubled. By 1525 it had tripled. A growing realization

that the world was widely inhabited, temperate and navigable cut

through previous assumptions about lands that Europeans might have

intuited, but not really ‘known’.17 Explorers and cartographers began

to portray the landmass as a single, unified New World that could be

named ‘America’ in the singular.18 With the new hemisphere appear-

ing as another horizon, it became possible to think in planetary terms

and the elites of Europe’s imperial states began to do just that. This

involved a different visualization of the continents. From the sixteenth

century portraits of the world began to allegorically depict the four

continents in ways that accentuated the distinctions between them.19

14 Antonello Gerbi, Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to GonzaloFernandez de Oviedo (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 1985), pp. 8–9. Seealso Zavela, “America and the Wider World,” and De Lamar Jensen, The Expansionof Europe: Motives, Methods and Meanings (Lexington: MA, D. C. Heath and Company,1967).

15 Arciniegas, America in Europe, p. 24.16 Bernstein, The Power of Gold, p. 112.17 On changing perceptions of the habitability of the world, see John Headley,

“The Sixteenth Century Celebration of the Earth’s Total Habitability: The Issueof the Fully Habitable World for Renaissance Europe,” Journal of World History 8,no. 1 (Spring 1997).

18 Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas, pp. 2–3.19 Honour, Hugh, The European Vision of America, pp. 112–22.

112 chapter five

The only landmass that counted was continental and its chief features

were taken to be civilizational. America appears the strangest of all

these. It was often pictured in classical pose as a woman with an

iguana or an armadillo or in Aztec headdress. This was one style

of projection of the new western hemisphere. It was another place

unaccounted for in the bequest of Ancient geographies. Other distant

places were starting to matter more.

A horizon of change also loomed large. Europeans deferred to

ancient texts but were also struggling to comprehend the ‘change of

horizon’. They were put between two poles of authority and, in this

sense, when confronted with a horizon of change responded by

searching for similarities. Early classicist iconography of America

pictured only common humanity, an image effected by positing

Romanesque gestures and appearance as trans-cultural. Artists and

cartographers portrayed America in classical similes. This was the

only way that the New World could be meaningfully depicted without

disclosing a broad dissimilarity. Ancient heritage felt more familiar

and thus the interruption of the Americas could be accommodated

in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The search for the origins of civilized humanity brought scientists,

artists and philosophers to the New World. They could express their

preoccupations with the classical heritage and the problems of the

present in accounts and images of that place. A paradox emerged

between European images of the Americas and new narratives based

on on-the-ground experience. Colonizers and travelers had to attempt

to reconcile an established philosophical outlook and inexplicable

experience. During the era in which the Spanish dominated the

Atlantic nexus, this perplexity was common. In the sixteenth century,

Spanish clerics tried to develop histories of Mesoamerica. They based

their attempts on the existing understanding of the progress of civi-

lizations. Yet other ‘texts’ also mattered and were grappled with in

an unprecedented attempt to understand the historical self-image of

others. This opened up an emergent, though contested, vein of

hermeneutical thinking in European civilization that was subsequently

present, even in the minority currents of natural philosophy and the

human sciences.20 Unfamiliar quipus and codices of Incan and Aztec

history and other types of indigenous script were treated as credible.21

20 See Bruce Mazlish, Civilization and Its Contents (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 2004), pp. 34–35.

21 Esguerra-Canizares, How to Write the History of the New World, chap. 2.


To be sure, they believed the sources to be biased and primitive,

but they regarded local information as sufficiently authoritative in the

context of an unknown past. Even within these parameters, explanations

of inexplicable experience remained pliable, especially when pressed

into the polemical argument of a disputatio, that is, a formal clerical

and scholarly debate.22 Disputation occurred in Europe far removed

from the American environment in which variance between well-

accepted views and lived experience must have seemed sharper. At

this time, the authority of eyewitnesses was high, but under challenge.

In Spain and Italy the authority of tradition was often invoked in a

highly expedient manner. Where experience would seem to refute

the book, the refutation would remain incomplete. Observations and

events that defied written wisdom could be neglected because the

canonical trinity of the Bible, clerical opinion and ancient wisdom

provided the paradigmatic design in which certain questions could

be accommodated and only certain answers attended to. Those dis-

coveries which acquired significance for much of the sixteenth century

seemed to be those that confirmed a tract of prevailing opinion, or

at least those for which credibility could be found in ancient expla-

nation. Nonetheless, the reports of witnesses were treated as serious

materials and, in this sense, the empirical endured as a problematic.

Both eyewitness accounts and tracts of debates on the continent

entered into growing fields of knowledge. They circulated freely

around Europe, creating an impression of continent-wide dialogues

amongst and between distinct networks of science and philosophy.23

There were also significant national and denominational variations.

Protestant and Catholic interpretations were at odds. Within each,

there were further differences, for example between Lutheran and

Calvinist, and between Franciscan and Dominican. As well, these

varied in different waves of colonization.24 On the whole, however,

a level of general communication meant that philosophy and science

became shared fields. A “mobile technology of power”—the repro-

ducible printed word—united otherwise diverse representations in

shared civilization-wide observations.25 A common field of discourse

22 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 52–54.23 See Collins’ macrosociology of ‘rapid-discovery science.’ The seventeenth century

juncture built up and intensified contacts and density of networks, according to hisaccount. See Randall Collins, Sociology of Philosophies, pp. 533–62.

24 Greenblatt, introduction to Marvelous Possessions.25 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

114 chapter five

and literature threw up a synthesis of world-views beyond the imme-

diate control of Europe’s ruling temporal and ecclesiastic powers.

The monarchies of Spain, France and England and their apparatus,

to varying degrees and in quite particular ways, endeavoured to cast

their American possessions in the mould of the European homelands.

But perspectives coming from the colonies disturbed this aim. The

New World inducted travelers and immigrants into societies where

enduring certainties were susceptible to revision. All explanations

returning back to European circuits were informed by sensual as well

as traditional authority, at least to some degree.

During the seventeenth century, the kind of scientific thinking that

might be more recognizable today was elevated, led by the coalescence

of the Newtonian paradigm in physics. Its natural philosophers and

ethnologists tended to dismiss earlier Spanish accounts of the Central

and South American continent. The general impact of science during

this phase was more notable beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Also, in

the Italian territories, the authority of the Canon was interrupted

increasingly by the expansion of science. Contemporary readings of

this movement identified Columbus’ voyage as its starting point.26

This laid the groundwork for Enlightenment philosophies that were

deeply sceptical of American accounts. In the eighteenth century they

increasingly clashed with growing American knowledge of the continent.

Evolutionary thinking associated with Cornelius de Pauw, abbe Raynal,

Buffon, Voltaire and William Robertson distrusted human perception

and thoroughly doubted the reliability of earlier eyewitnesses.27 Their

ascendant philosophy of history contained contradictory perceptions

of the New World’s natural and ethnic make-up. Amerindians were

ostensibly strong, war-like and dignified, and yet weak and in need

of benevolent paternity. It was a young, virgin continent and yet

also inhospitable and unforgiving. It was a world of depravity, inhabited

by the depraved. De Pauw’s method of philosophical criticism became

tremendously influential in a new eighteenth century species of writing

26 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 90–96.27 Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, chap. 1. See also

Stuart Andrews, The Rediscovery of America: Transatlantic Crosscurrents in an Age of Revolution(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), chap. 12. On the ambiguities of Europeanimages of America and American self-imagery, see Thomas K. Murphy, A LandWithout Castles: The Changing Image of America in Europe 1780–1830 (Lanham, MD:Lexington Books, 2001), chap. 2.


on America.28 The reliability of written histories and scientific trea-

tises was judged by standards of internal consistency. The frame-

work of evolutionary history was the paradigm of judgement which

would over-ride more empirical attempts to describe difference. De

Pauw and his followers inspired relatively closed systems of thought

that derided American culture, where previous Spanish accounts of

Amerindian world culture drew stereotyping though nevertheless more

flattering analogies with classical Europe.

Those living in and traveling extensively through the American

continent were also attuned to difference. But they lived through it

as direct observers and their experience was not limited to remote

criticism. A kind of Spanish-American patriotic epistemology built

up a critique of the scientistic contempt for the American world and

the eyewitnesses who gave account of it.29 The social standing of

Creole interpreters was privileged in the defence of American his-

toriography, where it was resolutely maligned in European versions.

Americans thought that only they could understand the complex

compendium of local sources that were the raw materials of history.

In defending their histories they were also upholding a partisan

position in continent-wide dialogues in Europe that countered social-

evolutionary philosophy.

This was an epistemological battle over the civilizational eminence

of the Americas. It marked out two different basic perceptions of

the value of the peoples, societies and ecosystems that inhabited the

Western hemisphere. In other words, by the eighteenth century there

were two different orientations that indicated a more sharply defined

conception of civilizational specificity. Spaniards sensed alterity, while

Creole Americans differentiated themselves from both Spaniards and

northern Europeans and from subaltern mestizos. This battle for cul-

tural possession of the past informed the accumulation of civilizational

distinction in the present. European disdain for the American world

had grown in the eighteenth century in competition with the coun-

tervailing position. At times, it reached the pitch of outright hostility

to Creole-Americans and enduring Amerindian cultures. The new evo-

lutionist philosophy of history demarcated a strong and more insular

identification with European civilization that was now more loudly

declared superior.

28 Canizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, pp. 29–49.29 Zavala, The Political Philosophy of the Conquest, pp. 107–14.

116 chapter five

However, it must be recognized that eighteenth century evolu-

tionism did not proliferate. When it did spread, it was opposed by

romantic and primitivist reflections on the New World. The latter

enlarged on prevailing utopian trends. To explain how, it is neces-

sary first to return to the sixteenth century to examine the first

impulses to utopian imagining. Wonder and utopian perception related

directly to the process of internal discovery that Europeans were

embroiled in. Those American experiences that seemed irreconcil-

able with the given conceptual apparatus assured the status of the

wondrous. Contemporaries took ‘wonderful’ to mean awe-striking

marvels,30 which assaulted the senses with their alterity. Travelers,

explorers, scholars and writers wrestled to fit new marvels from

American lands into familiar moulds.31 The uncanny and the mar-

vellous sat in the interstices of familiar and inexplicable findings.

This was a confrontation with the unknown for Europeans. Columbus’

intrusion into the Caribbean initiated “a century of intense wonder”

in which explorers, conquerors and settlers grappled with what they

encountered and perceived in contrasts.32 In this struggle with con-

trasts, received wisdom did sustain its forcefulness. However, sense-

dependent understanding expanded as the traffic of ideas, people

and goods across the Atlantic world grew. An awareness of horizons

of ‘here’ and ‘there’ increased; that is, an awareness of Atlantic

seaboard states and their new distant colonies on the other conti-

nent. This literal horizon added more dramatically to the body of

experiences in the colonies that were at some variance with metro-

politan perceptions. On both the European and American sides of

the Atlantic, experience blended with canonical preconceptions, some-

times with harmony and sometimes with friction. Later, the divergence

of the two would be enlarged.

This was a crucial discovery: that the representation of experiences

might not be consolidated within pre-existing schemas. It brought

unease and was accommodated by attempts to render the incom-

mensurable familiar. It also stimulated utopian imagination. From

Peter Martyr and Columbus’ letters and from More’s Utopia onwards,

a current of ‘Golden Age’ thinking pictured the Americas as an

30 See Rachel Roggett, ed., New World of Wonders: European Images of the Americas1492–1700 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992).

31 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 10–12.32 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 14.


original utopia.33 Reports of the condition of Amerindian peoples

were coached in the language of a ‘liberty’, ‘natural virtue’, ‘a state

of nature’ or a true Eden. The Golden Age current drew on impres-

sions of the old and new worlds using metaphors to enable unified

comprehension of the contrasting conditions of each. The contrast

could serve as a means of critiquing the existing state of European

civilization. The New World was used in utopian writings as a mirror

reflected onto European societies to defamiliarize them. The enthu-

siasm for the discovered metaphorical Eden sustained the Creation

story as an allegory as well as a story taken literally as truth. For

much of the seventeenth century enthusiasts bustled about filling in

the gaps in the Bible and in their own imagination, debating whether

America was a separate Creation or not.34 It seemed that in America,

Europe’s own prehistoric origins—now freshly discovered—had been

preserved. The utopian impulse drew succour from the assumption

that Europe could be redeemed from its present state, if it had

enjoyed a more ideal past, even if that past was remote. By the end

of the century such wonder and romantic retrospectivity had begun

to fade as speculation about the New World’s contained and distinct

history over-shadowed the belief in common anthropological origins.

Europeans had discovered what they did not know: an expand-

ing horizon of another vast land. Utopian metaphor was not the

only means by which the contrasting environment could be grasped.

The wondrous was the rhetorical process that filled the gaps of New

World imagery and complemented the catalogue of the exotic to

33 Beatriz Bodmer delineates a specific mode of thinking that is utopian at thistime. Its ‘locus utopica’ is America, but it brings together the dark recesses of theEuropean invasion as well as the hopeful desire for perfection. More and Columbus’views contributed along with others. See El Jardin y el Peregrine: Ensayos Sobre elPensamiento Utopico Latinoamericano 1492–1695 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi),1996. See also William Brandon, New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World andtheir Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe 1500–1800 (Ohio: Ohio UniversityPress, 1986) and Stelio Cro “Classical Antiquity, America and the Myth of theNoble Savage,” in Haase and Reinhold, The Classical Tradition. In this period, MarioGongora also sees utopian thought, as a particular current, breaking off from escha-tological vision, which was the established basis of Christian ‘hope.’ Utopianismcame to dominate writings of the sixteenth century and spiritual hopes were investedin them. Their distinctive traits lay in rationalism, which was an element absentfrom the eschatological imagination. See Gongora, Studies in the Colonial History ofSpanish America, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1975) pp. 230–38.

34 Philip C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth Century Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999).

118 chapter five

produce a remarkable unity of comprehension. The exotica of monsters,

‘savages’, plants and animals that did not accord with anything in

the ancient inventories were rendered in forms digestible for Europeans.

A gift economy involving the exchange of actual transported novel-

ties from the Americas, Africa and the sub-continent also emerged

amongst Europe’s rulers. Mostly, it was representations from the cat-

alogue of exotica that circulated. Apprehension of difference became

a growing challenge. But it was not a challenge without any prece-

dent. Myths of the Wild man and of monsters facilitated the con-

sumption of the strange and unfamiliar were firmly established in

traces of Ancient writings and the dark and fearful side of the medieval

imagination.35 They were mobilized in a wide and ongoing exercise

of comprehension. Yet the surprise of the American continent’s exis-

tence and the particularity of its features lent the description of its

natural and human landscape a unique place in the compendium

of European representation. The tracts, diaries, tales, paintings, carv-

ings, specimens, captive natives on display and pageants celebrating

New World paraphernalia that brought impressions of America to

Europe had to render alien features comprehensible.

This was a more difficult process, as many Europeans did not

appreciate America’s antiquity. Myth provided a prism of recognition

for perplexed Europeans, one that endured. But this was insufficient.

Forms of visual, graphic and other textual representation dedicated

to the imitation of Nature developed at the intersection of art, science

and natural philosophy.36 Museums, gardens and libraries induced

transition in this regard as they assembled and housed a selection

of artefacts that could be taken as representative. Artefacts on exhibit

gave the appearance that the phenomenal diversity of the New World

could be grasped, managed and indeed even possessed.37

35 Susi Colin, “The Wild Man and the Indian in Early Sixteenth Century BookIllustration,” in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collectionof Essays (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Jeffrey Janome Cohen,“The Order of Monsters: Monster Lore and Medieval Narrative Traditions,” inFrancesca Canadé Sautman, et al., eds., Telling Tales: Medieval Narratives and the FolkTradition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination,trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); LorraineDatson and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York:Zone Books, 1998).

36 P. Smith and Findlen, “Commerce and the Representation of Nature in Artand Science,” in Merchants and Marvels.

37 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in EarlyModern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).


Botany is an area where the assimilation of New World flora was,

arguably, more rapid and complete. Natural philosophy as its epis-

temological underpinning was a catalyst. Sixteenth century science’s

preoccupation with the similarity of plants was a struggle with com-

parability. Early botanists strove to match unusual plants with those

classified by Pliny, Aristotle and Dioscorides. In fact, few specimens

were considered until the mid-sixteenth century and even fewer were

transported. Often enough the natural history of the day relied on

human sources and neglected eyewitness accounts.38 Original dis-

coveries provided the impetus to refine the standards of illustration

and classification of new species. Of course, species unknown to

Europeans were being found in many places. But the growing vol-

ume coming from the Americas made it a special source of scientific

renewal.39 Furthermore, it compelled naturalists to focus more on

the genus of plant life than on references to them in erudite texts.

Many felt additional compulsion to represent them with greater

accuracy to accentuate their wonder. Curiosity about the New World’s

natural phenomena increased noticeably from the mid-seventeenth

century onwards,40 paradoxically during the period where investiga-

tive inquisitiveness into the universe of its aboriginal inhabitants

declined. Scientific institutions, such as the Royal Society and the

Paris Academy of Sciences, gathered collections in a quasi-public

space. A physical interface with New World materials fostered an

early scientific public sphere. Criticism of hitherto respected ancient

texts emerged. In summary, botany was an area of endeavour where

representation in realistic proportion and perspective prevailed earlier.

Many mediated the initial botanical and ethnographic observa-

tions of travelers and receptive audiences across the Atlantic. Anthony

Pagden alludes to these in discussing the relational positions of con-

querors, travelers, missionaries and settlers.41 Attachment to the New

World is the principle on which commensurability pivoted for all

those different types of colonizers. Their perception was dictated to

partly by their relationship to the environment. Travel, in particu-

lar, was a compelling stimulus to enquiry, one that had begun to

38 Henry Leywood, “The New World and the European Catalog of Nature,” inKupperman, America in European Consciousness.

39 Honour, The European Vision of America, pp. 57–58.40 Katie Whitaker, “The Culture of Curiosity,” in Jardine et al., Cultures of Natural

History.41 Pagden, European Encounters, chap. 1.

120 chapter five

gain momentum before Columbus’ voyages.42 Returning traveler-

ethnographers did not have to face the permanent condition of accli-

matizing to unfamiliar environments as settlers did.43 They returned

with memoirs or with artefacts of elements torn from their contexts

and habitats and, in this sense, what they brought back was ephemeral.

English travelers of the seventeenth century are a good example.

They were instructed to tour with purpose.44 They were to take an

inventory of all things that they saw, perhaps with a view to pub-

lishing when they returned. Traveling amateurs sketched or painted

many landscapes and illustrations.45 Their records were additional

materials for botany and geography. Far from being only personal

experiences, impressions of America were passed around an eager

reading and viewing public, whose appetite for representations of

American ecology seemed insatiable. This was a public that incor-

porated the naturalistic and scientific sensibilities that Milton’s ParadiseLost appealed to.46 Collectively, they helped to build up impressions

of other places. They were a major source of information about the

New World environment, but could amount to little more than

fleeting portraits excised from the contexts in which they were formed.

Consequently, the significance of habitat and ecology could not be

completely conveyed and was therefore piecemeal, in spite of the

advances in botany and in spite of a growing public that was hungry

for reports on the American environment.

Translations disseminated impressions also, although these mat-

tered less in the eighteenth century due to the progress of proto-

evolutionism. Missionaries, historians, artists and visitors were acutely

aware of their inability to understand or indeed to transport the ele-

ments of the other continent. Yet it was in the attempt to convey

42 Aston, The Fifteenth Century, chap. 3.43 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 36–38.44 Peter J. Marshall and Glyn Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Percep-

tions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1982),chap. 2.

45 Honour, The European Vision, pp. 6–7, 179.46 Karen Edwards argues that Paradise Lost reflects how this public measured the

natural world against ‘experiential knowledge.’ It was a record of new natural sciencederived from exploration. Nature is depicted as a ‘book of knowledge’ open to inter-pretation. It captured the insurgent interest in microscopic sight eager to explorethe inner universe of plants and animals. This universe was open to interpretationby experimentalists much as the world was open to new interpretation by Milton’sAdam after the Fall. See Karen L. Edward, Milton and the Natural World: Science andPoetry in ‘Paradise Lost’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).


impressions of the environment that a common frame of cultural

encounter can be found. There were weak, but nonetheless dis-

cernible, links between Americans, Europeans and the myriad of

intermediaries. Their translations not only applied on the frontier,

the coast or in the central hinterlands. Their words reached other

audiences in Europe in both scholarly and vernacular languages. Of

course their role was not solely one of benign functionaries. Strange

European ideas were translated for the Arawaks of Hispaniola, for

Moctezuma, in John Guy’s trading expedition in 1612 and for many

after the early encounters. Although they did not always find equiv-

alents in the Amerindian universe of understanding, these were acts

of representation of European intentions. Greenblatt singles out trans-

lators as the factor that gave the Spanish decisive edge in using the

rivalries of the central Mesoamerican empires to advantage.47 To be

sure, they occupied a pivotal position in the nexus of intercourse.

However, the indigenes were relegated to the margins of philosophical

history over time. Reconstructions of their pasts could attribute

different traits—some ‘civilized’, some ‘savage’—to distinct tribes and

societies.48 In this way, evolutionary accounts of the continent’s past

that appear self-contradicting to modern observers could be easily

pieced together. During the first century of confrontation, the Spanish

had retrieved and relied on Amerindian sources of information.

Denigration of non-alphabetical languages was not their custom. A

sea change in attitudes came in the eighteenth century as Mesoamerican

cultures were situated within evolutionist schemas as lower than

Egyptian and Chinese civilizations. Non-stratified societies did not

fare nearly as well. They were designated natives without history.

For cultures with a physical record and a recognizable hierarchy, it

was the image of savagery that was the nucleus of European com-

prehension and not a treatment of their interpretations of the past.

Given all of the above, if this can be aptly described paradigmatically

as a period of Discovery, what then was ‘discovered’? The discovery

47 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, pp. 11–13. Stuart B. Schwarz is implicitly crit-ical of Greenblatt’s theorization of representation as the essential core of culturalencounters. Instead, encounters do capture and retain some of what is reported. Inthe case of the Americans, Schwarz sees a complicated range of encounters, onlysome of which are linguistic, textual, symbolic or pictographic, and not all of theseare exercises of power, for that matter. See his introduction to Implicit Understandings.

48 Ter Ellington, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2001), chaps. 1–5.

122 chapter five

was that little was known. A profound feeling of new and expand-

ing limits of European knowledge unfolded. In Pagden’s words the

boundary of what was known was a “receding horizon,” stretching

on forever, further out of reach as more and more was added to

the store of European knowledge.49 This was a discovery in itself

that resulted from an accumulation of numerous and smaller obser-

vations. Civilizational encounters in the Atlantic zone cultivated a

pragmatic disposition as ethnological awareness and scientific imagery

began to incorporate a greater diversity of environments. This raised

the prospect that the existing fund of knowledge held by European

civilization was limited and therefore the categories of scientific think-

ing should be relativized to admit future findings.

Awareness of the span of humanity was a ‘horizon’ of knowledge

that ‘receded’ most rapidly. Confrontation with other peoples whose

status was uncertain led to much debate. Strictly speaking this can-

not be calculated as the early rise of anthropology. However, it might

be seen as its pre-history.50 The continent-wide contact with peoples

to that point unknown by Europeans did spark an ethnological aware-

ness or a curiosity that was proto-anthropological. It was steeped in

an ambiguity that was not present in the founding writings of nine-

teenth century anthropology.51 The impulse to comparative inquiry

meant that questions about others had to be open-ended to some

degree. Empirical sensibilities competed with philosophically-abstract

principles by demonstrating that there were now clearly exceptions

49 Pagden, European Encounters, chap. 3.50 Robert Wokler, “Anthropology and Conjectural History in the Enlightenment,”

in Christopher Fox, Roy Porter and Robert Wokler, eds., Inventing Human Science:Eighteenth Century Domains (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

51 “(M)any . . . discern during the first half of the nineteenth century a harden-ing of racist attitudes and a withering of what is seen as a genuine curiosity andempathy for other cultures, characteristic of Enlightenment explorers and naturalphilosophers.” (Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government[Oxford: Polity Press, 1994], pp. 68–69).

Fuyuki Kurasawa takes this view a great deal further in his analysis of cross-cultural counter-currents in the history of social theory. An intercultural sensibilitycan be traced back to Montaigne’s essay on cannibalism, then to Montesquieu’sPersian Letters and to Rousseau’s far-reaching critique of European civilization. This‘ethnological imagination’ forms a backdrop to the critical dimension of modernsocial theory. Sociology’s capacity to constantly reinterpret gives it an inter-culturaldisposition, which at first glance might seem to be missing in anthropology. However,in-depth interpretations of different aspects of Durkheim and Levi-Strauss show thatanthropology too shares the ethnological imagination with sociology. Kurasawa’sstrong argument is that the counter-current has been present in Western social


to the accepted universal story of the spread of humanity.52 In other

words, they countered universalism with illustrations of diversity that

demanded alertness to relativity.

In hindsight, this inquisitiveness clearly echoed the main ethical

dilemma of Spanish colonialism: how to relate to actual peoples

whose genesis and character were unexplained.53 To this dilemma

there was a spectrum of responses. The scholarly exchange between

Juan de Sepulveda and Bartolome de Las Casas in the well-known

Valladolid controversy was an early instance, although it was per-

haps the most spectacular.54 The reactions continued through to the

eighteenth century.55 By this time, polygenesis had supplanted mono-

genesis in explanations of the anthropographic spread of humanity.56

Public admission that the peoples of the New World might have a

different origin lent legitimacy to the notion that it was a separate

world altogether. It remained for many a perplexing and barbaric

world. Spanish and French ethnographic thought spanned a new

spectrum that variously ascribed traits of ‘savagery’ in impressions

of indigenous civilizations. Some of them reflected a romantic and

primitivist mood and attributed nobility to those living in ‘lost’ nat-

ural conditions. Others endorsed the collective sense of superiority

in tune with evolutionist currents. The self-assured confidence of the

Renaissance that attributed brotherhood to America’s people and

searched for a common genesis was starting to fall away. A con-

founding New World was displacing it.

theory since the sixteenth century. In fact, tellingly, he consistently describes Westernmodernity’s sphere as ‘North Atlantic’ and ‘Euro-American.’ See “The EthnologicalCounter-Current in Sociology,” International Sociology 15, no. 1 (March 2000), andThe Ethnological Imagination: A Cross-Cultural Critique of Modernity (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 2004). See also Philip Bagby, Culture and History: Prolegomena tothe Comparative Study of Civilizations (London: Longmans, Green, 1958). In his introduction,Bagby re-visits the pre-anthropological writings of Montaigne and Lafitau and tracesa relationship to romanticism in anthropology’s nineteenth century emergence.

52 See Mazlish, Civilization and Its Contents, pp. 26–27.53 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 184–88, and The Fall of Natural Man, chaps.

2–3.54 For a commentary about the revival of Ancient writings in the disputes involv-

ing Las Casas, Juan de Sepulveda, Jose de Acosta, Pere Lafitau and the AmericanJesuits, see Mario Gongora, Studies in the Colonial History of Spanish America (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 225–30.

55 Arciniegas, Europe in America, chaps. 5 and 11.56 Joyce E. Chaplin, “Race,” in Armitage and Braddick, The British Atlantic World.

124 chapter five

However, the appearance of variety continued to provide stimu-

lus in a range of fields of inquiry as it had since the sixteenth cen-

tury. During this time, theology acquired a secular aspect kindling

the urge for new pursuits.57 The first generation of scientific, geo-

graphical and philosophical responses is indicative of a rupture in

thinking precipitated by exploration and colonialism, but neglectful

of American realities. Partial, yet significant, revisions were made to

the ancient texts on findings in medicine, geography, cosmology,

physics and political science. Some landmarks were notable. Early

in the sixteenth century, Columbus and Vespucci’s journals brought

doubt on the questions of the shape of Earth’s overall landmass and

its peopling. Munster’s cosmographie charted lands, seas and peoples

in an encyclopaedic way. Copernicus re-charted the heavens, while

Vesalius went back to Galen to check his anatomy against fresh dis-

sections of the body. Vespucci, Munster and Vesalius were all icono-

clasts in their day, but they also accommodated Aristotlean precedents

and concepts in elucidating their breakthroughs. Hugo Grotius captured

wider concern about the lack of sound explanation of the ancestry

of American peoples in the Bible. Mercator’s refutation of Ptolemy

and Galileo’s ‘abolition of heaven’ were bolder responses; in Galileo’s

case, a later one.

Although a common tension in conceptual apparatus united these

figures, the spectrum of perspectives was also broadened. The reception

of images of America was at once bound by the cognitive heritage

and divided by a splintering of interpretative bases. An expressed

notion of ‘civilization’, internally fragmented from inception, was also

‘discovered’ in the mid-eighteenth century. It was preceded by dis-

cernible awareness of civilizational difference. Europeans had chronicled

awareness of other societies since Antiquity. Aside from familiarity with

Islamic states in the Middle Ages there was some acquaintance with

southern Chinese dynasties and empires in the Indian sub-continent.

57 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages tothe Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Funkenstein focuseson European developments in his historical survey. It was lay education andProtestantism that eroded the Church’s theological monopoly and led to a flourishingof scientific pursuits. See also Blair Worden, “The Question of Secularization,” inHornston and Pincus, A Nation Transformed. For one alternative view that scienceduring this period was more varied than this image suggests and mirrored a greatperception of variety in nature go to Lisa Roberts “A World of Wonders, A Worldof One,” in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels.


However, they were not the objects of a projected Golden Age

counter-posed to an advanced, though perhaps decadent, civilization

in the manner that the Americas were in the sixteenth century.58

America was a mixture of states and societies and while there was

some accommodation of Andean and Mesoamerican states, it was

the primitivism of non-stratified societies that dominated. This made

the other ‘unknown’ continent across the Atlantic more ‘known’ and

gave great impetus to a self-sustained and more sharply defined sense

of particularity that underpinned European notions of civilization.

Curiosity lost? New signs of dominance

Europe’s penetration and conquest of the world beyond its borders

did not just involve the extension of its institutional and economic

order. In constructing new societies, the empires came to see them-

selves as bearers of civilization. This was boosted by French, British

and Spanish incarnations of colonialism. A glance at the adventures

of the concept of civilization reveals a longer history and a vital for-

mative period in which images of the civilized were crafted.59 Latter-

day etymologies of the term ‘civilization’ indicate many historical

lineages. The Romans used various terms—civilis, civis, civitas, civilitas—in a quasi-anthropological classification of those races they saw as

non-civilized. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this family

of terms acquired an association with ‘civilized’ refinement and

conduct regulated by manners. In the context of the debates over

the Americas and the validity of ancient texts, the idea of civiliza-

tion was endowed with the values of progress and exceptionality. It

was the basis for a philosophical defence of the imperial project

against the antagonists of colonialism who mobilized a notion of cul-

ture to advance their views. In the Enlightenment debates around

the idea of civilization, a notion of ‘civilizing mission’ held meaning

a full century before it was incarnated in the French mission civilisatrice.

58 Brandon, New Worlds for Old, pp. 151–52.59 Bruce Mazlish, “Civilization in a Historical and Global Perspective,” International

Sociology 16, no. 3 (2001); Anthony Pagden, “The ‘Defence of Civilization’ in EighteenthCentury Social Theory,” History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (1998); and Rundelland Mennell, Classical Readings, p. 6. See also Lucien Febvre, “Civilization: Evolutionof a Word and a Group of Ideas,” in Peter Burke, ed., A New Kind of History: Fromthe Writings of Lucien Febvre (London: Routledge, 1973).

126 chapter five

It was present in the philosophical discourse of Western Europe’s

public sphere. In the Americas, it had a practical application, as it

was borne by missionaries and perhaps confined to their communities.60

The word ‘civilization’ coined in the eighteenth century was a noun

that took the action of civilizing and turned it into an image of

development. The more frequent usage of the word in the eight-

eenth century was necessarily plural. It referred to things that were

developed such as achieved standards of cultivated behaviour, a state

of social order, a universal goal and, most importantly, a stage of

social and economic development.61

Civilization as an idea denoted different particular things for

Europeans. But a comprehensible imagery embraced all. While pos-

session in Africa, Asia and Ireland provided points of reference for

the colonial mind-set, the Americas more forcefully dominated impe-

rial imagery until the early nineteenth century. Indeed the breadth

of European possession circumscribed the contours of civilizational

thinking for supporters of colonial purpose such as Sepulveda, Hakluyt,

Bodin and Acosta and its mildest and most trenchant critics such as

Las Casas and Montaigne. Civilizational consciousness had not crys-

tallized ideologically in the sixteenth century in the way that it would

in pre-revolutionary France or Britain after the Seven Years War.

Nonetheless the conceptual signage that buttressed European under-

standing of Asian, African and American societies had materialized.

It did not at this time impart to Spanish, English and French sub-

jects an unambiguous language through which they could represent

themselves as the ‘civilized’. But it could guide the premises of sci-

ence and provide paradigmatic coherence for Europe’s relationships

with pre-Colombian societies.

Expansion across continents altered the structural and economic

dynamics of Iberian and north-western Europe. A difficult yet crucial

release of its cultural energies accompanied the rapid spread of

European power. While the Spanish, French and English intrusion

into the American world was theological in its thrust, science and phi-

losophy were also travelers.62 After an initial era in which naïve and

benign curiosity coexisted with colonization, sciences of classification,

60 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 5–6.61 Thomas C. Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization (New York: Monthly Review

Press, 1997), chap. 2.62 Pagden, The Idea of Europe, pp. 10–11, 50–4.


collection and cataloguing were practiced in new ways in an inter-

civilizational environment. They established a body of signs symbolizing

the civilizational difference between Europeans and Americans and,

more vividly, between Europeans and the indigeneity of the American

world. With this objectification of civilizational difference, European

powers could systematize the world’s spaces and civilizations for the

purposes of collective understanding, for trade and commerce, for

the mercantile re-ordering of inter-state relations, for warfare and

for travel.

However, this particularization of European identities was marked

by its own tension with universalizing patterns and ideals that shaped

empires as vehicles of European civilization. The accumulated self-

belief in civilizational distinctiveness—increasingly underscored by a

proto-evolutionist paradigm in the eighteenth century—was forged

in a dialectic of universality and particularity. Looking at how this

played out in the American colonies, it is evident that there are two

areas in which this tension is well illuminated: the experiences of

migration and settlement and the relationship to conquered and

transformed aboriginal worlds.

On the side of the colonizers, the ontological renewal of identities

fostered singularity through the confrontation with America. Migration

disembedded and for those who undertook it, it was a process of

transformation in itself. Migrants carried diverse regional or religious

identities, rather than national ones.63 Waves of new migrants repeated

the importation of geographical and denominational identity. However,

the accumulation of experiences of distant surroundings and peoples

honed a two-sided appreciation of both European homelands and

new American homes as singular entities. At the moment of joining

colonies, settlers may have felt intensely aware of the diversity of

their place of origin. Migration did not stop at the settlements on

the east coast. Repeat migration was a common feature, as settlers

moved a second time, following a period of acclimatization. Immersion

63 Altman and Horn ‘To Make America’; Patrick Griffin, introduction to The Peoplewith No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World1689–1764 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); James Horn, Adapting toa New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, NC:University of North Carolina Press, 1994), chap. 1. Meinig, The Shaping of America,pp. 80–82. Meinig cites Michael Kammen’s telling remark that “colonials didn’tcome from Europe. They came from East Anglia, Bristol, London, Ulster, Leydenand Nantes” (p. 80).

128 chapter five

in a new environment had a creolizing effect. The contrasts that

mattered more were those that were immediately sensed and those

that were remembered in the local community cultures. Invoked in

those cultures were images of the old world more in tune with con-

ditions of the new one. Moreover, fear of indigenous populations

that were colonized or just beyond the reach of established settle-

ments forced a communal unity on colonists that were otherwise cul-

turally diverse. Fear of the indigenous presence fostered a similarity

of colonial interests and an integration of perceptions of the Spanish,

French and English. In other words, migrants were turned into French

and Spanish Creoles or Anglo-Americans.

Growing uniformity on the side of the colonizers influenced the

ways that they re-shaped the American world. After the initial and

normally pacific encounters,64 different indigenous cultures were judged

in terms of civilization and ‘savagery’. The juxtaposition of the two

sets of standards was more pronounced in the Americas than in the

trading entrepots and naval bases that comprised European imper-

ial holdings in Asia and the Indian Ocean. In the settler colonial

empires, the language of civilization and ‘savagery’ was “honed into

the sharpest instrument of empire.”65 It was turned on relationships

with indigenous worlds, but also on places and values. The distinc-

tion between civility and savagery in the nexus of European and

Amerindian encounters was actualized in three practices: cartogra-

phy, geographic nomenclature and linguistic dominance. Each is elab-

orated in more detail below, after some general remarks on the

proliferation of European significations.

In the Colombian scenario of the first relatively passive encoun-

ters, respective European and indigenous semiotics of territory co-

existed.66 Colonization brought a universalizing logic into a general

scenario of coexisting conceptions of time, space and culture. European

names for American places prevailed as the official geographical

nomenclature marginalized indigenous signifiers. The diversity,

difference and novelty of the New World were displaced by European

64 This is a well-known facet of Columbus’ early voyages. However, English set-tlers too had non-violent relations with Indians in the New England area beforethe 1620s. See Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing off in the EarlyAmerica (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

65 Hulme, Colonial Encounters, pp. 2–3.66 In other places, indigenous and European knowledge were blended, at least

for a time. See Gerald R. Crone, Maps and their Makers: An Introduction to the Historyof Cartography (London: Hutchinson, 1968), pp. 90–92.


representations of it. The Americas were named, understood and

described in the terms and language of the Old World. The new

continent had to be illustrated in a recognizable semiotics.67 Thus

confrontation with difference entailed the mobilization of an idiom

that was familiar to Europeans, even while it could only partially

conceal the particularity of the American world.

Representations of the New World were part and parcel of the

universalist subsumption of non-European civilizations and their cul-

tural horizons. Yet such universalizing ideals sat uncomfortably with

the reality and experience of difference in the colonies where they

could, to say the least, become uncertain. A tension emerged between

the ‘civilizing practices’ of empires and the real limits to the exer-

cise of European culture in the colonial frontiers.

Mapping was such a practice. During the long era of imperialism,

the world was re-mapped within European consciousness as a place

foreign to Europe, but under the auspices of its major powers.

Mapping the world was an important step in cultivating this pretension

and, in itself, was an impulse to imperial state formation.68 In Euro-

American empire-building these steps were precarious and unstable.

Heightened competition between imperial powers for the most accurate

and contemporary maps suggests that they were highly sought after

objects. Their political, economic and military importance to competing

states and their apparatus made them valuable commodities in them-

selves. The mercantilist projection of the world mandated a scientific

and rationalized representation of space. Renaissance perspectivism

accorded a new privilege to visual perception.69 The ocular objects

of measurement that it generated rationalized the representation of

space. They were used to craft materials for the consumption of the

seeing individual. The transformation of mapping is a measure of

the early modernity of spatial conceptions.

Renaissance maps acquired a descriptive aspect that enhanced the

textualism of the age.70 Their medieval antecedents had centered mainly

on stylized symbolic and mythological representation. In contrast,

67 Hulme, Colonial Encounters, pp. 34–39. See also Elliot, The Old World and theNew 1492–1650.

68 Michael Biggs, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory andEuropean State Formation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 2 (1999).

69 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of CulturalChange (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 240–53.

70 Jeremy Black, Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (New Haven andLondon: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 6–9.

130 chapter five

objectivist impulses were plainly influential in the rise of geograph-

ical realism. Mercantile exploration encouraged common standards

of cartography within imperial states. The commensurability of spa-

tial representations that the exploring states strove for was one impe-

tus to uniformity in cartography. Standard representations of the

semiotics of space within the institutions of the state (notably the

mercantile Casa de Contratacion, the Academie Royal des Sciences and the

Portuguese Padron Real ) animated European conceptions of the world

as a series of imperial domains.71 In the early years, the maps of the

Casa depended heavily on Columbus and Vespucci’s accounts.

Portuguese innovations continued to aid navigation adding more

detail to the realistic representation of proportionate spaces and geo-

logical and geographical features. The Academie produced less elabo-

rate utilitarian maps that made best use of Mercator’s projections of

the planet’s sphericity. Thus the lessons of the early voyages faded

as a source of information for cartographers.

The invention of printing enabled a wider distribution of maps

and intensified inter-state competition for more advanced versions.

The minimal Portolan charts ceded ground by the end of the six-

teenth century to more elaborate and expansive Dutch maps.72 Later

products were not just artistic and they went far beyond utilitarian

and political purposes. They captured the globe in a European con-

ception that crossed Dutch, English, French and Spanish experience.

Imperial officials, merchants and explorers constructed and read maps

not only for practical purposes, but also to estimate the extent of

their national reach. Attempts to map the whole world indicated a

desire to grasp the totality of humanity and bring it under the signs

of European civilization. Unknown lands and continents were accepted

widely by the third quarter of the sixteenth century. They appeared

in outline on new maps from that time on. Maps carried more

71 The Casa dedicated a number of officers and staff to the accumulation of geo-graphical knowledge about the New World and the Atlantic. They passed their dis-coveries on to pilots and other state officials and manufactured new navigationalinstruments and maps. See Antonio Barrera, “Local Herbs, Global Medicines:Commerce, Knowledge and Commodities in Spanish-America,” in Smith and Findlen,Merchants and Marvels, p. 165. On the development of the Academie and other suchinstitutions in France, see F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 77–78 and DanielRouche, “Natural History in the Academies,” in Jardine et al., Cultures of NaturalHistory. On the institutional memory contained in surviving cartography, see Biggs,“Putting the State on the Map.”

72 Hale, The Civilization of Europe, pp. 15–27; Suarez, Shedding the Veil, chaps. 6–7.


particular detail of places colonized, or at least claimed, by European

powers. Often the imagined reach of the empires ran ahead of their

real control over actual territories. They painted a continent, indeed

a world, under state domination for Europeans to look at. Where

territory remained unexplored, mapmakers ventured speculation about

the size of the landmass and the characteristics of its possible inhab-

itants. Peoples depicted at the margins as uncanny, exotic or

Romanesque served to demonstrate the sources of conquest. Such

anthropographic annotations powerfully declared the extent of European

possession and knowledge.73

Maps reassured imperial elites in Europe of their control far from

the real coasts and frontiers of captured worlds. They connoted

mobility and told Europeans about their capacity to move through

space and time and conquer new worlds. Mapping and the signs

made on maps in a way made the places themselves transportable.74

They could be unfixed and ‘read’ in a form that was legible. They

suited the baroque culture of Counter-Reformation Europe as they

were designed to impress the visual senses. They were not only tools

of imperial penetration; they were the accessories of imperial identity.75

Cartography was an especial mode of representation that boasted

the achievements of European state formation and that deepened

civilizational self-understanding. Concurrent processes of exploration

and the cartographic charting of the non-European world were the

initiation of imperial imagery of the globe and Europe’s possessions

in it.

Modern ideas of civilization involved re-imagining the American

world. Place names involved a more literal institution of signs. It has

been argued that the textuality of European culture was part and

parcel of colonization of the Americas.76 If this is the case, and if it

can be seen as part of a cultural movement onto the American con-

tinent then New Spain was a frontline. The Aztec world was ‘textually

73 Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, pp. 269–81.74 Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 27–28.75 They were also essentials of civil gentlemanly Anglo-American identity. See

Margaret Beck Pritchard, “‘Useful and Elegant Furniture for Screens, Balls, LargeRooms, Stair Cases’: Maps as Symbolic Objects,” in Margaret Beck Pritchard andHenry G. Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America (Williamsburg, VA:The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2002).

76 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso, 1989); Greenblatt, Marvelous Possession; Tzvetan Todorov,The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row, 1992).

132 chapter five

captured’ over time, in a manner of speaking. In the first instance

the romanization of Nahuatl ensured the displacement and slow

demise of pictography.77 Mexica idiom utilized the combination of

expressive forms for some time. Ultimately, the loss of indigenous

signage was an act of assimilation that was shored up by other forms

of redefinition of the pre-Hispanic imaginaire. Topography too was

conceptually reordered. In the Mexican scenario—and more gener-

ally throughout the Americas—the environment was grasped in new

ways. The suppression of indigenous territorial signs re-classified the

unfamiliar world. Re-identification and re-naming of places left a

European stamp on the land.78 Explorers and conquerors initiated

the renaming of places as a means of homogenizing difference.

Comparison of discovered American geographical features with the

familiar European landscape was an attempt to discursively tame the

land. Re-constituting places officially with European-like names was

part of the process of classification. Some Amerindian words were

appropriated in the development of Creole terminology and American

names. Also Inca and Aztec maps maintained a coexistence with

cartography and were absorbed in some instances. However, there

are strong reasons for recognizing that the invention of geographic

nomenclature was a vital feature of Spanish colonial accommoda-

tion to the American world. The English and French went even fur-

ther in their seaboard colonies in North America and their island

possessions in the Caribbean, constructing complete topographies for

the areas they ruled. That linguistic dominance minimized later

indigenous challenges until the nineteenth century.79

77 Serge Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into theWestern World, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), pp.52–55. For studies of comparable processes of transformation in the Andean regionin the sixteenth century, see Kenneth J. Andrien and Rolena Adorno, eds., TransatlanticEncounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1991).

78 Whilst re-naming figured prominently in the era of discovery and conquest,this process was even more pronounced in empire building in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, important traces of these features of empirescan be found in the era of conquest, settlement and revolt. David Harvey discussesthe nineteenth century at length, The Condition of Postmodernity, pp. 242–52, 264–65.On the Colombian moment of contact and conquest see James Axtell, Beyond 1492:Encounters in Colonial North America (New York: Open University Press, 1992), in par-ticular pp. 58–63 on the naming of new places.

79 On the nineteenth century critics, see T. Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization,chap. 5.


The experiences of the Americas nourished European perceptions

of civilization. Peoples, environments and places so unique had to

be rendered in a digestible form. The apprehension of otherness

crystallized in different interpretations of what was noble and what

was savage. To the extent that we can talk about a single symbol

of l’homme sauvage, it was a transfigured image that condensed the

indigenous past and projected it as a timeless and unchanging state

of being. It did not find its way into the discourse of philosophical

critique, as is often supposed with regard to Rousseau.80 It was a

deeply contradictory ensemble of depictions of Amerindians that

could variously bear the trappings of civilizations or denigrate their

alleged savage practices or both. The lack of discursive substance in

the image generated by countless representations of Amerindians left

it open to a nostalgic yearning for noble races that were assumed

‘lost’. But it could just as easily be turned to contempt for a base

state of existence that was being superseded by civilization. If it is

feasible to talk about a noble savage image in the eighteenth century,

it should be considered the accumulation of centuries of portrayals

that became quite open to a wide range of interpretations by that

time. It had not begun in Rousseau’s romantic essays, or Lahontan’s

dialogues—as convention has had it—although they and other figures

did produce important portrayals of civilized natives. It arose in more

modest ways in meetings on the frontier, letters, diaries, paintings

and woodcuts. It also survived in artefacts, plants and people trans-

ported and exhibited in Europe.81

Attributes of savagery or dignity acquired momentum at an ear-

lier time in the particular versions of each of the colonial empires.

80 See Ellington’s The Myth of the Noble Savage. Ellington’s main argument is thatthe myth of noble savagery is itself a myth of nineteenth century anthropology. Theromantic unity of l’homme sauvage finds little support in Rousseau’s own writings, noris it prominent in other ethnographies. The absence of essentialized nobility andthe preference for variously assigning distinct traits of civil custom and savage habitto different Amerindians is what really marks eighteenth century ethnographic think-ing. The phrase ‘noble savage’ itself occurs more times in Lescarbot’s accounts ofthe sixteenth century and Lescarbot is credited with coining the phrase. WhileEllington’s reasoning and empirical profile is quite convincing, it is confined to thediscursive and textual artifacts of the day. The unified representations that culti-vated impressions of the ‘original’ New World are not treated, even though someare, paradoxically, reproduced in The Myth. My argument here is that the ‘noblesavage’ image did have currency in the eighteenth century, although not in thegenre of travel writing and philosophy as has been thought.

81 Katie Whitaker, “The Culture of Curiosity,” in Jardine et al., Cultures of NaturalHistory.

134 chapter five

They were influenced by myth and legend, to some extent, and most

certainly by pre-understanding of otherness. For the Spanish, pagan-

ism anthropologically defined the conditions of Amerindian peoples

as both barbaric and noble. How it did so varied from the early

years of Spanish colonialism to its final period.82 Sixteenth century

theologians and jurists debated the status of aborigines as subjects—

the well-known Valladolid Controversy was a landmark disputation

of this sort. Ethnographic categories of barbarism were deployed in

reference to new races, but this was flexible enough to allow the

representation of American natives as singularly good. New data on

the Americas were interpreted through the prism of classical and

biblical analogies as contesting views sought to work out where

Amerindians fitted into the anthropography of humanity. The names

used in theological and historiographic disputes to describe different

things in Caribbean, Andean, Mississippi-based and Mesoamerican

cultures invoked familiarity, just as the names of places did so more

generally back in the Americas. Moreover, the signifiers allowed

recognition of the internal hierarchies of highland Andean and

Mesoamerican societies. They constituted a recognizable vocabulary

that could partly depict social complexity.

Eighteenth century works in the evolutionary philosophy of his-

tory disparaged such aids to recognition. The Spanish had earlier

conceptualized savagery in un-philosophical terms, according to this

view. Too much nobility was accorded to the pre-civil conditions of

indigenous-imperial cultures and their place in the ranking of civi-

lizations could not be accurately reflected. Of course, the level of

differentiation was no longer immediately evident to eighteenth cen-

tury observers, as the long process of integration of Amerindian com-

munities had simplified previous hierarchies. The writings of ascendant

evolutionary historiography reflected indigenes as an amorphous mass

of commoners lacking the societal complexity of civilized peoples.

This censure of the Amerindian world had an impact, prompting

an assault on suggestions that virtue and civility could inhere in

indigenous cultures that had become less differentiated due to the

process of colonization. Spanish responses were tempered by the

need to defend its history of colonialism against the Protestant offensive

82 Canizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, pp. 38–44, 207.


and by the Bourbon project of modernization. On the whole, they

proved unsuccessful. Along the way, the ambivalence about indige-

nous civilizations waned.

Seventeenth century English perceptions rested on different values.

Creation myths were unintelligible to the seventeenth century English

minds and were consequently disparaged. Where spirituality was

foundational for Indian civilization, landed property was at the heart

of English values. Indian nations did not have the signs of industri-

ousness that were at the core of the Protestant temperament and

capitalist ideal. English colonists built an empire of fences in the

North Americas with this ideal in mind.83 Agrarian and village tra-

ditions melded with different inflections of Protestantism to reorganize

the landscape according to the principles of enclosure. The legality

and legitimacy of possession came only with delineation of possession

and ‘improvement’ of land. The Indians’ mode of production, quite

deliberate in its land use, could not be recognized at all as civilized

in the colonial mission of agriculture. Native American hierarchies

were identified, but were not respected because of the value accorded

private property.

This is not to say that colonial forces were indifferent to what they

saw as the spiritual impoverishment of the Indians. Indeed, the Puritan

projection of the indigenous condition as a fallen state confirms this.84

In a paradoxical way, this projection stressed a common fate of English-

men and Indians: a fall into temptation by Satan that demanded redemp-

tion. Not only the land had to be ‘improved’ in New World America,

so also did its inhabitants through so-called civilizing measures. By

the mid eighteenth century, the weight of opinion had swung against

this view. Savagery appeared intrinsic and irredeemable. A natural

law conception of the uncivilized accentuated the distance and

difference of the colonials’ fellow beings from their ways of cultured

life. The demand for more land coincided with this outlook to move

Anglo-Americans to thrust westwards and to sweep aside perceived

obstacles to their cultivation of wilderness. Earlier connections of

Indian paganism that implied common human origins were severed

in favour of a goal of progress that allowed no part for Indians.

83 Patricia Seed, “Houses, Gardens, and Fences: Signs of English Possession inthe New World,” in Ceremonies of Possession.

84 Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the AmericanMind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

136 chapter five

This is, of course, a typology of Anglo-American thought over

time. Notwithstanding broadly shared values, views of relations between

the Indian nations and the colonizers could still vary. Harsher sev-

enteenth century views of the means of redemption in the northern

colonies contrasted with Pennsylvanian accounts written later.85 The

contrast is consistent, however, with threads of French and Spanish

visions. Natives appeared in uncultured frames in all three nations.

In French eyes, savagery came from a condition of proximity to

nature.86 The lack of polished manners, the competences of conver-

sation and the arts was a Native American trait that set them out-

side of the bounds of civility. There was an incongruity, however,

and much disputation over the intrinsic civility/barbarity of natives.

Unlike the Spanish, some French travelers thought the indigenes

capable of civilized development, but that they simply did not possessits rudiments.87 The key writers can be taken as representative of

more particular currents that defended the human integrity of Canada’s

indigenes.88 Lafitau submitted that they possessed native virtues and

were convertible. Thus they should be subject to missionary work.

Samuel de Champlain thought that the French should go around

them in the search for economic and strategic resources. Another

view—Lahontan may be its progenitor—saw semi-nobility capable

of much more. The dispute reflected a dissonance of the French ori-

entation to the New World environment. It certainly allowed for a

great flexibility of views. Moreover, the dispute was more widely

exposed in an inclusive public sphere, rather than halting at the

confines of the theocratic intelligentsia, as in the case of Spanish

philosophical deliberations. Distinctions between Spanish and French

views may be due in part to the courtly context in which the latter

were presented.89

85 Marshall and Williams, The Great Map, pp. 188–91.86 Dickason, The Myth of Savagery, pp. 63–70.87 Cornelius J. Jaenen considers this civilizing process to be Frenchification. See

Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

88 Harry Liebersohn, Aristocratic Encounters: Europeans Travellers and North AmericanIndians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chap. 1.

89 “Courtly society, we know from Elias, was predicated on the internalizationof status distinctions . . . In this light, European civilization was further distancedfrom the ways of the ‘savage American’” ( John Mandalios, Civilization and the HumanSubject (Oxford: Roman and Littlefield, 1999), p. 101).


No tradition or set of traditions was isolated. Ideas about America’s

pre-Columbian peoples were widely communicated. Translation accel-

erated the circulation of views in the eighteenth century. A climate

of mounting criticism of Europe’s supposed civilizing duty did nur-

ture a reassessment of America’s indigenes, although this may not

have been as important as previously believed. Eighteenth century

reaction against the excesses of Spanish colonialism led the French

and the British to distance their own imperial projects from the ini-

tial conquest. Some distinctions are clearly discernible. Nonetheless,

alternate currents of thought about the conquest reflected on it as

a collective enterprise in which all shared, even though the Spanish

penetration was the most complete.

Conclusion

Three of the most relevant premises of the intercultural sociology

set out in the second chapter are addressed with respect to the emer-

gent civilizational imaginary. They are the forms of engagement used

in transatlantic encounters, the growth of civilizational consciousness

and the materialization of particular European civilizational signs.

This chapter addresses several aspects of long-term intercultural

engagement in which the emergent side of creative transformation

is evident. Briefly, they include the reconstruction of ‘unknown’ new

phenomena in recurring forms; manifestations of wonder, marvels

and utopianism to fill the gaps left by the unexplained; the development

of more exact modes of science (cartography, botany and topography);

the rapid expansion and diversification of experiences of the New

World on the part of both settlers and travelers; and growing con-

tempt for all things American. These can now be reordered in sum-

mary form according to the main categories of civilizational sociology.

The forms of engagement of European powers were transformed

by the long exchange with the Americas. Both the settler-immigrant

societies and enduring Amerindian civilizations were subject to more

sharply defined European identities. It is indigenous cultures that are

mostly discussed. For mainstream eighteenth century metropolitan

culture, America’s aboriginal peoples represented another epoch and

were depicted as wholly different. The greater appreciation for the

anthropographic diffusion of humanity that had characterized ear-

lier inquisitive attempts to relate to Amerindian cultures had mostly

138 chapter five

given way to constructions that mixed together characteristics believed

to be either vice or virtue. New evolutionist philosophies of history

reflected a belief in European exceptionality that was consistent with

the denigration of American indigenous nations. The potential for a

deeper understanding of anthropological diversity was compromised

by the conflation of distinct societal and cultural forms that resulted

not only through conquest, but also through processes of mis-recog-

nition. European colonization of place naming, language and history

established signs of civilization that simultaneously claimed the New

World and enhanced the colonial sense of distinctive American and

European identities. The exceptionalist consciousness put America at

a distance from Western Europe by situating it and its societies at

earlier stages of civilizational development. This was always con-

tested, as the debates around the proto-evolutionary sciences showed.

Creole and indigenous voices that were heard in Europe also bore

witness to competing interpretations of progress. However, it was

also evidence of increasingly forceful perspectives that boldly pro-

claimed the superiority of European civilization. The forms of engage-

ment therefore showed symptoms of distance between imperial and

colonial centres, and at times outright hostility.

A strong contention of the current work is that, before the nine-

teenth century, Europeans’ sense of alterity reached a peak in rela-

tion to the Americas. For Europeans, the Atlantic zone represented

the most completely unfamiliar and different of all worlds. When

challenged by the novelty of American societies in the sixteenth cen-

tury, they used images that corresponded to what was familiar to

them. Classical similes helped to portray the strange environment

and everything that inhabited it in comprehendible forms. Nonetheless,

there was a two-sided discovery that was unavoidable. They discov-

ered how limited the realm of their own knowledge was. Moreover,

with deeper exploration of the American environment, they found

that the frontier of geographical, botanical and ethnological knowl-

edge continuously retreated. On the other side, the pluralization of

paradigms in European philosophy and science generated new cog-

nitive frameworks for the assimilation of phenomena. The sciences

became objectivist and classifying arts of inquiry. The great discov-

ery was how little was known compared to what could be known.

Moreover, the difference and novelty of the lands under the sover-

eignty of Europe’s expanding empires nourished general and national

cultural awareness.


Finally, the signs of civilizational consciousness emerged in trans-

atlantic relations. Imperial authorities reconceptualized the globe in

uniform terms with the use of maps as technologies and universal-

ism as a set of values. Colonial authorities variously followed suit by

colonizing communication, history, topography and the representa-

tion of space through the institution of official nomenclature and

language. How this occurred and the degree to which it was com-

plete varied greatly between the three empires and indeed between

different colonies. A monopoly was achieved only rarely. Moreover,

colonies were beginning to create their own cultures distinct from

governing metropolitan traditions and customs. Nonetheless, it is clear

that the establishment of the signs of Euro-American cultures eroded

the imaginary of Amerindian civilizations and powerfully asserted

the domination of the empires. Subsequently, mixed and occasion-

ally self-negating images of Amerindian worlds were made for

Europeans by Europeans.

A deeper awareness amongst the empires’ rulers of Western Europe’s

relative position in the world was evident. Words to articulate this,

such as ‘civilization’, were only barely in use in the eighteenth cen-

tury. But the widespread consciousness that circumscribed its expres-

sion was forming. The self-understanding of Europeans was forged

not only in connection with the territorial consolidation of imperial

states, but also in the civilizational intersection with American worlds.

Another way of looking at this is to see that it developed not only

in the social settings of national societies on the European continent,

but also out of the transatlantic exchange of images, values and

impressions of America. The modification of European conceptions

was an internal journey of discovery that was undertaken as part of

the construction of the Euro-American empires. The New World

captured and colonized by European power and culture was also

integral to the expansion of capitalism. Europe’s leap across the

Atlantic extended not only its horizons and its dominions, but also

its economic sphere. More than this, it was a decisive point in the

early creation of capitalist social relations.

1 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States 900–1990 (Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1990).

2 Jean Baechler, John Hall and Michael Mann, Europe and the Rise of Capitalism(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).

3 Samir Amin, Unequal Development (New York: Harvester Press, 1974).4 F. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1979) and Celso Furtado, “The Concept of ExternalDependence,” in Charles K. Wilber, ed., The Political Economy of Development and Under-development (New York: Random House, 1973).

CHAPTER SIX

MERCANTILISM, SLAVERY AND THE PART PLAYED

BY THE TRANSATLANTIC EMPIRES

IN THE FORMATION OF CAPITALISM

The analysis of the modern transatlantic world moves, in this chap-

ter, from a direct concern with the interactivity of civilizations to a

debate history of capitalism. Quite forceful arguments for dating the

development of Western capitalism from the early sixteenth century

have been convincingly put by historians working in quite different

traditions. Braudel, Wallerstein and the world systems theory cur-

rent pioneered a new periodization of capitalism based on a height-

ened tempo of trade and the intensification of economic networks

in Europe. Charles Tilly focusses on the accumulation of coercive

resources to re-date capitalism.1 Accepted time-scales of European

capitalism’s birth were re-problematized in a Cambridge symposium

organized by Jean Baeuchler, John Hall and Michael Mann.2 Samir

Amin has launched a sustained effort to bring the mercantilist phase

into the picture.3 Robin Blackburn draws attention to the neglected

status of slavery as an element in the development of capitalism. His

results have a special place in this chapter. Dependency theory, as

developed by Andre Gunder Frank, Ferdinand Cardoso and Celso

Furtado, is a kindred school of thought of world systems analysis but

spreads theoretical revision further afield.4 Weber’s classic thesis on

Protestantism as an affinity of capitalism also pinpoints the sixteenth

century as a watershed in the trajectory of the West. His ghost haunts

this debate, as does that of Marx.

Rather than attempting to add to this or adjudicate on it, I will

pluck out one thread. I am honing in on the involvement of impe-

rial states in the transatlantic process of so-called primitive accumu-

lation. Discussions about the stages of capitalist expansion open up

a line of enquiry about the early relationship of state and economy.

This chapter draws out some conclusions of some important, albeit

under-acknowledged, theorists of capitalism. Mercantilism is the lynch-

pin of the affinities of states and capitalism in this formative phase.

Mercantilist institutions acted to integrate national economies. But

mercantilist strategies were simultaneously extended into the trans-

atlantic domain. Their development in the imperial sphere was homo-

logous to that of the national one in all three cases under discussion.

The outstanding difference between the two spheres was Atlantic

slavery. Slavery also serves my argument as an illustration of the

partnership of states in economic expansion.

Mercantilism is a controversial concept amongst economic historians.

Before commenting on the long-standing debate about this concept,

I want to give a short working definition. The mercantilist institutions

that states were in the process of creating in Europe were enlarged

and geared to transatlantic trade. Furthermore, a type of conflictual

relationship featured in the imperial realm as well, pitting the metro-

politan imperial state against a distant and distinct colonial order.

Mercantilism in Europe was spawned out of the routine confrontation

of national governments and provincial and city-based administration.

Mercantilism in the imperial domain grew out of a tension between

the colonies and a state that ruled from the other side of the world.

There is no view of mercantilism in the literature that quite resem-

bles this. Economic historians understand it largely as an unintended

economic philosophy of statehood or an early modern perspective

on the relationship of national economies to each other and to state

institutions.5 It can, however, also be reconceptualized as a two-sided

development. In the first place, it was the crystallization of an impulse

to trade and the expansion of trade networks. Secondly, it can be

transatlantic empires in the formation of capitalism 141

5 A genealogy of the notion of mercantilism can be traced to Gustav Schmoller,Adam Smith and through to Thomas Mun. Mercantilism as doctrine, ideology ordiscourse is emphasized. In this chapter, the notion of mercantilism draws on EliHeckscher’s detailed work. There is a literature of debate that emerged afterHeckscher published his tome. See Mercantilism (London: George Allen and Unwin,1935). See also “Mercantilism,” in Donald C. Coleman, ed., Revisions in Mercantilism(London: Metheun, 1969). In that volume a number of other pertinent essays can

142 chapter six

be found. See A. V. Judges, “The Idea of a Mercantile State”; D. C. Coleman,“Eli Heckscher and the Idea of Mercantilism”; Jacob Van Klaveren, “Fiscalism,Mercantilism and Corruption”; Ingmar Bog, “Mercantilism in Germany.” See alsoFrank A. Haight, A History of French Commercial Policies (New York: MacMillan, 1941),chap. 1; Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution 1713–1826(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) and Lars Margusson,Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (London: Routledge, 1994).

6 Epstein’s economic history stresses a sea-change in opinion that has emergedwith Robert Brenner, Wallerstein and historians of proto-industrialization. Indeed,Epstein concludes that it was the incomplete nature of mercantilist regulation (ratherthan its development) that restrained the growth of competitive capitalism. SeeStephan R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe1300–1750 (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), chaps. 1–2.

7 Johann P. Arnason “Modernity as Project and as Field of Tension,” in AxelHonneth and Hans Joas, eds., Communicative Action: Essays on Jurgen Habermas’ TheTheory of Communicative Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Cambridge:Polity Press, 1991), p. 191. Etzioni-Halervy similarly prescribes a three-stage historyof intervention and withdrawal. See Eva Etzioni-Halervy, Social Change: The Adventand Maturation of Modern Society (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 70–73, 92–95, 154.

reconstructed a posteriori as a system of instrumental policies by

which states tried to engineer optimum conditions for advancement

in trade and commerce. This view may be contentious and is certainly

not in accord with a long-standing consensus that has only more

recently come into question.6

In the discussion of capitalism here, mercantilism stands for a

series of policies, institutions and effects enacted by states motivated

by involvement in the European world economy, with a number of

unforeseen outcomes. The emphasis rests on mercantilism as the cre-ation of state institutions of economic life within the Atlantic empires, rather

than as a well-defined doctrine. On this question I want to sound

agreement with Johann Arnason—both in spirit and in formulation—

when he writes:

It would consequently seem advisable to replace the conventional peri-odicization of capitalism in terms of a liberal and organized variantwith a three-phase model. The formative phase is characterized bythe symbiosis of pre-industrial capitalism and the absolutist state; thelatter influences the economic sphere both via direct participation init and by supporting monopolistic strategies. The next phase, oftencalled competitive or liberal capitalism, can in retrospect be reducedto the regional, partial and temporary separation of state and capital,and it is followed by a phase of their renewed interpenetration.7

This formulation precisely expresses the premise that the relation-

ship between state formation and capitalism is indeed more variable


than may have been thought. Mercantilism was a vital characteris-

tic of the formative phase of the engagement of European states with

capitalism. The state was closely involved in capitalist economic life

as a set of institutions of unique importance. It shared the frame-

works of monopoly in which economic action takes place. Euro-

American states assumed a co-constitutive agency. Understood this

way, the inter-relationship of imperial states to capitalism can be re-

conceptualized (as Arnason suggests), not as a two stage evolution

of capitalism through its liberal and then monopoly regimes, but the

constitution of capitalism and market logics in three phases: during

the first era of European colonialism absolutism, through the disen-

gagement of state and economy and via their renewed partnership.

Arnason’s view is pre-empted by others that have been neglected

until recently. Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is an account

that brings to the fore the role of the British state in creating the

monopoly conditions of free enterprise capitalism.8 Eric Hobsbawn

has a similar view. The nineteenth century was an era not of lassez

faire, but of government intervention of different weight and char-

acter. Like Polanyi, Hobsbawn argues that British Free Trade pre-

supposed a whole range of state-sponsored acts that created the

conditions in which industrialization could proceed apace.9 Indeed

if these otherwise disparate interventions are grouped together, then

it may be possible to talk of a minor current of historical sociological

thinking becoming evident.

If this important modification of mainstream historical scholarship

is embraced, then a different interpretation of the relationship between

state and economy can be easily and clearly elaborated. A radical

and unique symbiosis existed between the early modern imperial

state form and the early development of modern capitalism. A dialec-

tic of transformation underpinned the relationship. Specifically, the

conditions of so-called primitive capitalist accumulation elaborated

by Marx nourished the state’s institutional creativity.10 In turn, the

state was the leading edge of the forceful process of primitive

accumulation. The mercantile creation of national and imperial

8 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of OurTime (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

9 Eric J. Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire (London: Penguin, 1990), esp. chap. 12.10 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Middlesex: Penguin, 1976),

vol. 1, pp. 915–16.

144 chapter six

institutions and provision of infrastructural resources was part of this

other side of the process of accumulation set out in Capital. Western

European states matured capitalist economic forms through the pro-

vision of guarantees of property, trade and credit; through labor

laws, the licensing and regulation of slavery; through the British Acts

of Enclosure; and ultimately through their own output. They were

both encouraged and constrained by the autonomy of capital and

of the market economy itself. States, therefore, were not mere

appendages of capitalist economic life. They aided its joint-creation

and extension, with the British state being a leading exemplar (rather

than a leading liberalizer). They connected with it as regulators and

as political, military and economic agents sui generis.Mercantilism set here as the augmentation of territory-wide con-

ditions of accumulation, trade and exchange was developed in three

spheres. It established national—or rather supra-provincial—struc-

tures and instruments that quickened the impulse to national unification.

Bodies that governed the administration and trade of the American

colonies worked within a second sphere of intra-imperial govern-

ment. Competition and warfare between European states became

more intense both in the transatlantic theater and within Europe

itself, especially after the Westphalia Treaty. In this context mer-

cantilism was a strategy of inter-imperial competition. The remain-

der of this chapter is an analysis of these three spheres.

National structures and the struggle over economic sovereignty

Mercantilism was fashioned out of the conflict between central and

provincial and municipal authorities within European states. The

methods and instruments of monopolies of provincial and city-based

bodies were appropriated and adapted by the Crown in France,

Spain and England. Ministers and their officials were the chiefs of

many bodies that regulated trade, industry and labor. They were

found in a variety of authorities: in Royal Mints that acquired a

monopoly of currency production, in state-sponsored industries, in

financial institutions and in judicial bodies.11 Bodies filled with such

11 See Fernand Braudel, The Identity of France (London: Fontana Press, 1991); PeterSeaby, The Story of British Coinage (London: Seaby, 1985); Vilar, A History of Gold andMoney.


officials forged the domestic institutional framework of capitalism.

There were three broad arenas open to their intervention. Firstly,

the passages of laws that created a level of commercial security nec-

essary to normatively anchor economic action. Secondly, only cen-

tralized states with effective territorial sovereignty could guarantee

the legitimacy of the form of currency, its weights, metals and its

divisibility. Finally, Western states legislated to regulate and control

labor, limiting some forms of labor—notably coercive ones—whilst

encouraging others. On the continent, involvement in cottage indus-

tries and the verleger mode of production gave them further means

of labor regulation. Above all, they limited the mobility of labor.

A layer of legislation decreed the existence of national mechanisms

of coordination. It was laid over an assemblage of provincial regu-

lation. To varying degrees, it was supported by the provision of

administrative force to implement it. Many of the edicts, laws, labor

regulations, cottage industrial enterprises and regulatory bodies estab-

lished by the state were directed at the erosion of provincial and

urban barriers. At times, however, they also imitated aspects of urban

government.

Portions of city government from the Middle Ages remained promi-

nent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Urban guilds and

city governments instituted tolls and tariffs and governed the deter-

mination of measurements and weights. They regulated production,

consumption and population and modified distributional patterns.

The fundamental characteristic of city-based corporatist structures

was particularism. Heckscher groups the facets of municipal ‘mer-

cantilism’ or corporatism into five different classes.12 Towns endeav-

ored to do the following: obtain an abundance of goods, particularly

produce; establish production monopolies; regulate migration; limit

merchant control of the internal movement of goods and labor and

regulate a more differentiated community. The means through which

this was achieved is a significant measure of the capacities of the

provincial and municipal order within their localized dominions. This

was a provincial or corporatist ‘mercantilism’. The logic of these

institutions set them in opposition to the mercantile regimes of the

state. Provincialism and corporatism continued to characterize city

economies in the early modern epoch.

12 Heckscher, Mercantilism, pp. 128–30.

146 chapter six

Rallied against this was the logic of mercantilism. However, in

order to fashion mercantile techniques, states had to engage in a

process of short-term replication. To a considerable extent, their poli-

cies were drawn from pre-existing conditions and methods of regu-

lation that were the creation and monopoly of the cities and the

provinces. The provincial and municipal order originated in these

structures. Its spheres of relative independence from central institu-

tions emerged from the immunities enjoyed by its localities and dis-

tricts. The principle of territorial consistency in regulation was the

innovation brought to the municipal and regional techniques of pro-

tection. It began as little more than a tendency to universalize provin-

cial structures. In this way, it represented an assault on the exclusivity

of the city where the internal apparatus of incorporation was sub-

sumed as a pre-condition of the nationalization of economic life.

And so, whilst the policies of city corporate entities were a major

barrier to the state of uniformity, the strategies of mercantilism were

designed to institute large monopolies as the foremost step in the

establishment of national economies.

Map-making and the production of currency illustrates well how

this process of nationalization proceeded. Map-making at the beginning

of the seventeenth century was largely the monopoly of the provin-

cial and municipal order, especially in France. One of Colbert’s

many endeavors was to put together a national map of France.13

The lack of such knowledge constrained infrastructural development.

A tyranny of local knowledge hampered efforts to co-ordinate national

planning within the realm. Provincial maps contained what geographical

knowledge there was of the country, its organization and resources.

An instruction sent to all provincial officers by Colbert in 1663

directed them to submit all amended maps to Paris for collation. It

was largely ignored, unsurprising perhaps, given the atmosphere of

France after the Fronde. Even if Colbert had cobbled together all

of France’s provincial maps, a practical representation of France

would have proved impossible. Cartography remained underdeveloped

at that time in two respects. A technique to render existing maps com-

mensurate did not exist. Furthermore, provincial administrators had

13 David Buisseret, Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as aTool of Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);Josef W. Konvitz, Cartography in France 1660–1848: Science, Engineering and Statecraft(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), introduction and chap. 1.


to be convinced of the need to hand over what maps they had. In

response to these difficulties, the Academie royale des sciences developed

a proposal to map France independently through a new method of

charting networks of triangles on a grid. The project was not finally

completed until 1789 and it produced the first national map of France.

Under France’s ancien regime, these works continued producing lim-

ited but helpful results for the court state. Advances in the centralization

of strongly related topographic and mercantile forms of knowledge

were novel institutions in Europe. The French court state led the

way in topography, but it was not alone in the pursuit of accurate

territorial maps. Consciousness of cartography in England sharpened

as the sixteenth century progressed.14 Its relationship to mercantilism

followed a distinctively English logic of economic development. Prior

to 1550, the Tudor state was directly implicated in the production

of maps. Its need for cartographic knowledge increased continuously,

as did awareness of this need. Furthermore, a considerable number

of administrators were engaged in the production of maps. After

1550, a shift in the demand for maps occurred. As private capital

increasingly entered trade and commercial ventures, merchants and

the landed gentry formed a private market for maps. Production of

charts and maps was led by the search for markets in trade and

finance and by an invigorated aristocratic fervour to protect the prop-

erty rights of rural holdings. Involvement of the merchant and noble

classes in military matters rendered the production of maps a respon-

sibility shared by court officials and patriotic Englishmen. In this cli-

mate there were a number of efforts made to construct a national map

of England. These produced some successful representations of parts

of the British Isles. Typically, they began with an assembly of already-

existing templates that had been drawn up by provincial and munic-

ipal administrations. No struggle seems to have occurred over control

of cartographic knowledge, as it had in France. In both cases it was

an aid to the mercantilization of economy.

The institution of the powers to mint coin and legitimize credit,

control circulation and regulate monetary values also occurred over

a long period. Competing oligopolies forced governments over time

to strengthen their own mints, or at least gain greater control over

the creation and use of money through granting franchises. In the

14 Buisseret, Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps, pp. 57–98.

148 chapter six

Middle Ages, the right to mint currency always remained the pre-

rogative of the monarch or the emperor in common law. It was part

of the colonizing pattern of Christendom.15 The authority that silver

coins carried depended on particular warrior lords and whether the

ecclesiastic see could survive on the expanding peripheries of Latin

Europe. However, multiple coining establishments continued to persist

long after the impulses of feudal decentralization had subsided.

Throughout Europe many foreign and regional currencies and minting

manufactures competed with each other for legitimacy and for scarce

bullion. Rivalry between different foundries and mints declined in

the sixteenth century due to the influx of bullion from the New

World, a development that favored the monarchies that controlled

the trade in precious metals.

The gradual and very uneven ascendancy of royal mints, royal

money and royal franchises coupled with the mercantile institutional

regulation of colonial trade allowed the state to gain greater control

over the flow and valuation of money. In both France and England,

for example, the state invented new currencies. In 1613, James I

experienced some success in halting the illegal production of pewter

coins. He then advanced a royal franchise to Lord Harrington to

mint the King’s money in return for half the profits. Baronial mints

were suppressed during the sixteenth century in France in a move

that asserted the monarchical prerogative to mint coin.16 In the 1640s,

Richelieu began to re-weigh the currency with a value and denom-

ination similar to foreign competitors. In effect he created a completely

new currency in France. The English did the same thing between

the Restoration and the eighteenth century, again with considerable

success. Innovations such as these in the mercantile institutions of

economic activity further sapped the autonomies of provincial and

urban powers. Moreover, they created the conditions for the institution

of national capitalist structures such as the London Stock Exchange,

the Bourse and the Bank of England.

The pre-eminence of domestic institutions eclipsed local sources

in these and other areas. The purview of the apparatus engaged in

forming and shaping such institutions was not only national, however.

It was also oriented to the crystallization of imperial power. This is

the area of greatest interest.

15 Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 280–88.16 Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, pp. 170–71.


Within empires: mercantile monopolies and Atlantic trade

A comparable tension developed within the imperial structures of

the transatlantic states, although many overt aspects of the intra-state

struggle were not present. In advance of the discussion in this section,

it can be plainly put that alternative economic networks of production,

trade and regulation coexisted with mercantilism in the imperial

sphere. In the American colonies, the fundamental measures of

exchange and the organization of property that mercantile-imperial

bodies generated were not as fiercely contested. More specific oppositionto trade monopolies and laws regulating labor characterized the intra-

imperial sphere. The forms of colonial resistance were broad and

some were specific to particular empires. Corruption in local admin-

istrative offices, widespread smuggling of contraband, the flouting of

shipping laws, imperial edicts modified through local legislation and

simple defiance were all made possible by the distance from imperial

legislators. These were not the steadfast economic autonomies enjoyed

by the provincial and municipal order back in Europe. They derived

from the fact that imperial bureaucracies either left the colonies alone

or were ineffective in enforcing mercantile rules.

This tension set mercantilist institutions against colonial networks

that shared the landscape of economic life in the Americas.

Mercantilism parented imperial bodies of economic coordination,

whilst commanding colonial economic relations. The mercantile gov-

ernance of economic activity in the British, French and Spanish

empires was almost entirely the province of imperial administrations.

These were based in the Board of Trade, the administration of the

pacte colonial and the Casa de Contratacion. Mercantilism developed in

the Atlantic trade and in Europe’s national economies simultaneously.

In the imperial context, the methods of mercantile regulation used

were certainly drawn from those techniques that European rulers

were becoming familiar with, and that were mostly available to them.

However, imperial bureaucracies also fashioned new guiding principles

that were specific to the flow of trade. Aspects of America’s economies

were mostly cast by metropolitan institutions and merchant interests

in the image of European mercantilism: mining in the Spanish Indies,

port trade in key staples and the traffic in slavery are salient exam-

ples. Overall, Spanish, British and French states directed colonial

economic activity according to the mercantilist preconception of the

European capitalist world economy.

150 chapter six

American economies had a limited dynamic of their own on which

independent institutions of economic development could be formed.

Private capital and non-imperial networks of exchange spread beyond

the imperial economy of French and British North America and the

Spanish Indies. As the seventeenth century expired, and the colonies

developed economically, networks became increasingly important. But

the intensity of their activity revolved mostly around inter-colonial

trade, which was regulated by imperial bodies. Hence the nodes of

the American economies did not have the independence or dynamism

of the cities in northwest Europe until the mid-eighteenth century;

the only exception was the British North Americas.

In the Spanish Indies, mercantilism conferred a centralist form on

economic development. Hispano-America’s extraction economy chan-

nelled resources into industries governed by imperial dictates. Indeed,

in the eighteenth century the viceroyalties were expected to produce

fiscal surpluses, a requirement not put forth by the French or the

British. Spanish imperial economic structures encouraged the rapid

exploitation of resources. Industrial growth was limited and the best

outlook for expansion seems to have lain with Catalan region. Other

European reinos that were governed by imperial councils were limited

in their economic development. Potentially more independent

economies were supplanted by mercantile institutions through which

all produce of the colonies had to pass. In the Indies, the two main

bodies of control were the Casa de Contratacion and the ultimate exec-

utive authority, the Council of the Indies. The Casa’s control of ship-

ping, the trafficking of bullion and merchant taxation was forceful

in the sixteenth century. The English victory over the Armada in

1588 signalled the de facto demise of the Casa’s monopoly.17 For the

Spanish, however, imperial trade remained a peninsular monopoly

restricted to New Spain and the La Plata region until Bourbon reform

took hold in the late eighteenth century.18 Until the colonies absorbed

the Bourbon commercio libre, Seville and Cadiz were the mandatory

gateway to European markets for Spanish merchants trading in the

Americas.

Within Spain, the colonies were reckoned an exploitable resource.

Where the English regarded land labored on by them to be their

17 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, chap. 3.18 Ibid., pp. 76–83.


right, for the Spanish it was the riches underground that they dis-

covered which were justly theirs. The Americas were perceived to

be a land of resources, a quarry economy, with which Spain could

negotiate its fortunes in the European world economy. However, the

monarchy was unable to alter its relative economic and political

position in Europe.19 It monopolized American trade for quite a long

period through its coordinating institutions of economy. But Spain

became nothing more than a commercial conduit in Europe. Much

of the trade that entered Europe in the seventeenth century through

Seville and Cadiz appears to have served a strategy of balancing

national debts. Its imports of bullion ran readily through to other

centres. The cross-Atlantic flows of produce and manufacture steadily

fell to non-Spanish merchants from the late sixteenth century onwards.

The Spanish court state was unable to cultivate a robust merchant

class that could prosper independently of the American trade. Nor

was such a class able to differentiate itself from the centre of monar-

chical power. This is a result of its construction of an imperial-

mercantile economy so carefully channelled through a couple of tight

avenues.

The long-term relationship between Spain and the Americas pro-

duced a constantly present axis of tension that ultimately prompted

the reform of Spanish mercantile institutions. It set in opposition the

official public mercantile economy and the much weaker quasi-private

forms that bore the stamp of local conditions. Spanish political

economy revolved around the general pursuit of mineral wealth. The

private enclosure of communal lands—a preoccupation of the English—

did not figure at all in Spanish calculations. The Crown’s goals of

public exploitation of America’s riches were not easily reconciled

with the private enrichment sought by conqueror elites. The outcome

was a range of institutions intended to mobilize labor in mining.

They included the encomienda to the hacienda vessel of production and

the repartimiento de mercancias parallel economy of forced distribution

of goods. Each was a compromise in the tug-of-war between the

monarchy that asserted its imperial authority and colonists who con-

trolled resources. In this chapter, I concentrate on the repartimientoin order to illustrate the manner in which this tension was played out.

19 See Antonio Garcia-Baquero Gonzalez, Cadiz y el Atlantico 1717–1778: El ComercioColonial Espnaol Baja el Monopolio (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-americanos,1976).

152 chapter six

For the most part, the difficulties in production, supply and trade

that imperial regulation created were alleviated at the regional level

through the flexible mechanisms of colonial administration.20 In its

sixteenth century origins, the repartimiento referred to the ‘apportion-

ment’ of natives to each conqueror. The King Ferdinand himself

recognized this practice: “(G)overnor or peace-maker, with whom

this authority may lie, shall divide the Indians amongst the settlers.”21

In the eighteenth century it became the predominant form.22 Officials

in municipal administration, especially the corregidores, used their posi-

tions to monopolize the supply of goods and then force Indian com-

munities and communities of isolated provinces to purchase them.

Smuggling of contraband goods and regional hoarding of currency

specie were the two most visible and yet pervasive examples of the

suppressed repartimiento.23 Its legalization in 1751 was an acknowl-

edgement of the frailty of viceregal control. The repartimiento fed offthe deficit of local officials in imperial administration. In fact, it meant

that they were entrenched in local interests and became “a political

technique of the ‘opposition’”24 or the colonial order, if you will.

Royal patronage could not strike roots in these conditions. In the

Indies, official trade was undercut by these illegal distributive networks

that revolved around colonial government positions. The repartimientomarket compensated officials for paltry salaries or for the complete

lack of salaries in some cases. Relatively independent of imperial

administration, they drew most of their income from the distribu-

tion of goods in the unofficial economy. Invariably, they identified

with the interests that were represented in the local economic edifice.

20 Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World (London: Fontana Press, 1985),pp. 401–403.

21 Cited in Seed, American Pentimento, p. 226 (my translation).22 McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World. On the Spanish state’s attachment

to general economic development in South America, and the repartimiento in par-ticular, see Johnson and Susan Migden Socolow, “Colonial Centers, ColonialPeripheries, and the Economic Agency of the Spanish State,” in Daniels andKennedy, Negotiated Empires. Stanley J. Stein has written an excellent analysis of cor-ruption and patterns of administration in the Indies. See “Bureaucracy and Businessin the Spanish Empire, 1759–1804: Failure of a Bourbon Reform in Mexico andPeru,” Hispanic American Historical Review 61, no. 1 (1981), on the repartimiento in par-ticular, see pp. 8–9, 15, and 27.

23 On smuggling in the Spanish Indies, see Braudel, The Perspective of the World,pp. 413–20.

24 Hamnett, The Mexican Bureaucracy, p. 11.


Contradiction in mercantilist policy marked the intervention of

the Bourbon regime in the eighteenth century. Two dilemmas lay

at the foundation of so-called liberalization, which set the pattern

for institutional and economic development in the last century of the

Spanish Indies’ existence. The first has to do with attempts to reconcile

the structure of imperial trade with provincial economic expansion.

Individuals enriched outside of local government protested the mono-

poly of the infrastructure of trade held by corregidores and sub-delegates.

The full extension of the principles of commercio libre championed by

prominent individuals in Madrid may well have loosened the officials’

networks of control. However, the merchant class in a number of

port cities allied their interests with the colonial order.

The second dilemma emerged from the failure to integrate a layer

of provincial officials who related to peninsular interests. When the

repartimiento spread, Spain tried to suppress it through legislation and

policing. The official mercantilist order provided the primary model

of economic organization. However, it did not tackle the source of

the contradiction: the Crown’s reluctance (or inability) to institute a

colonial bureaucracy furnished with sufficient means to undermine

the participation of officials from the colonial order in the repartimiento.In other words, it was unwilling or unable to cultivate the links of

patronage that were its whole modus operandi on the Iberian Peninsula.

It was a paradox that this aspect of the Hispanic governmental com-

plex was not reproduced in the New World. Those charged with

unshackling economic constrictions were not furnished with the means

to do so and were predictably reluctant to comply with Madrid’s

decrees. Madrid officially gave up trying to eradicate the repartimientoin the early nineteenth century.

Liberalization brought some alteration to both layers of economy,

although its impact varied from Peru to New Spain to La Plata. In

1765 the colonies were permitted limited trade with each other. The

1778 reglamento sponsored new merchant guilds, which had a modern-

izing effect on agricultural production. Moreover, formerly smuggling

cities were economically renewed (Buenos Aires, Santiago, Vera Cruz,

Havana), differentiating them from noted colonial-administrative

centres (Lima, Mexico City). Nonetheless, in 1797 when the monopoly

on shipping was dropped at the insistence of Madrid there was wide-

spread objection from local merchant classes:

The reason is not hard to discover; the merchant class, made up bothof Spanish born and creole traders, had prospered precisely by adapting

154 chapter six

successfully to the intricate pre-Caroline restrictive regulations; theywere not interested in changing them, facilitating thereby the way fora competition that could prove ruinous to their interests.25

Thus, there were two dimensions of economy. Although the mer-

cantile economy dominated, the legal imperial trade coexisted in ten-

sion with the economic networks born in a colonial order that formed

with the encomienda and prospered in the colonial economy.

This tension exacerbated ethnic divisions. Cautious generalization

is possible here. Peninsular communities, in the main, controlled

official trade whilst Creoles, in the main, engaged in the repartimiento.The shift into economic activity of Creole-dominated urban com-

munities during the seventeenth century altered the relationship

between Spain and the Indies. Coupled with the gradual exhaustion

of mineral wealth in the Americas, the diversification of production

strengthened Creole networks of distribution and forms of economic

interaction. During the era of Bourbon restructuring, the socio-cultural

distinction between Creoles and peninsulares paralleled the structural

separation of the two forms of economy. The repartimiento belonged

to the American-born; it was the economic orbit of positions of rel-

ative independence of the colonial hierarchy. Typically, the under-

paid administrator had to seek remuneration by means other than

the imperial salary. It was in the colonial institutional nexus of gov-

ernance that Creoles dominated. During the eighteenth century the

low level struggle between the imperial apparatus and the colonial

order took on an ethnic appearance. The conflict between the Spanish-

born minority and the American-born majority was also a clash of

different levels of the colonial hierarchy with varying relationships

of dependence on and degrees of loyalty to the Spanish Empire.

Notwithstanding these comments, the issue of composition of offices

is a complicated one and will be taken up in more detail in chap-

ter eight. A provisional generalization can be made that ethnicity

was an axis of tension exacerbated by Spanish mercantilism. It indi-

cates a conflict with the weak, but not unimportant, American colo-

nial order. The tensions that emerged from within directed the

methods of imperial economic regulation.

The incorporation of England’s American colonies into the impe-

rial economy was a more complex case of imperial monopoly. The

25 Veliz, The Centralist Tradition, p. 128.


nature of seventeenth century corporate colonization set a pattern

of distant autonomy. Puritan colonies were densely settled and existed

in close proximity to each other. As the colonies were integrated

into the English Empire, the tempo of migration increased drama-

tically.26 The rapid and ongoing population of the Chesapeake and

Massachusetts Bay colonies, the Caribbean Islands and then the

Carolinas led to the quick development of robust colonial networks

of internal trade and production from the mid-seventeenth century

onwards.

The British Empire was a transoceanic commercial empire and

some of its colonists were vibrant traders. As in the Spanish empire,

English mercantilism revolved around the needs of the centre. However,

the manner in which the centre dominated differed markedly. It

incarnated a Protestant regard for commerce and industriousness.

This ideological variant of the capitalist imaginary did not simply

privilege private enrichment. Trade and the accumulation of national

wealth were mercantilist activities that served the strategic interests

of the empire. Trade was the centrepiece of national thinking, that

is, the rhetoric of public interests. It sat privileged in the national

market, alongside of the debate around fixed property, mobile prop-

erty, land, credit and corruption. In addition, population and migra-

tion were viewed differently. Population of the North American

colonies was encouraged as a boost to trade.27 Colonization was inter-

preted quite literally in English political economy after the 1690s. It

was taken to mean ‘peopling’ other lands for the benefits of trade.

England’s orientation to commerce was different from Spain’s. It

structured mercantile regulation in a less centralized manner. English

mercantilism revolved around the legislative products of Parliament,

Cabinet Council, the Privy Council and the instructions of the Board

of Trade. It was the latter—a quintessentially mercantilist body—

that was foremost in controlling trade. It drew up instructions for

provincial government in the colonies. Its brief also covered finding

new sources of raw materials and produce and finding new colonial

markets for English manufactures. It was to superintend colonial

finances and legislation and advise the Privy Council accordingly. Its

26 On migratory movements and their momentous impact, see Alan MacFarlene,The British in the Americas 1480–1815 (Essex: Longman, 1992), chaps. 2–3.

27 Armitage, The Ideological Origins, pp. 166–67.

156 chapter six

overall task was a judicial one: the supervision of the imperial mono-

poly of the commercial profits of colonial trade. It was inaugurated

at the beginning of a period of economic prosperity for the British

Empire,28 which immunized it from far-reaching challenges either in

parliament or in the fledging colonial assemblies.

Despite being charged with important responsibilities, the Board

of Trade itself did not have the full powers to execute its brief.29

The ministerial apparatus abrogated many of its official responsibil-

ities during the period of Whig government. Its sway therefore

depended on personal connections with Ministers. Parliament took

far greater interest in the business of the Board, but the government

focussed mostly on Britain’s overall commercial position in Europe

and neglected the Board’s advice on the state of colonial trade. Even

at its height in the first half of the eighteenth century, associations

representing Anglo-American merchant interests could more easily

capture its proceedings than those of other government departments.30

Presbyterian, Quaker and Congressional groups vied with French

lobbies for influence over decision. Generally they were successful.

The preoccupation with trade paradoxically disadvantaged the Board

as a superintending body. Success in commercial ventures through-

out the Empire gave the Board little ground for more extensive pow-

ers of intervention or greater authority in commercial matters. The

Board, therefore, did not act with the sweeping prerogative of the

Council of the Indies, nor did it attempt to direct non-economic

aspects of colonial society. Likewise parliament found itself in a posi-

tion of considerable control over oceanic trade, sustaining the mono-

poly of trade and ensuring that exports to the Americas went via

British ports.31 But it was impotent in matters of internal colonial

life, or indeed inter-colonial trade.

28 Richard J. Johnson, “Growth and Mastery: British North America 1690–1748,”in Peter J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 of The Oxford History of theBritish Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

29 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, pp. 188–92.30 Alison G. Olsen, “The Board of Trade and London American Interest Groups

in the Eighteenth Century,” in Peter J. Marshall and Glyn Williams, eds., The BritishAtlantic Empire before the American Revolution (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., 1980).

31 John M. Murin, “The Great Inversion, or Court versus Country: A Comparisonof the Revolution Settlements in England (1688–1721) and America (1776–1816),”in J. G. A. Pocock, ed., Three Great British Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1980).


Thus, the relationship between the colonial economies, the metro-

politan state and early British capitalism seems to be more intricate

involving more sources of authority in a devolved figuration.32

Management of the framework of trade in the British imperial econ-

omy was made more complex by the wide-ranging array of private

capitalist interests. From the middle of the seventeenth century

onwards, officially sanctioned competition in imperial trade between

commercial firms began to emerge. The Navigation Acts were reg-

ulated by the Board of Trade, which effectively permitted a more

flourishing inter-colonial trade. Officially, the governor of each British

colony was entrusted with the enforcement of the Navigation Acts

that involved an array of supervisory duties.33 In the eighteenth cen-

tury, these duties were expanded to include the monitoring of colo-

nial legislation to ensure that no colonial acts interfered with English

merchant trade. This move emerged from incidents pitting merchant

interests in a nascent colonial order against Parliament and the Privy

Council. The Navigation Acts did not impoverish colonial trade,

although they did formally exclude Irish and American merchants

from the immediate benefits of colonial commerce. Indeed, excep-

tions were made to the regulations when it seemed the economic

vibrancy of the empire was in jeopardy.34 Beyond this the only major

transgressions were the contraventions of the Navigation Acts—and

this did not invite sanctions—or when the regulations of Spain,

Portugal or France were violated. Nevertheless, decisions crucial to

the fortunes of the colonies were made in London by an apparatus

whose attention was fixed on Britain’s position and not the conse-

quences for the Americas.

What made British mercantilist institutions a complex web was

the triangle of interests linking the British merchant class, colonial

administrations and economic actors in settler markets. Well-organized

merchant influence emerged out of the revolutionary settlement of

32 See Jack P. Greene, “Metropolis and Colonies: Changing Patterns of ConstitutionalConflict in the Early Modern British Empire 1607–1763,” in Negotiated Authorities.For a recent work that reiterates the vitality of the metropolitan center in the devel-opment of the colonial empires and a “gentlemanly capitalism,” see Peter. J. Cainand Anthony G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914(London and New York: Longman, 1993).

33 On these tasks see L. W. Labaree, Royal Government in America: A Study of theBritish Colonial System Before 1783 (New York: Ungar, 1958), pp. 120–21.

34 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, pp. 152–60.

158 chapter six

the long seventeenth century.35 The influence of private English mer-

chants in the restriction of the economic outflow of the colonies

proved considerable. The coincidence of private merchant interests

and municipal officials closer to the English Crown suggests that

British hegemony in the capitalist economy in Europe in the eighteenth

century was contingent on the official British monopoly in shipping.

The entwinement of mercantile interests in the empire and capital-

ism in Europe produced the merchant-driven efforts of the Crown

to maintain the imperial monopoly in the eighteenth century.

Arching over this complex figuration of economic actors was the

opposition of the constitutional state and the colonial order. The

instructions of the British government to the colonies, which were

influenced by mercantile interests, addressed protectionist legislation

enacted by colonial assemblies. Close relations between Britain’s com-

mercial classes and the Board of Trade proved to be a source of

settler antagonism to the Board.36 It became an arena of the com-

peting claims of well-organised British commercial interests and con-

testatory counter-claims of colonists.37 In many ways, the instructions

of the Board provoked more opposition from some settler commu-

nities than did the Navigation Acts. Colonists could contravene the

latter by a form of subterfuge. However, legislation of the assem-

blies designed to circumvent direct instructions had to pass through

the governorship and the Board of Trade, it “could not be smug-

gled as could a pipe of French wine.”38

Mercantilism became an issue of autonomy and dominance for

the colonial order. It entered the public domain in which American

interests competed with the claims of British commerce. The impe-

rial system of trade rarely accounted explicitly for the interests of

settlers. However, the illicit trade proved extremely profitable for all

involved, especially colonial merchants. Thus, in British North America,

the tensions engendered by the mercantile grip on economic inter-

action often became political issues and a source of antagonism

35 On the emergence of merchant capitalist interests in the seventeenth centuryinstitutional structure of the imperial state, see Bliss, Revolution and Empire, pp. 191–93and Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, andLondon’s Overseas Traders 1550–1653 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

36 Labaree, Royal Government in America, pp. 60–61.37 Ibid., pp. 62–63.38 Ibid., p. 247.


between London and the colonial order. The complexion of English

imperial rule was thus coloured by the involvement of English mer-

chants, some American interests and the Crown, at one pole, and

colonial producers and other commercial interests, at the other. These

were the actors that stood in opposition to one another in an ongo-

ing legislative conflict between colonial and imperial institutions.

This was certainly centralism. But the extent of its penetration

was not so great as in the Spanish Empire or in the French Caribbean.

Furthermore, no single body was empowered to oversee and enforce

the legislation and regulation of the British government. Thus, cen-

tralized rule was always more nuanced than in the Indies and French

America and the economic restrictions on settler communities were

less stringent.

As in the Spanish case, restructuring emerged from the tension

within the British Empire. By mid-century, the level of smuggling

had gone beyond its earlier proportions. Indeed, it seemed as though

the private merchant empires that existed were beginning to swal-

low up greater volumes of the overall trade; empires within the

empire, one might say.39 In the 1750s, the British government

responded to the general situation by revitalizing a stagnating Board

of Trade. It introduced a reform program that encapsulated two

strategies. First of all colonial government was re-designed around

greater monarchical prerogative. In particular, legislation passed by

colonial assemblies had to include a clause empowering the Board

with the right to suspend it.40 Secondly, the provision of mercantile

incentives to diversify production, particularly of goods in which

England did not have an advantage or simply did not produce

expanded the range of opportunities for American merchants. Naturally,

this also reasserted imperial imperatives, albeit indirectly. However,

it also permitted the colonies to conduct greater trade within the

continent. Moderating the mercantile system catered for colonial real-

ities and compensated for economic underdevelopment.

Alongside of this, the restructuring was a product of more deci-

sive and practical shifts in British political economy towards the ideals

of free trade. When Parliament enacted the Free Ports Act in 1766,

it opened up channels of inter-imperial trade for colonial merchants.

39 T. H. Bowen, “British Conceptions of Global Empire 1756–83,” The Journalof Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 3 (September 1998).

40 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, pp. 208–209.

160 chapter six

This produced an attempt at resurgence in imperial authority via a

liberalization of British North American trade. The desired results

were an increase in imperial prestige in the colonies, greater economic

purchase in the home economy and boosted inter-imperial competition

in Europe. The reforms did not dissolve the tensions of the British

mercantile system, nor did they placate opposing colonial interests.

They put in place a regime of economic policies that were more

adaptable to changing circumstances. Yet, the tension of imperial

state formation reconstituted itself, and found explicit voice in the

growing dissent of settler communities after the Seven Years War.

French historians have judged mercantilism as a force of domination

in the Americas. This perception has its roots in nineteenth century

Canadian historiography and yet it has come under scrutiny more

recently.41 The complexity of intra-imperial relations is evident in the

origins of French intrusion into the American world. Reconnaissance

came early enough, although settlement came comparatively late. The

French had begun trading in fur and farming fish stocks in the North

Americas in the 1550s and 1560s, whilst in the south French slavers

were active in Brazil and the Spanish Indies and pirates patrolled the

Caribbean. They faced stiff competition and not only from the Spanish:

the English presence on the seas became increasingly weighty in the

second half of the seventeenth century.42 French Huguenot colonies

were contemplated for Florida, but early experimental settlements had

failed.43 It was only when the first settlement at Quebec was estab-

lished that early French trade was supplemented by colonialism.

It was really Colbert’s tenure that heralded a systematic French

approach to colonialism and with it a mercantilist regime. Many of

the institutional innovations of this period were national applications

for France specifically: regulation of the guild structure, efforts to

draw up a national map, the introduction of accounting procedures

in state budgets, a systematic reorganization of the monarchy’s body

of taxes, monetary reform and the development of state industries.

Much of this set in train a substantial transformation of the machin-

ery of state, rendering it more effective as a national structure in

early capitalist Europe.

41 Leslie Choquette, “Center and Periphery in French North America,” in Danielsand Kennedy, Negotiated Empires.

42 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 13–18.43 Ibid., pp. 24–29.


But Colbertism was also an empire-building project. Navigation

and trading associations were established. More generally, the French

monarchy aimed at a favourable balance of trade in accordance with

mercantilist principles. Growing French trade in the seventeenth cen-

tury was, to some degree, due to the state-led expansion of its

empire.44 The direct economic benefits to the French state were indis-

putable. Its diverse range of colonial holdings carried great expense,

but also brought visible gains. Canadian trade in leather, fish and

fur fitted neatly into the logic of Colbertism and provisioned the

homelands with a variety of essential goods that would be procured

at greater expense otherwise.45 In return, the American colonies were

an outlet for French manufactures. The economic fortunes of France

were paralleled in the colonies.

More generally, for the duration of imperial rule, colonial pro-

duction served three purposes. It fed French markets, a benefit

directed towards defraying the costs of an expensive empire. The

French market for fur became saturated in the 1680s. Canada’s value

as a colony did not lessen though. Quite the opposite: the ascen-

dancy of the Bourbon regime heralded an improvement in Canada’s

strategic standing.46 Secondly, it supported the wider growth of French

colonial trade. A profile of Franco-American trade after the treaty

is quite instructive and indicates that the American colonies were

anything but marginal.47 The Caribbean sugar trade proved extremely

profitable. The French Empire entered a long North Atlantic cycle

of rapid growth.48 While overall French foreign trade between 1716

and 1720 and the revolution only increased seven-fold, the value of

trade with the colonies jumped eighteen-fold. Trade with all colonies

(excluding Africa) in the 1770s constituted a third of all French

exports and imports. Much of this passed through the transatlantic

44 See Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, p. 246:“Above all, it accounts for the fervour with which some of Louis XIV’s advisers

pressed on him the idea of accepting the Spanish succession for his grandson. Manyof them imagined that this would result in joint Franco-Spanish rule of America.”

45 Raymond Birn, Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648–1789/91 (Hinsdale, IL:Dryden Press, 1977), pp. 102–103.

46 William, J. Eccles, “The Social, Economic and Political Significance of theMilitary Establishment in New France,” Canadian Historical Review 52, no. 1 (1971);Allain, French Colonial Policy, chaps. 5–6.

47 Marzagalli, “The French Atlantic”, pp. 75–79.48 Marc Egnal, New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early

Canada (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), chap. 7.

162 chapter six

routes between Bordeaux, Nantes and the Caribbean slave islands.

It was predominantly a commerce in agricultural goods and slaves

that was dedicated to the development of Antillean society, on one

hand, and the benefits to the hinterland economies of French Atlantic

ports, on the other. However, this suited the Atlantic zone well.

French Canada in particular was a beneficiary as prices for its main

export commodities increased steadily.49

Thirdly, colonial production was seen as a support to the strate-

gic designs of the monarchy, in which long-term economic interests

figured fairly prominently. This inter-continental nexus became a

more conscious part of the economic structure of the French state

in the eighteenth century. In the rivalry of states, it can be confidently

concluded that French foreign trade became “Americanised” through

mercantilism whilst that of Britain was “globalised.”50 Thus, mer-

cantilism did not give France the final leading edge that the monar-

chy sought. However, as a set of guiding motives it did drive the

imperial reconstruction of the French American world.

During the eighteenth century, North America remained a seem-

ingly insurmountable problem for the Crown. Remote and daunt-

ing tracts of wilderness made Canada an impenetrable place that

forced compromise on the part of the colonisers. This left its stamp

on the structures of mercantilism. The Crown was exceptionally

assertive in the area of maritime trade, while in non-economic areas

it was less forceful. When corporate holdings were ceded to the

Crown, l’exclusif was invoked through Colbert’s West Indies Company.

After it collapsed, the principles of regulation were generalized, begin-

ning a history of strict French monopoly. Monopolies over trade

were rapidly developed at the turn of the century. Some monopo-

listic methods failed. After the Seven Years War, the mercantile econ-

omy was liberalized for French Americans under a regime of l’exclusifmitige.51 Free ports were established and new restrictions on imports

paid for with American products were introduced. In other respects,

the advantages for France were augmented. New monopolies on

49 Ibid., chap. 9.50 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 2, p. 270. See also H. V. Bowen,

“British Conceptions of Global Empire.”51 Aldrich, Greater France, pp. 16–17.


valued colonial exports and French imports were promulgated.

Ongoing employment of French mariners was guaranteed.

Conflict between imperial authorities and the colonial order did

not suddenly wane as a result of liberalization. It had been born in

the structure of the British, French and Spanish empires and con-

tinued to reproduce itself from that structure. Mercantilism itself was

constituted out of a conflict generated by the presence of an oppos-

ing colonial order. In Europe, the conflict between monarchies and

provincial and municipal administration influenced the early stages

of the long historical formation of capitalism.

At the same time, another side of this process was unfolding in

the Americas. Mercantilism in the intra-imperial sphere informed the

transatlantic development of European capitalism. It was a realm of

state intrusion into the affairs of the colonial order. It was intended

to augment the benefits that accrued to states from accumulation and

trade. Nowhere is this more evident than in the trade in enslaved

humans. Why is slavery so important in explaining the role of mercantile

states in early capitalist development? In many respects, slavery was

truly transatlantic. It created a nexus of trade and production in a

zone of inter-dependence that connected West Africa to the Caribbean,

Brazil and Chesapeake Bay and then to London, Cadiz and Nantes.

Official government initiatives were crucial in sponsoring the trade

and then sustaining it. Above all, it furnished America with much of

the labor that was so essential to the production of colonial commodities

and to the early consumer markets of capitalist Europe. Furthermore,

its importance has not been lost on historians and social scientists,

although much of the interest is conspicuously recent and coincides

with the development of postcolonial sensibilities in the social sciences.

Slavery and the breakthrough to Atlantic capitalism

Modern slavery was vital to transatlantic commerce in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries. The observations of Marx and Adam Smith

showed due regard for the contribution of American production and

trade to the takeoff of capitalism. Contrary to some readings of Marx

and the mainstream understanding of Smith, their views do acknowl-

edge the contribution of the slave trade to early capitalism. There

is a growing body of opinion that the place of slavery in the for-

mation of capitalism needs to be re-assessed. Either Smith or Marx

164 chapter six

has been taken as a starting point.52 Marx’ scattered remarks on

America draw attention to the modernity of colonial slavery:

(T)he Negro labor in the southern states of the American Union pre-served a moderately patriarchal character as long as production waschiefly directed to the satisfaction of immediate local requirements. Butin proportion as the export of cotton became of vital interest to thosestates, the over-working of the Negro, and sometimes the consumptionof his life in seven years of labor, became a factor in a calculated andcalculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from hima certain quantity of useful products, but rather of the production ofsurplus-value itself.53

Where the capitalist outlook prevails—as on the American planta-tions—this entire surplus value is regarded as profit; where neither thecapitalist mode of production itself exists, nor the corresponding outlookhas been transferred from capitalist countries, it appears as rent.54

The fact that we now not only call the plantation owners in Americacapitalists, but that they are capitalists, is based on their existence asanomalies within a world market based on free labor.55

These comments reflect on a later period than the one under scrutiny

in the current work. However, the essential point is that it is the

world system in the whole of the modern epoch that Marx has his

eye on here, rather than the internal features of the mode of production

as such (aside from the mention of slavery’s calculative rationality).

Moreover, cultural aspects of slavery are accorded a place alongside

of the process of extraction of value. Marx’ belief remained firm that

a free labor force was an indispensable feature of capitalism. However,

his anatomy of industrial capitalism’s pre-history shows signs of a trans-

atlantic scope. It is clear now that Marx’ views on American slavery

do contain ambiguities and, furthermore, he had little evidence with

which he could more sharply distinguish different Anglo-American

colonies.56 Nonetheless, he is unequivocal in identifying the necessity

52 Marx certainly was for Eric Williams in his classic on capitalism and slaveryand for C. L. R. James in his study of French slavery in the Lesser Antilles. Bothof these are intermediaries between Marx and recent writers, such as Robin Blackburn,Barbara Solow, Jacob M. Price and David Galenson. See C. L. R. James, The BlackJacobins; Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books,1963); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1994).

53 Karl Marx, Capital (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 345.54 Marx, Capital: A Critique, p. 804.55 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 513.56 Both of these points are elaborated on by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene

Genovese in “The Janus Face of Merchant Capital,” in Fruits of Merchant Capital:


of both waged European labor and systematic slavery in the Americas

to the development of capitalist social relations during this era.57

Adam Smith’s treatise on capitalism makes little mention of slav-

ery. When it is remarked upon, the kind of contempt that Marx

expresses for it is conspicuously absent.58 In both models of capital-

ism waged labor is pivotal and the independent producer and planter

of the New World appear as the embodiment of a modern entre-

preneurial ethic of self-reliance. For Marx, such self-sufficiency rested

on a patriarchal foundation of slavery (locked into the world wide

capitalist mode of production); while for Smith it seems to be a

choice made by settler communities confident of the especial value

of their consumer commodities:

The plantation of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave-cultivation . . . In our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole workis done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it.The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West Indian coloniesare generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that isknown either in Europe or America; and the profits of a tobacco plan-tation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn. . . Both can afford the expense of slave-cultivation, but sugar canafford it still better than tobacco. The number of Negroes accordinglyis much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our sugar than inour tobacco colonies.59

In this passage slavery appears as a function of the imperial division

of labor, the central motif of Smith’s political economy. Indeed, it

was slavery and mercantile monopolies of trade that mediated colo-

nial America’s relationship to the world. Both elements are neces-

sary in an explanation of the prosperity of British America’s colonies.

Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983).

57 One survey of the sixteenth century questions whether the bonded Americanworkforces (estimated to be close to one million at the end of the sixteenth cen-tury) might not have equalled Europe’s waged labour force. See Blaut “On theSignificance of 1492,” pp. 378–79. Prior to the American Civil War, the combinedslave populations of the South and Brazil came to more than 6 million, account-ing for more than 30%. Prior to the Haitian revolt in the 1790s the total slavepopulations of the Caribbean came to 1.1 million (around 70%). See Barry Higman,“Demography,” in Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman, A Historical Guideto World Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 168–174.

58 Robin Blackburn points out, however, that the “analytic gap between Marxand Smith was . . . less substantial than it appears” (Blackburn, The Making of ColonialSlavery, p. 516).

59 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 489.

166 chapter six

The latter does not get its due in Smith’s classic. But the wider

importance to the transatlantic trade is not lost on him either.

If this was a lively and industrious sphere of the world economy

that he suggests it was, then imperial mercantilism and slavery were

necessary and dynamic components of it. If this was the epoch of

so-called primitive accumulation, then slavery was a weighty com-

ponent. Recent research suggests that profitability in economic activ-

ity in the Caribbean and the North Americas only came with slavery.60

If mercantilism was the establishment of the pre-conditions of accu-

mulation, then the philosophy of state and active involvement of

state officialdom warrants careful attention. The orientation of all

those involved in slavery also shows up something of the character

of transatlantic commerce. Its patriarchal veneer implied that it was

embedded in firm traditions, and yet its practices and productive

organization were, in many respects, integral to Europe’s early cap-

italism and even to its modernity.

Colonial slavery could not be local in orientation; the self-sufficient

oikos was not a model that could be reproduced easily in North

America and had no feasible application in the Caribbean. Its orbit

was necessarily transatlantic.61 Its lifeblood was a trade in goods and

human beings. This trading nexus was firmed up by lines of credit

that linked merchants, planters, shipowners, financiers and parlia-

mentarians. The chains of interdependence reached from Bordeaux

and London to Barbados and Charlestown. This nexus was a means

of extending English and French capital westwards in investment and

loans for plantation production. It also provided for the planter class

the imperative to trade with other economies. At the same time,

production for distant markets logically compelled slavers and planters

to participate in a mercantilist regime of accumulation. The exchange

of produce for manufactures—an import/export trade over long dis-

tances—was profit driven and quite competitive. The availability of

credit encouraged the expansion of estates and the takeover of others.

60 Barbara L. Solow, introduction to Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1991). David Eltis puts the case that economicfactors were marginal, although he concedes that the enslavement of Africans washighly profitable. See “Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery: AnInterpretation,” American Historical Review 98, no. 5 (1993).

61 Research into the history of slavery has taken the transatlantic sphere as itsproper scope of analysis. Cross-national studies have received less attention sincethe 1970s. See Locksley Edmundson, “Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the Interna-tionalization of Race,” Caribbean Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1976).


Across the seventeenth century, small Caribbean-based producers

found themselves bankrupted by the marginal and uncertain returns

on their output. Through foreclosure, their lands fell to larger pro-

ducers as ownership became more concentrated.

Competition and the different lines of connection with Western

Europe, African and other colonial networks compelled all within

the orbit of the slave trade to re-organize. More systematic forms of

cost accounting were developed. More complicated and extensive

credit arrangements were devised. New types of insurance that catered

for risk taking in long distance trade were drawn up. Calculation

and a calculative rationality were inherent to these aspects of economic

organization. Moreover, there was an impulse to expand operations

indefinitely up until the point of zero return. Through investment in

a larger workforce, fertilizers, new crops, storage facilities and housing,

sugar, tobacco and other goods could be produced at cheaper rates

through higher levels of productivity. A more rapid rate of purchase

of inputs and technology coupled with the growth of luxury markets

in Europe accelerated the circulation of commodities. The intense devel-

opment of capitalist social relations in Western Europe therefore depended

on the inclusion of colonial producers and traders from America and

Africa for the rapid growth of markets. It also rested on the behaviour-

shaping character of slave-centred economic organization to provide

further impetus to the refinement of mercantilist and financial insti-

tutions. Slavery was critical in all these respects to the actual devel-

opment of capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

By the early eighteenth century, the Atlantic world governed by

Europe’s colonial empires resembled a new social formation. Slavery

formed the sinews of transatlantic trade. Portuguese exchange with

slave traders in Africa pre-dated slavery’s emergence in America. But

slavery’s breakout from Africa was precipitated by the growth in eco-

nomic activity in the West Atlantic and the quickening pulse of Euro-

pean trade along the West African coast. The extension of the range

of capital investment and the connection of metropolitan and colonial

markets perpetuated slavery and indeed may have been a root cause

of its expansion. From the perspectives of the American colonies,

slavery appears to be no less essential to the economic life of the

French and British empires. Not only did it entail the traffic in humans

across the so-called Middle Passage; the fruits of Africans’ labor in

America were transported to Europe to satisfy luxury markets that

delighted the tastes of the new bourgeois-aristocratic public sphere.

168 chapter six

At the apex of this trade was a class of businessmen who provided

coordination of a number of commercial, financial and distributive

activities.62 Slavery was the basis of these, although many seemed

detached from the processes associated with slave-based production.

This pattern has been dubbed the three point triangular trade.

This is an oversimplification and can be misleading. More penetrating

analyses suggest that trade linkages were more complex. The large

joint-stock companies normally associated with the triangular net-

works were only part of the trade. Small-scale private traders had a

considerable stake in long-distance trade and contributed consider-

ably to the development of modern forms of credit and transaction.63

They depended on networks of ‘correspondents’, commissionaires or

‘employees’ to transact their business through Atlantic and Caribbean

channels. Small time businessmen relied heavily on trust built up

with contacts over time. Their reputation could be further secured

if they belonged to the same religious denomination. ‘Moral credit’

guaranteed their financial creditworthiness.64 Credit was indispens-

able in all these exchanges and the trade linkages that they pro-

duced were a patchwork of connections. As for the large monopolies

and joint-stock companies, they too depended on the balances of

relations between London-based factors, financiers, merchants and

planters.65 From the middle of the eighteenth century, West Indian

planter dominance enabled triangular trade, where previously return

journeys from Britain were unprofitable. Of course, a good portion

of the trade was bilateral involving merchants that sailed from North

America to the Caribbean or to Europe.66

62 Hancock’s Citizens of the World is a fascinating study of the entrepreneurial out-siders to London’s merchant circles. This group was an emblem of colonial slav-ery and an exemplar of transatlantic unity, and yet was two degrees removed fromslave-based production. They established a transatlantic commercial network thatfurnished a cosmopolitan array of goods for Britons abroad (and at home). Theirscope was global. They were imperial ‘improvers’ in commerce, consumption, styleand manners. These agents of empire coordinated the factors of production acrossmarkets, regions and indeed continents.

63 Jacob C. Price, “Transaction Costs: A Note on Merchant Credit and the Orga-nization of Private Trade,” in James C. Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of MerchantEmpires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 276–97.

64 Peter Mathias “Risk, Credit and Kinship in Early Modern Enterprise,” inMcCusker and Morgan, The Early Modern Atlantic Economy.

65 R. B. Sheridan, “The Commercial and Financial Organization of the BritishSlave Trade 1750–1807,” Economic History Review 11, no. 2 (1958): 249–63.

66 Stanley Engerman argues that the image of the triangular trade should bemodified as it subsumes complex patterns of commerce to the neglect of bilateral trade.


In addition, some general caution is warranted when examining

the most basic patterns of trade in the Atlantic zone. The so-called

hub-and-spoke model of imperial commerce that has enjoyed favour

amongst economic historians stresses the flow of agricultural goods

to Europe in exchange for manufactured products, tight imperial

monopolies and the decisive weight of decision-making of metro-

politan merchants. Close scrutiny of particular industries suggests that

this model does not capture the complexity and variation of the

operation of actual markets. The hub-and-spoke image applies best

to the sugar and tobacco trades.67 However, for present purposes,

the important conclusion to draw is that, whatever its underlying

patterns, the triangular trade was qualitatively new and cohered a

new economic zone. In a way it was the raison d’etre of a whole

species of French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and English merchants.

Slavery was the basis of economic relations in this zone. It integrated

activities of distant locations. London, Liverpool, Cadiz, Bordeaux,

Rotterdam and North America, the Caribbean, the Brazilian coast-

line and then West Africa were linked in a transatlantic nexus.

Slavery was, therefore, the centrepiece of the extension and expan-

sion of capitalist forms. Its effect on nascent capitalism was also cul-

tural. It promoted a supervision and discipline of labor that would

later suit industrialism.68 It also boosted the calculative activities of

merchants, shippers, insurers and planters alike. For those involved

in plantation there was a marked desire for greater predictability in

production and trade; for example, planters went to great lengths to

secure their interests through local legislative and judicial bodies.

Calculation was a significant feature of most stages of production

and trade connected to slavery. This resembles the rationalization of

economic action described by Max Weber, although he did not rec-

ognize this source of rationality.69

See “Mercantilism and Overseas Trade 1700–1800,” in Roderick Flood and DonaldMcCloskey, The Economic History of Britain Since 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994).

67 See David Hancock’s discussion of Madeira wine as an instructive counter-example in “The British Atlantic World: Coordination, Complexity and the Emergenceof an Atlantic Market Economy 1651–1815,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 107–26.

68 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 588.69 Max Weber’s relevant comments on colonial slavery can be found in General

Economic History (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 300–301, and Economyand Society, p. 155.

170 chapter six

In this regard, David Galenson’s description of “market behav-

iour” to typify the trader-planter outlook is apt.70 I argue, however,

that this type of behaviour is a specific cultural form constituted in

variable ways in the Atlantic zone. The picture of cultural influences

on slavery and reactions to it is more varied than a survey of ratio-

nalization might suggest. The tensions between traditional and mod-

ern sides of slavery differed between Caribbean, Brazilian and North

American plantation colonies. In the British North American tobacco

and cotton plantations, the incongruence was of a particular kind.71

A localized culture of villa life fashioned itself, to a degree, on Roman

republicanism. Its values were hospitality, leisure, quiet reflection,

active exercise and a discursive inter-subjectivity (albeit a private

one). It should be remembered that underpinning the South’s leisurely

recreation was slavery; the adjuncts of the villa were the plantation

and the slave quarters. But more than this, the aim of all activity

was directed towards a private enrichment. In contrast to ancient

slavery, “‘(p)roduction’—and not ‘consumption’ in the sense of pub-

lic buildings, festivals and so on—was the telos of economic behav-

iour.”72 As well, however, it must be added that the imperative to

trade and exchange was a constant intruder into the cultural domain

of the southern gentry. The local style of life could not evade Atlantic

trade; indeed it often depended on these external links. A disjunc-

ture between the modern plantation economy and the selective revival

of Ancient and Renaissance traits of virtue placed some limits on

the expansion of so-called rationality. In the new US, it generated

dilemmas in political philosophy for Southerners grappling to rec-

oncile republican virtues with the practices of slavery. Tradition was

no stable thing. The South’s villa society conformed only partially

to ancient models and these were open to wider interpretation. On

the other hand, the impress of modernity varied between the port

70 See David W. Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves: Market Behavior in EarlyEnglish America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 148–50, on WestIndian maneuvers to stymie the effects of Royal African Company’s de jure mono-poly as an instance of ‘market behaviour’. Nuala Zakelich provides a snapshot ofEnglish merchants from port books in 1686 that supports the idea that the ‘new men’of the Atlantic trade promoted calculative forms of action. See “Making MercantilismWork: London Merchants and Atlantic Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactionsof the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 9 (1999): 143–58.

71 See Peter Murphy, “Peregrini,” Thesis Eleven 46 (1996): 14–16.72 Ibid., p. 15.


cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and the colonial towns

of Savannah and Charlestown. While the modern principles of cap-

italist organization may have prevailed in production, inter-colonial

trade may have seemed more distant and focussed on northern coastal

centres.

The Caribbean experience was different. ‘Tradition’ in many of

the island colonies was over-determined by the imperative of trade

and the nature of the colonies’ origins. There seemed less room on

the islands for detached villa life. Demographic patterns make this

clear. They were far more densely populated (especially in the eight-

eenth century) than the mainland colonies and the number of slaves

relative to the white population was far greater. However, it was the

authoritarian model of agricultural production that most decisively

formed island traditions. In the early years of founding plantations

“everything had to be brought over from the old continent: the mas-

ters—white settlers; the labor force—black Africans . . . the plants

themselves.”73 English colonists in the West Indies were quick to form

a coherent master class capable of coordinating wealthy plantations

a whole generation before the Southern gentry and years before the

French.74 Production methods were also imported. Implantation did

not end with people and production techniques. In a way, societies

were being artificially created out of “total strangers” who were

mostly brought to this world forcibly.75 Bewildered Africans arrived

to find themselves amongst an estranged majority; indentured Scottish,

Irish, Welsh and English servants had preceded them. Their motives

for transportation were immaterial (if indeed they were apparent in

any way). In contrast, the motives of free settlers were crucial and

drove the trajectory of development in many of the islands. Unlike

early mainland English colonists who had gone through a religious

exodus, island planters and their overseers were spurred on by temporal

73 Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, p. 273.74 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West

Indies 1624–1713 (Williamsburg, VA: University of North Carolina Press, 1972),chap. 2.

75 Orlando Patterson, preface to The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins,Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (London: Associated UniversityPresses, 1969). There is a substantial debate about the randomizing effect of trans-atlantic migration on Africa’s cultural groups. It revolves around whether there wascultural continuity and, if there was, how much and how did enslaved Africansmaintain it. It is beyond the scope of the current work to develop a judgment onthe finer ethnographic and demographic research on this. Broadly speaking, I accept

172 chapter six

interests in commerce.76 They brought what they were familiar with.

Above all, English settlers insisted on their northern European style

of life. Their very diet, daily social schedules, clothing, housing and

urban architecture resembled English custom.77 Beyond these fea-

tures of life, however, gentility was extremely thin.

But they were also quick to develop a total system of production

that was unique to this part of the world in the seventeenth cen-

tury.78 Unlike forms of cottage industry in Europe, slave-based plan-

tation production involved intense and direct supervision. An owner

or overseer was immediately responsible for the management of all

facets of production, plantation maintenance and care of the work-

force. The extent of supervision reached a point of close surveillance

of many aspects of the lives of slaves. Agriculture provided a disci-

plinary regime (in the manner described by Michel Foucault) that

went beyond the labor process. Not surprisingly, its defenders were

heavily armed and well organized. The disciplined and instrumen-

tally rationalized organization of slave production was also a cultural

form of slave economy.

Gang labor routinized the experiences of production. The rela-

tions of oppression between master and slave that dictated in the

sphere of production spilled over into many aspects of social life,

especially towards the end of the seventeenth century when the

growth of slave numbers became more conspicuous. Master-slave

Patterson’s sociology of the historical experiences of slavery in the Caribbean. Thelively and changing debate over disenclavement and recomposition of African soci-eties should be acknowledged. Two seminal contributions are Melville J. Herskovits,The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958) and Sidney W. Mintz andRichard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective(Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1977). Blackburn, The Makingof New World Slavery, pp. 344–50. See also Philip Morgan who argues for a para-digm that appreciates the heterogeneous and porous nature of slave interaction.Noting empirical evidence that many slaves were channeled from their points oforigin, he remarks that the record of the fate of many is thin after disembarkation.However, the cultural forms that have survived show extraordinary ethnic creativ-ity and hybridity. See “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade:African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments,”in David Eltis and David Richardson, eds., Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity andMortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade (London: Frank Cass and Company), 1997.For a summation of the issues and an analysis that seeks a middle ground betweenthe so-called maximum diversity hypothesis and the view that there was consider-able cultural continuity and sharing, see Thornton, Africa and Africans, chaps. 7–8.

76 O. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, pp. 33–34.77 R. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, chap. 8.78 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 332–35.


relations encompassed manumitted slaves who, although nominally

free, were always treated with suspicion. Nonetheless, holding a major-

ity, and living in close proximity to one another, slave communities

in the British Caribbean were able to develop community ties that

afforded them a modicum of immunity from the tyranny of over-

seers.79 To the white minority, this was a source of long-term fear

of violence or rebellion. Revolts and sporadic violence did occur and

fuelled white prejudice. But these were more infrequent and vivid

manifestations of slave defiance.80 Muted resistance was far more

common and took many forms from malingering to marronnage.

Acts of resistance added to an accumulated subculture of slave com-

memoration of such events. They were not the only way to claim

some autonomy. Sunday worship, subsistence plots and accompany-

ing markets for their produce and stories, music and dance all con-

tributed to a social space for slaves partly generated by the white

elite, partly forged by black communities themselves. This contributed

to Creole traditions in the region through cultural osmosis. In the

dominant white communities, habits of constant vigilance spread.

They complemented the extraordinary attention paid to prices, the

course of trade and wider imperial affairs. The state seemed more

prominent to the colonial order based in the British Caribbean or

French Antilles than it did to mainland communities in North America.

And, in the matter of slavery, the British and French apparatus were

quite involved.

Slaving as an industry that encompassed the capture, transport,

purchase and laboring of Africans exemplifies the character of mer-

cantilism. To understand how this is the case, mercantilism must be

conceived as a series of strategies of colonial pioneering, rather than

simply the operation of monopolies. Only then can the involvement

of governments be more clearly understood.

Mercantilism and slavery came together in the early development

of cross-Atlantic and cis-Atlantic trade. States invested heavily in

slavery, and not just in a financial sense. In the seventeenth century,

the British, French and Spanish furnished their empires with the

essential infrastructure of the slavery business, founding a mercantile

79 T. H. Breen, “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” in Jack P. Greeneand J. R. Pole, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the EarlyModern Era (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp. 210–12.

80 Thornton, Africa and Africans, chap. 10.

174 chapter six

unity in the Atlantic world. Fortified African ports protected ship-

ping. Supplies of slaves were guaranteed by chartered companies

that matured with state support. Governments also drew up legisla-

tive frameworks for the regulation of bonded labor. While they sought

to govern slavery in this way, governments also reaped the fiscal

benefits of slave production. The commodities most directly associ-

ated with slave production were the most profitable and were sub-

ject to the heaviest taxes and customs duties.81 In this way, slavery

enriched the public purse in Britain as it did the private fortunes of

the large merchant traders. The British public sphere also incorpo-

rated planters from the Caribbean and the east coast. Parliamentary

government in England opened up a significant space for colonial

planters to exercise political influence over imperial affairs. The pub-

lic dimension and some private interests were mutually bolstered by

the outgrowth of slavery in imperial Britain. Infrastructure, regula-

tion, the acceleration of revenue-raising and involvement in a sub-

stantial portion of the trade gave the French and British states especial

purpose in the process of accumulation generated by slavery.

Europe’s empires were connected with slavery in other respects

also. Beyond the structural and economic complex of nascent capi-

talism, slavery was factored into inter-state relations. States pursued

the development of slaving in a larger diplomatic framework. A cli-

mate of multilateral negotiation over free access to sea-lanes emerged

in the treaties drawn up between the major contending powers after

Westphalia.82 Diplomacy was used more often to restrain piracy and

other sorts of private violence and settle disputes over land and mar-

itime boundaries. The Westphalian framework of inter-state relations,

along with the recession of Spain’s claim to sovereignty over the

Atlantic, brought a relative security and confidence to slaving enterprises

after early decades of free piracy during the seventeenth century.

The involvement of states in slavery should be put in the context

of wider patterns of colonial population. One dimension of mer-

cantilism was the concept of ‘plantation’. One of its connotations

was ‘people-ing’. The initial foundation of American colonies reflects

this outlook.83 Emigration was exile for early colonists, most certainly.

81 Christopher L. Brown, “The Politics of Slavery,” in Armtiage and Braddick,The British Atlantic World, p. 217.

82 Mancke, “Empire and State,” in Armitage and Braddick, The British AtlanticWorld, pp. 184–86.

83 E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 15–17.


However, it was supported by the mercantilist conception of a trade

in people to the outer reaches of a stillborn empire. Thus early

English experiments with the transportation of indentured servants

indicated an enthusiasm for populating. The subordinated status of

these subalterns made trafficking easy. But it produced little success.

By the late seventeenth century, the preference for slaves as a source

of population had gained momentum. For the English state, the

height of governmental involvement came just prior to the 1688

Revolution.84 Populating was a matter of great concern to imperial

authorities and the main institutional vehicle for slaving was the

Royal African Company.

Official support for the plantation of people in the American

colonies underscored French efforts in this period.85 The scale of

emigration was less impressive than that of England. Prior to the

1660 Restoration, the French navy and the Company of the Isles

of America supported the movement of more than 20,000 French

colonists. Like English initiatives, there were few slaves and many

servants. However, the character of the French advance differed in

important ways. Huguenots were potential exiles and colonizers, but

were prohibited from joining the colonies. The dearth of numbers

in Canada encouraged routine co-operation with the Indians. Jesuit

missions also sat alongside forts on the frontier, which was the peri-

meter west of the St Lawrence River. Population of the settlements

may have been official policy, but its effectiveness was slight. In the

French Caribbean, settling people on Martinique, Guadaloupe and

St Christopher was formative work and proceeded more swiftly. But

formative work it was and, like the English colonies, slavery was not

so significant until the 1680s. Then the demographic transformation

would alter tropical perceptions of population, as race became the

basis for oppression and resistance.

Royal government supervised the establishment of many other

aspects of slavery. In Anglo-America, slavery was driven by the inde-

pendent initiative of planters more than in the French or Hispanic

American colonies. Nonetheless, even in the British Caribbean and

84 Imports of slaves into the English colonies grew substantially around the 1680s.Between 1651 and 75, 368,000 slaves were imported into the North Americas and69,200 into the West Indies. This increased considerably between 1676 and theturn of the century. By then 602,500 slaves transported to the North Americas and173,800 taken to the West Indies. See Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves, p. 15.


176 chapter six

the Chesapeake colonies, the role of metropolitan authorities was

considerable. Indeed, in the formative phase of plantation, it was an

essential prop for small producers.86 British authorities were more

than a collective superintendent. The state was altogether a beneficiaryof slavery. Customs duties and the heavy taxes levied on tobacco

and sugar contributed significantly to the greater fund of public

wealth.87 Its fiscal capacity to sustain a large military and naval force

to police its colonial possessions and its trade routes were greatly

enhanced by the revenue that slave-based production brought. In

turn, it assigned itself a role in providing the infrastructure of the

slave trade. The Royal African Company fashioned the architecture

of the English slave trade. Its factories held contacts in Africa; its

forts guarded English interests and its ships accounted for much of

the trade in the 1670s and 1680s. Furthermore, its charter of mono-

poly constituted a legal framework in which government in London

could attempt to minimize competition from private traders. Financially,

it was a vehicle through which capital could be aggregated. Slavery

required a high level of capitalization and joint stock incorporation.88

Above all, royal surety was essential for success at this time.

The Company represented direct imperial support for the trade

that lasted until the mid-eighteenth century, even though its fortunes

declined significantly after the 1688 Revolution. Its monopoly was

enshrined in the charter. The Navigation Acts provided a mercan-

tile framework that favoured its operations. However, there was com-

petition; from the Madagascar trade, from other European traders,

from private sales made by the Company’s own captains and from

‘interlopers’.89 The Company was unable to control prices and quan-

tities because of the local domination of colonial institutions. In the

Caribbean, colonial legislatures and courts heavily favoured the

planters and often acted against the claims of the Company’s agents.90

Furthermore, the English plantocracy was able to constantly place

pressure on parliament and the Crown to revise the terms of the

charter of monopoly. The Company was therefore not an effective

monopolist. Instead, it might be better understood as a vehicle of

86 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 2, pp. 167–69.87 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688–1783

(New York: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 98.88 R. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 231–32.89 Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves, pp. 14–17.90 Ibid., pp. 18–20.


state involvement and a guarantor of the flow of slaves from West

Africa.

Similar efforts by Richelieu and Colbert to establish chartered

companies with a French monopoly failed.91 The Crown succeeded

in establishing state control of this slave trade through l’exclusif. Sugar

cultivation as a dynamic industry emerged within this system of reg-

ulation. The tight monopoly was strictly enforced, much to the chagrin

of planters in St Domingue, Martinique and Guadaloupe.92 Still, as

in Anglo-America, there were other sources available. Dutch and

English traders were happy to breach l’exclusif. Furthermore, settler

complaints accumulated and exploded into revolt against metropolitan

authority on a frequent basis.

But the most striking differences between French and English reg-

ulation of slavery lie in two factors. Firstly, the French were unable

to secure their trade routes around the West African coast at this

time. The lone fort of the Senegal Company could not service a

large number of ships. The Company could not come close to match-

ing the Royal African Company’s volume of shipping. Secondly,

Louis XIV promulgated the Code Noir in 1685, “the most compre-

hensive attempt by a European power to regulate the judicial, moral

and material conditions of slavery in its colonies.”93 The Code was

couched in a language of paternalistic guardianship of all aspects of

the slaves’ lives. It was a royal decree that regulated the moral con-

duct of masters, in contrast to its Barbados equivalent of 1660 which

was a Common Law derivative based on local experiences aimed at

exerting greater control of its slave force.94 The Code’s specifications

were far-reaching, including the prescription of the terms of religious

observance for all colonists. It was a systematic attempt to recreate

the moral order of absolutist France in all spheres of routine. Naturally,

institutional autonomy accompanied the program of regulation. The

legislation of islander counseils was a mark of “unwonted respect” for

the amassing colonial order.95 Planter loyalty was vital at this time

91 Between the 1620s and 1670s twelve companies were chartered, re-charteredor reconfigured with a new charter, according to Allain, French Colonial Policy, pp.46–48.

92 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 283–85.93 Dale Tomich and Carolyn Fick, “French Caribbean,” in Drescher and Engerman,

A Historical Guide to World Slavery, p. 134.94 Meinig, The Shaping of America, p. 171.95 Blackburn, The Making of Colonial Slavery, p. 292.

178 chapter six

as Colbert’s plans for an expanded marine fleet that could match

the English were not complete. In all, although French mercantil-

ism was quite comprehensive in its body of regulations, its reach

into (and influence over) the Africa-America trade was limited in the

seventeenth century.

British and the French intervention seemed less active in the eight-

eenth century. However, this withdrawal was not straightforward;

the forms of mercantilist intervention changed significantly, rather

than simply receding. The Royal African Company steadily lost

ground to private traders in the trade to America’s English colonies.

After gaining legal status in 1698, they delivered far more slaves on

far more ships than the monopoly firm.96 Later attempts by the

Company to lawfully regain its hegemony failed. As the Company

began to fail in the early eighteenth century, slaving was opened up

to a greater number of agents.97 Moreover, the concentration of plan-

tation production in the West Indies turned many successful planters

into large producers. A stark division between small and large planters

had prevailed in Barbados, Jamaica and Bermuda from the Restoration

to the turn of the century. Moreover, the application of English law

was more forceful in the smaller islands that had not been formally

conquered.98 Both factors—internal division and legislative autonomy

in Jamaica—strengthened the independent liberties claimed by planters

as their heritage. As land ownership became more concentrated and

production more dependent on slaves in the early eighteenth century,

the large plantocracy pushed its autonomy even more vigorously. A

web of patronage and connection gave them considerable, sometimes

decisive, political weight in parliamentary government.99 Their contacts

in Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow and London were influential lobbies.

Some, who were more fortunate, relocated to London, as they were

rich enough to afford a local supervisor to manage their plantations.

In London, they became a strong constituency, which could ply its

influence in metropolitan politics.100

96 Jacob M. Price, “Credit in the Slave Plantation Economies,” in Solow, Slaveryand the Rise of the Atlantic System, p. 305.

97 Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves, pp. 20–21.98 Michael Craton, “Property and Propriety: Land Tenure and Slave Property

in the Creation of a West Indies Plantocracy 1612–1740,” in John Brewer andSusan Staves, Early Modern Conceptions of Property (New York: Routledge, 1995).

99 Christopher A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830(London: Pearson Education, 1989), pp. 90–91.

100 On the influence of the planters as a common interest, see Christopher Brown,“The Politics of Slavery,” in Armtiage and Braddick, The British Atlantic World.


However, this produced a paradox. It made the British govern-

ment an unrivalled center of debate about the slave trade and about

colonial affairs more generally. This did little to alleviate the plight

of slaves, as local planters strengthened the slave code defining chat-

tel property and the conditions of life. For a time, parliamentary law

found little application.101 Other avenues of regulation emerged for

the English. Credit-based purchase of slaves was becoming more

important as the trade expanded.102 A war between colonial and

British legislatures began in the 1720s.103 Local laws designed to aid

indebted planters were annulled by London, which, in turn, passed

laws supporting creditors. Merchants and planters lobbied parliament

and then the Board of Trade during the course of several episodes

of conflict over colonial bills. In 1732 the government settled the

issue with the Colonial Debts Act and thereby stamped its author-

ity on the credit system. The British state had withdrawn from direct

participation in the trade, but its prerogative in management of the

trade remained and was, in some ways, even augmented by its con-

solidation of the terms of credit.

The French state had been so assertive in the development of the

Code Noir and l’exclusif. Yet, it did not establish a uniform legal basis

for credit.104 Laws varied throughout the French Antilles. Consequently,

debtors encountered difficulty in identifying bankers who could feel

confident acting as guarantors. Instead, lines of credit were estab-

lished in the islands themselves, according to local agreements. Often

slaving captains remained after a voyage to broker such agreements

and to directly sell their cargo. It was in other ways that the French

state eased its grip on slavery. As was the case with Britain, it was

a matter of changing the form of intervention, not withdrawing from

it. The old regime could maintain mercantile guidance through the

manipulation of taxes and some control over the movement of trade

through French ports.

After the Treaty of Utrecht, l’exclusif was loosened slightly due to

French failure to gain the asiento. The Guinea and Senegal companies

101 Craton, “Property and Propriety,” in Brewer and Staves, Early Modern Conceptionsof Property.

102 Jacob M. Price, Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from theChesapeake 1700–1776 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). H. V.Bowen, Elites, pp. 92–98.

103 Price, “Credit in the Slave Plantation Economies,” in Solow, Slavery, pp.307–10.

104 Ibid., pp. 331–35.

180 chapter six

were disbanded and trade opened to all French mariners. Trading

was limited to French vessels, of course, and to French ports only.

Nantes, Rouchelle and Bordeaux enjoyed the prosperity that the

slave-based sugar industry and the general growth of international

commerce brought.105 After 1741 the trade was permitted in all

French ports. This brought little benefit to planters. Arguably, the

main beneficiaries of trades between the Antilles and France were

merchant interests in the port cities on France’s Atlantic coast.106

Moreover, increased taxes designed to capture for the state the fruits

of expanding and prosperous trades provoked revolts in Guadaloupe

and Martinique in 1715.107 Colonial governors quelled the unrest.

But, it would emerge again, later. They felt the pressure of a grow-

ing colonial order in the Caribbean and were willing to make tem-

porary concessions. But, at the height of the imperial apparatus,

there was little immediate compromise. Exception was made for

French merchants who during the eighteenth century increasingly

enjoyed ‘free trade’—but within a framework of national monopoly.

The situation mostly favoured merchants over planters and the bal-

ance did not change substantially after the Seven Years War. Rivalry

with the British swelled, placing the Caribbean planter in a stronger

position.108 Freedom to trade with the enemy during the war itself

made the planters accustomed to some choice, which had to con-

tinue. Also, the value of the Caribbean possessions grew as a result

of the loss of Canada. During the postwar period, further re-growth

of the trade soothed antagonistic traders. At that point, the regime

in Paris was able to relax l’exclusif.Perhaps the most significant role remaining for the state was out-

right protection of trade routes. Indeed, even when direct state

involvement seemed diminished, the potential deployment of a naval

presence to defend colonial interests often still remained. The confidence

of producers, colonial administrators, merchants and investors in the

105 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), pp. 251–55.

106 Fernand Braudel argues that raw and processed materials could be passedfurther through European markets by these same merchants. The multiplier effectwould augment their profits. Meanwhile, merchants could ship goods back to theislands at far higher prices and thereby profit from the return trade. See The Wheelsof Commerce, pp. 275–78.

107 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 295–97.108 Robert L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime

Business (Madison, WI: University of Winsconsin Press, 1979), pp. 29–34.


diplomatic and naval capacities of their state was a mark of its

strength, even where more direct forms of involvement were not in

evidence.109 This was not the case in the early years when Spain

dominated the Atlantic. Spanish treaties drawn up with the French

in 1559 and the British in 1604 had placed America “beyond the

line.” Only Spanish claims to territory had any legal status.110 Norms

that applied to international conduct in Europe were suspended in

the American zone. British and French ‘adventurers’ were free to

act as they willed. But they could expect no defence from their gov-

ernments and the Spanish reserved the right to expel them. The

treaties slowly lost their worth after the Anglo-Spanish War, when

Spain could no longer enforce them. Naval protection increased in

step with the growth in armed conflict between the French and the

British. Slave-based capitalist growth “required the combined spon-

sorship of the state and of economic agents, guaranteeing both good

security and good commercial conditions.”111 The former rose in

prominence as the century wore on. It did not involve merely the

provision of naval protection. Legal security of titles (and labor) and

of the authority of commercial and political institutions in the colonies

rested ultimately on the state acting as guarantor. But enforcement

of those things required the mobilization of naval power in the con-

text of fierce economic and political competition. This was costly

and none bar slavers and sugar planters could afford to pay for it.

Moreover, skirmishes between French and British naval expeditions

during the three Anglo-French wars of the seventeenth century did

great damage to both planter property and marine forces.112 This

doubled the expense of military protection for those involved in slav-

ery. Clearly, only imperial navies had sufficient means to provide

this. After the Peace of Utrecht, it looked like only the British and

the French governments could afford the costs. The Dutch, and

finally the Spanish, found the price too high and they were unable

to maintain their share of the slave trade. After the Treaty of Utrecht,

the field was mainly left to the French and the British.

Slavery in these two transatlantic empires was a catalyst of capi-

talism’s development. It was highly profitable. It provided the fuel

109 Mancke, “Empire and State,” in Armitage and Braddick, The British AtlanticWorld, pp. 182–83.

110 R. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 11–12.111 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 507.112 R. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 22–23.

182 chapter six

for significant consumer markets for Europe.113 Its impact, in terms

of quickening capitalist development, was not limited to its acceler-

ation of urban growth.114 It was highly productive and contributed

substantially to many domains of capitalist accumulation, if Robin

Blackburn’s case is to be believed.115 The Caribbean was perceived

as an economic prize; the Brazilian gold mines and the northern

continent’s plantations not far behind. For the French, maintaining

them meant sustaining a heavy involvement, even if mercantilist reg-

ulation was lightened over the course of the early eighteenth cen-

tury. English merchants had a much freer hand. Yet, during this

phase of Anglo-French rivalry, dependence on marine forces was

universal. While the French-British contest was global, the American

theatre was the most important. But, it was also a test of two national

models of capitalist development. In each, the state had a sizeable

interest. Each empire had similar shares in slaving and in the

transatlantic industries dependent on slaves such as sugar, coffee and

cotton.116 Where capitalism grew, the visible hand of the state was

never far away.

Mercantilism and slavery prompted debates about trade, especially

at the summit of the British state. Open debates became impassioned

after the 1688 Revolution, perhaps because England was in the ascen-

dancy in the world economy. Planters put the case for less restricted

trade to the Board of Trade in 1711. Government interest had been

augmented by the Board’s formation and the passage of a further

Navigation Act in 1696. However, the England Company, the

Merchant Adventurers of London and the Muscovy Company had

already been divested of their respective monopolies. The impetus

for more liberal conditions of trade existed and produced results.

What makes this an era in which mercantilism constituted the whole

field of economic philosophy was the terms of debate. Contention

revolved around the institutional and regulatory structuring of trade.

Without doubt, the lines of dispute ran from monopolists to free traders.

113 See Carole Shammas, “The Revolutionary Impact of European Demand forTropical Goods,” in McCusker and Morgan, The Early Modern Atlantic Economy.

114 See, for the British case, Paul E. Clemens “The Rise of Liverpool 1665–1750,”Economic History Review 29, no. 2 (1976).

115 See also an early essay in transatlantic economic history by D. A. Farnie,“The Commercial Empire of the Atlantic 1607–1783,” The Economic History Review15, no. 2 (1962).

116 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 4–7


However, mercantilism defined the field of disputation as one about

the regulation of trade and the nuances of opinion were geared to

this question. Institutional support from the state was not in dispute,

simply the form that it should take. The ideological field was steadily

reorganized as the Abolitionist position grew in prominence. Slaving

was then fought over as a moral as well as economic problem. But,

by this time, Britain’s supremacy in the world economy was clear

and its creed of political economy was unhindered free trade.

For France there were two reasons for introducing slave labor.117

Firstly, the colony in Louisiana was failing in the early part of the

eighteenth century. It was established as an oceanic outlet for Canada

and not a colony with a separate raison d’etre.118 It also fronted on

to St Domingue with which it had social and cultural links. Yet its

place in French America was not secured. It was far removed from

any significant French military outpost. The Middle Mississippi was

Louisiana’s frontier society. Only when it was incorporated as a regal

colony did it gain a governing centre. Its population was quite

Francophonic in its cultural and even agricultural practices.119 All

the while, however, it resorted to shifting alliances with local Indian

nations and with other European powers. It had its own internal

coalitions of villages and communities that oscillated.120 Up to 1717

its population was not sustainable. The initiative to place the colonies

under the tutelage of Say’s Compagnie des Indies led to an experiment

in the importation of engages. It was obvious by the early 1720s that

indentured labor also had failed. The Code Noir was made law in

1724 with the intention of resolving the demographic hiatus through

the introduction of slavery. This distinguished it from France’s other

continental colonies. Imperial authorities remained absolutely deci-

sive in all major decisions (including the decision to persist in colo-

nization) prior to and after the Compagnie took control. The presence

of all Europeans settled around the Mississippi Delta was an artefact

of French aspirations to a continental empire that were embodied

in the Louisiana colony. As a regal enterprise, it must have seemed

117 Eccles, France in America, chap. 6.118 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 192–202.119 See Carl J. Ekberg, French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in

Colonial Times, Urbana and Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).120 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 72–76.

184 chapter six

always a failure and the introduction of slavery was designed to bol-

ster its flagging fortunes.

The second reason relates to the Caribbean and it was commer-

cial. The development of sugar planting necessitated the use of large-

scale slave labor. Sugar was expensive, but extraordinarily profitable.

The greatest singular threat to this trade was war. During the eight-

eenth century wars with Spain and Britain, French commerce in the

Atlantic sea-lanes suffered terribly. Conversely, its prosperity during

years of peace was remarkable. The Ministry of Marine and the

French navy were essential vehicles of protection; they guaranteed

the course of trade in both directions. In addition, the provision of

militia and scientific corps to pursue the development of improved

crop varieties registered as other forms of imperial involvement.121

This vital support came at a price for the planters, the continuation

of l’exclusif, which delivered conditions that were visibly less favourable

than those offered by Dutch or North American merchants.122 It

angered planters in Martinique and Guadaloupe. But it helped finance

the monarchy’s ventures.

The application of the French mercantilist system was selective

and quite deliberate. Exemptions, privileges and bounties benefited

merchants from Nantes and Bordeaux who traded both in shares

and the goods produced by their labor. This policy was strategic. It

was also open to alteration. As Law’s system receded, the metropolis

withdrew from its constant assault on colonial interests. This was

an admission of planter autonomy and it emboldened the colonial

order. Colonial economies were essential for the French state and

could not be gambled with. The value of the islands was staggering

and put the slaver-based colonial order in a strong position. The

sugar trade constituted more than half of France’s overall exports.

St Domingue by itself provided the world with two-fifths of the

world’s sugar and more than half its coffee.123 This was well in excess

of production in the British West Indies. While production and trade

in the British West Indies was well integrated into the empire’s

structure of urban manufacturing and commercialized agriculture,

121 James A. McLellan, Colonialism and Science: St Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University, 1993).

122 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 431.123 These calculations are made from figures presented by Frederick Quinn in

The French Overseas Empire, p. 83.


the same process in the French Antilles depended on an economy

of ostentatious consumption in France’s public sphere which in turn

depended on Caribbean production for its continued existence:

The splendour of the French Court helped to advertise and promotesuch luxury products, setting a standard for the aristocracy and hautebourgeoisie throughout the continent. At Versailles Louis XIV, withoutintending it, had built a showcase for the exotic produce of the plan-tations: chocolate served from gleaming silver pots, snuff taken fromelegant little boxes, banqueting tables spread with elaborate sugar con-fections. The plantations were to add mercantile zest to an AncienRegime that might otherwise have sunk into lethargy.124

The life of the French court state was directly dependent on main-

taining its hold on imperial affairs. When France lost all else in

North America, it clung to its Caribbean possessions. The state was

heavy-handed in the transatlantic business. But, like its British rival,

it was able to bring about a retreat from policies implemented in

its slave-based economy, when self-interest dictated.

Between empires: capital and the rivalry of states after Westphalia

Slavery helped to breed struggle amongst states. Piracy was con-

centrated on this area early on. It gave way to a general contra-

band trade in slaves. Although illegal, it was widespread and it

generally benefited planters looking for a cheaper source of labor.

The slave trade was a significant cause of war in the Caribbean. It

was a patch in the mosaic of Western Europe’s rivalries. The com-

petition of states afflicted the whole Atlantic world. Europe at this

time was embroiled in alliance building and armed conflict on land

and at sea.

How states strategically engaged imperial competition depended

also on domestic conditions. Relationships with the capitalist classes

were vital.125 Mercantile regimes brought the court state and private

capital closer together in a partnership of sorts. Yet, it too was fraught

with tension. Western European states encountered two strategic

dilemmas in their affinities with capital that haunted them until the

124 Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 301.125 This passage takes Immanuel Wallerstein’s work as a source. See Historical

Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983).

186 chapter six

nineteenth century. Firstly, they had their own interests generalized

over and abstracted from those of particular capitalists. Secondly,

they had to adjudicate between different and sometimes competing

fractions of private capital, which petitioned in favor of either pro-

tectionist or free trade policies, or a combination of the two. In the

relationship between capital and the state, the latter had its own

concerns. Its own military and imperial projects and the sustenance

of the body etat gave it a form of universalist social organization all

of its own.

Mercantilism was a strategic stance that addressed contradictory

and complex situations confronting governments. At times, it kindled

internal tensions between the state apparatus and conglomerations

of capital, especially amongst those capitalist interests that were par-

ticularly keen on reducing the costs of production and increasing

productivity. At the commanding heights of mercantile institutions,

the struggle over markets and geography seldom fell from sight.

Hence, its strategies were generally informed by mercantile and inter-

national financial and military movements, rather than by the espe-

cial interests of specific industries. From here, the struggle between

states in economy, diplomacy, war and politics was of paramount

importance and shaped the responses of states to intra-state, intra-

imperial and international events.

However, at the same time, the reactions of Western states were

also modified by their relationships with competing aggregates of

capital. Interests and perceptions of interests conflicted and alter-

nated. Leading merchant interests tended to favor the liberalization

of trade, which would give them access to more markets. Against

them were arrayed less productive producers who cherished mono-

polies of trade and labor. The strategies of mercantilism were also

informed by this conflict between merchant classes to the extent that

the benefits of national and, more importantly, imperial monopolies

had to be balanced against the particular concerns of leading, active

economic potentates. The resolution of this second dilemma was not

set hard and fast at any particular point, but was variable and open

to re-negotiation, depending on changing circumstances or a re-

figuration of the interests of private capital, or both.

The effectiveness of regulatory instruments was also jeopardized

by circumstances in the Americas. The propensity of colonial officials

to circumvent imperial ordinances and the ability of competing states

to break them were significant influences. Thus, the imperial state


was caught in a double bind: it had to ensure mercantile economic

cohesion, maintain the growth of internal markets, seal the increase

in wages (especially during periods of recession of trade) and compete

with major rivals. In order to do this, it had to, on one hand, weigh

broad imperial and colonial needs against specific private influences

and, on the other, balance conflicting private interests themselves.

How different states responded to these sometimes-contradictory

impulses framed their strategies within the international system of states.

The economic infrastructure of empires therefore developed in a

context of rivalry between the main powers influenced internally by

relations with capital. The competition of states in the early modern

period over trade, colonial expansion and supply had economic and

military dimensions that are difficult to separate. While the Dutch

and Spanish figured in the core activities of sixteenth century trade,

the prime economic and military contest in Europe after that was

between Britain and France. Considerations of international and

intra-imperial trade influenced the mercantile regimes that each state

respectively adopted. Furthermore, military concerns abetted the aims

and designs of mercantile policies, at least in the inter-imperial arena.

Through fashioning and renovating mercantile institutions and through

imperial expansion, France and Britain located themselves in positions

of strategic confrontation in trade, military contests and conquest of

land.

This was the time when the stakes of economic and strategic pre-

eminence were raised in the Atlantic world. England’s competitive

resources developed earlier. A number of internal peculiarities placed

England in a fortuitous strategic position. By the beginning of the

eighteenth century, certain features of English economic life were

well developed. Transport systems had been transformed. ‘Exotic’

luxury goods held widespread appeal. Mass economic demand under-

wrote the market economy. English banking aggregated capital in

ways that Dutch financial institutions never did in the previous cen-

tury. The universal spread of commodities throughout the British

Isles had brought a more consummate uniformity to the English

national economy. The compact and dense character of British eco-

nomic life permitted the constitutional state to play a greater role

in regulating trade between England and its early colonial posses-

sions, and within the world economy as a whole. Domestically, a

relatively high state integration of economic life supported a strat-

egy of developing capitalist institutions.

188 chapter six

This situation was slower to emerge in eighteenth century France

for three reasons. The lethargic pace of the development of capi-

talism and land enclosure can be attributed to the relative lack of

structural integration of the provincial and municipal order, elements

of France’s geographic tyranny and the higher level of resistance

amongst French rural communities for whom the land of the laboureurwas crucial. It was through Colbertism that the French monarchy

had hoped to compete. Colbertism as a type of mercantilism was

characterized by its ability to reorganize the French state around the

imperatives of war. Colbert’s internal restructuring of its fiscal machin-

ery had furnished the state as a whole with far greater resources.

However, it did more than this. The reconstruction of the appara-

tus also transformed the techniques that it employed to raise funds.

Reform involved a redistribution of income and resources from the

tax-farming offices of the fermiers and the traitants—a significant sec-

tion of the fiscal machine which sat in a provincial relationship to

the monarchy—to more productive enterprises that fulfilled mer-

cantile objectives, even if only indirectly. Industrial, agricultural and

trade enterprises benefited enormously from monarchical patronage

during Louis XIV’s reign. In return, they provided a base for the

French monarchy’s military ventures. Royal industries in France

helped the state generate its own sources of revenue and capital

whilst expanding and defining the structures of mercantile economy.

In the late 1680s, an additional program of reform was instituted in

response to the growing threat of war and religious strife that fol-

lowed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.126 The monarchy’s ambi-

tions and projects were only possible due to the reservoir of resources.

France’s mercantile achievements were limited in one further respect

during this era: they did not complete the unification of France’s

economic interior. Different regulations, or at least different effects

of existing legislation on diverse regions, lessened the impulses towards

a national economy. However, by the mid-eighteenth century an

appreciation of France’s economy as a national market did exist:

It seems to be at this point, in the 1760s, the French elites—the intel-lectuals, the bureaucrats, the agronomists, the industrialists, and thepoliticians—began to express the feeling that they were somehow ‘behind’Great Britain and began to thrash about for ways to ‘catch up’.

126 John C. Rule, “Royal Revisions of the French Central Government in the1690s,” in Adcock et al., Revolution.


In light of our current knowledge, such an impression was probablyexaggerated, but that does not efface its impact on the social andpolitical behaviour of the time.127

With the support of private capital, the ruling classes of the West’s

imperial states were able to carve out territorial cores bound by insti-

tutional restrictions and regulations of production, trade and exchange.

In these historical circumstances, the competition between states

became increasingly more intensive in the theatres of war and the

markets of trade. Mercantilism acted as a philosophy in this inter-

imperial sphere. In this game, there were certain accepted wisdoms

about how to gain ascendancy over a rival. To be a leading power,

the productivity and availability of economic resources had to be

such that few other competing powers could match it. The next

imperative for the foremost power—mainly Britain from the early

eighteenth century—was the relative freedom of markets for the

movement of resources, goods and services. This could be ensured

through counter-balancing internal barriers to commerce and labor

with programs of liberalization in imperial trade. Hence, mercan-

tilist uniformity within borders became the mandatory, even if difficult,

program of the major states. Externally, these strategies were adopted

to tackle market movements, growth and contraction. For the French

court state, gaining uniformity remained the central economic labor.

British mercantilism was also driven on by the intensified inter-

connectedness of European states. Its advantage lay in its own inter-

nal order. By the late seventeenth century, when Colbert was beginning

to grapple with the problem of coherence in regulations, England

was starting to look like a major economic entity composed of the

nexus of London financiers and merchants, rural industrialists and

agriculturalists and a solid, but slender, apparatus. By establishing

mercantile conditions of production and exchange, the British were

securing the general relationship between London and the rest of

the world and delineating its central location within the Empire. It

was orienting the mercantile alliance of capital and the state to the

overall processes of creating capitalism in a country with expanding

colonial concerns. Hence, it converted its mercantile policies to new

areas: joint stock companies, credit provisions, a system of insurance,

protection of agriculture and cultivation of its stock markets. All of

127 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, p. 73.

190 chapter six

these were institutions of imperial economic expansion fashioned by

the British state that brought it directly into a certain mutually

beneficial partnership with private capital.

This relationship was never fully achieved in France. For the

English it meant that the costs and general responsibility for colo-

nial possessions did not lie with the state alone. London’s financial

interests shared that responsibility. Unhindered by the imperatives

of infrastructural unification the British could devote their energies

to pursuing their inter-continental trading interests. Its outward per-

spective and its management of mercantilism distinguished Britain

from France, where mercantilism had subsequently consolidated the

court state’s authority, but could not go immediately further.

Officials drew up imperial directives mindful of this rivalry. Not

only did they have to respond to the manoeuvres of other powers;

they had to balance the perspectives of their own wealthy and pow-

erful elites. Not only did they have to consider the weighty influence

of military commanders, leading industrialists and parliamentary and

judicial factions; they had to incorporate the views of colonial author-

ities, especially leading slavers. There is little doubt that the highest

representatives of the empire in the colonies, especially at the guber-

natorial level, had a transatlantic orientation that rose above local

concerns. However, for British officials stationed in America, the

communities of colonists were potent constituencies, just as they were

for officials back in London. Not all the interests of these sometimes-

intricate societies were represented in the institutionalized colonial

order. Where the elites of colonial institutions objected to the empires’

cadre or simply defied them, or even where they merely passed

gubernatorial or viceregal ordinances, they distinguished themselves

as leaders of structures that were separate from the metropolitan

apparatus. They were caught between the ministers responsible for

the colonies and their inhabitants.

Conclusion

Capitalism as a dimension of Atlantic modernity is treated in this

long chapter. Three arguments specified in the opening chapter are

elucidated in detail. First of all, there is a contribution to debates in

the social sciences about where to place capitalism in world history.

A fuller understanding of its development obliges a longer view of


history, a conclusion reached some time ago by macrosociologists.

But the move to extend its chronology is insufficient. The analysis

of the spatial scope of its formation also must be amplified. It never

originated as an entirely European world system. It was instead an

Atlantic one, before it went global. This thesis is stated in the intro-

duction and is implicit at every stage of this chapter. The evidence

to support this thesis lies in several developments that are summa-

rized in the pages above: the extraordinary growth of Atlantic trade

and capital, the close strategic attention paid by imperial adminis-

trators to the colonies during key periods, the intensity and reach of

networks and linkages created in transatlantic economic activity and

the invention of colonial slavery, a vast form of highly productive

labor connected directly with the Americas.

Next, the notion of mercantilism is revived to help re-think the

historical relationship of Western European states to the institution

of capitalist social relations. Mercantilism is taken to refer to domes-

tic and imperial infrastructures that promoted economic expansion.

Governments and the permanent apparatus of states constituted them-

selves as co-founders of capitalism by guaranteeing the essential com-

ponents of intercontinental economic expansion: the provision of

legal, military and financial security of trade; the establishment of

pioneering enterprises; the centralization of banking and finance; the

regulation of waged, indentured and coerced modes of labor and

programs of standardized laws and regulations that governed trade.

The infrastructure provided and watched over by imperial states had

a unifying effect on the Atlantic. It connected northern and central

to western Africa, and then to South and North American ports and

the Caribbean, and finally to Atlantic cities in north-western Europe.

This unifying tendency was always qualified by the tension of impe-

rial state formation. The struggle for autonomy was simultaneously

an economic as well as strategic and political one for the colonial

order in Anglo-America, the Spanish Indies and the French Empire.

Many mercantilist strategies drafted by royal and governmental admin-

istrators had to respond to colonial demands, as well as to private

capitalist interests and the imperatives of inter-imperial rivalry.

Finally, a minor problematic in this chapter is the cultural side of

early Atlantic capitalism. It fostered calculative rationality in eco-

nomic action—rationality in the sense intended by Weber. Exact

accounting practices, more sophisticated long-range credit and insurance

arrangements, precise estimation of inputs and outputs of production,

192 chapter six

close and disciplining supervision of labor and an imperative to pre-

dict sometimes far-off future economic movements are the compo-

nents of this calculative culture. Slavery had a special place in this

consolidation of the premises of rationalized economy action. The

merchant-bourgeois orientation that emerged in the slaving economy

resembled supposed market behaviour celebrated in neo-liberal eco-

nomics and rational choice theory. It is more soberly viewed as a

cultural type that coexists with other conceptions of economic agency.

Culture, therefore, is relative to place and circumstance. The ratio-

nalities evident in slave-related industries were embedded in modes

of living that varied from one colonial region to another. The villa

ethos found in the Carolinas’ plantations did not exist in the severe

and authoritarian culture of the colonial order in the French and

British Caribbean. A climate of racial fear plagued the settler-planter

colonial order there. Slave-owners reacted with regular repression.

Despite this, a space existed for hybrid and Creolized sub-cultures

that arose from slave and freed Africans communities. This had a

cultural impact on capitalist development as surely as the expres-

sions of rational conduct by merchants, producers and financiers did.

In this sense, cultures contextualized the development of capitalism

as well as being forms of engagement with it.

All this goes to suggest that colonial societies turned out full-bodied

communities. Their engagement with the early international capitalist

economy was a sphere of life strongly interrelated with their integration

into Empire. In this way, colonial communities were more intricate

than they might appear to be. Indeed, the colonial order was caught

up in a knot of competing interests, crammed between European

authorities (and the civilization they represented) and the character

of their American domains. The next chapter delves into this complexity

in the French, British and Spanish empires and returns the line of

argument in this book to the problematic of imperial state formation.

CHAPTER SEVEN

COMMUNITIES OF THE COLONIAL ORDER

The American possessions extended the administrative and economic

resources of the masters of the British, French and Spanish empires.

Distance between the chief European authorities and the lands that

lay under their auspices undermined the capacity of their local rep-

resentatives to effectively implement imperial law. The problem of

government from afar was created for the imperial bodies responsi-

ble for trade, intendancy and regal representation. Furthermore, con-

solidation of distinct loci of command that addressed problems that

appeared in dissimilar social and ecological environments furthered

the strain on government. Legislative and executive initiatives were

often ineffective. However, distance also drove colonists into a rela-

tionship of relative dependence on existing structures. This made it

possible for imperial authorities to enact laws, ordinances and decrees

of royal government. The result was tension-laden government whose

sovereign rule was limited by a permanent gap between the de jure

authority and de facto power. At the same time, it provided oppor-

tunities for colonists to variously seek to create or capture institu-

tional autonomies at the lower and local end of the structures of

empires. This tension marked each of the Atlantic empires and was

present from their inception through to their overthrow.

Institutions

A comparative notion of the colonial order can convey how this ten-

sion set conditions for colonists in Hispanic French and British

America. The colonial order can be defined negatively and posi-

tively. In negative and residual terms it can be conceptualized as

local or confined communities that are subject to distant government

by bodies headquartered in Europe. Positively, it can be discerned

in the capacity of communities to actively forge their own institu-

tions, outlooks and connections with each other. The manner in

which this occurred varied widely. It differed considerably from

French Canada to the British North Americas and between the

194 chapter seven

Caribbean and the southern viceroyalties. However, the relationships

of different colonial communities to imperial apparatus were sufficiently

similar to warrant comparison. In this section, the chief similarity

that I focus on is the structures of colonial power.

The general character of the colonial order can now be spelt out

and the distinctiveness of its existence re-iterated. In the North Ame-

rican colonies and the Indies, the colonial order formed in circum-

stances quite unlike those of Europe. It fashioned its own institutions

outside of the sphere of mercantilism and gubernatorial superinten-

dence. The colonial societies it was embedded in variously diverged

from the dominant national characteristics of Spain, England and

France, either as an initial rejection of the home culture or in an

attempt to preserve the culture as it was remembered. Puritan New

England is an instance of the first trend, while Peru exemplifies the

second. Whether marked by degrees of cultural rejection or preser-

vation, the colonial order in its different guises tended towards the

formation of its own identities. This brought communities up against

the structures and ethos of empire. This contestatory stance was

closed off for the provincial and municipal order back in Europe,

due to its regional and corporatist character. In contrast, the colo-

nial order could develop through generating new institutions which

were less easily subsumed by the monarchical apparatus or sub-

merged within the latter’s own institutions. Thus colonial commu-

nities were able to confront the imperial state in ways the provincial

and municipal order of European absolutism was not.

In the Indies, the colonial order was formed in the most tension-

ridden location of the Spanish empire. It spread Hispanic civiliza-

tion in the Americas, even as it was quite ambivalent in its relationship

to Spain. Its ambivalence appeared at the inception of the colonies

and lasted through to independence. In adapting to the American

world, settlers developed a Creole association with the land and with

a style of life. They fashioned a localized outlook and a sense of their

own history that echoed through the administrative colonial order.1

There were three institutional areas in which contestatory colonial

orders formed in the Spanish Empire and gave political expression

1 On sixteenth century Creole consciousness, see Beatriz Pastor Bodmer, The Armatureof Conquest: Spanish Accounts of the Discovery of America 1492–1589, trans. Lydia LongstrethHunt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

communities of the colonial order 195

to this ambivalence: the encomienda, Spanish-America’s cities and local

administrative institutions that were the sources of conflict between

viceregal representatives and colonists.

The colonial order was initially constituted by the early develop-

ment of the encomienda system of labor and production which was

intended to limit the independence of Spain’s conqueror-warriors:

Left to themselves, (the conquistadores) would have probably settled inloose communities, employing the feudal terms which already wereanachronisms in Spain, exploiting the Indians as the needs of themoment dictated, and according verbal homage but little else to theCrown. The rulers of Spain never for a moment thought of allowingsuch a state of affairs to persist. In the late fifteenth and early six-teenth centuries the Crown, with considerable bloodshed and expense,had cut the claws of the great feudal houses, of the knightly ordersand of the privileged local corporations. A growing royal absolutismcould not tolerate the emergence of a new feudal aristocracy overseas.2

The re-dispersal of authority through grants of labor (encomienda) made

by the conquerors to their followers entrenched colonial autonomy.

The encomienda was a post-feudal arrangement of power and labor

that echoed Spain’s medieval past.3 Hispanic legal tradition of the

day ordered territorial jurisdiction by the fact of occupation.4 Where

communities established a pattern of occupation, they could exercise

authority. In the Colonial Americas, this meant that settled areas

were not fully recognized as the jurisdiction of local bodies by dint

2 Parry, The Age of Reconnaisance, pp. 222–23.3 On the encomienda see Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, pp. 22–24; James Lockhart,

Spanish Peru 1532–1560: A Colonial Society (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,1968; McAlister, Spain and Portugal, chap. 8; Seed, American Pentimetnto, chap. 4. Onits social origins in the Americas and the ongoing conflict with the Crown, seeClaudio Esteva Fabregat, La Corona Espanola y el Indio Americano (Valencia: AssociationFrancisco Lopez de Gomara, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 231–32, and vol. 2, pp. 10–25.Fabregat casts this as an extractive, but strictly post-feudal relational form:

“Territorial property, the encomienda, and on it the Indian settlements, wereshaping the seigniorial ideal and he (the encomiendero—JS) was converted intoa privileged vassal of the King. Although less than the coalescence of a feu-dal ideal, and although its productive organization was based on the personalservice of the Indians, the encomienda could not escape the fluctuations of a soci-ety that was moving in the direction of gold, of precious metals, of pearls andof money and material gain and that, therefore, with its demands and its mate-rial attractions continuously extracts from the Indians their obligations to theencomienderos” (p. 232).

4 See Tamar Herzog, “The Meaning of Territory: Colonial Standards and ModernQuestions in Ecuador,” in Roniger and Waisman, Globality and Multiple Modernities.

196 chapter seven

of those bodies presence. Sovereignty by legal right did not exist in

law. Consequently, the grant of labor associated the Indians with a

community that was headed by the patriarchal figure of the encomiendero.This implied authority, but also left the issue ambiguous as other bod-

ies such as audiencias and cabildos could also claim jurisdiction. Thus,

this reflection of feudalism brought the encomiendero little satisfaction.

The encomienda entailed a grant of indigenous laborers to the con-

quering class who were entrusted with their general welfare. Later,

the right to tribute was added.5 It also charged the church with a

responsibility for their spiritual and material wellbeing of the Indians.

However, the Church had no direct economic interest in their exploita-

tion and could focus on their spiritual conversion. Thus, one set of

identifiable interests was established for secular settlers and another

for the missions. In the early sixteenth century, the protestations of

theologians about the mistreatment of indigenous communities brought

action from the court in Madrid. The encomienda drew a sharp reac-

tion from Dominican missionaries in particular, prompting the Crown

to enact the Laws of Burgos in 1512. They failed to halt the assign-

ment of ‘trusteeships’ in New Spain, New Granada and Peru. The

Crown renewed its efforts to ban the institution with the 1542 New

Laws. This too failed to meet its intentions and resulted only in the

codification of social relationships that already existed in order to

bring regulation to the use of indigenous labor. Over time, the Indians

would acquire the status of vassals of the Crown. Even though a

revolt in Peru against the New Laws failed, they remained ineffective

vis-à-vis their stated intention.

For the rulers of the empire, there was a grave dilemma.6 Sub-

jugation of the interior required the support of encomienderos on the

frontier. Yet, the encomiendero domination of the aboriginal inhabitants

countered the Catholic doctrine of benevolence and the proselytiz-

ing inclinations of the clergy, though all of them shared in the same

Catholic faith. But their ideological understanding of the rights and

5 Robert Himmerich y Valencia argues that this was its main purpose in New Spain,The Encomienderos of New Spain 1521–1555 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991).

6 In the discussion of the encomienda that follows, a debt must be acknowledgedto the treatment of these problems in three works. Claudio Veliz’s argument aboutthe legislative contradiction in the constitution and development of the SpanishIndies and about its decline can be found in The Centralist Tradition, pp. 51–69.Shorter, but valuable, contributions are Parry, The Establishment of the European Hegemony,pp. 57–64; and Kiernan, State and Society in Europe 1550–1650, pp. 45–46.


duties of the Hispanic social order was at variance with clerical opin-

ion. Their representations to the Crown indicate a belief that Indian

tribute was their natural right. The laws did not succeed as intended

at this time. An institutional compromise of sorts emerged between

an imperial apparatus trying to contain a new colonial elite within

the bounds of its objective of expansion and an unrestrained con-

queror elite. Spain’s court state tolerated forced labor in a limited

form because it satisfied the conquerors and opened up the interior

of Mexico and the Andes.

The legal traits reflected the tension of imperial state formation.

Jurism was a central principle of Spain’s philosophy of empire and

so the dispute over the encomienda was bound to find legal expres-

sion. The Crown could endure it to a certain point only, and then

attempted to abolish it. Part of its motivation was to curtail colonist

tendencies to relative independence. But more was involved. The

encomienda presented the legal apparatus with a paradox. Indians were

declared a free people in law. Nevertheless, they were assigned in a

kind of bondage to encomiendero functionaries who had no jurisdic-

tional authority over them, but who represented the empire that did.

Furthermore, in law, the encomienderos were subjects without seigneur-

ial authority, but with responsibility for the tasks of education, ‘employ-

ment’ and protection of indentured Indians. They were thereby

furnished with the autonomy to improvise, which they had to and

which they did. The encomienda generated a tension between the legal

constitution of the empire and the pressing reality of frontier social

formation.7 It was a means through which Indian liberty could be

recognized de jure, whilst centralized control over the grant of

encomienda could be pursued. Hostilities between the encomienderos and

their opponents were the target of imperial legislation. The former

interpreted the laws as a guarantee of the continuity of labor. For

the latter, they seemed to promise regulation. By the early seven-

teenth century, a voluminous body of legislation had been compiled

and catalogued by Spanish jurists. It was published in 1681 as the

Recopilacion de leyes de los reinos de las indias. In the compilation appeared

7 The application of the encomienda itself varied significantly in different social andecological conditions. For a long-standing study of the distinctive case of Paraguay,see Elman R. Service, “The Encomienda in Paraguay,” in David J. Weber andJane M. Rausch, eds., Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin America (Wilmington:Scholarly Resources, 1994).

198 chapter seven

a new law finalising the relationship with South America’s indigenes

by prohibiting all war against them.8

Culturally, the conquerors developed independently of Spanish

jurism. The frontier mind, cultivated by the experiences of conquest

and colonization, turned itself to issues of property and seigniorage.

There was a cultural dimension to the conquistador class that was pro-

jected through the outlook of the Creole colonial order.9 Creole life

survived the demise of the encomienda system. It lived off myths of

an American antiquity that developed in the wake of the defeat of

Mesoamerican cultures. One of the crucial elements of the consti-

tution of the Spanish Empire was the suppression of indigenous cul-

tures. In this, the church, which had variously contested the encomienderos’treatment of Indian labor, played a crucial part. A bi-product was

the generation of a Creole Catholicism. The church furnished the

rationale for the suppression of indigenous oral traditions (and thereby

ethnic memory), the criminalization of their script and the abolition

of their calendars. Its mission was to monopolize the sacred, or at

least to try to. As a result, heritage and memory of the Indian past

was eroded, while in the conquered present indigenous cultures were

transformed by enactment of these measures. They were not exter-

minated, nor were they suppressed in an even pattern. They proved

resilient.10 Their survival was quite unmistakable in the Andean region.

In post-Mesoamerican New Spain cultural exchange occurred between

peninsular and Creole power and abiding conquered Indian cultures.11

The latter survived there by absorbing features of the former thereby

redefining itself. To be sure, this form of acculturation was two-fold.

It was based on an interaction of two changing cultural worlds,

although this was far from symmetrical. Indeed, the loss of the Aztec

Empire had been catastrophic for Indian society in the sixteenth cen-

tury. The conquerors effectively froze the symbols of the Mesoamerican

world in the distant past. Set at a distance, Aztec icons and rituals

8 Zavala, New Viewpoints, p. 46. On the history of the Recopilacion, see McAlister,Spain and Portugal, pp. 435–38.

9 See Jose G. Merquior, “El Otro Occidente: Un Poco de Filosofia de la Historiadesde Latinoamerica,” Cuadernos Americanos 13 (1989).

10 Stuart B. Schwartz, Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views on the Conquestof Mexico (Boston MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000).

11 See Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico; and Antonio Annino, “The Long SeventeenthCentury in Latin America,” Itinerario 21, no. 2 (1997).


integrated easily into the nativized culture of Mexican-Americans.12

Creole mythologization of Christianity blended Indian folklore with

a Mexican version of Catholicism that had to coexist with indige-

nous practices. The creation of a redemptive culture yielded a provin-

cial religion that grafted myths about the pre-Conquest state onto

ancient Latin ceremonies.

The sacred fatherland proved to be a powerful component of the

created Catholicism, which would ensure its long-term growth. It

lent Creole communities a dimension of identity that was self-edifying;

namely, a cultural horizon that could clearly separate them from

both the native and Peninsular communities. Genealogy fulfilled this

need. After the early waves of Conquest, the encomienderos and their

heirs sought legitimacy in their ancestral heritage.13 Long tenure on

the land gave them a blood tie that they believed others could not

emulate. Their inheritance ought to include title and nobility. Once

disappointed by the Crown, they effectively invented a Creole pedi-

gree. It was based on their self-declaration of service to the new ter-

ritories that they lorded over and on an appropriation of the heroic

myth of the Aztec and Incan pasts. Amerindian warrior cultures

were readily spliced with the conquistador imagining of Creole ances-

try. In both the realms of religious and political meaning, Creoles

would adorn the symbols of Inca and the Texcocans whom their

true ancestors had vanquished. By pressing this version of the past

into the service of the present, they could fill their horizon with the

elements of an ancient heritage of virtue and a New World his-

toricity that displaced their Spanish background.14

The encomienda was the institution that had given the Spanish a

basis to monopolize the land and South America’s riches. Creole myth

was based on this collective act of conquest, although it did not

directly acknowledge this act. It was based on the premise that the

12 J. C. Phelan, “Neo-Aztecism in the Eighteenth Century and the Genesis ofMexican Nationalism,” in Stanley Diamond, ed., Culture in History: Essays in Honorof Paul Radin (New York: Octagon Books, 1981); Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico,chap. 4.

13 Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 77–83.

14 David Brading, “Patriotism and the Nation in Colonial Spanish America,” inRoniger and Sznajder, Constructing Collective Identities; Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, pp.128–30.

200 chapter seven

new nobility were no longer conquerors, but servants of the patria.Through this cultural dimension, the colonial order could coalesce,

even with the decline of a structural underpinning such as the

encomienda system. Colonial life acquired a universalism that arose

especially in New Spain. Thus the colonial order had a history of

itself and a religious, philosophical and political basis for a separate

identity. Much later, in the nineteenth century, republican govern-

ment would feed off it and off Creole traditions of redemption. Jose

Merquior sheds light on the geometry of the post-imperial Mexican

imaginary:

(T)he ideological phenomenon of ‘mestizo patriotism’ had a broad con-tinental diameter . . . a catholic republicanism formed and developed,which lent a radical face to traditional political culture, gaining at times the author-ity of a truly Christian Jacobinism.15

The forms of labor relation that accompanied the coalescence of the

Creole position still echoed the ongoing tension between Crown and

colonists. The encomienda was in decline anyway due to the depopu-

lation of indigenous peoples that its regime of toil brought about.

Where the Crown had failed to abolish it, depopulation succeeded.

Its legal existence was expunged over time, except in Chile where

it survived until 1789. Then it was replaced by labor systems that

had coexisted with the encomienda and shared a legal link.16 These

were the repartimiento and hacienda and represented ongoing attempts

to systematically subsume Indian labor. The repartimiento was based

on a quota system of community labor. Viceregal efforts to rid the

colonies of it ran up against local resistance. Waged labor under the

hacienda appropriation of lands proved more efficient and did not

have the same deleterious effects as the other two systems. It pro-

ceeded without Crown opposition. While the colonial order did not

command the institutional powers that the encomienderos had consid-

ered their right, they did acquire the basis for personal enrichment.

Officials of the Crown confronted an elite enriched by its agricul-

tural and mining enterprises. With this capital, privileged Creoles

15 Merquior, “El Otro Occidente,” p. 17, my translation and emphasis.16 James Lockhart, “Encomienda and Hacienda: The Evolution of the Great Estate

in the Spanish Indies,” and Robert S. Keith, “Encomienda, Hacienda and Corregimientoin Spanish-America: A Structural Analysis,” in Joyce Lorimer, ed., Settlement Patternsin Early Modern Colonization, 16th–18th centuries (Aldershot: Variorum, 1998).


could procure influence and position in the lower end of the colo-

nial structures.

The specificity of the Spanish figuration is evident also in the sec-

ond institutional area listed above. American cities were initially

founded to house indigenous labor. They were a means of conquest

and were established wherever the Spanish presence went. In the

continental hinterland they imposed structured symbols of the Spanish

advance.17 When it came to the legal ‘no-man’s land’, they were a

de facto authority. They were the visible, material signs of Hispanic

presence and of the permanence of European civilization. Creoles

had labored in culture for a separate self-image.

In architecture, however, they were loyal Spaniards and declared

Europeans. Settlers built with familiar Castilian designs in mind and

so cities resembled the layout and the replicated jurisdictional reach

of their Iberian equivalents. From 1573, urban planning accorded

with fresh and specific imperial directives.18 Either way the results

were similar. Cities had vital set features: a main square, jail, church,

courts, arcades and a municipal hall. The founding of a bishopric

gave the city some importance. Arches and arcades accentuated

Hispanic style in contrast to pre-Colombian shapes and outlines.

Such baroque design mirrored the relationship between the European

court state (with its representatives stationed in the colonies) and the

settler-based colonial order. The preconceived design of the city

expressed the political and ecclesiastic might of the crown, and could

set the peninsular and Creole communities apart from the Indians

and, in some ways, apart from each other:

The conquerors were advised that the shape and size of houses mustbe such that would be regarded with awe and admiration by theIndians and would convince them that the Spaniards intended to remainforever in these places and would move them ‘to fear and respect[them], to seek their friendship and avoid giving them offence.’19

Cities came to be much more, however. They were administrative

centres with territorial responsibilities that became politicized. It was

17 Carla Rahn Phillips, “The Iberian Atlantic,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 91–9218 I am closely following Marianne Picon-Salas’ argument in chap. 4 of A Cultural

History of Spanish America: From Conquest to Independence, trans. Irving A. Leonard(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). See also Fernandez-Armesto, TheAmericas, pp. 46–47.

19 Veliz, The Centralist Tradition, p. 231.

202 chapter seven

not only large cities, such as Mexico City and Lima, which constituted

themselves as centres. Others were nodes of trade and production.20

With the decline of the encomienda, Hispano-American cities increas-

ingly became a political battleground for peninsular, indio and Creole

communities. These functioned as housing for the administrative

autonomy of the settler communities, even though they were preor-

dained the incarnation of Spanish power. Through the mechanisms

of urban government, settler interests could gain a foothold in the

edifice of sanctioned imperial authority in institutions beyond the

immediate control of the court state.

The audiencias (viceregal courts), the figures of the corregidor (district

mayor) and the alcalde mayor (town magistrate) and the cabildo(urban/municipal administration) made up the legal and adminis-

trative infrastructure of cities. The colonial order coalesced in these

official nodes of administrative power. Positions below these prolif-

erated with the spread of the sale of offices. Control of municipali-

ties was of considerable consequence as their geographic jurisdiction

was extraordinarily large. The stakes were often quite high.

Spanish-American cities were geographically larger than their con-

tinental counterparts. As well as institutional make-up they epitomized

Castilian ideals of life. Ceremonial occasions were perennial in many

cities but their significance for participants varied according to the

degree of friction within the viceregal territory. On one hand, they

regularly reminded witnesses of their Hispanic origins and allegiance.

However, in circumstances of disaffection from the monarch’s rep-

resentatives their purpose altered. They remained indispensable acts

of loyalty, but they also signalled that the colonists considered resis-

tance to laws and decrees compatible with fidelity to Spain. Ceremonies

performed in full panoply publicly communicated the Hispanic-ness

of Creole Americans. The splendour set against early baroque archi-

tecture also conjured up the ambiance of a near-Castilian style of

life. In this way, they were often complex and multifaceted occurrences.

City structures duplicated some aspects of the social constitution

and corporatism of their Spanish equivalents. Royal officials intended

the charter of cities to be an especial foundational act that would

20 Ida Altman, “Reconsidering the Center: Puebla and Mexico City 1550–1660,”in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires.


lead to a Hispanic civilizing of the American terrain.21 In the orig-

inal consent granted to found cities there was a marked investment

of autonomy. This was realized in proto-democratic forms with the

election of municipal representatives. While the Crown always rec-

ognized the political role of the cabildos—and had to as they were

the vanguard of its civilizing mission—it labored to reclaim admin-

istrative duties for higher functionaries. Mexico City, Puebla and

Lima all held the valued responsibility for the execution of justice

for a time, although only Lima could retain it permanently.22 The

decline of municipal control over time did not diminish the belief

amongst city-dwellers that they held a separate set of interests. Up

until the late eighteenth century, the reception of viceregal figures

was always accompanied by their pledge to honour the liberties

enshrined in the original consent. Pageants and public displays there-

fore affirmed the reciprocity of relations between non-indigenous

Americans and peninsulares. There was general recognition of monar-

chical sovereignty. But the place of the council in the structure of

state was also symbolically ratified.

The cabildos system of elected council government operated through-

out the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries. At the height

of cabildo authority in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,

the cities were crucibles of political conflict. Indeed, the institutional

autonomies of the colonial order appear to be concentrated in the

urban structures. As the most assertive cabildos subsided and imper-

ial authority gained ground, the lively intrigue of Spanish-American

cities faded, with the exception of crucial mining centres.23 Afterwards,

it was supplanted by viceregal patronage. The expansion of the towns

and the peninsular assertion of monarchical authority led to the sale

of positions in local government, which then became hereditary dur-

ing the seventeenth century.24 Eventually, all offices were sold or

21 G. Baudot, La Coruna y la fundacion de los reinos americanus (Valencia: AssociationFrancisco Lopez de Gomara, 1992); and J. G. Doering and G. L. Villena, Lima(Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992).

22 McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, pp. 224–25.23 See Oscar Cornblit, Power and Violence in the Colonial City: Oruro from the Mining

Renaissance to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru 1740–1782, trans. Elizabeth Ladd Glick(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

24 For an example of the changing composition of cabildo government, see PeterMarzahl, “Creoles and Government: The Cabildo of Popayan,” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 54 (1974). In Mexico, the sale of offices seems to have favoured

204 chapter seven

filled by appointment. They still remained in the domain of the colo-

nial order. Also their holders identified with the numerous local inter-

ests: landed aristocrats, merchants, small traders and landholders and

some professional groups. Calls for enfranchisement at the level of

regional government were responses to the muted war of attrition

between court state and the colonial order. The municipalities remained

the major repositories of settler politics and constituted a position of

relative independence from the state’s representatives. Thus, the

encomienda system and urban development in the Americas were both

arenas of contending interests in which colonial autonomies appeared

suppressed, albeit incompletely.

This leads us to a third area of institutional tension: the contest

for positions in the institutions of administrative order. The rela-

tionship of the peninsular court state and a largely Creole colonial

order was one of antagonism, even though Creoles shared a com-

mon cultural background and were not excluded from positions of

administrative power to the extent assumed by nineteenth century

nationalist historians. Within Latin American historiography, this has

been a matter of contention between liberal and revisionist inter-

pretations of nineteenth century independence.25 Specifically, the

debate revolves around the ratio of Creoles/peninsulars in the impe-

rial apparatus. There is little dispute over the fact that peninsularesdominated the high administration of the empire, while Creoles were

found in greater numbers in colonial posts. There is less agreement

over overall levels of enfranchisement and the mechanisms through

Creole advancement according to Brading. Although peninsulars maintained theirdomination of judicial institutions such as the oidores and the alcaldias mayores, theinfusion of Creole judges represented a marked shift in the composition of legalpersonnel. See David A. Brading, “Bourbon Spain and its American Empire’, inLeslie Bethell, ed., Cambridge History of Latin America, vols. 1 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985), pp. 401–402, 409–11. Peru was also a case of enhancedautonomies accompanying the advancement of Creole administrators. See KennethJ. Andrien, “The Sale of Fiscal Offices and the Decline of Royal Authority in theViceroyalty of Peru, 1633–1700,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 1 (1982).

25 The publications that perhaps best exemplify the opposing poles of the debateabout exclusion are Sergio R. Villalobos, Tradicion y Reforma en 1810 (Santiago deChile: Universidad de Chile, 1961); and Jaime Eyzaguirre, Ideario y Ruta de laEmancipacion Chilena (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1971). Villalobosargues that Creoles were systematically excluded and the subsequent collective griev-ance powered the revolutions. In contrast, Eyzaguirre presents the case that theygrew in number at most levels of administration. Following Habsburg tradition, theypresumed that their prevalence should translate into a political monopoly. Thus,they revolted to claim their rightful position.


which Creoles were excluded. Benedict Anderson points to the monop-

olization of high offices by peninsular bureaucracies;26 however, his

evidence is selective. Other sources suggest that this may have been

the limit of exclusion.27 The extensive influence of Creole officials in

the church, the army and the legal structure appears to have been

considerable, prior to the Caroline reforms.28 With the decline of the

electoral cabildo system of urban government, town burghers, who

were mostly Creole, began to purchase offices in local courts giving

them positions of substantial authority.29 The complexity of less for-

mal powers, which lay in the hands of middle to lower level Creole

26 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 58.27 Such is the argument of Leon Campbell in “A Colonial Establishment: Creole

Domination of the Audiencia of Lima during the Late Eighteenth Century,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 52 (1972). Campbell’s case for Lima and Mexico is com-prehensive, yet caution is warranted in generalizing his evidence beyond thosemunicipalities. Mark A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler’s study is more extensive.Indeed it could be tentatively described as the definitive study into Creole inclu-sion/exclusion from administrative office. The depth of their historical research per-mits them to reconstruct a more complete and substantiated picture of the ethnicpatterns of colonial officialdom. Mark A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler “CreoleAppointments and the Sale of Audiencia Positions,” Journal of Latin American Studies 4,no. 2 (1972).

28 The Peruvian example is covered by Leon Campbell, “A Colonial Establishment,”pp. 2, 3, 10, 14, 15 and 20. On Chile, which manifested a similar institutionaldemography, see Jacques A. Barbier’s “Elites and Cadre in Bourbon Chile,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 52 (1972). John Lynch’s evidence supports this view. Between1687 and 1750, 44% of audiencia appointments went to Creoles. A majority of audi-encia judges were Creole even in the 1760s, at least in the key cities. After thattime the ranks of administration were recomposed. Between 1751 and 1808, thelion’s share of senior posts of the audiencias went to Spaniards. See John Lynch“The Origins of Spanish American Independence,” in Bethell, The Cambridge Historyof Latin America, pp. 26–27.

29 The widespread jurisdiction of judges is a reflection of the residues of powerwhich lay in this municipal structure:

Judges served as auditor of war, assessor of the tribunal of accounts . . . and asadministrators of the properties of the expelled Company of Jesus, of hospi-tals, colosseums, water districts, pension funds, royal monopolies, and publicworks of all kinds. In addition, they were delegated to inspect troops or Indiancommunities, conduct censuses, residencias, or investigations, to study subjectssuch as the mails, taxation, the slave trade, and to execute a variety of prop-erty divisions. Through these commissions, the creole magistracy constituted avirtual interlocking directorate which influenced and controlled the operationof the city of Lima, and indeed of the entire viceroyalty. Virtually no aspectof colonial economic life escaped their authority. (Leon Campbell, “A ColonialEstablishment,” pp. 14–15)

Some caution is necessary here. Lima was one of the foremost cities of Creoleinfluence. However, the outline of the pattern and reach of the colonial order in Peruserves as a powerful corrective to the impression of complete peninsular domination.

206 chapter seven

nobility, corresponded to the maze of Creole routes to office. The

links of “patronage, marriage, god parentage, property ownership

and friendship bound the creole bureaucrats to the creole nobil-

ity . . . of which they were indeed members from birth.”30 If clien-

telism was effective anywhere, then its efficacy lay in the colonial

order and not the royal hierarchy. Settlers did have a kind of counter

hegemony in this respect.

The complex intertwinement of the contending communities pro-

duced ethnically heterogeneous settlements. Informal links created

through ‘corruption’ brought peninsulars and locals into greater prox-

imity as much as the penetration of Creole nobles into the colonial

state outfit.31 Whilst historians suggest that this was the case in Chile,

Mexico and Peru, regional variations in the implementation of the

Bourbon reforms in the eighteenth century meant that Creole advance-

ment also varied.32 The Bourbon reform era brought the ownership

of state posts to a head as one of the major contentious issues.

Following Burkholder and Chandler, this can be explained by ref-

erence to the pre-reform period. Creole penetration of the institutions

of the colonial order in the first half of the eighteenth century was

made possible by the cycles of sale of office that were forced on

Madrid. In particular, municipal tribunals were institutional sites in

which Creoles gained some control over the administration of power.

The Bourbon program of imperial restructuring in its later phase

revived the institutions of the audiencia and the cabildo that had been

dormant during the course of the eighteenth century.33 However, the

presence of Creole elites in colonial administration complicated the

process of rejuvenation. The Caroline reforms—notably the institu-

tion of the intendancy system replicated from the France court state—

heightened the tension between a resurgent peninsular court state and

a Creole colonial order that grew in confidence as the century drew

to a close. This tension surfaced as a conflict over the revitalized

institutions of the colonial order. Contrary claims over who would

30 Ibid., p. 19. See also Hamnett, The Mexican Bureaucracy, pp. 21–25.31 Barbier, “Elites and Cadre in Bourbon Chile,” p. 416.32 Lang discusses the contrary impact of Bourbon centralization on different urban

centers, Conquest and Commerce, p. 83. See also Herr, Spain, chaps. 3 and 4.33 See John Fisher, “The Intendant System and the Cabildos of Peru, 1784–1810,”

Hispanic American Historical Review 40 (1960); and John Lynch, “Intendants and Cabildosin the Viceroyalty of La Plata, 1782–1810,” Hispanic American Historical Review 35(1955).


control them fuelled early nineteenth century sentiments for either

greater autonomy or even for independence.

Spanish colonialism, at this point of its fullest growth did incor-

porate leading settler administrators into the lower-to-middle eche-

lons of the viceregal states. At the same time it strengthened the

higher posts of the apparatus. It was strong in its orientation to its

own methods of government and in its grip over its own court state

personnel. But, on the whole, the empire was fragile insomuch as

its resources were diluted and spread across vast areas and sparse

populations. Furthermore, it was weakened by the resuscitation of

the institutions of the colonial order. The intention of the Bourbon

reforms was a resurgent centralization. But the unintended outcome

was initial division in the early years and then a grant of greater

authority to more senior posts.

The Franco-American colonial order was embedded in two con-

trasting types of society. The thinly spread settlements of Canada

and Louisiana were frontier defences, dependent in Canada’s case

on the fur trade. Military organization held a privileged place due

to threats from other imperial powers and indigenous nations allied

against the French. Montreal and Quebec were substantial and thriv-

ing towns connected to the Atlantic economy. They manifested the

visible signs of Euro-American civilization—the trappings of aristoc-

racy, maritime enterprise, seignorial grants, colonial government and

the heavy military presence. They were closer to France and linked

to Europe. At a distance from the St Lawrence River, the material

presence of New French society was constituted by the network of

forts around the Lakes and by the commercial relationships and val-

ues established in the interior. The presence was light and repre-

sented a compromise with the wilderness and the Indian nations

which sustained their social and political force.

The vieilles colonies of the Caribbean zone were quite different. The

visible signs of Frenchified society were unmistakeable and heavy on

the ground. The indigenes were gone; they had been all but exter-

minated by the Spanish in early colonial years. In the eyes of colonists,

the threat of slave revolt was unmistakable. Consequently, the military

presence loomed large in social life. War in the Caribbean zone was

frequent. Combined with the harsh system of slavery, the condition

of war bred a colonial order that was exacting in its demands of

imperial authorities and largely merciless when it came to the perceived

menace within. A long history of planter resistance to imperial edicts

208 chapter seven

begins with Colbert’s attempts to enforce shipping monopolies and

ordinances that specified that sugar could be refined in France only.34

It continued after the Treaty of Utrecht when conditions improved

for those in sugar related industries and reached a peak in the late

eighteenth century when threats to French possessions were at their

greatest. This set the general conditions of the Antillian colonial

order and cultivated a high degree of internal solidarity. White set-

tlers had divisions of their own, but were capable of stout defence

from threats, whether local or from outside.

The social composition of French-American communities speaks

volumes about the level of social closure in the colonial order. There

was a marked social ranking set by colour and class.35 Plantation

owners were at the top. They were large landowners in many cases.

They married their daughters into aristocracy, maintained close con-

nections with France and produced manors that displayed their

wealth. Bekes were a Creole class below them, whites born in the

Caribbean. Their cultural bearings were local and distinguished them

from the plantation owners. Petit blancs were at the bottom of the

white hierarchy. They had few resources and farmed or worked as

tradesmen. Ex-slaves and free blacks were challengers for this layer.

Consequently, the petit blancs proved the most fervent opponents of

moves to end slavery.

Although the island societies were sharply stratified, the colonial

order proved durable. It survived France’s global losses in the Seven

Years War, perhaps due to the economic value of the islands. It sur-

vived the French Revolution and the revolts of those who took up

its call with the spectacular exception of the Haitian Revolution. It

recoiled from the pressure of metropolitan abolitionists and from the

rebellious anger of slave and mulattoes issuing from below it. It

remained the chief French presence in the Americas, long after the

strategic global defeat of the Empire in the Seven Years War.

Society in the Canadian expanse was quite different. Everyday life

there was diverse and divided.36 Yet, paradoxically, aspects of its rul-

ing structure underwent a process of de-differentiation. Royal inter-

34 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, p. 57.35 Aldrich and Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier, pp. 22–23.36 For a social history of New France that ‘slights’ the common focus on poli-

tics and power, see Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1997).


vention secured the future of the beachhead settlements down the

St Lawrence River and the fort defences to their south and west.

Fortification demanded the continuous dispatch of companies of

French troops to North America. By the mid-1660s soldiers made

up thirty-five percent of the population.37 The militarization of the

New France colony turned out to be a formative pattern. The rel-

atively high income paid to French troops meant that they carried

considerable economic weight. The military corps was an attractive

career for enriched colonists. In the absence of the full range of aris-

tocratic titles available in France, military commissions were sought

for the sons of prosperous traders.38 Early generations of French

Canadians did service in the army. The authority that accompanied

officer positions afforded them some influence and imparted to them

a set of conservative values. Those with a family background in the

fur trade during its peak years (up to the 1690s) could bring together

the interests of merchants and militia.

In the eighteenth century those interests were directly fused.39 In

the early 1700s the Compagnie de la Colonie went bust and the govern-

ment assumed the monopoly of trade directly. In 1729 the Governor

began to lease posts to army officers in the hope that they would

put imperial interests before private enrichment. Contemporary reports

suggest that some of them didn’t. Their possession of trading leases

made them agents of war and trade simultaneously and enhanced

their pre-eminence within the colonial order. It also lent Canada’s

leading officers a vested interest in inter-continental trade and a link

to mercantile authorities. This was not the only connection with metro-

politan authorities. Acquisition of officer commissions required the

recommendations of the governor and the intendant to the Ministry

of the Marine.40 Regal approval was also needed. Leading families

looked to French authorities and identified with the court state in

their pursuit of these most prestigious titles. Consequently, there was

relative cohesion in the upper echelons of colonial society. Local

imperial agents had influential milieux to draw upon for support.

Directly below the military and administrative elite was a mass of

provincial habitants. There was a more tangible divide between a

37 Eccles, “Social, Economic and Political.” 38 Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV 1663–1701, chap. 4.39 Eccles, “Social, Economic and Political,” pp. 12–15.40 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

210 chapter seven

partially de-differentiated gubernatorial apparatus and a diverse colo-

nial order marked by a wider societal differentiation. For the colo-

nial order there were two axes of differentiation. Firstly, life in urban

New France stood in manifest contrast with the world of the fron-

tier. The frontier world forced coexistence on its inhabitants. During

the life of the French Empire, this world could not be remade in

the manner than the Laurentine settlements were.41 Many colonial

frontiersmen accommodated themselves wholly to their immediate

environment. Some adapted aspects of the indigenous style of life,

a cause of considerable moral anxiety amongst ecclesiastics in

Montreal.42 Canada was the inverse of New England’s colonies as

there was no sustained attempt to take possession of the land and

fence it off. Instead, Canadian frontiersmen simply passed through

the wilderness in pursuit of the trade, adapting themselves to their

environs as they went.43 Their course was directed by the flow of rivers

and the system of lakes in the interior. Life in the eastern settle-

ments was marked by an attempt to adopt the trappings of French

civilization to Quebecois life. It was a world away from the wilder-

ness. Yet, in the eyes of its inhabitants, it was frightfully close to the

Indian nations that issued from it.

This world was socially complex and constitutes a second axis of

differentiation. The distribution of wealth ensured that it was so.

Cutting across that pattern of social inequality were forms of status

ranking that intensified the social hierarchy.44 Marriage alliances,

family background, the possession of governmental posts and con-

spicuous consumption intersected with class relations to stratify the

colonial order. Under the judicial, administrative and military elite,

an artisan class splintered into numerous occupations: architects, hat-

makers, metalworkers, stonemasons, tailors and many others. Professions

such as medicine and land surveying sat to one side of them. Religion

41 Richard White treats the Great Lakes region as a middle ground in whichdifferent peoples sought accommodation in the context of conflict and imperial war-fare. This was a region of interchange of Iroquois, Huron and their respectiveoffshoots with English and French Americans. See The Middle Ground: Indians, Empiresand Republics in the Great Lakes Region 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991).

42 Allain, French Colonial Policy, pp. 172–95.43 William J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier 1534–1760 (Montreal: Holt, Reinhart

and Winston, 1969), chap. 1.44 Peter N. Moogk, “Rank in New France: Reconstructing a Society from Notarial

Documents,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 8, no. 15 (1975).


divided the bulk of merchants off from a small Huguenot group that

emerged in the eighteenth century.45 The clergy and the army had

their own hierarchies. Servants and a small number of enslaved

Indians occupied the lowest stations.

The hardy institutions of relatively autonomous administration were

not as developed as that they were in Anglo or Hispanic America.

The colonial order may have been fragmented, but this was not due

so much to structural factors in the imperial polity as it was to the

degree of cultural integration of military elites in the Laurentine

region with the Parisian nobility and the level of incorporation of

the fur and fishing trades into imperial commerce. Furthermore, it

would be erroneous to perceive a complete absence of governmental

conflict. Royal intervention in Canada did stimulate an institutional

apparatus that was not fully controlled by imperial administrators

and was more open to capture by provincial factions. Seventeen

assemblies were convened in the last three decades of the seven-

teenth century; one was notable—the etats generaux called by Frontenac

in 1672.46 They were formally convened in Quebec and a number

were called in country parishes. A degree of popular participation

was permitted. However, they were in no way lively bodies and had

no legislative powers. They were a response to a perceived strain in

relations between imperial administrators and merchant groups and

between the governor and the intendant.

Nonetheless, the ill feeling that existed reached a height in the

last few decades of the seventeenth century. The conflict between

Colbert and Frontenac exemplifies this.47 Colbert endeavoured to

boost the intendancy and the counseil soverain to check Frontenac’s

capricious governorship. The intendant presided over the counseil ’sdeliberations and dominated in early years. Over time, it became

preoccupied with litigation and steadily withdrew from its legislative

role. Indeed, it came to hold de facto supreme judicial authority in

the late 1670s and had jurisdiction over minor courts below it. Later,

more councillors were appointed and its powers were augmented. In

response to Frontenac’s unruly governorship, the Council and its

members were given greater sanctions by Colbert. Accordingly, it

45 J. F. Bosher, The Canada Merchants 1713–1763 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).46 Allana G. Reid, “Representative Assemblies in New France,” Canadian Historical

Review 27 (1946).47 Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, chap. 6.

212 chapter seven

began to exercise more independence and enjoyed powers formally

separate from the governor and the intendant. For some years, it

became a crucible of conflict between Colbert, Frontenac, the inten-

dant and the councillors. It could fail to register royal edicts and

regulations, if they were deemed inappropriate. In the island colonies,

the counseils did just that. In New France, it was less audacious due

to divisions within its membership. Colbert’s vision of accelerated

development of villages in the main colony was actively impressed

on the governor. In 1673 Frontenac defied the Minister by estab-

lishing new forts around Lake Ontario to promote the fur trade and

capture it for himself and his allies. This measure encouraged some

colonists to drift westward. More importantly, it brought Frontenac’s

party into conflict not just with Colbert, but also with Montreal’s

traders. Factional battle-lines were drawn in the Counseil between the

two sets of Canadian traders. In this way, it became a body of ongo-

ing intrigue for the remainder of the century. Eventually, it was tamed

and the factionalism defeated. Its name was changed to Supreme

Council in 1703 to conform with its new loyalty to the court state.

One final institution of this fragile cluster of colonial bodies deserves

mention. The capitaine de malice was a parish and town-based official

who acted as a moderator. The office was avenue for townspeople

to air grievances. Whilst in no way a democratic institution, it allowed

the King’s administration to act responsively in its rulings. Officials

at this layer were intermediaries who had to face neighbourhoods

of numerous constituencies. Their exposure to local communities

made them bearers of popular measures. This was an important role,

even though it bore no formal judicial or decision-making powers.

New France did not nurture a concentrated colonial order with

ongoing institutional autonomy. Episodes of non-cooperation did lit-

tle to decisively augment its powers. Up until and even beyond the

Seven Years War the sentiment for autonomy appears quite absent.

In retrospect, it can be confidently claimed that the movement for

independence in the New French region coalesced in opposition to

the British at a later time. There was no such movement against the

French court state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The

heightened tension of imperial state formation that was striking in

relations between the Antillais colonies and metropolitan France was

less conspicuous in the Canadian trajectory.

The situation was quite different in Anglo-America. British colo-

nialism had separate origins and generated more nuanced social rela-


tions. It was distinct in five respects.48 Economic life and attitudes

to the land and its inhabitants were singularly English and reflected

models of colonization discussed in previous chapters. Whereas the

Spanish and the French proselytized, Protestant colonists were largely

indifferent to the question of the indigenes’ salvation. Spain’s legal-

istic zeal and the French preoccupation with the body of mercan-

tile ordinances were not emulated in the English colonies. The flow

of immigrants to the northern continent was far more intense and

rapid. Finally, in later years, slavery and the plantation economy

were pivotal for British interests.

This contrast is greatest in the founding conditions of American

settlements. The British had three types of colony: corporate or char-

ter, ‘proprietary’ and Crown colonies. Colonial autonomy originated

in the first American charters and the joint stock companies that

supervised initial settlement. Royal grants of corporate charters pre-

supposed collective rights for the colonial grantees. Whilst this form

of colonial corporation did not last beyond the second half of the

seventeenth century, the logic of chartered government was embod-

ied in the legislative institutions and claims to jurisdiction of colo-

nial administrations. The decline of the charter did not bring a loss

of autonomy to the colonies. On the contrary, the imperial state

structure that was consolidated after 1688 enshrined greater inde-

pendence for colonial government. Administrative jurisdiction was

drawn from a separation of legislative and executive responsibilities.

Competing legislative sovereignties shaped colonial development and

recast the relationship between the metropolitan state and colonial

government as one that could be contested and transformed.

Comparison of the English and Spanish trajectories can serve to

throw into relief the distinctive features of English colonial society.

A first distinction lay in the entrenched image of a colony. The

Spanish conquerors founded a ciudad on an accepted blueprint, which,

by force of its presence on the American landscape, shaped the

nearby countryside. Their priority was the organization and display

of religious, administrative and military supremacy. English colonization

drew on coalescing agrarian and commercial capitalist values. Pro-

testantism informed ideas about the British Empire, although it is

48 This comparison draws notes from Samuel E. Finer, The History of Governmentfrom the Earliest Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), vol. 3, chap. 7.

214 chapter seven

questionable as to whether it furnished the English with a grand ide-

ology of empire in the manner that Catholicism did for the Spanish.49

It did carry images of colonial organization. Early sketches of colo-

nial life by Raleigh, Hakluyt, Purchas and others had previously

stressed a regimented and disciplined organization of the colonies.

Actual colonies should replicate country life. Survival in the hostile

environment required a high level of social regulation. There is a

recurring analogy in writings of the time of the beehive that expressed

the intention of English investors.50 As charter colonies were super-

seded the beehive analogy faded. Towns and cities spread down the

eastern coasts and through riverine settlements. They were the vis-

ible, material signs of English expansion though they did not resem-

ble sixteenth century dreams of regimented urban life.

What English colonials did bring with them were the essential ele-

ments of modern Protestant agrarianism.51 Notions of possession and

property found a material expression in the enclosure of land in new

village communities scattered along the eastern seaboard. The idea

of enclosed and ‘improved’ land ordered the immediate physical

landscape and also the relations of colonists to the American envi-

ronment. The New World was seen as a ‘waste’ land because of the

lack of clear markers of its productive use.52 It was thought grossly

under-populated. ‘Improvement’ signified clearance of flora and fauna

(and indigenes) and containment of the wild. Property in this period

did not have to be codified in written law as it was proclaimed by

the act of fencing and improving land. Thus, it comes as no sur-

prise that speculation on land was present in colonial towns from

the moment of their foundation.53 There is evidence that the Spanish

had a similar notion of industrious improvement, but expressions of

such a notion were marginal.54 Anyway, their mindset was fixed on

49 Armitage, The Ideological Origins, chap. 3.50 Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “The Beehive as a Model for Colonial Design,”

in Kupperman, America in European Consciousness.51 See Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, chap 1. Compare with Mark Peterson who

argues that Anglo-America in its Puritan origins was primarily commercial in itsorientation. See The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

52 Seed, American Pentimento, chap. 2.53 John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of

New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC and London: Universityof North Carolina Press, 1991).

54 J. H. Elliot, “The Seizure of Overseas Territories by the European Powers,”in Armitage, Theories of Empire, pp. 148–50.


extractive production, which compelled them to explore South

America’s hinterlands and coerce communities of labor. Advancement

into the interior did not seem as urgent for the English as it was

for the Spanish. Within the British North American colonies the

social metaphor of the fenced-off garden better describes the village

life of the English colonial order.

Spanish colonialism placed American land and peoples under a

unified regal sovereignty. It was driven by a singular enthusiasm for

subjugation and conversion. English colonization did not have the

same uniformity. Each colony had its own charters that established

a separation of powers. The innovations of the English state in the

late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries did not succeed in

capturing all aspects of governmental responsibility for imperial author-

ities. Metropolitan bodies were based on jurisdictions that conflicted

with those of colonial legislatures. It was not clear in either law or in

the constitutional theories of sovereignty where authority lay. Multiple

institutions combined in a patchwork of authority. Some were con-

temporary; others were legacies of colonial origins. In theory, Parliament

had the ultimate authority. In practice, its legislative activity did not

touch the colonies terribly often, apart from the Navigation Acts. It

was more likely that the colonies would deal with the regal apparatus.

Each colony structured a different relationship of autonomy to the

Crown.55 In New England’s corporate colonies, however, the King’s

representative was elected by the executive council; the Crown had

little power here. All colonies had a legislature of a representative

assembly and an upper house. The Crown nominated the latter,

although in some instances it was elected. It also acted as an exec-

utive council. The legislative power of the assemblies was only really

restricted in cases where it conflicted with imperial ordinances. By

1730 Crown colonies had become the norm. Nevertheless, settler

communities fiercely guarded the basis of their relative independence.

Issues of revenue raising and expenditure on civil administration were

particularly contentious and often turned into political flashpoints. A

fiercely loyal senior gubernatorial apparatus was not so easily nur-

tured, as governors found themselves unable to enforce London’s

instructions and permanently in a position where they sensed polit-

ical pressure from local elites.

55 Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, pp. 61–62; Lang, Conquest and Commerce, chap. 8.

216 chapter seven

English law in effect supported the colonial order’s assimilation of

crown powers throughout the eighteenth century. It guarded the legal

rights of colonists. Trial by jury and habeas corpus were legally con-

stituted norms. Justices of the Peace oversaw their administration.56

Furthermore, the Vice-Admiralty Court for All America was also

under colonial control, often by nature of the fact that local judges

staffed them.57 In many ways, the imperial state imported the insti-

tutions that British subjects in England enjoyed. In the context of

the North Americas, however, these were transformed into semi-

autonomous and self-legislating bodies. Colonial liberties were grounded

in legislative control over the executive arm of the Crown. This

understanding of the relationship of representative assemblies and

the monarchy had its origins in the opposition to Stuart rule.58 In

a way, Parliament was a model institution as far as the colonies were

concerned. It provided what they thought was an example of a bal-

anced constitution of government and a civilized form of political

behaviour. It always remained a standard in America, one that

imparted to colonists a heightened appreciation of the liberties they

believed to be their heritage. The initial impression held by officials

of the constitutional state was different. Ideally, the colonial assem-

blies were to be limited to those powers that the parliament had

under the Stuarts: the power to legislate, vote taxes and petition the

Crown. The real exercise of power in colonial British America went

well beyond this. The power to tax was enlarged in the colonial

context into a type of control over colonial finance. The salaries of

the governor and his staff were paid by London, but this brought

them little respect when conflicts arose. An ongoing skirmish between

many legislatures and governors marked the history of the British

Americas from 1689 on.

As a result, the institutions and apparatus of the imperial state

had limited and imprecise constitutional powers in the Thirteen

56 D. Sayer, “A Notable Administration: English State Formation and the Riseof Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 5 (1992), pp. 1405–407.

57 Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, The Fall of the First British Empire:Origins of the War of American Independence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1982), pp. 130–31. On the tensions of the vice-admiralty and colonists in casesinvolving smugglers, see Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1973), pp. 30–31.

58 See Jack P. Greene, “Political Mimesis: A Consideration of the Historical andCultural Roots of Legislative Behaviour in the British Colonies in the EighteenthCentury,” in Negotiated Authorities.


Colonies. The uncertainty surrounding legislative and executive affairs

in the colonies issued from the fragmentation of responsibility within

various imperial bodies. Unlike in the Spanish Empire, there was no

single institution of superintendence to manage imperial affairs. The

Board of Trade and the Privy Council had supervisory roles but few

actual powers. Privy councillors tended to rely on the Board of Trade

for administrative advice, a body that had few executive powers.

Other ministries carried out their work in the colonies by adhering

to their respective functions. Customs, the Post Office, the Admiralty,

the War Office and the Treasury did not correspond with each other

often, nor did each consult regularly with the Board of Trade.

Imperial interests within the constitutional state were “nobody’s busi-

ness and everybody’s business,” inasmuch as no institution within

the apparatus was responsible for colonial affairs, but all dabbled in

it.59 Considerable nominal powers were invested in colonial gover-

nors. But the assemblies uncovered their limitations. Governor Belcher

of New Jersey faced the dilemma that plagued most governors:

I have to steer between Scylla and Charybdis . . . to please a King’sministers at home and touchy people here; to luff with one and bearaway with another.60

Britain’s colonies in the Americas were, in effect, not supervised

clearly and completely by any part of the imperial apparatus. This

intricate institutional arrangement permitted the space in which the

empire could be brought into question, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Colliding notions of sovereignty set the imperial-constitutional state

and the colonial order apart. Two conceptions of sovereignty were

permissible.61 One located authority firmly in the hands of the monar-

chy or the Privy Council. The other asserted the prerogatives of par-

liament in governing the colonies. Imperial rule itself was rarely in

question within Britain. However, there were nuanced versions of it,

an indication of some level of debate and discussion about the char-

acter of the British Empire.

In the colonies, competing theories of political power amounted

to alternative perspectives. The empire was variously considered as

59 Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, p. 64.60 Cited in Finer, The History of Government, p. 1403.61 See Max Savelle, Empires to Nations: Expansion in America 1713–1824 (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. 43–44; and Tucker and Hendrickson, TheFall of the First British Empire, pp. 148–49.

218 chapter seven

a federation of sovereign or quasi-sovereign entities. Colonial insti-

tutions should have authority within each set of jurisdictional bound-

aries and this was seen as legally correct. At the peak of the federated

structure, the British Parliament carried responsibility for overall wel-

fare, the export economy, intra-imperial matters and foreign policy.

In the colonial theory of a quasi-federated state, Americans were not

articulating fundamental opposition to the imperial-colonial rela-

tionship as much as interpreting it within the context of their accu-

mulated experiences of partial self-government. Their understanding

of empire led to the perception that their own colonial government

was in partnership with Britain. The resurgence in imperial institu-

tions in the latter half of the eighteenth century, after the Seven

Years War, upset this conception and, when married to other cru-

cial contingencies, problematized British rule.

In the eighteenth century, a colonial order emerged that was capa-

ble of social self-legislation and governance. This was clearly the case

in the British North Americas, less so in the Spanish Indies and the

French Caribbean. Imperial rule from the outset had engendered a

colonial opposition. In all three empires, however, there was a colo-

nial order capable of exercising autonomy and embedded in the life

of settler-immigrant culture. Each had an ambivalent stance in rela-

tion to bodies of imperial rule. Varying degrees of independence of

action were possible, but were nonetheless circumscribed by loyalty

to imperial arrangements. Those loyalties were made uncertain by

the demands of colonial society and its principal elites. During the

course of two hundred years of state and social formation, the build

up of colonial communities had aggregated historical experience of

mutual dependence, but also a degree of self-reliance. Colonial com-

munities had social ballast of their own and the cultures they generated

acted as another pole of loyalty for the most pre-eminent political

and economic classes. Different allegiances tugged at the political

sentiments of colonial leaders and the communities that they led.

The character of those allegiances and the local inflections that they

exhibited is the next topic.

Communities

In the colonies, unique populations were composed of surviving indi-

genes, slaves and ex-slaves, immigrants and settlers, clergy and local

and imperial merchants. A social and class hierarchy of a new kind


underpinned colonial communities. Ownership of property (or lack

of it) and control of the apparatus of government (or exclusion from

it) were pivotal factors shaping the hierarchies of rule. Within those

communities coexistence between different sections of the populace

was punctuated by episodes of massacre or revolt. Identities that

were ethnic and aboriginal informed the tension between the empires

and the colonial order. These amplified the dramas of eighteenth

century America and would later come to fruition in the revolutionary

acts of 1775 and the Napoleonic era.

Miscegenation was a sort of policy in the Spanish Indies. During

the sixteenth century, just less than one quarter of a million Spaniards

emigrated to South America and the Caribbean following the con-

quistadors.62 The rate scarcely increased in the years up to indepen-

dence, so the immigrant peninsular population was never too weighty.

Until the 1590s Spain’s imports of slaves ran well below the rate of

peninsular migration. But between 1595 and 1640 there was a spec-

tacular reversal of this trend as Spain experimented with the slave

trade.63 The ethnic variations that this process produced led to a

proliferation of organizational interests. The offspring of inter-mixing

were classed as mulatto, metis, albino, morisco, lobo or by other regional

designations. The aim was a so-called pigmentocracy.64 Spaniards

could rule through a fragmentation of the Indian and African slave

populace. It was ineffective inasmuch as other social categories of

inequality overtook the fundamental conflict between Indians and

conquerors. Class divisions assumed greater importance rendering

deliberate miscegenation a superfluous strategy of divide-and-rule.65

Also, the barriers to joining colonial communities faced by foreign-

ers were substantial.66 They reflected a tendency towards ius soli prin-

ciple of integration and exclusion, which privileged the criterion of

birthplace in determining membership of a community. As a result

of these two types of division, the strategy of miscegenation produced

62 Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz “The First Transatlantic Transfer: Spanish Migrationto the New World 1493–1810,” in Canny, Europeans on the Move.

63 Robin Blackburn, The Making of Colonial Slavery, pp. 140–44.64 Magnus Morner, Race Mixing in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown

and Company, 1967).65 Ferro, Colonization, pp. 105–14.66 See Tamar Herzog, “ ‘A Stranger in a Strange Land’: The Conversion of

Foreigners into Members in Colonial Latin America,” in Roniger and Sznajder,Constructing Collective Identities.

220 chapter seven

the unforeseen consequence of diversity in the range of ethnic group-

ings where the boundaries between them were relatively fuzzy.

Canada’s sparse settlements isolated white pioneer communities

from daily encounters with the Huron. Despite purposeful emigration

guided by the court state, the overall intake was low. New France

still had only 3,000 settlers in 1660, most from north-western France.67

They did not emigrate as families and there was no financial incen-

tive or religious compulsion for them to do so. When the British

took Canada, the total population had only grown to around 70,000

or about 5% of that of the English colonies.

The thin distribution of colonists contrasted with the situation in

the Caribbean where immigration was directed. In all, around 200,000

whites emigrated to the French Antilles during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. Migration may have been more concentrated

after the losses in North America incurred in the post war settlement

of 1763. But this represents a small part of the region’s population.

Imports of indentured servants primed demographic growth.68 After

the supply slowed, slaves filled the gaps and then exceeded them.

Between 1687 and 1737, the slave population grew tenfold.69 Slavery

was a ‘solution’ in the French Caribbean to the low level of settle-

ment. The consequence was a group of island societies in which a

highly stratified white minority had to govern itself and then had to

govern an enslaved African majority. Confrontation was inevitable

and features prominently in the history of the islands. But daily inter-

racial interaction did not always involve conflict or acts of repres-

sion—far from it. Racial mixing was unavoidable. Also, French

colonial strategy deliberately focussed on fostering a freed African

community.70 The lower level of white settlement prompted this devel-

opment as a safeguard against social unrest. The overwhelming pres-

ence of free and enslaved blacks heightened awareness amongst

colonists of their cultural separateness which was accentuated by their

social proximity. Additionally, it opened a separate possibility. Original

67 MacFarlene, The British in the Americas, p. 153; Ted Morgan, Wilderness at Dawn:The Settling of the North American Continent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), pp. 195–96.

68 Christian Huetz de Lemps, “Indentured Servants Bound for the French Antillesin the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Altman and Horn, ‘To Make America.’

69 Eccles, France in America, p. 160.70 Aldrich and Connell, France’s Overseas Frontier, pp. 97–98; Robin Blackburn, The

Making of Colonial Slavery, pp. 439–41.


cultural features were forged out of Creole hybrids of French and

African arts. The intense fusion of imported cultures produced local

customs, language, dance and music that survived decolonization.

In British America’s demographic history, the outstanding features

are the relatively high level of migration, urbanization on the coast

and around eastern estuaries and the ethnic mixture of the migrants.71

Two periods can be distinguished.72 Between 1580 and the middle

of the seventeenth century, migrants came principally from England,

Wales and lower Scotland. A high rate of population growth in the

British Isles produced the numbers for emigration and political insta-

bility produced the motives. Between 1610 and 1660 English migra-

tion to the Caribbean and the north-eastern seaboard far outstripped

that of the French and Spanish, more than doubling the Spanish at

one point.73 Prosperity in English agriculture combined with the

impoverishment of a class of laborers to create the ‘push’ and ‘pull’

factors of a higher rate of migration. In the second period—from

the mid-seventeenth to the 1776 Revolution—Irish, Africans and

continental Europeans composed the majority. After the Treaty of

Utrecht in particular, the pace of migration increased rapidly.74 The

genocidal depopulation of indigenous societies was completed in the

Caribbean and set a fast pace on the east coast of North America

after 1660. Those that survived were marginalized and pushed west-

wards or moved around. The import of slaves to the islands was

higher than for the northern colonies until the late eighteenth cen-

tury. Still, growth in the black population on the continent nearly

doubled that of the whites in the seventeenth century.75

Settler communities gelled around port towns and then on the

frontier, rarely more than one hundred miles from river estuaries or

from populated bays. The towns, cities and regional jurisdictions they

71 For a survey of the literature and a discussion of some of the historiographicissues in the demographic history, see Nicholas Canny, “English Migration into andAcross the Atlantic during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Europeanson the Move.

72 Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World.73 Blackburn, The Making of Colonial Slavery, pp. 228–29.74 Lester Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution 1750–1850 (New Haven

and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 18–19.75 Between 1630 and 1680 the growth in slave numbers was significantly greater.

By the end of the century Africans made up 11% of the colonial population. SeeJim Potter, “Demographic Development and Family Structure,” in Greene and Pole,Colonial British America.

222 chapter seven

chartered were based on familiar English standards.76 The terms to

describe these could be connected them to equivalents in England:

manor, hundred, parish, borough, precinct. What they signified in the home-

land was highly variable. Their application to the landscape of the

North American east coast similarly varied. Some had no discernible

precedent in England that could be readily drawn upon. So the

municipalities that American settlers forged were original, in a way,

even though they had models to try and emulate. The formation of

colonial communities was more haphazard in English North America

and no two colonies and their townships were replicas. The pre-

eminence of town and city resulted, not through a strategy of baroque

design, as in the Spanish Indies, but through demographic concen-

tration and a pragmatic application of known settlement methods.

These housed significant numbers of new arrivals. Between 1700

and 1770 the northern colonies grew eight-fold, while the popula-

tion of the West Indies trebled.77 By this time, the ethnic composi-

tion of the Chesapeake and New English population had been

transformed. New migrants hailed from European sources connected

with Atlantic routes.78 Eastern Europe, the Baltic region and the

Mediterranean furnished few emigrants due to their relative isola-

tion from ports of embarkation. Africans and their enslaved heirs

constituted almost one-fifth of the populace by 1770.79 As their num-

bers rose, so did segregation; racial boundaries became thicker.80 The

subordinated Indians and bonded Africans were grouped by com-

pulsion. Settlers, Indian nations and slavery all remained more dis-

tinctly dissociated than in Spanish and French America.

Against this forming and inconstant demographic background, it

is possible to view the formation of identities in the colonial order

as a dynamic process in itself. A number of facets of civility symbolized

for Europeans the distance between immigrants and indigenes and

different segments of settler communities: language, style; dress and

a monopoly of communications, manners and position.

76 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 236–44.77 MacFarlene, The British in the Americas, p. 229. Bernard Bailyn details a quan-

titative analysis of the extraordinarily diverse sources of emigration in Voyagers to theWest, pt. 2.

78 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 213–14.79 MacFarlene, The British in the Americas, p. 231. A percentage calculation based

on Robin Blackburn’s figures suggests that 17.6% of the total North American pop-ulation were slaves. See the table in The Making of Colonial Slavery, p. 460.

80 Greene and Pole, Colonial British America, pp. 210–11.


In Europe, the cultures of nations in their formative stages were

defined by the use of a dominant language by political or cultural

elites.81 Likewise in the colonized world, language could act as a basis

for senior imperial elites. Being able to speak the dominant language

of imperial business incorporated many settlers into the mercantile

economy of the empire, whether they had transoceanic connections

or not. Later, it opened up the possibility of reception to various

currents of Enlightenment thinking via their access to philosophical,

historical, political and, importantly, literary works. For those outside

of European or Creole communities, the inability to speak imperial

languages meant disenfranchisement. Degrees of incorporation or the

extent of exclusion on the basis of language decided the thickness

of the boundaries of the colonial communities. This sharply defined

linguistic boundary did not exist within Anglo-American communi-

ties. Indeed, the process of formation of New World societies effected

a homogenisation of language that acted to solidify communities,

while broadening the number of settlers who could have access to

transatlantic flows of information and commerce.82 English, of course,

remained a solid symbolic boundary that distinguished Anglo-European

civilization from the Native American nations.

Style also distinguished communities of European origin from pre-

Conquest inhabitants and from slaves. This distinction went beyond

ethnicity. The outward appearance of European civilization insinu-

ated deeper cultural difference, even greater spiritual worth. For the

Spanish, conversion of indigenous populations to Catholicism was

deemed to be a major imperial mission. This appeared to be the

limit of what was possible or necessary at the time. On the other

hand, greater incorporation of Creole Americans was an imperative

and it was made possible by common written language and traditions.

Those of American birth could quite freely take up features of sub-

ordinated cultures. Diet, a consumptive lifestyle and relaxed eating

routine were habits of a “short present” that distinguished Hispanic

Creoles from Spanish born administrators and their families who

served in high office.83 Preserving etiquette and daily customs made

them Spanish. The civil habits of life could not be readily or com-

pletely abandoned without social consequences.

81 Eric J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality(Cambridge: Canto, 1991), pp. 60–61.

82 H. V. Bowen, Elites, pp. 113–18.83 Ferro, Colonization, pp. 114–15.

224 chapter seven

British and French colonists had a similar relationship to their

metropolitan principals governing in the colonies. Indeed style

confirmed the exclusion of even Creole/settler communities from

European-dominated high administration. However, style and manner

varied more across England’s North American colonies than anywhere

else in European America.84 Social distinction was built on standards

that were current in Scotland and England. But it sat in tension

with American localism. Inevitably, this resulted in a provincialization

of gentility, “a local form of Englishness.”85 Economically, they were

agrarian and commercial colonies and not dominated by extraction

or ranching. Close inspection shows up diversity in style, in the social

hierarchy and in the immediate relationship with the gubernatorial

apparatus.86 Puritan New England steadily expanded its boundaries

beyond Massachusetts. Life amongst the settlers was relatively egal-

itarian in the North compared to the sharply defined hierarchies of

East Anglia that migrants might have remembered. The experience

of migration was itself a process of acculturation.87 Those destined

to become Anglo-Americans—and they came from miscellaneous

backgrounds—entered this process from the point of embarkation.

Weeks-long voyages across the Atlantic threw migrants together and

forced cultural exchanges. Subsequent entry into the northern English

colonies immersed new migrants with such experiences in a society

where common tasks of domestication of the land confronted all.

In contrast to this northern pattern, it was villa life that was cul-

tivated in the Carolinas and Virginia over a long period of time. In

these colonies, social rank tended to mirror England more closely.

Large plantation owners were at one pole with tenant farmers and

indentured servants at the other in great numbers. In Virginia, the

southern gentry pursued aristocratic habits and were loyal to the

Church of England, consistently rejecting radical Protestant experiments

in theology. Further south, in the Carolinas, the merchant and planter

class were modestly gentrified and detached, although they did not

parody English-ness to the degree that colonists in the Caribbean

84 Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” in Armitage and Braddick, The British AtlanticWorld.

85 Ibid., p. 107.86 MacFarlene, The British in the Americas, chap. 6; Ian Steele, “The Anointed, the

Appointed, and the Elected: Governance of the British Empire 1689–1784,” inMarshall, The Eighteenth Century, p. 113; H. V. Bowen, Elites, pp. 18–60.

87 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 131–44, 218–19.


did.88 Slaves were appendages in this world; few could ever be sov-

ereign participants in it. The Middle Atlantic colonies developed a

polyglot population drawn from a greater number of sources. Dutch

origins and Quaker influence shaped a more insular and egalitarian

community orientation. Frontier America produced pioneers. Fresh

settlers made up the numbers of those pushing the boundary westwards.

Forceful, strong-willed individuals, better suited to the environment,

did not entertain strong notions of community. Nor did they auto-

matically defer to the rule of imperial law.

This contrast left its imprint on the social boundaries between

imperial officials (and those around them) and the large settler com-

munities. Northern and middle-eastern settlements were communi-

tarian and juxtaposed their social worlds with those of their remote

governors. Where social inequality was greater and found expression

in style, manners and custom (as in the South), imperial rule might

seem more ‘natural’. But the South and the frontier could also be

most antagonistic to imperial authorities. Central authority might

have seemed the bane of slave-owning southerners and law resistant

frontiersmen. This does not signify that there was no porosity between

imperial administration and the colonial order in British North

America. Both had independent access to the means of production

and they shared elemental features of a common culture, especially

language. The compulsion to incorporate settlers into the commu-

nity of empire was also generally felt by colonial administrations.

The French Empire was split between Canadian and Caribbean

colonies. In New France, a homestead style of life developed along

the river system, in spite of Colbert’s best efforts to establish villages

modelled on agrarian France.89 In contrast, elites housed in Quebec

and Montreal aspired to the ethos of the French nobility.90 This was a

second Canada, wedded to the original colonial implantation. Montreal

and Quebec were the most densely populated ports and represented

“the highest level of urbanization in any North American colony.”91

They were inhabited by a would-be noblesse whose military commis-

sions, connections in trade and membership of Parisian milieux led

88 See Richard Waterhouse, A New World Gentry: the Making of a Merchant and PlanterClass in South Carolina 1670–1770 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1989).

89 Eccles, France in America, p. 37.90 Ibid., pp. 119–21.91 Meinig, The Shaping of America, p. 113.

226 chapter seven

them to simulate an aristocratic lifestyle. The personal wealth required

for such a life was not available in the North American colonies. As

compensation, many obstacles to ennoblement were removed. The

stigma attached to commerce in the old world was also absent. Con-

sequently, nobility was quite an alluring goal. For a small and distinct

minority, it was a means of becoming conspicuous in an urban world

set apart from the frontier of the coureurs de bois and habitants.In Canada, the two worlds did not collide too often. In the West

Indies, however, social extremes coexisted in close proximity. This

sharpened the distinction between grand blancs, other whites, freed

blacks and slaves.92 They inter-married and monopolized positions

in local administration and justice/law. Positions in the colonial order

brought little official remuneration and officials became quite susceptible

to influence. Gubernatorial salaries were low from the formative era

in the seventeenth century through to later years.93 Such positions

held attraction for the already enriched, furthering the distance

between governors and those below them. They became enthusiasts

for science and their sons and daughters assimilated the works of the

philosophes.94 Paris was their centre and they became political actors

in the French court. The structure of oppression that they resided

over left little by way of status symbols to other colonists. A pale

skin and the social and economic advantages that went with it was

the exception. In the late eighteenth century, the petit blancs of St

Domingue agitated successfully for the exclusion of blacks from pub-

lic employment and campaigned against inter-racial marriage. They

were able to re-capture some privileges to maintain a higher status.

That this was a bitterly fought issue serves as a reminder of how

important distinctions of status were. An advantageous economic

position was vital for the small and large planters as it was for the

military-merchant elite of Canada. But the markings of what was

seen as French civilization were an obligatory expression of privilege.

In all three empires, a sense of belonging to the American land

vied with imperial loyalty. In the case of the Spanish Indies and the

French West Indies, ethnic and indigenous distinctions were more

acutely felt and those who held Hispanic or French identity held it

92 Eccles, France in America, pp. 164–66.93 Philip P. Boucher, “The ‘Frontier Era’ of the French Caribbean 1620s–1690s,”

in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires, p. 221.94 McLellan, Colonialism and Science.


strongly. Canadians developed a strong sense of connected-ness, at

least outside of the aristocratic hobereaux. Creole identity came easily

for them. However, in British North America the level of identificationwith Britain was also strong and, in some respects, could have been

strengthened by geographic isolation from Europe. For colonial set-

tlers in British North America the imperial and colonial experience:

. . . vivified inheritance. Transatlantic and intercolonial communica-tion—complex networks of commerce, migration and remigration,official and private correspondence—sustained common understandingin multifarious ways . . . Economic and social developments in mostcolonies maintained, perhaps even strengthened individuals’ sense ofEnglishness; ‘anglicization’ is not a uniquely eighteenth century phe-nomenon. Some historical episodes were particularly important bothto shaping the empire and to maintaining its Englishness; here England’srevolutions enjoyed pride of place alongside the Restoration of 1660.Such seismic shifts forced colonists to react and made English politicsacutely relevant to the colonial situation. However, such events hadanother significance, and this lay not so much in the drama of theirimmediate impact as in how they changed (and marked changes in)the ways in which Englishmen thought about government and soughtto organize or benefit from the relationship between state and society.95

English North American settlers forged common identities through

shared experiences of colonial life. Detachment from the European

base of empire nurtured this sense of distinct collectivity. But until

the consequences of the Seven Years War rolled out, it was always

ambivalent. Colonists considered themselves English and viewed events

in Britain as critical to the development of the colonies. Traffic in

news across the Atlantic bound the English together fostering a

transatlantic affinity. The 1688 revolution exemplified this relation-

ship and indeed cemented it for nearly one hundred years.96 Divisions

between the Whig opposition and Stuart rule found some symmetry

in the colonies in the confrontation of the proponents of ‘English

liberties’ and the governors. Local inflections also drove the dispute.

In turn, the reaction in colonial America rebounded onto the par-

liamentary opposition in England. The establishment of the founda-

tions of Westminster administration boosted the sense of English

community. English-ness was buttressed by the seventeenth century

95 Bliss, Revolution and Empire, pp. 4–5.96 Lang, Conquest and Commerce, pp. 165–71.

228 chapter seven

inter-state rivalries of Spain and England, which found expression

in English entry into the Americas.97 Inter-imperial war and eco-

nomic competition modified the long-term designs of the British

Empire. At the same time, imperial fortunes in the international

competition of states were seen as a great concern of the colonies.

In the Spanish Indies, imperial identity was fed by ethnic and cul-

tural encounters which were, arguably, more intensive and came ear-

lier. The sense of distinctiveness that peninsular communities cultivated

was fuelled by their experiences of a foreign America. Journeying

through ethnically-stratified cities furnished imperial officials with the

experience of encounters with geographic and cultural contrasts.

Familiarity with all sectors of government gave peninsular elites priv-

ileged familiarity with Spain’s dominions. The passage of officials

through diverse social, cultural and administrative settings fuelled the

self-identification of the personnel of the imperial state with each

other. Benedict Anderson’s idea that the community of absolutist

functionaries was grounded in the interchangeability and experiences

of journey has some relevance here. The salient point is that:

(T)he most important ( journeys) were the differing passages created bythe rise of absolutizing monarchies, and, eventually, Europe-centredworld-imperial apparatus of power, controlled directly by, and loyalto, the ruler over against a decentralized, particularistic feudal nobility.Unification meant internal interchangeability of men and documents.Human interchangeability was fostered by the recruitment—naturallyto varying extents—of homines novi, who just for that reason, had noindependent power of their own, and thus could serve as emanationsof their master’s wills . . . (the functionary) encounters as eager fellow-pilgrims his functionary colleagues, from places and families he hasscarcely heard of and surely hopes never to have to see. But in expe-riencing them as travelling-companions, a consciousness of connected-ness (Why are we. . . . here . . . together?) emerges, above all when all sharea single language-of-state. Then, if official A from province B admin-isters province C, while official D from province C administers pro-vince B—a situation that absolutism begins to make likely—thatexperience of interchangeability requires its own explanation: the ideo-logy of absolutism, which the new men themselves, as much as thesovereign, elaborate.98

This insight can be applied with equal salience to the colonial settings

of the Americas. The interchanges of bureaucratic functionaries had

97 Bliss, Revolution and Empire, pp. 8–10.98 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 56–57.


greater resonance as they were less densely concentrated. The paucity

of imperial administration relative to the size of the Americas quick-

ened the communication of skills and interchangeability of peninsu-

lar functionaries. The experience of journeying in the Americas, albeit

in limited regions and encounters with associates encouraged an

affinity with the community of peninsular bureaucrats. Engagement

within the bureaucratic state furnished the imperial oligarchy with

its own self-understanding of Hispanic cultures.

Likewise, journeys for Creoles cultivated identity. Travel through

the continent inculcated a sense of American-ness. Touring imper-

ial Spain enhanced American loyalties. Seventeenth and eighteenth

century Spain appeared poor and foreign to Americans. Its cities

lacked the grandeur of the baroque New World, reflecting instead

more of the medieval Islamic past than the contemporary aesthetics

of court society. The colonies may have even seemed like the region

of the empire in which Spanish culture and social structure were

directly preserved.99

Journeying can be contrasted with the metaphoric homecoming.

In the long term, Spanish elites in the Indies thrived not only on

the military or economic functions of imperial pride or trade, but

also on the needs of imperial institutions. This included the devel-

opment of the administrative American city, planned in the baroque

tradition with open plazas and carefully located government centres.

The public spaces of the baroque city were reminiscent of the alter-

native home that the agora represented in Ancient Greece.100 Indeed

this trace of Antiquity had been carefully crafted into the baroque

style. Beyond this, the American city could be a place of home-

coming. The growing familiarity of the American environment and

the trade of functions within imperial bureaucracies that multiplied

those experiences required a cultural and symbolic foundation to sus-

tain itself. Authority invested by the monarchy in the imperial appa-

ratus supplied that foundation. The involvement of court state officials

trained in Europe in provincial governments encouraged an elite sol-

idarity which manifested itself in beliefs, values, fashions and habits

and was confirmed in the correct use of Castilian Spanish. Such

shared features of identity were housed in the colonial city. Although

99 This is J. H. Parry’s suggestion in The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London: Hutchinson,1966), pp. 340–41.

100 Murphy, “Peregrini,” p. 21.

230 chapter seven

the rule of the peninsular court elite was often fiercely contested in

the cities, the administrative setting was more conducive than the

frontier to their magisterial mores and lifestyles.

Conclusion

One of the methodological starting points for this book’s overall argu-

ment is that there are compelling similarities between the Atlantic

empires to justify comparison of different colonial experiences. In

this chapter, I have tried to chart roughly corresponding features of

different Euro-American colonies through a notion of the colonial

order. The colonial order is a concept with heuristic advantages. It

helps to reiterate the constantly present imperial dimension of the

historical experiences of colonies. This chapter revolves around it

and is drafted with one of the main aims of the book in mind: to

examine transcontinental empires within Atlantic modernity. A pre-

liminary conclusion is that Spanish, French and British colonies are

comparable across the northern and southern American continents.

However, further comparison is required to illustrate the tension

of imperial state formation. American colonies can also be evaluated

against the provincial and municipal order of Western Europe dis-

cussed in chapter one. A quick assessment would highlight the unique

position of the colonial order in its configured opposition to the vice-

regal apparatus. Distance between centres on the two continents con-

strained the governmental capacities of the empires’ peak bodies.

Due to this condition, the colonial order can be described in nega-

tive and positive terms; negatively due to the lack of effective impe-

rial government, positively due to the institutional autonomies that

it created or captured on its own. The institutions that it coalesced

in were in part the objectified and material expression of their

autonomous condition. Colonial cities might echo English, French

or Hispanic origins, but they also bore the mark of Americanized

colonial communities with Creole traditions. The institutions of local

self-government could be the bane of imperial officials. Unlike the

provincial and municipal order, they were not prey to the cohesion

of dense networks of patronage. Their circumstances often made

autonomous action a necessity. The form of economic relations also

endowed settler communities with societal separation. Exploitation

of the land and its resources—be it in plots, ranches, mines or plan-

tations—enriched some settlers enormously. New World wealth made


some of them formidable figures in metropolitan Europe. The unique

and specific position of the colonial order in American colonial soci-

eties enabled Creoles/settlers to develop an ambiguous relationship

with the imperial edifice. In summary, the colonial order was analo-

gous to the provincial and municipal order in Europe, but enjoyed

a distinguishing capacity for self-reliance. A great awareness of belong-

ing to the American world variously buttressed the feeling of inde-

pendence; but such sentiments competed with entrenched imperial

allegiance.

The life of colonies is not taken here in isolation from the empires

that formed and possessed them. Comparison is therefore possible

and, in fact, is highly rewarding. The comparative analysis of this

chapter has turned up the above similarities in colonial history. The

variation is equally illuminating. The cultural horizons of American

communities contrasted Hispanic forms of Creole identity such as

the neo-Aztecism of New Spain with the strong loyalism of New

French settlers in Canada’s main city centres. Low levels of immi-

gration over decades made for small and separate white communi-

ties in some places. French Canada and the Caribbean stand out in

this respect and consequently exhibit high commitments to empire.

Concentrated mixed migration to the British east coast enabled diverse

provincialisms. Imperial allegiance was always moderated by local

conditions there. Voluntary immigration did not have nearly the

same impact in the Spanish Indies due to the long-term blending of

communities. The spectrum of ethnicity formed around the inter-

changes of Spanish Americans and indio communities and through

the spread of slavery. Creole/settler cultures were also informed by

the intensity of social inequalities. Again, this fluctuated from one

set of colonies to the next; it was often most severe in places where

it was compounded by organized slavery. The final variation lies

with the different civilizational signs of foundation of colonies. Enclosure

and possession of land symbolized settlement for the English. The

ritual foundation of cities authorized the landmarks of Hispanic civ-

ilization. The establishment of forts and spread of trade signified the

advance of French civilization in North America, while in its Caribbean

possessions the oppressive apparatus of plantations incarnated its pres-

ence. These were, in a way, the possessions of the colonial order as

much as they were the institutions of the empires.

Local conditions were important as they influenced the degree of

compact and conflict between imperial and colonial leaders. The

232 chapter seven

institutional struggle over authority combined with intensified rivalry

between Europe’s empires to open up a new conjuncture. In the

Atlantic world, new states could be created by a colonial order that

set itself against the British Spanish and French empires. The next

step in my overall argument is a reconstruction of the British and

Spanish American revolutions that took place in the late eighteenth

to early nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction throws into relief

the imperial figuration of tension that produced those processes and

mark how divergent histories shaped distinctive paths of modernity

for America’s emergent republics.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WAR AND IMPERIAL RE-DIVISION BETWEEN

UTRECHT AND THE SEVEN YEARS WAR

By the mid-eighteenth century vibrant settler-colonial societies had

grown in the Spanish, French and British Atlantic empires. In places

where the tension of state formation engendered conflicts in the

American environment, those conflicts exposed the limited capacity

of imperial rule and the tenuous links of colonial patronage. On one

hand, the conflicts stoked the hesitancy of existing loyalties and

magnified American subjectivities. On the other hand, it shored up

the sense of rightful authority on the part of the personnel of state

who understood themselves to be the embodiment of empire. For

settler elites, the experiences of the remote character of the institutions

of the imperial state sat uncomfortably with their steadfast loyalties

to old world traditions. Their familiarity with colonial life and par-

tial self-administration re-confirmed their location at the perceived

‘margins’ of the Spanish, French and British empires. Yet, many colo-

nists also saw their own worlds as centers of sorts or at least saw

themselves as compatriots of a common cultural heritage in which

they had entitlements as Hispanic subjects, Frenchmen or Britons.

In the changed international climate of the late eighteenth century,

when states militarized the world-wide competition of empires, this

polarization of perceptions boosted conditions of potential rebellion.

The Atlantic empires, to varying degrees, had generated self-reg-

ulating institutions which colonists used as vehicles of partial gov-

ernment. Through these, Americans developed distinctive colonial

visions of empire. More than this, they experienced colonization as

peripheral subjects, even though they felt that they were members

of an empire who should stand on a truly equal footing with their

European counterparts. The sense of marginality was heightened by

the colonial autonomies that they held and jealously guarded. American

republican sentiments emerged as responses to experiences shared in

the colonial order of government. They aggregated Creole perspec-

tives on questions of sovereignty, legal jurisdiction, economic inter-

est and the constitutional character of empire as a whole. In the

234 chapter eight

British and Spanish empires, which are the main focus of this chap-

ter, the possibility of republican political horizons flowed out of the

institutional autonomy created by the colonial order.

Conflict within empires—competition between states

I will assume license to re-date the eighteenth century such that

analysis can commence with the 1689 constitutional reformation of

the English state and finish with the American War. With this time

frame the eighteenth century can be classed as a short century of

war.1 The transformation of governmental institutions and the devel-

opment of the philosophies of political economy were responses to

the martial climate of inter-state rivalry. Reform of the administra-

tive and mercantile structures of British, French and Spanish empires

heightened the level of conflict in the mid-late eighteenth century.

The economic relationship between the mercantile organization of

imperial economic life and the endogenous formation of colonial

economies bred opposition. Administratively, the societal distinctive-

ness of the New World was also evident in the structures of colo-

nial government. Moreover, the stakes were raised across the board

after the Treaty of Utrecht as the competition of states intensified.

Manoeuvre, intrigue and war in the interstate system had a pro-

found impact on the course of trade. Programs of ‘liberalization’

were responsive to crises that led to war. In a short eighteenth cen-

tury, wars and their resolution prompted the internal restructuring

of the protagonist states. The terms of settlement of the War of

Spanish Succession began this short century and the Seven Years

War established new conditions for trade at its end. Indeed, during

this time commercial advantages became part of the spoils of war.

Spain suffered a great deal in both conflicts. The Treaty of Utrecht

was a watershed that was Atlantic in its scope.2 In law, it established

the sovereignty of realms, finally terminating Spain’s claim to universal

monarchy after the 1493 Papal Bull. It limited France’s territorial

claims. The results were directed by British interests, which were

1 See “The Economics of War and the Politics of Peace,” in Nancy F. Koehn,The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire (Ithaca, NYand London: Cornell University Press, 1994).

2 Liss, Atlantic Empires, chap. 1.

war and imperial re-division 235

clearly perceived to be commercial and not territorial. France and

Spain’s most visible losses, however, were territorial. The resources

of the Habsburg dynasty and its energies had been extended across

six different territories. The European territories were lost to the

Austrian Habsburgs. Moreover, the strategic locations of Gibraltar

and Minorca fell to Britain. On top of this the benefits of Spanish

mercantile monopolies were curtailed by the further inroads into

Spanish trade made by the British and the loss of the asiento—the

slave monopoly in the Caribbean. The asiento was a coveted prize

that states fought fiercely for, although its monopoly properties could

not be strictly enforced. For the British, it opened up Spanish trade

in the Americas. Three decades of peace with France enabled the

British to exploit the new opportunity. In turn, France surrendered

Newfoundland, Port Royal, Hudson Bay and Nova Scotia to Britain;

more gains for the country coming out of its century of revolution.

The Bourbons claimed the Spanish throne in an important dynas-

tic coup that re-shaped the institutional arrangement of the Spanish

empire, yet they saw fit not to annex Spain outright. Although ter-

ritorial boundaries had shrunk in the aftermath of the War of Spanish

Succession, the problems of governing a vast empire remained with

its Bourbon heirs. The legacy of Habsburg rule—an exhausted trea-

sury and a battered court state—continued to limit what Madrid

could do. The parlous state of Spain’s reduced empire presented the

Bourbon regime with a challenge.

The century-long response was a strategy of modernization that

gained momentum in the 1750s. Elements of physiocratism, liberal-

ism in trade arrangements and mercantilist aggression in the exploita-

tion of resources were combined in the renewal of the state apparatus.

The Spanish Enlightenment (ilustracion) was the creed of the new cen-

tralism. Within this ideology, reform itself was legitimized. The author-

ity of the state could no longer rest on appeals to virtue. It had to

justify itself on the grounds of interests served rather than honour.

This introduced a new tension between the legitimation of dynastic

continuity and the encouragement of individual subjects to pursue

material gain. In policy, the regime shared its sincere commitment

to the goal of private prosperity, while at the same time overseeing

debates about the national interest between the ilustrados and the

functionaries of state.3 Modernity came after a fashion with Spain’s

3 Perez-Diaz, “State and Public Sphere,” pp. 253–55.

236 chapter eight

new dynasty. But it was restricted to a rationality of outlook amongst

new officials and the rationalizing measures that they introduced.

Spain’s cities were not greatly effected, even less so the rural worlds

of the majority of Spaniards. Spain’s state was its most modern sector.

Thus the main result between 1715 and the Seven Years War was

economic and administrative stabilization.

For Britain, aside from strategic gains, the terms of Utrecht brought

the conditions of further institutional innovation. The potential was

realized. A new institutional hegemony emerged under Walpole.

Where colonial interests did not conflict openly with British ones,

the colonies were left to govern unrestrained. However, in the 1740s

the existing instruments of imperial supervision were applied more

and more.4 Governors in a number of colonies were under siege

from local assemblies.5 At the conclusion of King George’s War in

1748, the Board of Trade adopted a renewed zeal for reforming

supervision arrangements. Officials on the Board and in related bod-

ies were increasingly influenced by the growth of political economy

in the 1750s.6 It was an applied social science, done by specialized

practitioners, rather than as an adjunct to business or public service.

Careful attention to the interests of Britain’s empire and its colonies

was a central tenet of the new kind of thinking. British political econ-

omy was becoming the paradigm of imperial policy and its grip on

British statesmen would grow during the war with France.

The Seven Years War was a watershed in re-shaping the balance

of Western European states. It was the first modern intercontinen-

tal war.7 Moreover, it had a cold war phase during which the French

and the British regarded each other with mutual suspicion.8 The

results were telling. The Spanish gained and lost; mostly, they lost.

4 Greene, Peripheries and Centers, pp. 49–51.5 Greene, Negotiated Authorities, pp. 71–75.6 Koehn, The Power of Commerce, pp. 19–22.7 The finest skills in mapmaking at this time were deployed in the manoeuvres

leading up to the war and in the subsequent conflagration. See Margaret BeckPritchard, “Claiming the Land,” in Pritchard and Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude.

8 Each government felt that the other harbored territorial ambitions in bothNorth America and north-western Europe. In Europe, the settlement of the Warof Austrian Succession satisfied neither party to the Treaty of the Aix-La-Chapelle.In America, past conflicts and skirmishes in which alliances with Indian nationswere mobilized to defend strategic posts had left issues of colonial possession unre-solved. New France’s borders in 1755 were still in dispute. Frank W. Brecher, Losinga Continent: France’s North American Policy 1753–1763 (London: Greenwood Press, 1998).


They gained Louisiana and Havana thereby enlarging their sphere

of slave-based production. However, with the loss of Florida, Spain

was in a weaker position on both continents on either side of the

Atlantic. Britain was unambiguously the victor in the war and in the

peace. Immediately, the Grenville Government was able to withdraw

from the European theatre and concentrate its energies on the trans-

continental empire. Its administration turned to four problems of

governing that crystallized in the post-war settlement:9

a) Ensuring that the alliances made with the Indian nations could be

managed without provoking conflict with the ambitions of colonists;

b) Restructuring the imperial apparatus to bring greater uniformity

in government. Coordination of different jurisdictions in the empire

could replace overlapping spheres of responsibility, or so it was

hoped;

c) Maintenance and even extension of defence forces capable of resist-

ing France and Spain’s counterparts;

d) Transfer of the costs of empire onto the colonies.

This reflected a shift in the disposition towards the English colonists.

Imperial administration in France and Spain adopted fresh postures

too. But, the unease between imperial administrators and colonial

society went deeper in British North America than it did in the

Spanish Indies or in the French Caribbean. It was most evident in

three areas: the application of the Navigation Acts, the collision of

expectations held by imperial and colonial authorities and in con-

stitutional theory. Each is dealt with below.

It was at the administrative summits of the Thirteen Colonies that

the unease was most conspicuous. Ownership and wealth had become

more concentrated in North American colonial society at this time.10

The enrichment of a settler-colonial capitalist class brought greater

competition between American and British merchants. However,

rivalry was confined to American markets.11 The only avenues for

export were through the imperial system of mercantilist regulations,

narrowing the options available to many American merchants. The

9 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 245–307.10 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, p. 196. On the enrichment of the

British North Americas after the Seven Years War, see also Blackburn, The Makingof Colonial Slavery, pp. 376–79 and Braudel, The Perspective of the World, p. 406.

11 Braudel, The Perspective of the World, pp. 409–11.

238 chapter eight

Navigation Acts regulated colonial shipping. They were made and

maintained by Parliament, a body whose authority was controversial

in the eyes of colonists right from the beginning of the eighteenth

century.12 The monopoly on credit was maintained by London. Trade

was centralized through the Board of Trade which since the settle-

ment at Utrecht had sought even closer supervision of colonial affairs.13

Such measures found their counterparts in Spain and France’s

American empires. But the British confronted more robust and densely

populated communities. British America’s prosperity flowed out of

the ongoing conquest of territory.

The Board of Trade, with government support, sought to apply

the Navigation Acts with even greater vigour after 1763. The effects

of mercantile regulation varied from one American city to another

and within cities too. The many competing merchant interests can

be distinguished by their relationship to the mercantile regime. For

some, the link with Britain offered prosperity and stability, or at least

seemed to, even after the War of Independence.14 London’s Navigation

Acts effected various sectors of the colonial economy in different

ways. The southern colonies in North America, in particular, seem

to have suffered lost export opportunities under the mercantilist

regime, which may partly explain southern support for the revolu-

tion.15 Consequently, the application of the Navigation Acts provoked

mixed reactions from northern merchant classes and the plantation-

based south. During the eighteenth century, many market districts

had been linked into the network of the imperial economy. New

York’s merchant class is a major example. However, the growth of

colonial capital magnified the degree of British regulation of the

American economy. Prior to the second half of the eighteenth cen-

tury, economic competition between wealthy colonial and British

merchants could only occur within certain limits, due to the influence

of the latter in the legislation of mercantilism. More energetic com-

petition precipitated an even greater number of legal regulations in

the instructions sent from London. Britain’s response in this period

12 Marshall, The Eighteenth Century.13 See Greene, Peripheries and Centers, p. 46.14 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, pp. 197–99.15 “Curiously, it was in the state with most slaves—Virginia—that the aristocracy

was most favourable to the Whigs, that is to the revolution, whose success it prob-ably ensured.” (Braudel, The Perspective of the World, pp. 408–409)


of crisis was intended to sustain its beneficial commerce with the

colonies. However, it was not just the increased volume of regulations

that made the Board of Trade’s regulatory regime an issue. A qual-

itative shift in the awareness of regulation accompanied the upsurge

in the amount of trade itself. Greater competition made the imperial

export economy more visible for British and colonial merchants alike.

The historical conditions of colonial economic activity illustrate

the tension in the imperial constitution of the American economy

and its growing colonial markets. It was also the case that mercan-

tile regulation helped in the formation of the colonies’ internal mar-

ket economies. There were market communities clustered around the

bottlenecks of American exports that were part of the official export

sector and which looked favourably upon imperial connections.

Merchants in Plymouth and Boston may have contested mercantile

controls silently by evading them, but their New York counter-parts,

and others besides, championed them. Overall, the mercantile reaction

after 1763 was, in part, a measure of increased competition and of

the greater leverage that colonists had within the imperial economy.

Yet, its impact varied significantly. The changing systems of taxation

and regulation fuelled the separation within the colonies between

those who profited, or at least thought that they did, from the con-

nection with London, and those who felt otherwise.16 Moreover, it

deepened the standoff between colonial assemblies and governors

who supported mercantilism.

Britain’s mid-century wars set the expectations of colonists at a

distance from metropolitan goals.17 Perceptions and expectations

diverged even more emphatically in the British colonies in the wake

of the Treaty of Paris and the Stamp Act. The British gained Canada

as its spoils. This brought relief to English settlers keen to gain

more land and it raised their expectations of enrichment. Already

imbued with the culture of frontier economy, they thought that they

could reasonably expect a further aperture of the colonies’ western

16 Partiality towards the sugar and tobacco-producing islands of the Caribbeanhad been evident since Walpole’s ascendancy. According to Greene, where therewas a clash between corporate interests in Britain and colonial interests, the for-mer would invariably hold sway over Parliament. This intensified after the SevenYears War. See Negotiated Authorities, pp. 62–67.

17 John Shy, “The American Colonies in War and Revolution 1748–1783,” inMarshall, The Eighteenth Century.

240 chapter eight

boundaries.18 The end of the Seven Years War might bring new

wealth and a concomitant relaxation of the economic constraints

inherent in mercantilism, or at least a return to the 1756 status quoante. Behind this was a colonial impression of what the Empire was,

or should be.19 The societies and institutions that colonists had devel-

oped were the political right, almost the property, of the colonial

order. Taxation was the privilege of their assemblies only. In the

eyes of British Americans, defence of the colonies was their respon-

sibility up until that stage and there were few compelling reasons

for that arrangement to change.

In London, the view of the 1763 Treaty reflected a very different

impression. The chief considerations were strategic and extended

over all of Britain’s imperial concerns.20 The Treaty presented an

opportunity to prune the financially stressed empire and its military

forces. Metropolitan intervention in colonial affairs could be reasserted.

There was, moreover, a growing perception that different parts of

the empire should be firmly connected.21 An overarching imperial

body could forge links between eastern and western possessions. A

new and broad imperial agenda was set to serve the overall needs

of Britain’s far-flung territories, or at least that was the way that the

new situation was understood in London.

Developments after 1763 favoured London’s ambitions. Expectations

had differed substantially in the Thirteen Colonies on three burning

issues. Going unfulfilled, they remained a source of antagonism for

frontier settlers. Firstly, the potential of the territories in the northwest

was denied to the colonists in the re-division of Ohio. The Royal

Proclamation saved the Ohio Valley for its original inhabitants, an

area envied by fur trappers, land speculators and other settlers.22

The decision to set the region aside was guided by a view that this

was a kind of ‘no-man’s land’ due to the absence of a legal claim

to it. In this instance, imperial administrators thought it their duty

18 H. V. Bowen, Elites, pp. 185–93.19 Eliza H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the

American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North CarolinaPress, 2000), chap. 4.

20 Mancke, “Negotiating an Empire,” in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires.21 H. V. Bowen, Elites, pp. 174–78.22 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in

British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), chaps. 54 and59. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, pp. 14–16.


to act with benevolence towards the indigenous nations rather than

in protection of the colonists’ interests.23 Secondly, the benefits of

Canadian markets were largely reserved for British merchants. The

reconstructed empire had closed off the areas to the north and north-

east desired by ambitious settlers. Finally, and most famously, London

instituted the imperial prerogative to tax the colonies for their share

of imperial administration and introduced a series of new taxes and

further regulatory laws.

Divergence of opinion was not confined to the Treaty. Constitutional

arguments grew.24 The parliamentary majority interpreted the rela-

tionship with the colonies through the prism of the domestic con-

stitution. However, the lack of constitutional direction on the place

of the colonies left great latitude for interpretation on the part of

the imperial and parliamentary elite. The central dispute in parlia-

mentary debates concerned whether the colonies were acquired by

conquest or settled outright. Since the turn of the eighteenth century,

the metropolitan view had declared that the colonies were dependent

on the Empire and should remain that way.25 The question was still

unresolved for the British government in the 1760s and confusion

reigned amongst competing imperial authorities. Parliament, the

King’s ministers and the Privy Council each entertained different

interpretations.26 In addition, it was clear to some that Britain sus-

tained separate set of interests for its American territories and another

set for its enterprises in Africa and Asia. Others added their voices

to the debate by arguing for an out-and-out integration of the

Empire.27 When it came to North America, Grenville as government

leader was himself unambiguous about the prerogative of the monar-

chy, as he was also about his directions to the governors. As far as

he and the Cabinet were concerned, there was no middle ground

when it came to the constitutional sovereignty of the empire: impe-

rial sovereignty reigned over that claimed by the colonial assemblies.

This meant that the status of the colonies could be constitutionally

remodelled to keep the powers of the assemblies in check.

23 Gould, The Persistence of Empire, pp. 59–61.24 Liss, Atlantic Empires, pp. 23–24.25 Greene, Negotiated Authorities, pp. 56–60.26 Greene, Peripheries and Center, chap. 2.27 T. H. Bowen, “British Conceptions,” pp. 16–19.

242 chapter eight

Debate was not confined to parliament and the ministerial offices

of the government. A groundswell of public concern informed fac-

tional alignments within the government. Ambivalence about victory

in the war and generalized anxiety about imperial rule underpinned

public divisions that were, in turn, reflected in government circles.28

On the whole, Britons had expected enhanced prosperity and terri-

torial gains from the war. Disappointment with the Peace of Paris

fuelled pressure for the cost of the war to be shared with the American

colonies. The war gave Britain a sense of global supremacy and, to

be sure, its imperial reach was unprecedented. The extension of its

rule was new and did not stack up against prevailing conceptions of

a limited and moral dominion. Many worried that the empire was

over-stretched and good deal of public insecurity was channelled into

disputes about the national budget. Constitutional and institutional

reform set a new direction, although it did not quell the debate

either in government or amongst the public. On balance, the weight

of active public constituencies fell behind those who wanted a heavy

handed and interventionist approach to the empire, even though this

may not have amounted to full endorsement.

In contrast, American views on constitutional arrangements were

based on what was perceived as the enduring rights of Britons under

the ancient constitution. Any perceived encroachment on them was

ranked metropolitan despotism. Such complaints were reminiscent of

seventeenth-century expressions of disquiet, which had also concerned

fiscal matters and liberties. Around the time of the 1660 Restoration

and the 1688 Revolution, Anglo-Americans had deliberated on their

status as provincials. They considered themselves English and viewed

events in Britain as critical to the development of the colonies. Anglo-

Americans accustomed to the constitutional notions of natural right

and Common Law precedent saw in their own institutions, customs

and historical practices a part of an undeclared imperial constitution

in which the relationship was cast differently. Throughout the eigh-

teenth century, colonists had sought a ‘regular’ constitution from

London.29 They were steadfast in the point of departure with metro-

28 Koehn, The Power of Commerce, chap. 5. Comparisons with the fate of Romewere symptomatic of imperial ambivalence. Gibbon was prompted to start his famousmagnum opus on the rise and decline of the Roman Empire only a year after thePeace of Paris.

29 Greene, Peripheries and Center, chap. 3.


politan authorities: they were English and therefore governed their

own affairs by right. Their perceptions sharpened after the Seven Years

War. The growth of the colonies conferred a sense that their status

was also growing. This seemed to them to be historically confirmed

in their internal tax regime, which had never been challenged by

parliament or the Crown. In the wake of the expensive war with

France, it was under threat from taxes imposed from without that

might over-run the fiscal capacities of colonial society. This appeared

to Americans as fundamental and constitutional as the question of

whether they could be taxed without parliamentary representation

seemed to go to the foundation of their societies.30

The conflict of interests in the British Empire became more appar-

ent in what Immanuel Wallerstein calls a decade “of acceleration of

conflict, or raising of the decibels.”31 This did not merely raise the

stakes in political debate within the colonies; it also led to more

intense actions on the part of colonists against the empire. The agents

of the British Empire, and indeed the colonists themselves, were dri-

ven to opposing poles. Politics developed a gruff, high-pitched rhetoric

that set republicans and loyalists at an even greater distance from

one another. Millennialism added to the shrill pitch of debate.32

The 1763 Treaty exemplified the tensions that were intrinsic to

the imperial state. The Treaty moved British statesmen to pursue in

full an oceanic empire.33 However, colonists imagined that they would

acquire more land. Their vision was one of a territorial empire, their

own lands that were separate from the British imperium, which was

30 Ibid., chap. 5.31 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, p. 203.32 Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought 1756–1800

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Causeof Liberty, Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1977); Liss, Atlantic Empires, pp. 43–45. But see also MelvinB. Endy, “Just War, Holy War,” William and Mary Quarterly 42 (1 January 1985):3–25. Endy argues that clerical support for the Revolution was couched in theworldly terms of a ‘just war’ rather than a strictly millennial language of a holycrusade. On the place of the so-called enthusiasts as a current in the revolutionarymovement that was separate from Whig influence, see David S. Lovejoy, ReligiousEnthusiasm in the New World: Heresy to Revolution (Cambridge MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1985), chap. 11.

33 Mancke, “Negotiating an Empire, in Daniels Kennedy, Negotiated Empires. Butcompare with T. H. Bowen, “British Conceptions,” who argues that the logic ofimperial expansion led to a territorial empire spanning diverse regions of the world.In his view, the orientation of British statesmen from Pitt onwards was to a globalterritorial empire.

244 chapter eight

oceanic and stopped at the shores of North America. This collision

of plans and hopes had longer-term roots in the structure and direc-

tion of the British imperial state. Indeed there were portents of impe-

rial restructuring in pre-1756 initiatives.34 The 1750 Iron Act, 1752

Currency Act and the ordinance that royal governors in the colonies

were responsible to the Board of Trade were intended to check the

influence of colonial legislatures. However, with the Treaty of Paris

those tensions became tangible in London’s re-conception of the

Empire. Of course, Britain’s American empire was still at the peak

of its prosperity. Growth in British American trade, in British manu-

facturing and in British exports of capital was a sign of its eco-

nomic ascendancy.35 But this success did little to diminish colonial

divisions; in fact it may have exacerbated them. It was becoming

more apparent to the government in London that colonial privileges

and indemnities did not serve its interests. International competition

of a military and economic nature, and opposition in the Thirteen

Colonies acted on the process by which decisions were made. The

1760s decade of accelerated conflict found its crucible in the North

Americas.

Bourbon determination to restore Spain to its former position crys-

tallized at this time, in this context. Early proposals only addressed

matters of reorganizing the top administrative apparatus, the navy

and imperial commerce.36 They aimed to reduce the breadth of

Spanish imperial responsibility, relieving it of financial and military

burdens.37 It was an attempt to increase metropolitan control over

the spheres of regulation of colonial administration, communications,

transportation, production and distribution. In the Americas, the

imperial project of re-centralization was applied to already-consoli-

dated viceregal jurisdictions in which municipal and judicial autonomies

had some lingering vitality and constituted a sphere of Creole admin-

34 Liss, Atlantic Empires, pp. 15–16.35 Engerman, “Mercantilism and Overseas Trade 1700–1800,” in Flood and

McCloskey, The Economic History of Britain.36 Liss, Atlantic Empires, p. 48.37 Jacques Barbier poses administrative expansion and commercial liberalization

at the end of the eighteenth century as a continuation of patterns of state forma-tion in the Indies. They represented continuity insomuch as they maintained Americandependence on Spanish if not European markets. In this sense they were not rad-ical innovations. See “The Culmination of the Bourbon Reforms” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 57, no. 1 (1977). On the content of the reforms, see Veliz, TheCentralist Tradition, pp. 79–83.


istration. The formation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1739

and then the Viceroyalty of La Plata in 1776 streamlined those juris-

dictions and were recognition of new economic and political realities.

It was also a move to diminish the influence of the Creole-dominated

audiencia in Lima. Inadvertently, this stoked merchant and adminis-

trative elites in Buenos Aires. Thus, the assertive regulationist prin-

ciples of the absolutist Spanish empire were slightly offset by informal

colonial rule, the mercantile economy and colonial black markets.

Madrid’s institutional overhaul addressed colonial autonomy in the

Americas. The centrepiece of reform in Spain was a system of inten-

dancy.38 Salaried bureaucrats answered to Secretariats of State, Treasury

Justice, the military and Navy and the Indies. The reforms took hold

in Spain, but were delayed in the Americas. Division within gov-

ernment in Madrid stymied the introduction of intendants into the

American viceroyalties until the 1780s. In the 1760s a crucial step was

taken. Bourbon minister and ideologue Jose de Campillo had con-

ceived a program of reform that included the visita general (inspection)

and the appointment of regional intendants with sweeping powers.

A number of visitations occurred in the 1760s. The vistadores seized

the authority to implement immediate changes, swinging the balance

of decision-making towards the Crown’s agents. But the problem of

controlling the viceregal apparatus and exerting authority over the

institutions of the colonial order remained. Until the 1760s, there

were too many senior peninsular officials who lived off the repar-timiento de comercio. Unable to scrap the corruption, Spain’s govern-

ment demanded that traded goods be priced and that tariffs on those

goods be collected by paid officials, of course, even though this met

with only limited success.

38 These comments draw on Brading’s “Bourbon Spain and its American Empire,”in Bethell, The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, pp. 394–409; Liss, AtlanticEmpires, pp. 55–58; John Lynch, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence,”in Bethell, The Cambridge History of Latin America; and McLachlan, Spain’s Empire inthe New World, pp. 90–91. In the case of colonial Mexico, eighteenth century Bourbonreform brought a reversal of the bureaucratization of colonial offices. The empireabandoned the principle of salaried payment of district magistrates—the alcaldes may-ores and the corregidores—and converted their office into an unpaid one. Previously,the pay had been poor. Now, the magistrates were dependent on trade in the repar-timiento economy or on “the meagre fruits of justice.” As a result office holdersbegan to perceive their offices as personal prebends. See David A. Brading,“Government and Elite in Late Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review53 (1973).

246 chapter eight

One fruitful outcome of the Bourbon strategy was the salaried

appointment of officials to lower levels of administration. The pay-

ment of a salary to the alcabalas (who administered treasury collec-

tion and transportation) spread between the 1750s and 1770s

throughout Mexico and Peru. Squads of armed guards were a sign

of their growing prestige; figures who were also on the viceregal pay-

roll. The reorganization produced a marked improvement in impe-

rial finances. Reform therefore demarcated peninsular elites who

identified themselves more directly with the court state and whose

fortunes were less dependent on the networks of exchange in the large

cities and their surrounding catchment areas. Increasingly, military

men accustomed to a chain of command were appointed.39 Where

the repartimiento had encouraged officials to entrench themselves in a

local economy, salaried income combined with fiscal measures tied

to exports linked them with trade activity.

Ideology also separated the Bourbon-cultivated elites from the colo-

nial order. A perception of rationality derived from the Spanish ilus-tracion guided innovation. Meanwhile, those same innovations were

viewed more and more by Creole leaders as incursions on local

autonomy. The judicial language of the empire’s constitution spoken

by Bourbon ministers betrayed a different attitude to the Americas.

Creole-Americans had grown accustomed to thinking of themselves

as part of a transatlantic empire, the ‘Universal Monarchy’. Spanish

officials spoke increasingly and incessantly of an empire now divested

of its European territories, as divided between the ‘metropolis’ and

the ‘colonies’. The ideological and linguistic shift was important, espe-

cially given the purposeful and programmatic character of the Bourbon

interlude in Spain’s imperial state building.

The program of reforms was a response to two coextensive devel-

opments. Firstly, the increase in the seemingly ubiquitous contra-

band trade in the Americas and the more vociferous presence of

Creole interests in colonial institutions formed the context in which

the reforms appeared necessary. The final return on intra-imperial

trade was consistently and severely cut by the repartimiento and smug-

gling. Forging a layer of supra-provincial officials attacked the repar-timiento head on. It also introduced an additional stratum of overseers

into colonial society.

39 McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, pp. 96–97.


Secondly, increased inter-imperial competition weakened Spain,

opening the Atlantic seaboard to British and French monopolies.

Bourbon Spain could have responded by shoring up its mercantilist

trade. But, the growth of contraband trading had undermined its

mercantile regulations for much of the century. Caught between the

strain placed on the mercantile economy by smuggling and pressure

from the British to unshackle inter-imperial trade, Madrid elected to

loosen its relationship to its possessions. Colonial commerce was

opened up in 1765 as part of a program to remove the incentives

of the black market.40 The liberalization of trade and the opening

of ports to intra-colonial commerce were generally opposed by mer-

chants in the Americas who had benefited from the pre-Caroline

monopoly on trade and profited from smuggling. Cadiz and Seville

lost their monopoly status in 1765 and Spanish ports were permit-

ted open communication with each other and the American colonies.

Subsequently the pace of trade accelerated for the colonies; between

1778 and 1788 one estimate suggests that the sum of Spanish American

exports increased by seven hundred percent.41 So why did the break-

down in monopolized trade lead to opposition? Monopoly had united

the different provinces of the empire with Madrid and it provided

economic security and even a spur to development. The renewal of

commercial restrictions reflected a new perception amongst court

state officials. The colonies were now vibrant economic entities in

and of themselves. Nonetheless, their purpose had not changed. In

1778 Gaspar de Jovellanos expressed this view well: “Colonies are

useful in so far as they offer a secure market for the surplus pro-

duction of the metropolis.”42

A further innovation—the creation of joint-stock companies—was

a source of greater antagonism between peninsular and Creole com-

munities in the Americas.43 Joint-stock companies replaced the mer-

cantile firms that had dominated monopoly trade in Seville and

Cadiz. They were not new monopolies, but privileged firms. Tax

concessions gave them an exercisable advantage in the first half of

the eighteenth century. Some monopoly companies continued to exist,

40 Veliz, The Centralist Tradition, pp. 129–35; and Herr, Spain, p. 61.41 McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, p. 93.42 Cited in Lynch, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence,” in Bethell,

The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, p. 15.43 Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire, pp. 338–40.

248 chapter eight

but their operations faltered. Joint stock companies adapted to chang-

ing regulations more readily. Of course, both the regulations and the

companies were intended to be vehicles of supervision for the court

state. They played a far greater role in colonial life than the Habsburg

monopolies and their personnel gradually gained a substantial place

in colonial administration, even in institutions that were relatively

independent. Their weight in the economic hinterlands was a mark

of peninsular influence and a source of growing Creole resentment,

even while trade with other colonies was bringing material benefits.

The chosen strategy of the Bourbons for the reconsolidation of

the Atlantic empire was a particular form of centralism designed

around the expansion of monarchical bureaucracy. Apart from the

restructuring of the imperial court apparatus, Madrid attempted to

significantly alter the composition of colonial government personnel.

The appointment of Creole and even indigenous servants to magis-

terial office was fairly common. This trend continued during the

early Bourbon years, until Charles III instituted the program of recen-

tralization in the 1760s. Filling colonial offices with peninsular per-

sonnel displaced some Creole and native civil servants and barred

other aspirants to higher office. Their traditional paths to govern-

ment were increasingly blocked; the purchase of offices became a

less common practice and their appointment to the positions of inten-dencia and oidor rare.44

Redirection of the empire in the second half of the eighteenth

century brought to light the partial exclusion of Creoles. Increased

centralization of administrative decisions and the displacement of

Creole administrators were designed to tighten a flagging imperial

economy. Within a given set of parameters, these measures could

be regarded as successful. Re-centralization, the lynchpin of liberal

reform, provoked the opposition of Creole officials whose political

position was weakened by the formation of an intendant apparatus

staffed chiefly by Europeans. Re-centralization provoked greater eth-

nic rivalry between Creoles and peninsulares that impacted on all: mer-

chants, traders, ecclesiastics, lawyers, judges, rulers.

Comparison of imperial re-division in the British and Spanish

Americas at this point can throw light on critical differences. The

imperial resurgence in the British Empire was, in important ways,

44 Leon Campbell, “A Colonial Establishment,” pp. 18–19.


characterized by different results. In British North America, the post-

1763 reforms galvanized pre-existing tensions, but in a new context.

The strategic and economic importance of the Thirteen Colonies

increased after the Seven Years War. This was recognized, after the

fall of Pitt, in the Grenville reforms.45 The opposition in the Thirteen

Colonies to more active imperial intervention was unmistakably more

differentiated than in the Indies. Consequently, colonial institutions

of legislative authority struggled to maintain their purchase on their

powerful and autonomous institutions, while London attempted to

shape a program of recentralization.

By contrast, the corresponding process in the Spanish Indies mar-

ginalized Creole-dominated colonial influence and opposition and

strengthened the peninsular-dominated court state apparatus in the

viceroyalties themselves. It advanced the court state’s authority through

direct institutional reform and innovation. What prompted Madrid

to pursue this path of recentralization was its inability to control

colonial production and trade and its declining position in the inter-

state system. Reform was therefore a product of relative demise,

rather than ascendancy.

Britain’s position in the global competition of European empires

after the Seven Years War was one of unprecedented strength. With

Britain soaring and Spain in decline, the respective economic for-

tunes of the two empires followed suit.46 Britain continued to benefit

greatly from its mercantile institutions. Conversely, Spanish America

was beginning to prove costly for Madrid. The American possessions

drove an expansion of an expensive administration at a time when

the profits of mercantile privileges were falling, even though the level

of trade clearly wasn’t.47 The fate of transatlantic empires in the mid-

late eighteenth century period rested with the success each had in

trying to forge new institutions that could maintain the pattern of

power in changing circumstances.

45 Tucker and Hendrickson, The Fall of the First British Empire, pp. 109–14.46 John Lynch, “British Policy and Spanish America 1783–1808,” Journal of Latin

American Studies 1, no. 1 (1969).47 Jacques Barbier outlines the effects of the decline of Spanish mercantilism in

“Peninsular Finance and Colonial Trade: The Dilemma of Charles IV’s Spain,”Journal of Latin American Studies 12, no. 1 (1980).

250 chapter eight

Conclusion

An emphasis falls in this short chapter on international pressures on

the Euro-American empires and how the rivalry of states impacted

upon the tension of imperial state formation. The principal purpose

in these pages is to set out how the tensions of empire were made

tangible through the clash of post-war aspirations in British and

Spanish America. In the re-aligned international context, the lack of

harmony between metropolitan intentions and colonial demands and

actions echoed in opposing perspectives on how Empire should be

configured. Republican decampment did not appear inevitable to

anyone embroiled in the political turmoil of the late eighteenth cen-

tury.48 But the shape of a colonial order that the imperial apparatus

confronted was more defined. It held vital instruments of adminis-

tration in Anglo-American and was resurgent in the Spanish-American

viceroyalties. Meanwhile, the institutional contours of London and

Madrid’s overarching structures were re-structured as part of re-

visioned programs of state-building. The growth of the colonial order

drew responses from reform minded imperial statesmen and the pro-

grams of reform were intended to tackle its institutional powers head

on. But the latter were more alert than ever to the interests of com-

petitors. This became a recipe for collision. The next chapter steps

aside from the international focus. I proceed on to examine the

American Revolution and the rise of Latin American republics The

next stage in this comparative analysis has a separate purpose: to

explore their contexts and historical significance.

48 In contrast, Marc Egnal argues that in the British North American colonies afaction of the upper class committed to expansionist development crystallized wellbefore 1763. Its patriotic determination was a critical force in the logic of revolu-tionary transformation in the North. See A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the AmericanRevolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

CHAPTER NINE

‘RAISING THE DECIBELS’:

REPUBLICAN REVOLUTIONS OF THE

COLONIAL ORDER

How republican states emerged and how they varied with one another

is the topic of this chapter. From the War of Spanish Succession

through to the end of the Napoleonic adventure, Western states were

engaged in fierce world-wide rivalry. International relations in the

Atlantic zone between extended polities conditioned the extent to

which colonial communities could govern themselves. The discussion

now focuses on the contexts of politics in the British and Spanish

Americas and the transformation of the social and economic struc-

tures that sustained modern republican traditions. This breaks down

into two problematics. Firstly, subjectivities cultivated in the New

World underscored competing imperial and republican loyalties. All

political coalitions depended on shared experiences of life in the

Americas. But ultimately, different commitments were made volun-

tarily and it is difficult to explain the development of a rich spec-

trum of opinion solely by reference to colonial subjectivity. The

pattern of pro-empire and pro-republican allegiance is dealt with

under the headings of proto-nationalism and the colonial condition.

Secondly, I consider the relationship of social and economic condi-

tions to civic and political traditions that were in the process of form-

ing in the late eighteenth century. Two sub-themes organize this part

of the chapter. Colonial public spheres emerged and were the sites

of republican traditions. None were a tabula rasa and existing polit-

ical alignments weighed on Anglo and Spanish American minds.

However, in the Spanish case, ethnic stratification of colonial com-

munities intersected with other social, economic and political divi-

sions to limit the horizon of political possibility. A final discussion

of the character and content of the revolutions of the Anglo and

Hispanic American colonial order arises from this.

Little is said about French America. Nor is the Caribbean area a

large part of the picture. This book stops at the 1820s. Canada’s

independence still had some time to wait, although the regroupment

252 chapter nine

of the British American Empire around possessions in the Caribbean

and the acquisition of Canada deserves a pause for reflection. Also,

colonies of the British and the French Antilles were held long after

the rest of America left the imperial fold. Any far-reaching expla-

nations of republican departures from the Atlantic empires must

acknowledge the fact that Canada was reformed as a British colony

and that the Caribbean colonies were not overthrown. The spec-

tacular exception is Haiti and there is a section on that revolt. Its

roots in local conditions and in Jacobin republicanism are discussed

against a backdrop of the shifting philosophy of empire before and

after the French Revolution. Otherwise, the French case is not as

prominent in these passages.

Proto-nationalism and the tension of state formation

The crystallization of opposing loyalties in the colonies has been

interpreted as the portents of nationalist causes waiting to emerge.

Conventional historiographic wisdom on the wars of Latin American

independence and the 1776 Revolution has been influenced by nine-

teenth century national histories.1 They explain imperial disintegra-

tion by reference primarily to the rise of nationalism as a driving-force

of independence. The presumption that the movements for inde-

pendence were nationalist has rested at the core of long-standing

historiographic explanation. This section examines the implications

of nationalist historiography and proposes a more theoretically nuanced

view. Following Eric Hobsbawn’s notion of proto-nationalism, the

current argument aims to set colonial political divisions in historical

perspective in order to highlight the limited effect nationalist senti-

ments had. This prepares the ground for a later analysis of the char-

acter of the revolutions of independence can begin.

On the face of it, there seems to be good reasons why explana-

tion of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revolutions should

1 Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 22–23, 277–80. On Latin American his-toriography, see Joseph A. Barager, “The Historiography of the Rio de La Plataarea since 1830,” Hispanic American Historical Review 39, no. 1 (1959). See also vol.40 of the same journal for a series of surveys of regional historiography. For a bib-liographical review of literature on the early nineteenth century revolutions, seeRobert Humphreys, “The Historiography of the Spanish American Revolution,”Hispanic American Historical Review 36, no. 1 (1956).

republican revolutions of the colonial order 253

hinge on nationalism. The articulation of nationalist ideas expressed

the consolidation of notions of independence in the revolutionary

period. However, the assumption that independence in the Americas

was fired by nationalism is too imprecise and one-sided.2 The social,

economic and cultural conditions that characterized the spread of

nationalist sentiment in the old world in the second half of the nine-

teenth century did not have exact American equivalents at this time.

Governed as they were by distant metropolitan elites, Americans pro-

jected distinct and indeed competing loyalties not easily subsumed

under the heading of nationalism. Many historians have re-evalu-

ated old world nationalism. It is now described as a mass phenom-

enon of the last two centuries to distinguish it from the identification

of the elites of state with the central monarchy.3 Nationalism is seen

as the form of mass identity of national communities in order to

delineate it with any theoretical clarity from antecedent complexes

of understanding and identity.

2 American historians began to utilize a new language to describe the events andpolitics of the eighteenth century in the 1970s. In her historiography, Linda Kerbercharts this shift by linking it with the context of contemporary events that indi-rectly inform the language of recent historical scholarship in the US:

A new label has been devised in the last decade; the modest phrase ‘earlyrepublic’ is not much more descriptive, but it is richer in nuance. Aggressivenationalism has come to seem somewhat less important to an understandingof the early American political system than does then widely shared sense thatAmericans were engaged in a republican experiment. Substitution of ‘republi-can’ for ‘national’ in the historians’ lexicon may have had some relationshipto a growing distaste, among people writing in the midst of the Vietnam conflict,for nationalism as a non-perjorative explanatory device. But it also owes muchto an enlarged sensitivity to and respect for words as carriers of culture, andto a respect for ideology as an authentic expression of political situation andcultural condition. (“The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation,”American Quarterly 37, no. 4 [1985]: 474)

3 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities; Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and SocialCommunication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1966); Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism. Francois-Xaviar Guerra charts a coursebetween Anthony Smith’s thesis of the primordial impulse of nationalism andAnderson’s hyper-modernity of nationalism with a notion of the nation as imagi-nary. See Modernidad e Independencias. This argument has some affinity with ShmuelEisenstadt’s sociological assessment of the debate on nationalism. Eisenstadt marksout a third perspective between primordialist and modernist positions and empha-sizes factors of trust, solidarity and the social construction of boundaries betweengroups. In the era of nation state, these affinities are articulated into nationalist ver-sions of collectivitism. See “The Construction of Collective Identities in Latin America:Beyond the European Nation-State Model,” in Roniger and Sznajder, ConstructingCollective Identities.

254 chapter nine

In the American context, the politics of independence addressed

a terrain of imperial and colonial loyalties and identities. Contestatory

national identities were, in a sense, present. Indeed, they can be

characterized as the ‘proto-national bonds’ of consociation, the basis

of ‘popular proto-nationalism’. This is the working notion of Eric

Hobsbawn’s theory of nationalism. His departure from the conven-

tional historiography of nationalism rests on the proposition that eth-

nicity does not form the sole basis of nationalist sentiment. Nationalist

movements mobilize and transform pre-existing ethnic loyalties as

well as other traditions (such as language and religion).4 Ethnicity

was one of “certain variants of feelings of collective belonging which

already existed and which could operate . . . on the macro-political

scale.”5 However, conflating proto-national bonds with macro-polit-

ical mass nationalisms of nineteenth century Europe is conceptually

misleading. In Hispanic America, nationalism was not clearly formed

and articulated in the early nineteenth century. It was only well after

the revolutions of independence had occurred that mass nationalism

found fertile ground in the new Latin American republics.6 In the

British north, national identity was more significant. Yet, in the post-

revolutionary period, the important questions issue from the conflict

between a range of republican and federalist visions of government.

Strictly speaking, it was debates over the constitution and different

plans for a federal polity that defined politics after the revolution.

While a national form did take shape, the ubiquitous nationalism of

socio-culturally coherent national communities did not take root in

the Americas until well into the nineteenth century.

Another reason to be cautious about past claims that flourishing

nationalism caused the republican revolts is the stubborn fact that

the British and French empires survived and re-divided. A pause for

reflection on why the colonies in Canada and the Caribbean remained

4 Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism, chap. 2. See also Craig Calhoun, Nationalism(Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), pp. 48–50 for a clarifying discussionof the literature.

5 Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism, p. 46.6 For a critique of Anderson’s theory of nationalism that draws on the Latin

American experience, see Claudio Lomnitz, “Nationalism as a Practical System:Benedict Anderson’s Theory of Nationalism from the Vantage Point of SpanishAmerica,” in Miguel Angel Centano and Fernando Lopez-Alves, eds., The OtherMirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2001).


which serves to qualify the analysis of the Empire prior to 1763 and

shed further light of the specificity of the North American revolu-

tion.7 Elizabeth Mancke summarizes recent critical research on

Canadian and United States history and introduces some vital cor-

rectives to received views on the nationalist break-up of the British

Empire. I will briefly review her argument here.8 She contrasts the

responses of American settlers and Canadian colonists to circum-

stances after the Seven Years War. While republican-minded Americans

chafed under assertive Crown intervention, Canadians largely acqui-

esced to their new rulers. After loyalist resettlement following the

War of Independence, political debate in Canada did not revolve

around independence or autonomy, but on the distribution of power

within a strong apparatus that remained unchallenged.9 There are

two sides to Mancke’s explanation as to why this was the case. The

first is the character of imperial governance before and after the

American Revolution. Canada during the revolutionary era fell to a

British imperial regime that was able to hold it together and was

more attuned to close superintendence of its colonies. English involve-

ment in the seventeenth century had taken the form of settlement

and medium range expansion of existing colonies. The eighteenth

century necessitated imperial strategies of commercial occupation of

apparently ‘empty’ lands and diplomatic agreements with other pow-

ers to govern over larger and more sparsely populated territories.

This state of affairs seemed to call for greater stability in the exist-

ing colonies. Newly acquired possessions that followed the Treaty of

Utrecht (Acadia, Nova Scotia) were familiar with imperial government,

but could not be closely supervised. They were thinly populated, as

7 Andrew O’Shaughnessy mounts a systematically-developed case that settlers inthe British Caribbean were, at root, loyal to the Empire, despite the appearanceof low-level agitation in their legislatures. See An Empire Divided: The American Revolutionand the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

8 Elizabeth Mancke, “Early Modern Imperial Governance and the Origins ofCanadian Political Culture,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 1 (March1999): 3–20; “Another British America: A Canadian Model for the Early ModernBritish Empire,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, no. 1 ( January1997): 1–36. On the more specific involvement of British Canadian colonies in theWar of Independence, see Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 311–15. Meinig stressesthe sincerity of motives of Canadians at this time, a factor that he believes hasbeen taken too lightly.

9 On this point, see also David Milobar, “Conservative Ideology, MetropolitanGovernment, and the Reform of Quebec, 1782–1791,” International Historical Review12, no. 1 (February 1990).

256 chapter nine

were all Canadian regions and the Floridas acquired after the Seven

Years War. Therefore, sustaining political power was the priority

and cultural and religious differences were tolerated to a greater

extent.10 This amounted to a different imperial strategy for British

Canada before and after the American Revolution.

The other side of the explanation has to do with the varying tra-

ditions of colonial government, the structure of the colonial order in

a manner of speaking. This is discussed in detail in this and previous

chapters. Some brief comments from Mancke will add to my analysis.

The colonies in Canada were accustomed to centralist French rule,

even where a de facto autonomy had existed west of the Laurentine

settlements of Quebec and Montreal. By contrast, the English colonies

of the north-eastern coastline held in common autonomous self-gov-

ernment on which they had been founded. To put this more sim-

ply, there was less privatism in the establishment of the Canadian

settlements. Consequently, there was less inclination to launch a more

sustained and far-reaching challenge to the imperial order in the

manner that the Americans of the eastern seaboard had. Indeed,

there was a ready acceptance of imperial rule, aside from some agi-

tation amongst newly settled Anglo-Americans in Nova Scotia, New

Brunswick and Quebec for a share of assembly representation.

This combination of post-1763 imperial arrangements with the

colonial heritage produced a different political landscape in Canada.

The proposition in the traditional historiography of the American

Revolution—which was unquestioned until recently—that the deci-

sive factor was forceful British administration can now be set aside

for a more nuanced explanation that captures the variability of insti-

tutional and economic arrangements and pre-existing political cul-

ture. Mancke’s work summarizes the critical research amassed around

this view. It calls for a comparative methodology and the conclusion

that is most salient to the current argument is that the specific condi-

tions of the Thirteen Colonies were vital. If the revolutionary episodes

of North and Hispanic America are compared, this becomes even

clearer. Any thorough assessment of the conjuncture of America’s

revolutions should single out the republican political culture of the

British North Americas and its institutional context as a highly dis-

tinctive factor. Different political postures struck by settlers in the

10 See also Bayly, Imperial Meridian, pp. 93–95.


Thirteen Colonies had a unique bearing on the development of an

independent state in North America. Hence, in Anglo-America, repub-

licanism figured prominently in the process of revolution itself.

Republican ideas featured in the revolts in the Spanish Indies, but

the political culture generated in the crucible of conflict was not itself

republicanized. The degree of social consociation of the tight knit

communities of the Thirteen Colonies and the public sphere that they

constructed had only fragile equivalents in the Spanish Indies. The

ground for bourgeois democratic republicanism was not as fertile.

This discussion of republicanism and the end of the British and

Spanish empires can now be broken down into three themes that

structure much of the rest of this chapter preceding the analysis of

America’s revolutions. One was common to both empires. The other

two were points of comparative departure. First of all, settler com-

munities lived in the Creole condition of being caught between

European and indigenous civilizations. In the Spanish Indies this cul-

tivated a fear of indigenous revolt amongst Spanish-Americans. In

British North America it forced a cleavage between loyalist and

republican camps. The economic and social institutional settings of

political debate and discussion that constituted the public sphere in

the north are a second crucial theme, one where there is a clear

divergence between Hispanic and Anglo-America. Finally, ethnic divi-

sions amongst non-indigenous Spanish Americans acted as an impulse

to the formation of republican states in the Spanish Indies.

The troubled Creole condition: caught between different worlds

Spanish Americans held the perception that both the Scylla of indige-

nous revolt and the Charybdis of overbearing metropolitan rule

threatened them. In the Spanish Indies, the tumults of the late eigh-

teenth century provoked fear in the three million strong Creole pop-

ulation. Slave and Indian rebellions spoke a language of loyalty to

Madrid that issued from past imperial interventions that had partly

attempted to improve their conditions of life. Creole fears of indige-

nous revolt strengthened sentiments for independence. Reaction against

Madrid’s liberal legislation on slaves and Indians fanned this fear.

Exasperation at imperial reforms that provided some protection for

the indigenous classes motivated many to consider greater indepen-

dence. On the other side of the Atlantic, Madrid had its own motives

258 chapter nine

for administrative and legislative reform, which included maintaining

stability in the colonies. However, its rationale for maintaining con-

trol over the vast apparatus of the imperial state brought it into

conflict with self-assertive colonial institutions.

The ambivalence of Creole communities in relation to the empire

was heightened by the policies of the Spanish ilustracion on non-

Creole communities. The political conflicts played out in imperial

administration and legislation in the eighteenth century had reinforced

metropolitan control and aggravated Creole grievances. Settler resent-

ment towards the Caroline resurgence was tempered by the fear of

indigenous insurgency, especially after the rebellion of Tupac Amaru

and the fall of Haiti.11 Both sets of sentiments—fear of insurgency

and colonial disaffection—became motives for independence in the

context of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain that precipitated the

decline of the empire. Apprehension and agitation then transformed

Creole constituencies into a movement for separation.

Such fears certainly did exist on the English-American frontier,

but they had little effect on the disposition of colonial settlements

towards London. Most urbanized British Americans saw themselves

as distant from any indigenous ‘threat’. Attempts to systematically

evangelize in native communities were abandoned from the mid-sev-

enteenth century onwards, around the time that Protestant Reformer

settlers in Ireland gave up their zeal for conversion.12 They had suc-

cessfully decimated many native tribes to the east of the Appalachians.

Others fell prey to forced resettlement. Moreover, the conquest of

northern indigenes was a longer, later and more drawn out process

predominantly carried by the republican state. The impact of fear

of indigenous nations was less during the colonial era.

Colonial North America exhibited another level of ambivalence.

An overarching belief held by Americans that, as Britons, they pos-

sessed full liberties guaranteed by the ancient Saxon constitution did

nothing to problematize imperial rule prior to 1763. However, this

sort of identity could accommodate considerable ambivalence in

11 Lynch, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence,” pp. 31–40. ReneJara and Nicholas Spadaccini explain the profound impact of Tupac Amaru’s move-ment by reference to the power of the myth of Inkarra in Peruvian society. See“The Construction of a Colonial Imaginary: Columbus’ Signature,” Amerindian Imagesand the Legacy of Columbus, pp. 70–76.

12 Canny, Kingdom and Colony, p. 113.


changed circumstances. Anglo-American understanding of colonial

self-government splintered into different camps of loyalty, conser-

vatism and radicalism after imperial reform began. In the colonial

order, settlers maintained divergent opinions on the relationship with

London while at the same time protecting their perceived loss of

common liberties. Prior to the Seven Years War, colonists were often

unconcerned about imperial economic regulation, or were alternatively

more interested in appropriating trading monopolies. Further to this,

even in the political machinations of colonial and imperial govern-

ment, they were often dependent on imperial administration for sanc-

tion to act, or even to call representative institutions to session.13 At

times, some settler communities quite resoundingly echoed the impe-

rial interpretation of the colonial constitution, even after London

reforms. After 1764, the mercantilist resurgence created divisions that

revolved around the axis of the politics of independence. Grievances

accumulated in the wake of the Seven Years War exacerbated by

greater regulation, extra-colonial taxes and British disdain for the

provincials.14 They served to exacerbate growing rifts of opinion in

the Thirteen Colonies.

Perceived hardship fertilized the ground on which feeling for and

against independence could grow. Independence was a question that

divided colonial society. This divide itself splintered into a series of

discernible perspectives. Some were conservative, others were more

nuanced. There were moderate views and there were those with more

radical objectives. Two general types of conservative response were

provoked: outright loyalty to the empire and loyalty to a moderate

agenda of independence. The main feature of the moderate program

was the tempering of non-aristocratic popular ambitions. Loyalty to

the empire for many wealthy colonists was steered by fear of pop-

ular mobilization of the independence movement and its possible

long-term consequences. On the other hand, there were also those

who thought that cutting the umbilical cord with Britain would not

benefit them and might place them on a spiral of downward mobility.

13 The unstable history of the Virginia assembly is illustrative of this more gen-eral problem. See Bliss, Revolution and Empire, pp. 29–31; and Jack P. Greene, “TheAttempt to Separate the Offices of Speaker and Treasurer in Virginia 1758–66,”in Greene, Negotiated Authorities.

14 On the contempt of British officers for Anglo-American provincials as a fac-tor in rising discontent, see F. Anderson, The Crucible of War, chap. 15.

260 chapter nine

This “Toryism of the Left” was the other type of allegiance which

the independence movement gave rise to.15

In the late 1760s, some leaders entertained a confederalist solu-

tion. Jefferson was among them, although he described it as the exist-

ing constitutional arrangement that Parliament was in defiance of.16

Republican currents were surfacing by this time, although they uti-

lized a language of British identity. The movement to independence

was buttressed by a heritage that was Gothicist and Saxonite.17

Interpreted in American conditions this gave one strain of colonial

political culture an image of primordial English nationhood that was

lost in the Empire. In this line of thinking, Anglo-Saxon liberty could

only be preserved in America and only through independence. In

these ways, the intricate political conflict over American identity, sov-

ereignty, autonomy and independence was prompted by debates

amongst colonists engaged in colonial government. The conflict

between shades of loyalism and republicanism took place in a public

sphere that was itself republicanized by the overall process of revolution.

The northern public sphere—the Atlantic economy of commerce

A robust public sphere formed in Anglo-America in the eighteenth

century.18 Its settings were urban. The vitality of economic life in

colonial America buttressed this development. Behind America’s

vibrant economy was a privileged relationship with British com-

merce.19 London, Bristol and Liverpool constituted a hub of trade

by the late seventeenth century. The coalescence of capitalist social

relations in English agriculture and commerce compelled revolu-

tionary merchant interests to embroil themselves in American mar-

kets. The settler centres of the Atlantic seaboard and Caribbean

colonies were, to varying degrees, integrated early into the dynamics

15 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, p. 238.16 Gould, The Persistence of Empire, pp. 134–36.17 Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic

World 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 261–76.18 See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry

into a Category of Bourgois Society (London: Polity Press, 1989); and Craig Calhoun,ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

19 See James F. Shepard, “British American and the Atlantic Economy,” in RonaldHoffman, ed., The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period 1763–1790(Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1988).


of expanding Atlantic capitalism.20 Within the British North American

colonies, demographic density and the proximity of city-based mar-

kets to each other enabled a more far-reaching integration of eco-

nomic networks than elsewhere on the continent. Boston, New York,

Salem and Philadelphia and their economic catchments produced a

substantial nexus of market economic life,21 in spite of their different

relationships to London’s export mercantilism. Commercial milieux

connected to imperial trade existed in the four cities.22 The weight

of merchant interests was heavy in all of them, although this in no

way would govern where the loyalties of each city would fall in the

crisis of the 1770s.

Their incorporation into major trading routes in the Atlantic net-

work guaranteed vibrant economic and social expansion. Growth in

exports and imports extended the links with European states, although

the impact of expanding trade was uneven.23 British North America

generated rival communities that competed not just for intra-colo-

nial markets, but also within different levels of economy. New York

was home to the colonial export market, while Boston and Philadelphia

mainly accommodated local markets. Market formation also cultivated

the bonds of colonial identity through the creation of differentiated

communities. These could distinguish themselves from each other

and their interests from others. Above all, it was easy to perceive

that their particular city contained a distinct set of markets. Commerce

gave them something in common with each other, and set them up

in social relationships of inter-dependence and reciprocity. This could

only but succour colonial consciousness.

In the Thirteen Colonies, political contention, discussion and conflictwere carried out in the colonial public sphere. The emergence of

20 Jacob Price, “The Transatlantic Economy,” in Greene and Pole, Colonial BritishHistory.

21 Donald Meinig portrays a Greater New England that was culturally Puritanand economically centered on Boston. The latter competed with ports at Salem,New Haven, New London, Providence and Portsmouth. Boston remained the maingateway servicing Massachusetts. See The Shaping of America, pp. 100–109. See alsoPhyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Identity: Massachusetts Merchants 1670–1780 (Ithaca,NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001); Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt:Urban Life in America 1743–1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955). RichardSheridan drew early attention to the vitality of North American colonial economieswith “The Domestic Economy,” in Greene and Pole, Colonial British History.

22 Meinig, The Shaping of America, pp. 317–19.23 Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, pp. 16–18.

262 chapter nine

the printed word and its constitution of different public spheres were

distinctive.24 The close relationship between communications networks

and printing houses produced a privileged position for the news-

paper and for the ‘printer-journalists’. Journalists could command many

aspects of the production process and were in a crucial location in

the flow of public information. Furthermore, their importance was

augmented in the years prior to the Revolution as pamphleteering

and broadside production provided more forums for public formation.25

Newspapers and smaller productions carried political commentaries,

histories, testimonials, legal tracts, local controversies, letters and

polemics. Anglo-Americans, who were well schooled in a classical

education,26 eagerly read those publications and conversed in a wider

political discourse about morals. A vibrant middle-class discussion

took place in a rich transatlantic circuit of periodicals. Some titles

had emerged in England and France as early as the mid-seventeenth

century and were found in the libraries of many Anglo-Americans

of diverse opinion.27 These fora of the public sphere were not monop-

olized by any one perspective or political interest. The prevalence

of loyalist and republican articles and publications, in all their respec-

tive shades of opinion, is testament to the relatively open character

of the eighteenth century public.

24 Benedict Anderson cites figures from Lucien Febvre which demonstrate phe-nomenal growth in American print: “Between 1691 and 1820, no less than 2,120‘newspapers’ were published, of which 461 lasted more than ten years.” This figurewould appear to include pamphlets and ‘broadsides’ also. By the mid-eighteenthcentury the media seems to have begun consolidating itself. Between 1763 and 1775the number of colonial newspapers in constant circulation more than doubled from23 to 58. The number of places that they were published nearly doubled from 15to 26. Between 1764 and 1783, Bailyn notes that 335 printers operated in 77different places in the colonies. On the unique character of American print capi-talism, see Imagined Communities, pp. 61–62 and Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin,The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 (London: New Left Books,1976). On pamphlets and the media, see Janice Potter, The Liberty We Seek: LoyalistIdeology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1983), pp. 7–10. For statistics on the growth of publishing, publishers andprint see G. Thomas Tanselle, “Some Statistics on American Printing,” in BernardBailyn and John B. Hench, The Press and the American Revolution (Worcester, MA:American Antiquarian Society, 1980), pp. 315–365.

25 For statistics and analysis on the spread of pamphleteering see Bailyn andHench, The Press and the American Revolution, pp. 349–57.

26 Meyer Reinhold, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the UnitedStates (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1984), chap. 2.

27 Norman S. Fiering, “The Transatlantic Republic of Letters: A Note on theCirculation of Learned Periodicals to Early Eighteenth Century America”, WilliamMary Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1976): 642–60.


The growth of public discourse had two important effects. Firstly,

it inculcated a sense of colonial selfhood that had a levelling effect,

though the public sphere was hardly classless in any sense. The pro-

vision of news of international, inter-colonial and British affairs helped

in this.28 American colonial interests could be articulated. Then these

would be the objects of controversy in relation to national and inter-

national developments. Different and competing points of view emerged

from a heightened sense of what was going on in the world and the

place of the colonies in it. Highly informed colonists considered colo-

nial and international events from within the structure of a news-

paper-based public sphere and in the framework of publicized debate,

learned critique and opinion. For colonial merchants, print media

relayed economic information about movements in prices, new ven-

tures and exports and imports. Furthermore, these were public fora

in which philosophical discussion could be carried out in serial

exchanges that always had a bearing on politics. In this way, the

plethora of newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides and other publications

combined to form a support of colonial identity formation.

Secondly, the public sphere also integrated relatively autonomous

colonial assemblies that had accumulated increased powers during

the eighteenth century.29 Representative assemblies as institutional

foci of public debate formed centres of colonial attention that deep-

ened the republican convictions of those in the colonial order. They

fostered a civic space in which republican notions of representation,

legislative prerogative and self-limited spheres of government could

gestate. Above all, the language and bonds that colonists created

within these structures animated both imperial and colonial loyal-

ties. Print media and representative government assemblies acted as

structural props of a pre-national public sphere. They acted as spheres

in which the competing perspectives of the Empire’s own internal

make-up tussled with one another for wider popular endorsement. After

1763 they developed a self-governing dynamic of their own, giving

life to the politics of independence in circumstances where it might

otherwise have struggled to find institutional nourishment from else-

where. Publicity and the public sphere opened up the realm of pol-

itics and the possibility of forging a new state and a new state form.

28 On the growth of Atlantic communications, see Steele, English Atlantic, pp. 1–92.29 See “The Role of the Lower Houses of Assembly in Eighteenth Century

Politics,” in Jack P. Greene, The Re-Interpretation of the American Revolution 1763–1789(New York: Harper and Row, 1968).

264 chapter nine

Compared to the British north, the development of print and inter-

related public spheres in the Spanish Indies was not as complete.

Cities were less closely connected with each other relying, on one

hand, on the surrounding region and, on the other, links to imper-

ial trade. Although the cities were densely populated, the kind of

proto-industrial development normally associated with print capitalism

was absent. However, economic developments alone do not explain

the limitations on the public sphere in the Spanish Indies. Indeed,

during the period under discussion colonial economic development

sped up and the pace and extent of economic exchanges in the

catchment areas of the viceregal capitals increased substantially.30

The reasons are more strictly political, or at least relate to the struc-

tures of state power. The tight grip of the Catholic Church and the

state over governmental institutions and sources of information lim-

ited the possible growth of a pluralist public sphere in almost all the

viceroyalties. This is not to say that there wasn’t a flow of commu-

nication or intellectual critique. The private circulation of corre-

spondence fostered a community of public ideas, one that was

underestimated by historians in the past.31 Furthermore, there was

a substantial readership for books and essays, indeed throughout the

Habsburg and Bourbon eras.32 Ideas circulated through bourgeois

merchant circles in trading cities in the sixteenth century. They

spread with the growth of universities, private libraries and mis-

sionary orders. Universities and academies were features of port and

administrative cities; indeed, they had a privileged place in urban-

izing the Spanish American landscape. However, the existence of a

reading audience for European philosophy, art and criticism does

little to counter the suggestion that politics, philosophy and criticism

were constrained. The purpose of places of learning was cultural

30 Brading, “Bourbon Spain and its American Empire,” in Bethell, The CambridgeHistory of Latin America, vol. 1, pp. 426–33.

31 James Lockhart and Enrique Otte, eds. and trans, Letters and People of the SpanishIndies, Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

32 Jacques Lafaye, “Literature and Intellectual Life in Colonial Spanish America,”in Bethell, The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 2, pp. 663–704. For TeodoroHarpe-Martinez, Colonial Peru had a vibrant public sphere based on the exchangeof letters and books that were imported fragments of the Enlightenment. Of course,this was limited to the wealthier Creoles and Peninsulars. Harpe-Martinez notesthat Peru was quite exceptional in this regard. See “The Diffusion of Books andIdeas in Colonial Peru: a Study of Private Libraries in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies,” Hispanic American Historical Review 73, no. 2 (1956).


transmission of Spanish mores and habits of life. The content of the

curricula was not the monopoly of the Inquisition, but it did follow

Hispanic scholastic trends.33 Medieval debates typical of the Habsburg

era gave way to curricula reform that propagated ideas of the Bourbon

ilustracion. In the second half of the eighteenth century, new institu-

tions were built and new chairs founded in Rio de La Plata, Mexico

and Guatemala. The Inquisition retreated and the circulation of texts

increased. Newspapers came late: the Diario Erudito was founded in

Lima in 1790 and Diario de Mexico in 1805. But their publication

was concurrent with more political pamphlets and gazettes and

together papers and other forms of publication proliferated during

the early years of the nineteenth century.34

However, until that time, the social structures of the public sphere

were confined to city centres and a significant proportion of Spanish

and Spanish-Americans lived beyond the reach of urban culture.

Above all else, they were publics dedicated to reading and receiv-

ing mainly European ideas, rather than spaces in which a full Creole

republican politics could freely gestate. Only Lima and Mexico spon-

sored publishing houses. These were busy in the second half of the

eighteenth century, but the price and distribution of their products

suggests that they did not serve popular markets.35 As a result, Spanish

American readers were comparatively few in number. The revolu-

tionary works of the French and then the North Americans were

read by Creole revolutionaries, but not by many others (at least prior

to independence).36 Thus, there were ‘publics’. However, the structures

33 Gongora, Studies in the Colonial History of Spanish America, pp. 187–93.34 Anibal Gonzalez finds in Spanish American journalism and literature an equiv-

alent to the French and American public sphere. Journalism was “imbued with thecritical spirit of modernity, though it could not help but reflect the strident anduneven nature of Spanish America’s particular approach to modernity as a whole”(p. 16). Interestingly, Gonzalez is critical of Benedict Anderson’s overemphasis onprint capitalism in the rise of Latin American nationalism. However, Gonzalez doesnot solve this problem, as publication is privileged as an element of “SpanishAmerica’s particular approach to modernity.” Then its comparative importance isinflated to put it on a par with the pre-revolutionary situation in the British North.This thesis might be more convincing if other aspects of the public sphere werebrought in to fill out the picture. However, Gonzalez does not pursue this. SeeAnibal Gonzalez, Journalism and the Development of Spanish American Narrative (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 1.

35 Lafaye, “Literature and Intellectual Life,” in Bethell, Cambridge History of LatinAmerica, vol. 2, p. 698.

36 John Lynch, The Spanish Americans Revolutions 1808–1826 (New York: W. W.Norton and Company, 1973), pp. 27–30; Liss, Atlantic Empires.

266 chapter nine

themselves were not demotic in character. The dynamic of town

meetings and regional assemblies that provided an impetus for the

republicanization of North American politics was largely absent.

American identity and community consociation encouraged by the

Anglo-American press proved powerful. In contrast, the peculiarly

local character of Spanish-American journals and newspapers pre-

vented the generalization of Creole experiences in the empire as a

whole. Spanish-American sensibilities were not generalized to all sec-

tors of the populace across the vast southern continent. In all, the

weakness and sparsity of the Hispanic Creole public spheres curbed

the formation of a wider variety of republican responses.

Ethnicity and the conflicts within empires

In British North America ethnicity did not divide the republican and

loyalist camps, as it did to a significant extent in the Spanish Indies.

The patterns of ethnic identity varied significantly between the two

empires. The clear borders of racial composition facilitated com-

munity cohesion for Anglo-American settlers. Divisions between blacks,

whites and natives were comparatively clear, enhancing the historical

myth of colonization as the subjugation of a lesser race. Ethnic differ-

ences within settler communities were minor, and reinforced a pre-

national and colonial sense of identity. In this situation, political

conflicts within the enfranchised white population revolved less around

ethnicity and more around social class and empire. The War of

Independence was not caused by a perceived ethnic inequality between

loyalist Europeans and colonial order Creoles, but by issues of repub-

lican politics, the instituted organs of government and the gap between

rich and poor. Ethnic divisions were discrete, permitting a degree of

cohesion amongst settler communities. The ethnic unity of the set-

tler-colonists removed the ambiguity of who was American, or per-

haps who should be a citizen. As slaves and natives were automatically

shut out, new republican horizons only incorporated European set-

tler communities. The question then became one of who would gov-

ern what type of state and how.

The situation in Spanish-American colonies was typically different.

Towards the end of the colonial period, the categories of ethnicity

proliferated. In the Caribbean and South America Indian and Creole

populations splintered into caste-like status groups with a variety of


designations.37 A spectrum of demographic divisions had grown out

of the social structures of colonialism. More complex social relations

emerged during the Bourbon years, clouding the boundaries between

different subaltern groups. Enlightenment reforms instituted an eco-

nomic strategy to control the Indians surrendering the overt coer-

cive measures associated with the Habsburg era.38 Divisions remained

sharper among the dominant classes. Creoles, for the most part,

remained distinct from the peninsulares. They were different in their

status, clothes, style and habits. The turbulent mix of status positions

in the Spanish Indies fuelled the resentment felt by Creole commu-

nities during the period of the Caroline reforms, when the compo-

sition of the court state and the colonial order was being transformed.

However, ethnicity itself did not consistently demarcate the bound-

aries of the colonial order. Anti-imperial sentiments were often artic-

ulated in the language of ethnicity. But the conflicts involved other

issues of position within the structure of the state. Furthermore, expe-

riences of ethnicity had a local inflection for members of Creole and

peninsular communities. Yet, the fact that the politics of indepen-

dence in the south formed as a juxtaposition of Creole and penin-

sular interests suggests that American identities were robust enough

to reflect some level of proto-national consociation. The antagonism

was evident to contemporaries: “too specific to deny and too wide-

spread to ignore.”39 The bonds that tied Creoles together were ethnic.

But they also involved status distinctions, collective experiences of

episodes of insurrection and regionalized versions of Catholicism.

The position of Creole elites in the rebellions of the eighteenth cen-

tury was symptomatic of the entire historical situation. They were

caught between indigenous mobilizations and the forces of the monar-

chy seeking stability through repression. Simon Bolivar’s retrospec-

tive remarks express the ambivalence of this intermediary condition:

We are not Europeans nor are we Indians, but a species halfwaybetween aborigines and Spaniards. Americans by birth and Europeansby law, we find ourselves engaged in conflict, on one hand, disputingthe natives over titles of ownership, and at the same time struggling

37 Gongora, Studies in the Colonial History, pp. 160–64.38 David Weber, “Bourbons and Barbaros: Centre and Periphery in the Reshaping

of Spanish-Indian Policy,” in Daniels and Kennedy, Negotiated Empires.39 Lynch, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence,” in Bethell, The

Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, p. 28.

268 chapter nine

to maintain ourselves in the country in which we have been bornagainst the opposition of the [Spanish] invaders. Thus our circum-stances are most extraordinary and complicated.40

These comments, which arise long after the event, say something

about the position of Creoles in the revolts of the eighteenth cen-

tury. Earlier rebellions (the Paraguayan comuneros 1721–35 and the

rebellion in Venezuela 1744–52) were regional and did not fore-

shadow future developments. In contrast, the 1765 Quito rebellion

centred on taxation, which was an imperial issue. Later rebellions

involved competing interests and agendas. However, revolts in Peru

and New Granada suggest that Creole communities acted in cohe-

sion.41 In both uprisings, mestizo and Creole elements maintained sep-

arate agenda to that of indigenous participants. The claims of the

latter implied a logic of social revolution, even though it spoke a

language of loyalty. In Peru, they allied soon enough with the

Spaniards. In New Granada, Creoles participated in the formation

and then fracture of an alliance with the Indians. They participated

in that rebellion for longer, though it was obvious that there were

two disconnected insurrections taking place. The mestizo and Creole

revolts were a response to higher and new taxes, whilst Indian par-

ticipation was manifestly prompted by government corruption, fur-

ther seizures of communal lands and despair at the region-wide

economic downturn. Compromises between peninsulares in the court

state apparatus, which unambiguously represented Madrid’s interests,

and the mestizo insurgents left the Indian armies out in the cold in

both cases. In fact, it allowed the Spanish to crush them.

These episodes suggest that the respective loyalties of the Creole

and peninsular layers of the state and agricultural landowning class

were sufficient to prevent the haemorrhage of communal cohesion.

Moreover, these links were comprehensible to Creoles. Spanish

Americans, in these instances, allied their interests with those of the

state at the point when matters threatened to get out of hand. In

the very least they perceived their interests as distinct from the Indian

revolutionaries. Their position of relative independence rendered them

distrustful of peninsular leaderships, but also fearful of indigenous

insurgency. The experience of insurrection reinforced a self-under-

40 Simon Bolivar, “Discurso pronunciado,” in Damas, Escritos Fundamentales, p. 116(my translation).

41 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, 3, pp. 219–223.


standing of both the social structure of Spanish America and their

place within it, which flowed from the coalescence of pre-national

colonial links.

These experiences united many mestizo colonists in the early nine-

teenth century. In the context of the Napoleonic Wars, events in

Europe were elevated in their importance to the South Americas.

These circumstances would galvanize Creole movements and pre-

sent the opportunities for independence. In this enterprise, they were

following Anglo-Americans who earlier broke with the British Empire.

While the norteamericanos provided one source of inspiration, the repub-

licanism and the republics of Simon Bolivar, Jose San Martin and

Santiago Marino diverged fundamentally from the polity of the United

States. The posture assumed by new republican movements con-

fronting their imperial legacies was a condition in the developing

trajectories of new Atlantic states.

The revolutionary institution of America’s republics

The revolution that led to the constitution of the United States

brought about a radically new formation and instituted a republican

political culture that was singularly innovative. In this final section

of the chapter, I want to bring into relief important features of two

general types of republicanism that realized “a ‘new world’ of poli-

tics.”42 The intention underlying this approach is to suggest that the

two processes of revolutionary transformation were not of equal

significance. The Anglo-American revolution generated a paradigmatic

state form. The long revolution in the Spanish Indies dismantled

Spain’s Atlantic empire. However, revolutionary processes there insti-

tuted states that retained more of the institutional patterns of the

previous state form than the United States did. In this sense, the

two processes had significantly different consequences.

In the remainder of this chapter I examine the institutional and

political-cultural divergence in the forms of republicanism developed

by Americans constructing modern relationships to their imperial

legacies. My comparison contrasts the British North American tra-

jectory and the centralist recomposition of power and politics in the

42 Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas, chap. 4.

270 chapter nine

republics that emerged out of Spanish colonies. A sketch of the argu-

ment below is followed by single discussions of British, French and

Spanish America. The passage on French America invokes the

Caribbean as a yardstick of comparison and an influential realm in

its own right. It also includes a brief discussion of the influence of

French republican universalism.

Fundamental differences separated the pre-histories of the United

States and the republics of the former Spanish Indies. The struggles

for independence that instituted a constitutional state in the north

marked an institutional departure from the imperial past. In the

Hispanic American republics, centralism endured in the form of the

foundation of ‘praetorian’ states.43 They were based on the colo-

nization of already-existing institutions of power by the professional

apparatus (especially the military) in alliance with private oligarchic

interests. Often the oligarchy and the military were indistinguishable

in this relatively undifferentiated figuration of power. The singular

outstanding feature that separates the constitutional and praetorian

states of the early to mid nineteenth century was the relative auton-

omy of the institutions of rule. A distinctive version of republican

political culture prevailed in the Thirteen Colonies, but gained lit-

tle ground in Hispanic America due to the character of those states

and the legacy of centralism that they inherited.44

The novel and radical nature of the American Revolution against

the British cannot be over-emphasized. It marked a sharp break with

the imperial past, generating a process of state formation that was

inherently self-innovating. Even the word ‘independence’ acquired a

43 On the notion of praetorian statehood, see also Enrique Peruzzotti, “TheWeimarization of Argentine Politics and State Autonomy,” Thesis Eleven 34 (1993).

44 Fernando Lopez-Alves critiques this ‘traditional’ view of the Spanish legacyand persisting centralism as culturalist. Aligning Claudio Veliz and Mark Burkholderwith Seymour Lipset, Richard Morse and Alexis de Tocqueville, he writes that theclaims of this group about Spanish centralism have been ‘seriously challenged’ byrecent literature that highlights the weakness of republican states (he looks to Peruin particular). The question begged is “how long legacies can last, how to measuretheir influence, and how to define them” (p. 154). It might well also be asked,should centralism be mechanically conflated with strong statehood. The history ofcentralist Spanish rule in the Americas is replete with examples of regions in whichstate power was ‘weak’. Also, it might well be asked whether Veliz’s analysis canbe regarded as properly speaking culturalist. For a critique of the categories of‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states, see Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism. Lopez-Alves’ essay is“The Transatlantic Bridge: Mirrors, Charles Tilly, and State Formation in the RiverPlate,” in Centano and Lopez-Alves, The Other Mirror.


different political connotation as a result of the war with the British.45

The New World generated its own version of political modernity in

the national-democratic republic. In British North America, the repub-

lican horizon was institutionalized in a civic public sphere structured

on the principles of limited plurality. The situation was different in

the Spanish Empire. Peninsular traditions of governance had smoth-

ered much of the public dynamics of the cabildos and audiencias, espe-

cially in their Bourbon iterations. The possibility of a republican

political culture emerging was thereby always compromised by the

centralism of imperial institutions and the subsequent praetorianiza-

tion of new revolutionary states.

There were, therefore, two inter-related dimensions of the mod-

ern logics of New World republicanism: state forms and a broad

political horizon. To this point, the latter has not received full atten-

tion. In what follows only secondary consideration is given to repub-

lican political ideas per se. I am deliberately limiting the analysis to

the extensive framework of revolutionary developments in which

Americans could constitute new states in the context of republican-

ised politics. In making this choice, specific republican traditions are

not dealt with comprehensively. What I am drawing into relief are

two different types of state that have emerged from different impe-

rial legacies. Each has a different relationship to those legacies that

include administrative, civic and political traditions as well as insti-

tutional arrangements and varying sets of social relations. Yet, it

should be noted that the praetorian form retained more from the

past than did the radically innovative northern American republicanism.

Anglo-American Republicanism

The philosophical contents of republicanism set in a colonial public

sphere where social structures did not deliver a monopoly of infor-

mation to the imperial masters. The British had not established the

full, visible and daunting architecture of power in North America.

The strict hierarchies of social relations did not bear down on English-

Americans in quite the manner that they did in the British Isles.

Exilic New England set colonists apart from the strongholds of state

45 See Germán Arciniegas’ interesting genealogy of the word ‘independence’ inAmerica in Europe, pp. 115–18.

272 chapter nine

power. At the same time, Americans believed liberty was their inher-

itance as Englishmen. The wealthy communities that they built sup-

ported that belief. Just as the contingencies of state formation in

Latin and North America differed, so too did their respective his-

toricities, that is their relationship to their traditions:

The multiple settlements in the English colonies led to an inadvertentpluralism, which made it easy to imagine alternatives to any particu-lar institutional arrangement. In America . . . neither the coercion ofeconomic dependence nor the persuasion of majestically ritualised powerwas ready at hand to reinforce the dictates of society’s arbiters. Norwere there in the colonies the cathedrals, royal palaces or countryestates to remind the many of the superior position of the few . . . Incolonial society far more than in England words were called upon to do the work of artefacts. The proper civil order was described in sermons, parental lectures and judicial pronouncements at quartersessions. But words were not so easily monopolised as churches andmansions. Despite the evident intentions of most colonists to replicatethe institutions left behind, the means of securing them from attackwas rarely strong.46

The power of words in the absence of the architecture of long-estab-

lished authority introduced a capacity to question the permanency

of traditional institutions. Anglo-Americans were heavily dependent

on the classical and modern works of the Western world. All these

works figured in the debates in political philosophy in this revolu-

tionary juncture, but they were read in contexts far removed from

their original settings.47 Common Law theory, romantic and ratio-

nalist works of the Enlightenment and the orations of Cato and

Cicero were meaningfully reinterpreted. They animated dramas that

Americans believed could be compared to their own. In the exer-

cise of philosophical discourse, ‘tradition’ was invoked in arguments

against traditional social structures.

This is further highlighted by a comparison with Hispanic America

where the institutions of Hispanic power had a very visible presence.

The power of words could be as easily summoned to support the

46 Margaret and James Jacobs, The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism London: Allenand Unwin, 1984), p. 11. On the power of sermons in shaping religion and politicsin pre-revolutionary North America, see Patricia Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven:Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

47 Reinhold, Classica Americana, chaps. 3 and 4; Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of theAmerican Revolution, pp. 23–31.


status quo as it could be to question it. Political philosophy was read

and discussed in the Spanish Indies, but amongst a much more

confined and smaller reading public. Moreover, Spanish America’s

cities gave pride of place to the church and its countryside haciendashelped to “remind the many of the superior position of the few.”

In this regard, rigid social rank existed as much in Spanish Indian

societies as it did in Spain. In British North America, by contrast,

the given form of imperial state was under scrutiny in this public

sphere, which was enlivened by debate in political philosophy.

Deliberation over what constituted a modern polity was a daily occur-

rence. However, it assumed grand proportions in meetings that por-

tended the separation of the colonies: the Stamp Act Congress of

1765 and the first and second Continental Congresses. This con-

juncture was ground breaking and not only because it threw up new

social relations and new ideas. This was a revolution in which pol-

itics as a sphere of social action was itself republicanized.

The significance of republicanism is a topic of diverse debates in

North American historiography.48 What was revolutionary about this

political culture? Was the radical edge taken off it by the federalist

solution? Was the predominant influence Lockean or did republicanism

reach back to other Renaissance traditions for inspiration, as main-

tained by Pocock and those who adhere to the civic republican the-

sis? I do not wish to re-visit these lengthy and much-debated issues.

They are extremely important, but there is a convincing argument

48 Some of the principal contributions to this literature include Joyce Appleby,“Republicanism in Old and New Contexts,” William and Mary Quarterly 43, no. 1(1986), and Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (NewYork: New York University Press, 1984); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins ofthe American Revolution; Robert East and Jacob Judd, eds., The Loyalist Americans: AFocus on Greater New York (New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975), Jack P.Greene, The Re-Interpretation of the American Revolution 1763–1789; Linda Kerber, “TheRepublican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation,” American Quarterly 37, no. 4(1985): 474–96; Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia inthe Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); and Republicanismand Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth Century England and America(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Cathy Matson and Peter Onuf,“Towards a Republican Empire: Interest and Ideology in Revolutionary America,”American Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1985); J. G. A Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History:Essays in Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985), The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thoughtand History Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press,1985); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Williamsburg,VA: University of North Carolina Press, 1969).

274 chapter nine

that various positions developed have been at times one-sided and

exaggerated.49 Moreover, the acute juxtaposition of internally con-

tained liberal and relatively eclectic republican traditions acts to con-

ceal the interchange between them.50 Instead, the main point to make

is that the outstanding feature is the unparalleled pluralism of the

eighteenth century public sphere. If the republic was a political cre-

ation of the Revolution, then it was due to the public sphere as much

as it was to the spirit of civic commitment championed by Pocock.

What is important is the sense of historical originality that the

process of revolution aroused: uncertainty about what would or could

follow resounded throughout the British Empire, not just in the newly

declared republic.51 Republican perspectives remained fluid on this

question, at least prior to the consolidation of the federal state. In

my view, this indeterminacy reveals that this modern citizenry was

grappling with innovative models of state, economy and society. The

mood of Atlantic republicanism may have subsided after the later

debates over Federalism. However, the horizon of political inven-

tiveness—that is, the sense that social and political institutions were

contingent and could be made and re-made—remained. This was

the lasting impact of revolutionary republicanism; however it may

49 See Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and ClassicalIdeas in the New American Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 43, no. 1 ( January1986): 3–20, for an analysis of this trend to imbalance in the historiographic debatesaround Jeffersonianism. “As things now stand, the literature appears to force achoice between mutually-exclusive interpretations of Jeffersonian ideology—a choicethat we really do not have to make, and one that would impede a better under-standing” (p. 4).

50 See Steve Pincus, “Neither Machivellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism:Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Republic,” American HistoricalReview 103, no. 3 ( June 1998).

51 The republican revolt dislodged existing conceptions of empire as libertarianand consensual in its foundations. This is widely understood with regards to theAmericas. Some recent studies reflect on the profound impact in Britain. Deep andimpassioned divisions emerged where a loose consensus over imperial rule had heldtogether. English sympathy for British Americans ranged from general oppositionto the war to outright support for the republican cause. Parliamentary loyalists feltprovoked and retaliated with accusations of treason, especially when petitionersprotested or rioted in the streets. The high pitch that marked American debates inthe 1770s appeared in this public discourse in Britain in the 1780s. See KathleenWilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England 1715–1785(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 5 and, for a survey ofGeorgian age radicalism, John Brewer, “English Radicalism in the Age of GeorgeIII,” in J. G. A. Pocock, Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1980).


have been influenced by Locke, Aristotle, Harrington or Luther and

Calvin. The presence of republican horizons meant that different

solutions to contemporary problems competed in the battle to pre-

vail in the determination of the direction of state formation. Behind

this historical process lay a revolutionary turn in the self-under-

standing of the human construction of social forms.52 Those who

executed the revolution understood themselves to be taking conscious

direction in settling social questions. The institution of a new state

was carried out with the issue of what kind of society combined pub-

lic and private virtue in mind. The concepts of power and law were

transformed by the process of revolution in a new world where social

relations more closely approximated the image of a ‘tabula rasa’

assumed to be the American condition by Europeans, than social

relations, in fact, did in Europe. In other words, the process of rev-

olution really was more possible in the New World, as Anglo-

Americans understood it to be. That recognition of limited social

change guided by a belief in the future itself was conceivable in a

society where the spoken word of a sermon and the appeal of the

book (be it the Bible or the philosophy of Locke, Harrington or

Montesquieu) held political sway alongside of the physical manifes-

tations of institutional power. How to reconcile received wisdoms of

public and personal virtue with the society of lively capitalist com-

merce and growing industrial property was the question that liter-

ate Americans deliberated on. It split Jeffersonians and their Federalist

opponents in the 1790s as surely as the issue of the precise consti-

tution of the polity did.53

Many historians concur with the view that republican sentiments

(as summarized by Pocock) were disappointed, or perhaps displaced,

by the Federalist advance in the 1790s. They have good reason to

hold this view. Nonetheless, a republican public sphere, in which the

competition of ideas was essential, had emerged and a different form

of state accompanied it. In the 1770s and 1780s this New World

terrain was new and its significance derived from its radically reflexive

character. Its coexistence with slavery was ultimately unsustainable.

Its coexistence with a dynamic logic of capitalist development

52 Dick Howard, The Birth of American Political Thought 1763–87, trans. David AmesCurtis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

53 Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order.

276 chapter nine

was relatively harmonious in the nineteenth century, but not with-

out its tensions. This trajectory stands as a contrast when compared

with French and Spanish American figurations of culture, economy

and state.

Republicanism and the French empire

French support in the War of Independence was indispensable to

the survival of the revolution. Strategic interests overshadowed any

concern about America’s anti-monarchical trajectory. After the Anglo-

American war, the French American Empire was reduced in the

Caribbean. Moreover, it was destabilized by frequent and growing

outbursts of violence, rebellion and warfare. Two kinds of conflicts

in the Greater Caribbean plagued French rule.54 Firstly, global rivalry

with Britain and France was fought out in intensive microcosm in

the region. Battles with the British navy became commonplace in

the Antilles. France’s military and naval forces were asked for greater

vigilance than ever. Secondly, sharp social divisions were magnified

by the upsurge in violence and by the example of the French

Revolution. In this context, the position of the colonial order in the

face of intrusion into colonial affairs and threats of slave revolts (both

real and imagined) was surprisingly good, in spite of the turmoil in

the region. After the war with America, the British presence was

multiplied and the energies of its imperial personnel increased. Britain’s

naval and military power had built up during the war with the

Thirteen Colonies. The British West Indies were heavily guarded

during that period.55 The remaining British possessions in this hotly

contested zone were more isolated from the English-speaking Empire,

which its colonists had previously experienced as a much larger

entity.56 The feeling must have been uncanny, as there can be little

doubt that the islands continued to enjoy good economic fortunes

both before the American War and afterwards.57 The value of the

54 David Geggus, “Slavery, War and Revolution in the Greater Caribbean,” inDavid Barry Gasper and David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The FrenchRevolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

55 O’Shaughnessey, An Empire Divided.56 See Edward Braithwaite’s study of the changing relationship between Britain

and Jamaica after the American War and how it ‘Creolized’ the island’s internalsocial relations and culture, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770–1820(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

57 See John J. McCusker, “Growth, Stagnation or Decline? The Economy of theBritish West Indies 1763–1790,” in Hoffman, The Economy of Early America.


British West Indies trade was not lost on the government in London

either. Britain’s islands were more fully fortified in the increasingly

hostile climate that emerged after American War.

French colonists, wary of their minority position in the new con-

text, grew restless. Agitation within the Chambers of Commerce and

through envoys in Paris attracted the attention of the French court.

There were other reasons for the renewed focus on the Caribbean.

The importance of the Antilles became magnified in the eyes of all

European statesmen in the latter part of the eighteenth century, as

slave-based trade and production grew. The British cast jealous eyes

over French possessions and imperial vigilance increased as a result.

The last decade featured ongoing open warfare between the British

and the French in a fight over possession in the region and over the

labor regime of slavery. The conflict of the two states remained

highly visible. The 1789 Revolution opened opportunities to the British

to grab the lot.58 However, it closed off these opportunities just as

quickly with one devastating measure: the temporary emancipation

and arming of French slaves.

Colonial elites were able to play a pivotal role during this period.

It played this role in the context of ambiguous, but growing, colo-

nial inclinations to self-government. The chief issue in contention

was slavery and it remained unresolved, both within the declared

libertarian ideals of the French Revolution (which were rapidly lost)

and within the legal and political edifice of the Empire. The French

court had ignored slavery. The Revolution did not resolve this conflict

and instead introduced further complications. In France, abolitionism

had found a voice in the Amis de Noirs and in widely read tracts by

Montesquieu, Rousseau and Raynal.59 Despite the patronage of promi-

nent figures, the movement was ineffective and faced formidable

opposition.60 The Revolution reversed this situation indirectly by legit-

imizing emancipation, even while public anti-slavery societies were

in decline. The island colonists held varying perceptions of the rev-

olutionary government. The split between colonists with stronger ties

to France (absentee planters, military and civilian administrators) and

the Creole populace deepened and multiplied. Also, the emancipa-

tory message of the French and American Revolutions, underscored

58 Michael Duffy, “The French Revolution and British Attitudes to the WestIndian Colonies,” in Gasper and Geggus, A Turbulent Time.

59 Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, chap. 5.60 F. Quinn, The French Overseas Empire, pp. 93–95.

278 chapter nine

by a commitment to universalism, brought into doubt the legitimacy

of the Empire. Initially, the radical revolutionary clubs favoured a

strong version of political liberty for all French, a position of some

attraction for wealthy planters and the petit blanc whites in the

Caribbean alike. Reaffirmation of slavery by the Paris Assembly

brought relief to colonial deputies. But the gap between the Jacobin

clubs in Paris and the colonies grew, as did settler anxieties.

The rebellion in St Domingue was seen as a radical realization

of the republican agenda, an outcome feared by whites.61 What it

challenged, and what seemed in question, was an imperial nexus

that had suffered an enormous blow in the Seven Years War. Now

the Caribbean possessions were insecure as the metropolitan polity

debated the virtues and vices of slavery, an issue long resolved for

the colonial elite. The French colonial order by the time of the

Haitian rebellion had become a dense formation filled with insta-

bility. Robin Blackburn’s appraisal of its figuration illustrates well its

pivotal position:

(C)lamped on top of the slave economy, there was a complex of inter-ests, formed by the intersecting fields of force of a colonial and mer-cantile system, an aristocratic political order, a racial caste hierarchy,and a highly unequal distribution of private property within both thewhite and free coloured population. In the French Antilles . . . exploita-tion and oppression (was) overlaid by conflicts stemming from thisinterlocking structure of control. The revolution weakened the grip ofthe metropolis and stimulated fierce factional strife, but this was a pro-tracted and complex process.62

Strong and independent elites had become apparent in this later part

of the century, as they had in the Thirteen Colonies, the River Plate,

Peru, and New Granada. The Haitian revolt in 1791 issued a seri-

ous challenge to this compact hierarchy. Ministerial authority and

public opinion in France saw it initially as an invitation to the British

to invade. Indeed, a constituency of Creole opinion in St Domingue

favoured such a change of direction. Elsewhere in the Antilles, royalist

support was expunged with news of the Convention’s consolidation

61 Frank Moya Pons, “Haiti and Santo Domingo 1790–1870,” in Bethell, CambridgeHistory of Latin America III.

62 Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, p. 169. James McLellan profiles thedemographic and sociological characteristics of St. Domingue in Colonialism andScience, chap. 3.


in late 1792. But newfound support for the government in Paris was

short-lived. As the conflict between settlers, mulattoes and slaves con-

tinued to simmer in Haiti, St Vincent, Guadaloupe and Martinique,

it had become obvious that the range of possible future directions

was wider.63

Outside of St Domingue, the colonial order seemed able to stave

off the threat of slave revolt against its rule. It also played off the

Spanish, the British and the Royalists against the Republicans and

small slave-owning mulattoes against slave battalions. In early 1793,

slavery itself was not questioned fundamentally by any of the contending

parties. But British blockades and a circling Spanish presence ensured

that the situation remained precarious for the French. Threats from

outside and divisions within ensured that rebel armies held the key

to continuity of Republican rule in St Domingue and perhaps the

rest of the French Antilles. The growth of the revolutionary forces

coupled with the decree scrapping slavery in 1794 tipped the bal-

ance in favour of republican universality in St Domingue and then

the British Caribbean.

The remainder of the decade featured ongoing warfare. St Domingue

fell to Toussaint; indeed the British withdrew deciding that there was

little gain from occupation. The costs were counted in both troop

numbers and pounds. The government in Britain was scandalized

by the losses. Napoleon then moved, with the connivance of Britain,

in 1802 to crush the black republic. Slavery was re-established in

Guadaloupe. But the birth of the Republic of Haiti terminated any

hope of return for the grand and petit blancs and they had to settle

into a condition of exile for which they were well-prepared.64 Slavery

intensified in Cuba and Brazil as a result. Indeed, the profits of slave-

based industries enjoyed a real surge with the spread of chaos in St

Domingue. The Spanish clearly saw developments as fortuitous. The

63 Michael Crafton, “The Black Caribs of St Vincent: A Reevaluation”, Anne-Perotin-Durnon, “Free Coloureds and Slaves in Revolutionary Guadaloupe: Politicsand Political Consciousness”, and David Geggus, “The Slaves and Free Colouredsof Martinique during the Age of the French and Haitian Revolution: Three Momentsof Resistance,” in Robert Paquette and Stanley L. Engerman, The Lesser Antilles inthe Age of European Expansion (Gainsville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996).

64 See R. Meadows, “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French AtlanticCommunity 1789–1809,” French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 (2000). Perspectives onthe legacy of the Haitian Revolution can be found in David Patrick Geggus, ed.,The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of SouthCarolina Press, 2001).

280 chapter nine

British, however, were deterred from a larger scale re-development

of slave numbers in the Caribbean by their losses. In the rest of the

region the French colonial order waxed and waned in ongoing skir-

mishes with the British. But it did survive Napoleon’s defeat.

Fluctuating strategic fortunes were one side of the French con-

stellation. Another side to the polity that reflected this pattern of

state formation was the philosophy of empire. The Americas loomed

large in the minds of French statesmen after the Seven Years War.

Imperial rivalry was magnified in the agenda of concerns of the

state’s elites. Furthermore, this occurred in a new socio-structural

framework. The rise of the bourgeois public sphere in the last third

of the eighteenth century broadened the space in which the empire

could be considered as a topic for discussion.65 Many literary, criti-

cal, and political figures inhabited the salons of French nobility prior

to 1789. To the philosophes, the physiocrats and republicans embroiled

in this discussion, America appeared as a beacon of hope more than

a horizon of depravity.66 Benjamin Franklin and his closest friends

were widely celebrated on their visits to France in the late 1760s.

Correspondence, exchanges and American letters to the French press

were the components of a lively traffic across the Atlantic from 1767

onwards. America was firmly implanted in the political imagination

of pre-revolutionary France and its horizon informed the debates

around the philosophy of the French empire.

Physiocratic administrators who straddled the worlds of the state

and the nascent public were also fascinated by the American image.

Physiocratic doctrine enjoyed its heyday at this specific juncture of

developments. The loss of Canada, the rise of the public sphere and

the growing concern over imperial fortunes all coincided with the

life of Physiocratism. A long-term dilemma came to the fore at this

point: whether to open-up France and its empire economically or

whether to strengthen the state in Europe. Britain and Spain liber-

alized trade after 1763. France, under Calonne, opened American

ports in 1784, mostly in response to growing trade. The Eden Treaty

65 See Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (London: DukeUniversity Press, 1991), pp. 136–69 and Habermas, The Structural Transformation ofthe Public Sphere, pp. 67–70.

66 On the mutual engagement of Anglo-Americans and the French after the SevenYears War see Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Imageof America to 1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), chap. 1.


(1786) furthered this process.67 In part, this was prompted by France’s

strategic weakness. However, the laissez-faire outlook of the phys-

iocrats also guided this tack. It represented a shift of sorts in the

philosophy of empire from the dominance of a residual Colbertism

to a more liberal economics. It was truly a transitional philosophy

that lauded the ideals of free trade, whilst calling on the sovereign

power to ensure the operations of the market system.68 As Marx

rightly pointed out a century later, the physiocrats were unwitting

free traders.69 In this period, liberalization was a strategy to strengthen

the state as a whole. This was clearly true of the British; it can also

be said of Spain and France. Indeed, liberalization represented a

response of the agronomist elite of the French state to a changing

context. Their deliberations expressed a shift in the philosophy of a

deliberate imperialism.

Physiocratism’s brief life gave way to republican universalism. The

governance of the empire developed new tensions between univer-

sal ideals and local realities. Assimilationism, based on the principle

of an indivisible polity, underscored a new philosophy of colonial-

ism. This became a peculiar feature of French empire building in

the nineteenth century: the rationality and uniformity of imperial

governance over a colonial empire that was, in all respects, extremely

diverse.70 But the promise that all French were to be integrated into

the republique had been well received earlier. The reception turned

cold in 1794 when the end of slavery was decreed. The Directory

found itself having to meet white settlers’ conditions in 1798 when

their protests grew too loud. Of course, the republican philosophy

of empire achieved few of its aims. In a way, its boasts were mostly

a fiction belied by the retention of many features of the old empire.

The civic egalitarianism of the Revolution sat in an awkward rela-

tionship with actually existing colonialism. What emerged was a

hybrid of different administrative practices and different patterns of

institutional formation. Assimilationism would prove impractical for

67 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, pp. 86–97.68 Albert O. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests: Political Argument for Capitalism

before its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 93–100.69 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963),

vol. 1, chap. 2 For a more detailed exploration of specific policies see A. I. Bloomfield,“The Foreign Trade Doctrines of the Physiocrats,” in Mark Blaug, ed., FrancoisQuesney 1694–1774 (Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1991), pp. 22–47.

70 Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, pp. 47–48.

282 chapter nine

France’s rulers after the Restoration and the colonies were returned

to a position of subordination. But that is a new stage of French

imperial history that is not a concern of the current work.

The long revolution in Hispanic America

In the framework of European crisis at the beginning of the nine-

teenth century and the deepening tensions of empire, the nuclei of

movements of independence in the Spanish Indies began to coalesce.

Three events precipitated Spanish-American secession: the American

and French Revolutions, Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and the break-

up of the Napoleonic Empire at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. These

did not foretell independence. They did, however, frame the inter-

national context in which the move to separate statehood occurred

across the Spanish Empire.

The Anglo-American and French revolutions altered the interna-

tional context substantially. The new United States sought more

extensive trade with the Spanish colonies in South America, espe-

cially after 1793. The revolutions also provided models of republi-

can state building, although they were not equally well received.71

Those Spanish-Americans who did read French political philosophy

were well versed in it. Mostly, they were concentrated in the key

nodes of information networks: the ports, capital cities and coastal

towns.72 Moreover, it was mainly members of the cultural elites who

were exposed to French thought: professors, pseudo-aristocrats and

high public administrators. The inquisition in Mexico rigorously

sought to root out French-inspired radicalism and any prospect of

conspiracy just prior to and immediately after the Revolution. In

New Granada, it echoed in an urgent criollismo. To escape the reach

of the Holy Office, many dissidents made London a base for exiles.

Some British officials courted potential revolutionaries with a view

to supporting any move to independence. After Spain and Britain

assumed hostilities in 1796, some received pensions. Britain’s con-

stitutional monarchy had appeal for the insurgents, perhaps due to

their long-standing connections with the minority liberal constitu-

tionalist currents in Spain. But the US provided a living example

and indeed was another refuge for fleeing Creole revolutionaries.

71 On French and North American influences on Spanish America, see Liss,Atlantic Empires, chap. 7.

72 Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias, pp. 42–43.


Its revolution and the French Revolution established two vital

republican principles: political involvement is a civic duty and that

the state is secondary to the nation and can therefore be rightly

overthrown in the conditions of injustice. The revolt of the Thirteen

Colonies achieved a continuous republic—so it seemed to Creole

leaders in the 1790s—while the promises of the French Revolution

faltered during the Terror and then were lost in Napoleon’s ascen-

dancy. Miranda spoke for others when he said:

Two great examples lie before our eyes: the American and the Frenchrevolutions. Let us discreetly imitate the first: let us carefully avoid thedisastrous effect of the second.73

The constitutions of Venezuela and Mexico echoed that of the United

States, at least in form. Up until the 1820s, Miranda, Bolivar, Moreno

and others reserved their public admiration for America first and

foremost, at least until the US publicised its initial refusal to recog-

nize the new republics.74 The Jacobin turn in France and its reper-

cussions in the Caribbean had driven anxious Creoles away from its

example. They continued to read the works of the philosophes and

warmly welcomed their influence. Indeed, Latin American intellec-

tuals frequently sojourned in Paris and took France as their cultural

parent.75 But for the new republican state-makers, it was the US

Federal leaders that embodied the vital example.

The second event, the Napoleonic conquest of Spain, although brief,

threw the imperial court apparatus into confusion. Fear of Madrid’s

incapacity to lend support to the empire in a moment of crisis per-

vaded the court state and the colonial order. Self-rule became a real-

ity for the colonial order during this period and the experience of

government was incorporated into the political outlook of Creole

leaders. After this brief interlude in which the viceroyalties had time

to contemplate non-dependence on the centre, Ferdinand VII was

restored. Although the monarchy’s policy was directed at a re-estab-

lishment of the imperial order, Spain’s relationship with Britain and

the United States was now altered. War with Britain ravaged Spain’s

resources and cuts its trade routes. The US and Britain could both

73 Cited in Liss, Atlantic Empires, p. 166.74 Lynch, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence,” in Bethell, The

Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1 pp. 45–46.75 Luis Roniger, “Global Immersion: Latin America and its Multiple Modernities,”

in Roniger and Waisman, Globality and Multiple Modernities, pp. 94–99.

284 chapter nine

covertly support independence movements without fear of them, or

of Spanish retribution.76 The related event was the resolution of the

1812 war between the United States and Great Britain. The United

States was now a competitor in the Atlantic economy. It had arrived

as a power in the international state system and in the American

hemisphere. This further permitted clandestine involvement in South

American politics.

Finally, in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, the victorious

European states were in a position to persuade Spain to extend lib-

eral reform in Latin America. Imperial reforms had continued from

the 1780s under Charles II. Actually, this had been a period of

flexible responses to changing circumstances in the Americas. Moreover,

Spanish liberals had actively agitated for more far-reaching reform

for some decades. Therefore, further remodelling of the imperial

polity did not meet entrenched opposition at this time. British com-

merce gained a firmer hold in the Spanish-American economy as a

result. Further, inter-imperial trade undermined an official Spanish

mercantile policy regime, which had become largely an empty shell

of regulations by this stage.

These three international shifts created the optimal conditions for

independence movements to succeed. Yet, there was no guarantee

that they would, a fact demonstrated by two features of the strug-

gle for independence. Firstly, Spanish Americans rarely accepted

independence unequivocally. In each separate case of independence

the level of mestizo support seemed to vary according to the perceived

threat to the established institutions of the colonial order. Bolivar’s

commitment to the end of slavery in 1815 and his decision to mobi-

lize the lower orders of colonial society added decisive weight to his

northern campaigns. This harmonized with the vision of a republic

of ‘good citizens’ that he derived from different sources: Rousseau,

the European liberals, the examples of revolutionary France and the

US and Ancient models of Sparta, Athens and Rome.77 His rendi-

tion of republicanism was a modern one, to be sure, that encapsu-

lated emancipation of slaves. But this would be another experiment

in liberty.

76 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, pp. 251–52.77 Luis Roniger, “Global Immersion,” in Roniger and Waisman, Globality and

Multiple Modernities, pp. 84–85.


It would run up against the next problem that confronted Latin-

American republicans (and the second feature), which was the difficulty

of creating viable states to replace the Spanish empire while bal-

ancing the powerful and entrenched interests of newly empowered

Creole elites. Two models were available.78 On one hand, the exam-

ple of a civilian legislature existed in the Cortes of Cadiz. Its oper-

ation was constitutionally-guided and it could have even formed a

centre for a re-launched quasi-federal imperial polity. The other was

an American-based republican tradition that emphasized executive

power. It better reflected long-standing Hispanic centralism.

The question of which might prevail was still open after 1812.

The fragility of the newly amalgamated movements for independence

meant that there was a range of possible outcomes. A major event

that revealed the weakness of the insurgent Creole order was Bolivar’s

attempt to forge an ‘American Union’ at the Congress of Panama

in 1826. This failed. However, its very occurrence suggests the exis-

tence of a form of solidarity that was at this time regional rather

than national in scale. Bolivar attempted to base a state power on

a centralized military force.79 Its failure was a product of the vast

area that the union would have encapsulated and the weakness of

military institutions in the early nineteenth century.80 However, this

was not only an issue of organized military might. Bolivar confronted

similar difficulties in uniting provincial forces that San Martin did

in Rio de la Plata. San Martin’s campaign struggled to gain influence

in the Argentine interior, due to the authority of rural leaders who

perceived their interests differently.81 Of course, the strength of provin-

cial government in that region was the legacy of the colonial order.

Yet fear of the shape that the new Argentina might take went beyond

the interior. Paraguay and Uruguay were both forged in defiance of

a new centralism emanating from Buenos Aires.82 The legacy of

78 Jaime E. Rodriguez, The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998).

79 David Bushnell, “The Independence of Spanish South America,” pp. 140–50.80 Wallerstein’s comment rings true here:

Bolivar’s dream of replicating the formula of unity achieved by the ThirteenColonies failed. The area involved was, of course, far more dispersed, andhence there was no possibility of unifying the military struggle, an importantfactor in the creation of the United States. Bolivar’s Congress of Panama inJune 1826 failed completely. (The Modern World System, vol. 3, p. 254)

81 Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, pp. 200–203.82 Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas, p. 101.

286 chapter nine

Hispanic centralism proved persistent in both the short-lived Argentine

Confederation (1810–16) and Gran Colombia (1819–30).

The national borders of the new republics remained undetermined

for some time. Competing republican and municipal models of sov-

ereignty meant that the establishment of a nation-wide centralized

source of legitimate authority was difficult in the absence of an

empire. The principles of nation state formation were often enunci-

ated in the constitutions of the new republics. A blueprint of rep-

resentation could be easily pieced together, but there was no prior

conception of ‘the people’. Thus, the influence of customary corpo-

ratist organizations endured due to a deep patrician logic common

to all the republics giving off the appearance of ‘family resemblance’

amongst the different societies in from the cone of South America

up to its northern coastal states.83 In establishing the jurisdiction of

rule, this produced two contrary trends. On one hand, authority lay

with territorial jurisdiction (although this was still being fought over);

on the other hand, Hispanic Americans were accustomed to the gov-

ernment of communities and not territory by provincial (audiencia)and urban (cabildo) authorities.84 By 1830, some stability emerged with

the dissolution of Gran Colombia that brought an end to Bolivar’s

classical republican vision. At that point, it was the audiencias and

cabildos which took over. In time, their unsettled borders would come

to broadly resemble the patterns of viceroyalty, intendancy, province

and municipality that were consolidated in Bourbon America.

The influence of republicanism on the process of imperial disin-

tegration has also been a traditional concern of Spanish-American

historiography.85 The first period of revolt (1808–1812), was brought

about by the Napoleonic invasion. Republicanism, in the sense of a

republican political culture, was absent. Bonaparte’s usurpation of

the French throne resulted in a loyalist backlash against France in

the Americas.86 The assertion of imperial allegiance to the Spanish

empire lent legitimacy to the juntas, cabildos and audiencias, which

assumed authority in the name of the monarchy. Although this was,

83 See Francois-Xaviar Guerra, “The Spanish American Tradition of Representationand its European Roots,” Journal of Latin American Studies 26, no. 1 (1994).

84 Herzog, “The Meaning of Territory,” in Roniger and Waisman, Globality andMultiple Modernities, pp. 167–70.

85 Liss, Atlantic Empires, chap. 9; and Veliz, The Centralist Tradition, p. 164.86 Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vol. 3, pp. 249–50.


in a way, a period of self-government or even the formation of quasi-

republics, republican horizons did not underscore its legitimation.

The political imagination of a nation—the requisite component

identified by Benedict Anderson and others—was distinctly absent.

Instead, acquired methods and habits of provincial and municipal

rule provided political continuity, even in the absence of the func-

tioning structure that had cultivated those same methods and habits.

During this period, the cabildos and even the audiencias were the struc-

tural-institutional foci of power.87 They attempted to establish inde-

pendent governments, even though, in some cases, professing loyalty

to Ferdinand VII. Some of the rebellious cabildos, re-formed as jun-tas. They re-drew the boundaries of their administration, constituting

a disunited Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico and Venezuela out of the

viceroyalties of New Spain, New Granada and the Rio de la Plata.

The centrality of the institutions of the colonial order emerged from

the historical occupation of these institutional locations by those who

figured prominently among the insurgents. Creole leaders were habit-

uated to administration in the governing bodies of the colonial order.

In establishing new states, or even in governing temporarily in the

name of the Emperor, they reached for whatever means of gover-

nance that were available to them and that they were accustomed

to. Mainly, these issued from prior patterns of governance and the

colonial institutions that generated them. This is attested to by the

fact that in almost all cases of early rebellion against court officials

in the Spanish Indies government could only gain hegemony over

a limited area around the major cities.88 The boundaries of what

might have been new figurations of power could only be drawn up

on the foundations of the jurisdiction of either urban-based audiencias

87 A historical narration of the first period of revolt can be found in Parry, TheSpanish Seaborne Empire, pp. 350–55. For a historical essay specifically on the revoltin New Granada, the relationship between the viceroy and his Creole constituents,and the crisis of the empire, see Robert L. Gilmore, “The Imperial Crisis, Rebellion,and the Viceroy: Nueva Granada in 1809,” Hispanic American Historical Review 40,no. 1 (1960).

88 The cabildo of Buenos Aires was a partial exception to this rule. After defeat-ing the British expeditionary force in 1807, it sought the title of ‘Defender of SouthAmerica and Protector of the Cabildos of the Viceroyalty of La Plata’. Its actionshad won it friends among other municipal cabildos, which in turn pursued strongerlinks with Buenos Aires. In many ways this was an attempt prior to independenceto extend the sphere of the cabildo’s influence beyond Buenos Aires and to encom-pass much of La Plata itself. See John Lynch, “Intendants and Cabildos in theViceroyalty of La Plata.”

288 chapter nine

or cabildos. To extend effective authority of the new governments

beyond this area would involve a radical innovation—the establish-

ment of a quasi-national state.

The two elements of the nineteenth century move to indepen-

dence in the Spanish American states—the uncertainty of mestizoopinion and the lack of definition of feasible national and territor-

ial sovereignty reflected in stable boundaries—are indications that

Creole nationalism was relatively fragile at this juncture. However,

they also point to the undeniable weight of accumulated Creole iden-

tity, which would form the basis of later Latin American nation-

alisms. Furthermore, it would also form the cultural basis for territorially

confined national populations.

After independence, political and state centralism endured in the

form of praetorian national states. The movements for independence

often:

. . . lacked a preconceived and unified program of action and (were)therefore forced to rely on the existing administrative concepts andpractices even though thereafter these were directed to different ends.89

Perhaps this is not surprising as the proclamation of independence

often came when the threat of the revolutionary process going fur-

ther seemed the greatest. For Creole communities poised between

the Spanish and the subaltern classes, independence may have been

the more conservative option, better in their eyes than the prospect

of a Haitian-style revolt.90

Still, continuity in practice sat easily with a fiery rhetoric of change.

The language of European liberalism and republicanism adopted by

independent governments masked the persistence of centralism in the

techniques and habits of governance that had ancestral roots in the

Caroline reforms. Because of this, the states produced by the rebel-

lions against the Spanish-American Empire can be characterized as

centralist. A glance at the reception of the different strands of the

Enlightenment amongst Spanish-American intellectuals accounts for

one aspect of this legacy. The uncritical, yet only partial, appropri-

ation of different versions of the Enlightenment furnished Hispanic

America’s revolutionaries with political horizons that were republican

in limited ways only. Reason appeared to contemporaries to have

89 Veliz, The Centralist Tradition, p. 117.90 Abernethy, Global Dominance, pp. 73–75.


migrated to the post-revolutionary Latin American states and jour-

neyed through all the cultural and political works of the early nine-

teenth century. Yet, the new enlightened approach to polity and

society clearly echoed the rationalist reform program of the late eigh-

teenth century court state.91 The continuity seems remarkable today,

although it was lost on nineteenth century nationalist historiography.

Indeed, it was quite possible for the Crown to reassemble the Empire

after Napoleon’s withdrawal.92 As late as 1821, a plan for autonomy

was put to the liberal Cortes in Madrid based on the division of the

empire into three regions, each with the right to trade with the oth-

ers freely. Its rejection left the American revolutionaries with little

choice. Compromise was widely contemplated; in fact, it was the

first and most feasible option. A universe of common interests and

ideas had held Spain’s American empire together. The populace only

absconded to seek independence at the very end.

Whilst the reverberations of the American and French Revolutions

sounded strongly in the ears of those who led revolutionary gov-

ernments, the tones of nationalism began to rise only after 1820.

This can be explained easily by reference to European trends which

Hispanic elites were mesmerized with. Independence in the Americas

only barely preceded the development of nationalism in Europe as

a widespread phenomenon. In Spanish America, nationalism followed

in the wake of the success of independence movements in establishing

new states. This is not to suggest that a mechanical, causal rela-

tionship existed between events in Europe and developments in Latin

America. Nationalism in the southern continent was not an auto-

matic product of its European counterparts. However, the growth of

nationalism on the European continent did provide a series of exam-

ples of nation-formation for ruling elites to later borrow from as they

saw fit.

Conclusion

The era in which immigrant-settler colonialism dominated Western

European expansion effectively ended with the revolts in the Americas.

Forthcoming colonies in Australasia and South Africa could be

91 Arciniegas, America in Europe, chap. 8.92 McLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, pp. 133–35.

290 chapter nine

compared and it might be supposed that they fit a type. However,

most of Europe’s future colonies were occupied by minorities that

partitioned the states, which they had subjugated. They were fun-

damentally different from the Euro-American empires of the Western

Hemisphere. That is the conclusion that can be readily drawn from

this chapter. The revolts of the colonial order terminated settler-colo-

nialism, not so much because they cleared much of the American

landmass of imperial sovereignty, more because they broke up the

potential for long-term endurance of this kind of polity.

This doesn’t merely finish the narrative. It bears on the second

and third premises of state formation considered in the opening chap-

ter. I’ll go over this briefly. Premise two is that Western European

state formation was a process of internal conflict of elites. Domestically,

a provincial and municipal order confronted a monarchical core in

routine struggle that was sometimes overt. In the imperial domain,

the colonial order was a more distant other of the governing regime.

The tension of state formation that underlay the creation of govern-

mental institutions in the European heartlands also marked the first

phase and subsequent ageing of imperial bodies. But the New World

changed everything. The colonial order developed different relations

with the agencies of the state. Royal patronage did not strike so

deep there. Distance forced self-sufficiency on administration in the

colonies. Laws were interpreted according to colonial interests.

Traditions were read in fresh ways, including political philosophy

and culture. The revolutions that occurred were anti-imperial in

character and direction. The analysis in the second half of this chap-

ter demonstrates that there is dissimilarity between the analogous-

though-not-identical colonial order and the provincial and municipal

figuration. The distinction can ultimately be measured by the hori-

zon of possible social and state forms.

This connects with the third premise. State formation is a process

of institutional creation. It is not only a consolidation of existing

arrangements and it is not an exhaustively pre-determined pattern.

Its variability is borne out in the diverse results of the rebellions

against the empires. They were terminated in the Americas by the

inability of the Spanish court and British constitutional states to sus-

tain legitimate governmental rule and a mercantile economy in much

of the New World. But the upheaval in the Thirteen Colonies was

groundbreaking. A republicanized public sphere containing multiple

political traditions was a prime social structure. Colonial bodies were


the institutional loci that gave rise to a new terrain of conflicting

identities. The axis of tension of transatlantic state formation was

manifest in the subsequent debates and struggles around autonomy,

sovereignty and, in the end, the very form of the state itself. Settler

colonialism in the Thirteen Colonies gave way to a path of recon-

stitution, while the British Empire in America re-grouped around

Canada and the Caribbean. This new form of state power was an

innovative creation that escaped more of its past and more of its

history. In Hispanic South America, the centralism of the Spanish

Empire continued in the praetorian-style republics that formed, despite

the rhetorical radicalism of the Creole revolutionaries.

The Atlantic nexus that was discussed in chapter one was broken

in the sense that the empires and their hegemonies unravelled. The

geography of the three large trans-continental states was fragmented

for a time. With the entry of smaller American republics onto the

world scene, the era of nation-states was dimly foreshadowed. Those

states began to trade largely on their own terms. They developed

diplomatic capacities and vigilance in guarding their own strategic

interests. The United States became a prominent trader and minor

economic power. But relationships between the Western European

and American continents also remained. They were changed as impe-

rial nexus receded. Capitalism proliferated in the Atlantic zone and

new, smaller states still had a visible hand in economic matters.

Cultural and political links in the case of Hispanic America were

very strong. These factors are outside of the parameters of this work,

but they are important continuities to note nonetheless.

The central point is that the area between the three continents

was still a set of arenas of inter-civilizational interaction. It was the

world of Atlantic modernity that Western Europe still looked out

over and it was, of course, an intercultural zone. These points allude,

however, to unanswered questions that are either implicitly fore-

grounded by the sketch in the introduction or by the subsequent

argument in the main body of the book or that are lingering in the

background. In the ‘Conclusion’, a summary of results of the argu-

ment is presented and some further points of clarification will address

those questions.

CHAPTER TEN

THE ATLANTIC’S DISTINCT MODERNITY

The main body of this book leaves us better placed to address ques-

tions raised in the first two chapters as well as highlight in summary

form the characteristics of Atlantic modernity. To summarize: those

questions have to do with the articulation of three dimensions of

Atlantic modernity and with its deeply inter-civilizational character.

Questions of ‘civilization’ are posed in two groups:

• The different aspects of civilizational conception—the modes of

contact and relation across different social formations, the stan-

dards of civility and the concentration and mobilization of the signs

of European civilizational interpretation. This is one working answer

to the recurring question: what is civilization?

• How the Western civilizational imaginary actually was particular-

ized by specific European states. Identifying and comparing Euro-

American empires is straightforward enough. Exploring the shared

features of traditions brought to America and transformed by

transatlantic experiences is more challenging. It requires looking

above and beyond the institutional entities of any one of the three

states to the circuits of information and knowledge in both Europe

and the Americas. Through these media, the cultural products of

the Western civilizational imaginary could be put into motion.

This précis of the book brings answers to these questions, answers

that do not claim to be exhaustive. It reviews each chapter, but also

summarizes across chapters. It is short, sums up the results of the

current work and points to prospective agenda for further research.

Civilization and Atlantic modernity

This work presumes the paradigm breakthrough made by the multi-

ple modernities school of thought in departing from the exhausted

metanarrative of modernization. In place of a singular linear pattern

of modernizing, multiple patterns and cultural programmes are

the atlantic’s distinct modernity 293

posited.1 The patterns overlap and interweave. This is only partly

because of the large-scale expansion of Western powers since the

sixteenth century. It is due also to trans-national dynamics of conflict

between states and the widespread tensions between cultures and the

forces of expanding capitalism. Divergence is the hallmark of moder-

nity not preordained tendencies of homogenisation.2 Thus, there are

many articulations of the principal features of modernity informed

by cultural legacy and institutional and political conditions, so much

so that it is sociologically more meaningful to talk about multiple

modernities, rather than an overarching logic of modernization.

Atlantic modernity thus has competitors and alternatives. At the risk

of over-stating its importance, I argue that Atlantic modernity over-

laps with European modernities but should not be conflated with

them. It is distinct and contains its own diversity of institutional, eco-

nomic and cultural forms. To see this clearly, some rethinking of

the classical image of European modernity is needed and has been

presented in this book. The breakdown of the closure of traditional

societies presumed to be the corollary of Westernization is discarded

in favour of exploration of the multiplicity and diversity of societies

created in the ferment of actual colonialism. This involves dynamic

historical processes of creation and reconstitution of social and polit-

ical institutions, broad cultural understandings and modes of eco-

nomic life. They were at work from the beginning of Europeans’

presence in the Americas and entailed indeterminacy and uncertainty

in the direction of social formations. This kind of dynamism goes

unnoticed in modernization studies that presuppose a singular and

inexorable erosion of traditional structures, ideologies and economies

by modern forces.

In its place, I emphasize the historical weight of the Atlantic world

and the societies of the Americas and this weight has mattered not

only since the independence of the United States and the Latin

American republics, but throughout the early modern era. In other

words, the diverse articulations of principles of modernity in new

1 S. N. Eisenstadt, “Modernity in Socio-Historical Perspective,” in Ben-Rafaeland Sternberg, Comparing Modernities; and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Jens Riedel, andDominic Sachsenmaier, “The Context of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm,” inSachsenmaier et al., Reflections on Multiple Modernities. See also Patterns of Modernity,vol. 1.

2 Eisenstadt and Schlucter, “Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities.”

294 chapter ten

Euro-American cultures were present from the beginning of colo-

nialism. Re-orienting the focus of comparative analysis onto the

Atlantic thus casts light on other neglected patterns. Accepted accounts

of Western modernity have variously privileged different endogenous

factors: rationalization, the Reformation, democracy and revolution,

industrialization and societal differentiation more generally, war or

the cataclysmic transformation of social relations. There is much that

is rich and illuminating in these explanations, but they are also lim-

ited in their range of analysis. In my ledger of Atlantic modernity,

there are other dynamics that are advanced and given visibility: impe-

rial transoceanic state formation, the shock of New World inter-civ-

ilizational interaction and the wider creation of networks of capitalism

connecting three continents. This re-casts the image of modernity as

manifold by pointing to at least one other original source of devel-

opment of its core institutional, political and economic features.

These three are the general dimensions of Atlantic modernity.

There are at least eight specific areas in which the colonized Americas

are set apart from European modernity. Firstly, the overall pattern

of confrontation and exchange between civilizational forms is vastly

different. Early modern Europe was a continent of three different

civilizational influences. All were articulated in imperial states and

were identified with particular societies and political-ecological zones.

Their modes of interaction were shaped by their grounded-ness and

the relatively even balance between them, whether it was in warfare,

trade or cultural, educational or artistic exchange. By contrast, the

historical relationships between Euro-America and the hemisphere’s

indigenous civilizations began with the fact of overwhelming con-

quest of territory and societies and the immense, almost unimaginable,

destruction of human life that was the result of colonialism in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This set in train a logic of exter-

mination. Despite its violence, this logic still had a vital cultural

dimension. The civilizational imaginary that made the encounter with

the Americas meaningful for Europeans included images of the indige-

nous worlds that enabled comprehension, and often misjudgement,

of the New World. This is the second distinct feature of Atlantic

modernity and it was only possible through the long historical engage-

ment with the Americas. The imaginary animated knowledge of this

world, its peoples and its environs, such as that knowledge was. It

framed the entire challenge of otherness, whether in its ‘natural’ (i.e.

botanical and topological) or societal and demotic guises. The conquest


had not resulted in finalized and decisive devastation. Its result was

more than mere survival, even in the cases of those relatively untouched

by the Euro-American presence until the nineteenth century. It was

the beginning of regeneration and reconstitution, albeit along greatly

different and generally less autonomous lines. The persistent and re-

creative presence of indigenous cultures and communities vivified the

imaginary in important ways, as argued throughout chapters four

and five.

This relates to the third area—the striking freshness of the Americas

in its terrain, its topos, its global location, its utopian appeal. There

was no place like the New World; one that had an appearance of

seemingly recent discovery and that lacked the mark of civilizations

known to Europeans. In reality, the landscape and all on it were

subject to colonial processes of transformation. Plots, villages, cities,

ranches, forts, ports, mines and farms sprang up at a faster pace

than in Europe, at least prior to the nineteenth century. Rapid growth

was a mark of all colonies. The speed and scale varied significantly,

of course. The sweep of colonization was breathtaking in Spanish

America, concentrated in the British colonies and marginal but, again,

concentrated in New France. In retrospect, the impression that colo-

nial societies were European fragments implanted in new soil is for-

givable, even if deceptive. The swift development of Creole communities

and settlements can lead to the conclusion that there was a wide-

spread process of Europeanization going on. In fact, a far-reaching

initiation of an Atlantic modernity had begun. The immigrant-settler

character of the societies that emerged is the fourth area of this

modernity and it self-evidently relates to the culture of novelty. A

large proportion of non-indigenous populations shared primary and

secondary experiences of migration, much larger than in Western

and Central Europe. It was not only that many had undertaken

cross-ocean voyages and then possibly relocated again later, but also

that it was widely recognized as a defining and founding feature of

American societies. These were, in other words, immigrant cultures,

especially the Anglo-American colonies. Travel and migration (includ-

ing internal migration) was the centrepiece of modern experiences

in a way that it was not in Europe.

Not all were willing travelers. The impact of slavery is the fifth

area. Contemporary historians have established that there were indus-

tries of slavery in medieval and early modern Europe. However, their

impact bears no comparison with the Atlantic in terms of scale or

296 chapter ten

long-lasting legacy. There is no need to labor the detail further on

this, except to note two points. Colonial slavery was modern, as socapably shown by Robin Blackburn and others. Moreover, it was

the scourge of the Caribbean, British America and the hinterland

colonies possessed by the Spanish; elsewhere it was sparse, even non-

existent. Densely multiracial populations in Brazil, the Caribbean

and the United States bear witness to this modern legacy and point

to countries where it was most prominent. Notwithstanding the facts

that abolitionism was a British movement and that Enlightenment

philosophies were deeply preoccupied with slavery in contradistinc-

tion to freedom, it is indisputable that the problem of slavery was

ingrained in Atlantic modernity while it only really figured as a philo-

sophical and political question in Europe.

Migration and slavery provided the membership of extended

colonial settlements. The nature of the colonial communities they

accommodated is the sixth area of distinction. Different ontological

constructions rooted in competing religious affiliations informed the

degree of accessibility and egalitarianism of particular communities

in more profound ways than in the Old World.3 Other sorts of clo-

sure and hierarchy can be delineated. Corporatism and guild-like

enclaves marked urban Hispano-American communities. Membership

of those communities was tightly constrained and cultural barriers

deterred strangers.4 Moreover, the segmentation of communities was

conspicuous reflecting deep divisions within the wider hierarchical

social order and the split between indigenous, Creole and peninsu-

lar groups. Elsewhere in the Americas, other communities were more

formally receptive. They generated cultural fusion, ‘splicing’ and

hybridity. In that process, they often produced their own traditions

and identities that had different orientations vying for adherents—

the seventh area of interest. This was strongest in mainland Spanish

America where operative myths of origin drew links with pre-

Colombian heritage to accentuate the supposedly primordial traces

of Creole cultures. It established a steadfast identification with the

land and with place that enlivened the Creolism of the revolution-

ary era. In other non-Hispanic colonial zones, greater ambivalence

3 See Eisenstadt’s argument about the unique multiple civilizations of the Atlantic,“The Civilizations of the Americas.”

4 See Herzog, “A Stranger in a Strange Land,” in Roniger and Sznajder, ConstructingCollective Identities.


reigned. Association with place competed with an allegiance to empire

and to its styles of civility. This raised continent-wide doubt about

the sense of belonging. Was it possible to be English and American,

Creole and Hispanic? Which place, what culture to belong to? Atlantic

modernity entailed a struggle with identification. In the eighteenth

century, communities started to look divided along lines of identity,

which were related to politics, religion and location. The divisions

were starkest in British North America, but were visible also in the

Hispanic south. They feed existing public spheres that emerged with

a horizon of other possibilities. A vibrant public sphere in the Thirteen

Colonies created more than access to political discourse; it posited

a principle of representation, some years before the French Revolution.

This was a distinct innovation and it informed the republican state

that emerged. The final feature is therefore the self-conscious revo-

lutionary foundation of new orders. It was expressed in two ways.

A strong millennial sense of mission informed the American Revolution.

Patriotic rhetoric summoned Creolist sentiments in the Spanish vice-

royalties. The results were different, but the shared sense of forging

something new was strong and it brought a focus on constitution

drafting—that is, on encoding the process of social change—if not

always constitutional statehood. It was in the Americas that this polit-

ical modernity first made a full appearance and it set models for

subsequent developments in Europe.

The eight areas distinguish Atlantic and European modernities.

The conquest of the American hemisphere opened up a context of

inter-civilizational interaction that was itself a part of modernity and

impelled cultural transformation. The civilizational self-consciousness

of Europeans condensed over time in general reorientation to the

Europe’s western horizons and to strikingly dissimilar formations. But

if this was an outthrust of European powers, how was it a forward

movement of a ‘civilization’ and an early token of a pattern of moder-

nity more particularly Atlantic than European? The intercultural

experiences that occurred in the Western hemisphere (including the

social and cultural pulverization that colonialism brought) were not

possible on the European continent, in the eastern interface with the

Ottoman Empire, or in northern Africa. Incursion into the Atlantic

and the Americas not only broke the dependence of Christian Europe

on the Mediterranean and North-West African confines, it produced

newborn colonial societies that were recognized as part of the Western

empires. Their heritage was, at the same time, both original and

298 chapter ten

shared. An outward freshness of the American hemisphere underscored

the societies founded in the Americas under the muffled yet swelling

de facto leadership of the colonial order. The apparent novelty of

the world that Iberian and then north-western European powers

claimed as theirs contributed to the self-reflected impression amongst

many Europeans of upheaval. This echoed not only in the rising

sense of civilizational otherness present in the Euro-American empires,

but also in the experience of a heightening of the sphere of eco-

nomic power, the range of Europe’s polities and the sense of dis-

tinctive cultural identities. Thus, the intrusive presence of Europeans

in American environments ushered in the creation of modern colo-

nizing state institutions, trans-imperial instruments of government,

the large-scale aggregation of capital, a colonial slave mode of pro-

duction, markets that bartered human beings and colonies at the

edge of cultures and social formations that they struggled to con-

struct firstly as similar and then as vividly different and barbarous.

Multiple centres on both sides of the ocean dominated these rela-

tionships. It is therefore misleading to speak in strict terms of a ‘cen-

tre’ with a ‘periphery’ or peripheries. Colonialism produced its own

centres on the North and South American continents. Granted, they

did not enjoy symmetrical relationships with the headquartered bod-

ies of imperial government, whether those headquarters were in

London, Paris or Versailles or in Madrid. But they were not simply

dependent on the capitals of the imperial states either. Thus these

are not outposts of Western modernity, as some social scientists have

understood it. All these historical features have panoramas that are

British, Spanish or French Atlantic and not exclusively European or

continental, even though they have been constituted culturally by

Europeans through what has been called in modern times the Western

Tradition. And it is Atlantic and American vectors—whether imag-

ined or really absorbed—as much as European ones that count in

thinking about the early modern processes of state formation, capi-

talism and civilizational consciousness. Considering the vitality of

developments in the Western hemisphere and how they influenced

Western Europe at its roots has pressed the following thesis which

underpins the argument of this book: that these histories are all bet-

ter written as ones of Atlantic rather than Western modernity.

The terms of this multidimensional pattern of modernity are intro-

duced in chapter one. A special place is given to civilizational cog-

nition as that is the area in greatest need of more complete development


and some further thinking. It draws on a longer tradition of sociol-

ogy and revives research programs that were concerns of early soci-

ologists but were subsequently overlooked. The context in which

civilization has come into public debates today is vastly different

from the fin de siecle ambivalence of the early twentieth century. Three

features of the new context stand out. The end of colonialism brought

an unfinished search for robust post-colonial independence and cul-

tural renovation for many states new to the United Nations. Indigenous

peoples who were formally subsumed under national categories of

citizenship now find voice in all sorts of public fora. They exercise

a politics of mobilization based on claims for recognition and justice.

The end of the Cold War has sparked new worldwide hostilities that

do not resemble traditional inter-state conflicts. They appear to some

as clashes of civilizations, although that impression is too casual and

short-sighted. This world is so starkly different from that in which

civilizations analysis initially flourished. It demands new sensibilities

to be exercised and a review of the underlying longer-term assump-

tions of Western history.5

The sociology of civilizations is well suited to this task as it is around

the idea of civilization that some of those assumptions have revolved.

A quick glance at the contours of the Colombian context in which

the substantial connection of all the world’s continents occurred shows

up the hazards that present themselves and some of the sensibilities

needed. A comprehensive examination of the American picture must

assume revision of the terms under which macrosociologists classify

historical formations and the typologies employed. Mesoamerican

and Andoamerican empires were a different type with distinct char-

acteristics (hinterland concentrations, pictographic communication

and monumental cities, alliance-making). Alongside those, the state-

less societies can be also reassessed within the frame of civilizational

theory. Pre-invasion cultures and political federations established

themselves in an interior world that contrasted with the Colombian

era interface of different groups of societies. The specific complex-

ity of their technological, economic and symbolic apparatus presents

a strong case for considering them to be bona fide civilizations.

Ethnographers and archaeologists in the twentieth century have

5 See, once again, Wittrock, “Cultural Crystallizations and Civilizational Change:Axiality and Modernity,” in Ben-Rafael and Sternberg, Comparing Modernities.

300 chapter ten

reconstructed their productive techniques, which were unappreciated

by intrusive colonizers. Many developed quasi-federal chiefdoms that

attained large-scale organizations, even though these were actually

state-less. Similarly, many of the sophisticated codes of myth and

history are decipherable today and often defended by descendants

in situations where languages have been recovered.6 Anthropology

and archaeology have also turned up evidence in state-less as well

as stratified agrarian societies of methods of cultural preservation that

involve capacities to absorb other influences but also to self-immu-

nize and thereby resist them.7 Moreover, it is evident today that the

best remembered civilizations were preceded by other cultures that

contributed substantially to them. Amerindian societies clearly had

ample connections with each other and possibly with trans-Pacific

and Atlantic nexus of integration and migration.8

How civilizational sociology evaluates the proto-federative, indigenous,

stateless societies and the pre-Colombian empires has consequences.

The relative lack of geographically discrete American formations

based on a kind of state power that is readily graded as ‘traditional’

increases the odds of overlooking these. Therefore, it is the very

invisibility of their civilizational character that should be investigated.

A historical genealogy of the social sciences would be one approach

and one with great merit. Another is to develop a reflexive sociol-

ogy of civilizations suited to the study of Atlantic modernity that

renders this invisibility visible. The contribution of the present work

to such sociological thinking is twofold. Firstly, it records very pos-

itive gains made in comparative social science. Secondly, it explores

in some depth the coalescence of the European civilizational imag-

inary in Atlantic contexts. The first point needs only brief reitera-

tion. Two notions of civilization are present and invoke considerations

of civilizational complexes as both regional and ontological contexts.

The objectivistic tag of ‘civilization’ for geo-cultural entities contin-

ues. This is a clear link to older traditions of civilizational thinking.

6 For example, see Samuel M. Wilson, ed., The Indigenous People of the Caribbean(Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997).

7 Michael E. Smith and Marilyn A. Masson, The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica:A Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).

8 Muriel Porter Weaver, The Aztecs, Maya and their Predecessors: Archaeology of Mesoamerica(New York and London: Seminar Press, 1972), chap. 9; Michael N. Nassaney andKenneth E. Sassaman, Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretationsin the Eastern Woodlands (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995).


However, the emphasis has changed totally. The nexus of different

social formations have gained more attention from historians and

this, in turn, has translated into an image of inter-connection. This

is by no means a finished trend in the literature. It establishes the

commonplace that past impressions that historical empires and civ-

ilizations were self-contained and protectionist are extremely mis-

leading. The thesis driving globalization studies that the unification

of communication, ideas and trade is a recent development serves

to replicate this impression. It draws attention away from rich schol-

arship that casts grave doubt over the presumption that large-scale,

multifaceted connections had few historical precedents before the

nineteenth century. The sociology of civilizations can be credited

with integrating the fruits of historical research, which demonstrate

that large-scale contact is a widespread feature of human endeavour

at least since the Axial Age (to use Eisenstadt’s celebrated label for

the first millennium BCE). This puts the Western trajectory into far

clearer perspective and returns a measure of proportion to impres-

sions governing contemporary World History. So much so, in fact,

that the case for a multiple modernities paradigm now seems unde-

niable and the claim that modernity is a singularly Western phe-

nomenon looks like it has been largely abandoned.

The second notion fixes on its symbolism. Durkheim and Mauss’

original insights are taken by Arnason and others as the material of

a research program that is ongoing. Arnason’s own innovation is the

relativization of ‘culture’ and ‘power’ in civilizational complexes. This

helps in relating civilizations as units of analysis to civilizations as

ontological visions. The boundaries of possibility for a hermeneutics

of civilization have not been reached, however. Deep probing of the

multifaceted inter-civilizational encounters of the Atlantic zone throws

into relief the profound cultural impact on Europe. These were

encounters like few others that Europeans had in the Mediterranean,

across Eurasia and in northern Africa. They drew on a civilizational

imaginary with the following characteristics:

1) The means to make sense of intercultural experiences combined

traditions of ethnological understanding with novel conceptions

of Others;

2) Signs of civilization that were both vehicles of understanding (for

example maps) and instances of recognition and re-closure (expressed

in early attempts to grasp Mesoamerican societies compared with

the inability to discern economies of land use in stateless formations).

302 chapter ten

Chapter four and five set out the complexity of the civilizational

imaginary. Over the course of three centuries a collective mood of

civilizational individuality swelled amongst Europeans. The racial and

cultural supremacy boasted about in the eighteenth century was

strongly contested, but mostly on the grounds of particularity. The

path to that point was uneven and disrupted. It was uneven as there

were variations in traditions of civility and conquest amongst Europeans.

It was disrupted in the sense that not all knowledge about the New

World was in circulation in urban intellectual milieux. Accurate

reports of the New World were raised; but more telling were the

kinds of interpretation being made. The parameters of understand-

ing that Europeans brought into the Americas set standards for

encounters there.

Traditions of empire were animated by actual strategies of empire

building and by the greater general example of Rome. Humanism

encouraged such a neo-classical sensibility that informed state for-

mation with a universalist imagination. This existed in tension with

the particularism of each national convergence of colonizing. Imperial

models were not only effected upon entry into the new continent.

The powers were increasingly mindful of each other, especially after

the settlement at Westphalia. Even before the end of the Thirty

Years War, there was vigorous rivalry. Nonetheless, compacts of con-

duct of foreign exploits also developed. Spain brought its own ver-

sion of universalism to the new sphere of oceanic rivalry that opened

up in the early fifteenth century. It sat at the cusp of medieval and

early modern romantic conceptions of the legal conduct of maritime

movement. Besides this, conquistadorial conquest and mercantilist

inclinations encouraged Spanish advances. Both drew upon the expe-

riences of previous and, at that stage, still current exploits. They

were led to large land seizures. The English employed a different

strategy that was simultaneously colonial and mercantilist: it ‘planted’

people in small, civilizing settlements. During the same period, they

were establishing beachhead community in Ireland with Atlantic ori-

entations. The French drew from a common history in crusading

over some centuries. Empire still meant Rome to them, however.

They took jurisprudence from its legacy. Along with the Spanish,

they shared notions of the universality of legitimate rule, which

deferred to the heritage of that paradigmatic empire.

The forces of colonialism therefore did not enter the Americas as

though it were a tabula rasa. Their invasion brought more than


guns, ships, towns and diseases. It also brought preconceptions that

were subject to change also over time. This was an era of ‘discov-

ery’ and not in the supremacist sense of other peoples and places

finally ‘discovered’ by civilized man, as has been assumed. It is the

discoveries internally set in motion by the transformation of knowl-

edge that came from debates about the New World. Foremost amongst

these, for the purposes of the current argument, was a widening of

the categories of thinking about humanity. The ethnologization of

European perception transformed established schemas and practices

of subjugation as discussed in chapter five. The ethnological horizon

expanded from the fifteenth century onwards as Europeans encoun-

tered a host of cultures, which they previously knew nothing about

and which knew nothing of them. It forced a confrontation with the

foundation of knowledge of geology, environment, botany and soci-

eties. Some of the latter were recognized as civilizations due to

detectable religious and political hierarchies of power, impressive

cities, systematic agriculture, architecture, the arts, monuments and

ordered markets. Other geo-cultural formations were less conspicu-

ous or were observed as cultures without the public infrastructure

and political superstructures associated with historical societies. These

had a sort of cultural unity, which took in a geographical area and

exhibited sophisticated though unacknowledged civilizational features.

On the side of Europeans, we can see that civilization is an intri-

cate matter. The upheaval instigated by the invading European pow-

ers brought to the surface civilizational features that were both

particular to each imperial state and shared by all of them. America

was treated over time as more distant and different. We find this in

the fields of botany, travel writing, topography, historiography, map-

ping, iconography, art and literature. How colonial societies related

to conquered indigenous civilizations speaks more loudly than any

other component of the invading complex. The modes of recogni-

tion of pre-Colombian civilizations (and the destructiveness that this

entailed) serve as an excellent illustration of the variability of the

conceptual ground of colonialism. To re-cap: the British held con-

ceptions of possession, the Spanish pre-established notions of pagan-

ism and the French a flexible spectrum of understanding of savagery

and civility that primed the forms of inter-civilizational engagement.

The English had a civilizational approach to the signs of productive

and enclosed land. Lands labored entitled the laborer to ownership

under an unwritten law of property. North-eastern Indian cultures

304 chapter ten

most certainly had economies of land use and long-standing lines of

trade, but these were imperceptible to English eyes. Collective myths,

land settlement and political organization were features of the Indian

nations’ sense of being that similarly did not find easy equivalents

in the Protestant universe of concepts. Without doubt, this was pecu-

liar to English civilizational sensibilities and its culture of capitalism.

Ambiguous conceptions of paganism cast a long shadow over

Spanish views. Impassioned debate about the ethnological character

of aboriginal Americans turned on this ambiguity. Slavery was up

for discussion as well and the conclusions reached put moral limits

on the economic exploitation of the New World, which became quite

severe anyhow. The direct enslavement of Amerindians in the min-

eral and agricultural economy of the colonies was contested. They

were pressed into economic communities by the encomienda and repar-timiento, but did not appear to have the visible physio-cultural features

required for slavery that Africans seemed to. Respected Mesoamerican

and Andean civilizations were invaded, then misinterpreted and doc-

umented by theologians whose own world views left them bewildered

in the face of unfamiliar cultural constellations. Interpreting

Mesoamerican histories led to constructions that emphasized com-

monality. Meanwhile non-agrarian and non-hierarchical societies of

the Caribbean and the central and southern continental hinterlands

were remembered in romanticized classical forms.

French premises were formed in the crusades of the late medieval

era and were communicated at that time to other temporal and

ecclesiastic powers in Christendom. They fragmented easily in the

Canadian environment where engagement with Huron, Algonquin

and Micmac forces was shaped by trade, diplomacy, missionary work

and alliance making as much as out-and-out confrontation. Where

battles broke out around colonial forts, a harsh image of the natives

ensued. Jesuit attempts at developing missions promoted a different

understanding. For the French, perceptions of civility or its absence

also primed relationships with Indian networks. However, fragmen-

tation enabled trade, rather than hindering it. Both kinds of per-

ception—the savage and the semi-civil—roughly matched the two

sides of the French imperial state, namely its militarism and its heavy-

handed mercantilism, while also accommodating Jesuit visions of the

Indians’ humanity.

Each mode of recognition and interaction with America’s original

civilizations is particular to its imperial source and, in that sense, is


part of British, French and Spanish. However, this question is com-

plex and a conclusive view needs to be balanced with some succinct

remarks on what was generalized amongst the European empires.

The cultural preconceptions that informed the continuing interface

with America’s civilizations were communicated through Europe’s

knowledge circuits. Maps, paintings and sketches had a common

geometry and semiotics, while books, diaries and journals were drafted

in widely intelligible idioms. The institutions of libraries, gardens,

scientific academies, and private museums and collections preserved

elements of the New World in a frozen and decontextualized state,

re-contextualizing them in settings of civilizational interpretation.

These were signs of civilization and they were exchanged through-

out Europe, giving off the impression of civilizational difference from

the American world and reinforcing propositions that there is a com-

mon Western destiny. Europe had entered the fifteenth century bear-

ing the traces of Ottoman, Western and Byzantine traditions. With

the transformation of Western Europe induced by the advance into

the Atlantic, a new commonality emerged in countries that extended

their states into the Americas. In a sense, the premier civilizational

identity of Atlantic modernity was Western—more properly Euro-

American—more so than British, French or Hispanic.

It is in the Americas that we find ambiguity and diversity and

some identities in a state of flux from the mid-eighteenth century

onward. They reflected off an instituting civilizational imaginaire. Itsunfixed nature was the source of new feelings of belonging. For

example, middling Creoles felt an ‘in–between-ness’ that did not res-

onate with their counterparts in French or British colonies. Their

demeanour was peninsular, but their close proximity to Indian com-

munities gave them a disposition to defensiveness about the places

and style of life they felt they belonged to. French Canadians were

split between fort, river and town. Many identified with cities and

some in the elite looked to Francophone culture for their bearings.

Others were more attuned to the rhythms of life in the wilderness.

Continental Anglo-Americans retained strong loyalties to the Anglo-

sphere and the tenor of its culture. Even when politics and philosophy

started to separate them, there were many customs and practices

that still transcended divisions. Conversation and hospitality—the arts

of the public sphere, if you will—were sustained, even in the cli-

mate of upheaval. In the Caribbean, European settlers became a

minority able only to generate ardent Anglophonic and Francophonic

306 chapter ten

identities. African influences produced hybrid cultures that proved

more lasting.

In the Americas the civilizational imaginary created new people

with interpretive resources to understand and articulate their own

conditions in fresh and synthetic worldviews. They also operated in

a governmental environment in which the political capital that they

could mobilise was starting to matter more and more in the second

half of the eighteenth century. They arrived at that point in an insti-

tutional context that echoed the tension of imperial state formation

analysed in chapters three, seven, eight and nine. Three factors pro-

duced different conditions for colonial governments. A colonial order

embracing local instruments of administration, Creole elites that were

coherent to different degrees and public spheres of philosophy, artis-

tic and political discourse in some places amounted to an effective

pole of attraction for opponents of imperial government. Secondly,

the reach of royal patronage was comparatively tenuous in the

colonies. There certainly were webs of clientage, but they were spun

in local and regional networks as well as imperial hierarchies and

they tended to hold people more firmly to American ties of obligation.

Finally, distance dictated the imperatives of colonial autonomy to a

degree. The means of effective royal government in non-contiguous

and trans-continental empires were not refined in the era of colo-

nialism. In fact, there was no major precedent for imperial endeav-

ours on this large-scale in the history of European empire building.

Even Rome, which towered as the great classical exemplar, was a

land-based empire that mainly occupied and dominated colonies.

The challenge of the Americas was to build oceanic empires, con-

stituting immigrant settler colonies on the remains of struggling indige-

nous civilizations. This produced the modern problem of large colonial

populations embedded in centres on other continents that were devel-

oping new societies against a backdrop of old environments mostly

depopulated by their intrusion. The resulting tension of state for-

mation therefore played out in analogous-though-different ways in

colonial and national spheres. It established the potential for inde-

pendent societies in the Americas.

Four conclusions about state formation can be drawn from chap-

ter three. Firstly, there were two comparable tensions. One is national,

the other imperial. A reconstruction of the notion of ‘absolutism’

gives effect to this point by illuminating the inner conflicts of early

modern polities and by expanding the range of analysis to encompass


all territories that were theatres of royal government. In this sense,

‘absolutism’ is only a meaningful term when it denotes a figuration

of constant conflict. This shed light also on the third conclusion. If

the complexity of intra-imperial arrangements is taken into account,

then multiple centres can be identified. This is a better and more

illuminating approach which can supplement hypotheses that map

institutional ensembles a priori according to a fixed centre and pre-

sumed peripheries. Furthermore, the instances of mutual dependence

between centres become clearer, where such instances can be dis-

cerned. Finally, the foundations of colonies set the tone for the emer-

gence and consolidation of autonomies within the Atlantic empires.

Naturally this was a process of institutional creation; indeed, state

formation in general should be theorized at a meta-sociological level

as an act of creation.

A pivotal concept is worked out through the course of chapter

seven. The colonial order is a feature of the transoceanic empires

of Atlantic modernity. Colonial elites are legion in complex empires

of different civilizational origins.9 However, the colonial order’s posi-

tion and role in the Euro-American empires was distinct and a token

of the early modernity of transatlantic colonialism. The contrast with

the provincial and municipal order, made up of more conventional

elites, confirms this. The colonial order was in possession of the insti-

tutions of administration and could establish a conception of this

kind of political ownership. The varied formulations of republican

politics within colonial societies spell out this modernity for us. They

vied with durable doctrines that reflected loyalty to existing arrange-

ments and to the monarchical order in place. This political compe-

tition generated modern republican horizons in the Anglosphere. It

was taken as a model by others and often incompletely at that. It

emerged from the new-ness of the New World that pressed itself

most forcefully on colonial subjects.

But there were colonists who were thinking about their past, their

traditions and their political-philosophical and cultural inheritance.

In the case of Anglo-Americans, this produced the deepest collective

reflection, although that collective was rife with division. For Hispanic

Americans who surrounded themselves with the monuments and

architecture of tradition, modernity came harder and it came from

9 S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York: Free Press, 1969).

308 chapter ten

others to some extent: the French and, after 1776, the North Ameri-

cans. This deliberative culture was heavily context-bound. Chapter

eight looks at how it took place in an environment of intense rivalry

between imperial powers, that were headquartered back in Europe,

but advancing their interests in intercontinental diplomacy, warfare

and intrigue. Modern empires were looking like large agglomerations

of non-contiguous territories a full century before the world empires

would move to carve up Africa. They were modern as their lead-

ers were global in their assessment of where they had a stake. The

division in the British colonies and the resurgent Creole colonial

order of the South American continent led to restructuring after the

Seven Years War. This magnified the tension of state formation and

encouraged confrontation between colonial and imperial authorities.

In the international arena, the rivalry of states was not ended by

the Treaty of Paris, although French interests were greatly reduced

at that settlement. Instead, the ongoing antagonism intensified in the

Caribbean theatre, where the colonial order was entrenched and

where slave-based industries were thriving. The last quarter of the

eighteenth century finished European coverage of the main conti-

nents with the reconnaissance of Australasia and the movement in

to the Pacific. At this time in which French and British empires were

assertive on an international scale, their American colonies were

either unstable or seemed in jeopardy.

Only in the Americas could republican polities emerge at this

stage. Within imperial states, colonial interests were a distant other

with which royal clientage had to compete to gain the sway of urban-

based American administrators. Self-rule was hard to grasp in the

end for new republicans. Autonomy as a sovereign rule came easily

to those accustomed to various levels of self-administration. Autonomy

of determination—that is, a break of the limitations on self-deter-

mination of the future—was harder. It evaded Latin American

republics where the legacy of executive power continued. How oppor-

tunities to industrialise and engage capitalism were negotiated rested

in a large measure on the resources of reflexivity that new elites

could draw upon (as well as the natural endowment, level of tech-

nological and economic development etc.). Praetorian states struggled

to develop these, while the US sustained a horizon of self-critical

democracy. There were real constraints on this, however, and indeed

on the new republics in general. Not the least of these was the

survival and reformation of the British and French empires. The


republican diversity of Atlantic modernity had to coexist with the

enduring American colonies that were positioned within changing

British and French empires as well as the newly configured Anglophonic

formation in Canada. That these were imperial forms made them

no less modern, as I’ve consistently argued throughout. The Atlantic

had the appearance of a singular zone, although its diversity is its

singularity. For example, the volume of trade and levels of invest-

ment in the Western hemisphere grew phenomenally in the nine-

teenth century, in spite of the fact that colonial and republican

governments had been sworn enemies. The civilizational programs

of the past instituted intercultural dynamics that permitted such a

nexus.

It had also by the time of republican decampment established

another constraint on the new republican states: inter-continental

capitalism, which simultaneously limited and enabled development

of the new polities. Capitalism was the child of Atlantic modernity,

notwithstanding its antecedents in European (such as urban mer-

cantilism, the growth of money as the imaginary of exchange). Chapter

six seeks to extend arguments developed by macrosociologists since

the 1970s at the cusp of dependency theory’s demise and world sys-

tems theory’s ascendency. It is the area of political economy that

the most work and the most comprehensive work has been done on

the Atlantic zone to date.

Mercantilism as a concept of heuristic value has suffered some

blows to its standing. On one hand, its credibility has been widely

questioned. On the other hand, the trends it designates have been

neglected in economic history. This is a shame as there is some

social scientific value in reviving and expressing this as a form of

state strategising. I have tried to do this here by pointing to four

features of the mercantilist state and what it actually did. Firstly, it

set up the domestic and imperial infrastructures that promoted eco-

nomic expansion. In doing so, it was giving effect to the second fea-

ture I’m interested in: its role in co-founding capitalism. States and

their particular divisions were also arbiters. They unified the trans-

atlantic infrastructure that they also monitored, guarded and connected

to different points in the geographic transect. Still, they were over-

seers of a sort when it came to deep-rooted and influential interest

groups. The fourth feature is those mercantilist strategies drawn up

by royal and governmental administrators who often juggled colo-

nial demands, the expressed interests of fractions of national capital

310 chapter ten

and the constraints imposed by inter-imperial rivalry. Beyond these

there was another feature of capitalism’s early development that

deserves attention: a partial and always contested rationality of eco-

nomic practice that emerged in the Caribbean. It could be consid-

ered an early type of rationality if one wanted to think within the

metanarrative of rationalization. Its components—such as cost account-

ing, high-risk insurance and sophisticated credit provisions—suggest

a full bloodedness or maturity that defies an evolutionary or devel-

opmentalist scheme. I consider this to be a cultural type, however,

and my analysis bears out the view that it was not alone and uncon-

tested. Capitalism’s development was therefore not smooth, nor unified,

although in some respects it was unifying.

Atlantic modernity after colonialism

Early Atlantic modernity is one path in the complex tapestry of the

contemporary world. It produced independent American states that

seem occidental in a number of respects, but really have developed

their own interpretations of modernity, models of capitalist economy

and distinct identities. Political and economic ties with Western Europe

regrew and expanded after the republican revolts. The states that

emerged from those wars stimulated the further cultural and eco-

nomic outgrowth of the Atlantic world throughout the nineteenth

century. Their own interpretations of modernity engaged the colo-

nial foundations of their original historical experiences. Yet their con-

dition and outlook was truly post-imperial. It is no surprise therefore

that none of these states acquired and kept a colonial empire—

notwithstanding the oft-repeated and correct caveats about the United

States.10 In this regard, economic, cultural, political and diplomatic

links with the lasting empires of Western Europe was a source of

transatlantic tension. Not that this was “a confrontation with an alien

culture,”11 as the encounter with the West would be for other civi-

lizations. Rather, it was a condition of reflection on many discrete

cultures that existed on two shores on either side of the Atlantic.

Their respective worldviews on the inter-state system divided into

10 On the anti-colonial posture of the United States, see Raymond Aron, TheImperial Republic (London: Weidenfeld, 1974).

11 Eisenstadt, “The Civilizational Dimension of Modernity,” in Arjomand andTiryakian, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis p. 58.


imperial and national. Moreover, French American, Hispanic American

and Anglo-American perspectives on modernity were not merely pro-

duced domestically; they were disseminated over the Atlantic and,

towards the end of the nineteenth century, globally.

Outside perceptions of the Americas came to be dominated by

the United States. It “radiated modernity” for Europeans, where

once it had illuminated a primeval past. Unlike during the colonial

era in which it had been romanticized as utopia or deplored as

depravity, the consolidated federal state was seen as a vision of

progress—a “pure modernity”—regenerating itself continuously in

the present.12 It had achieved the aim of an unbound past, or so it

was believed. Nonetheless, ambivalence prevailed because it always

had a record of Western achievements from which it could selec-

tively borrow, even though it started its history in the present. Thus,

what past it did establish for itself was inscribed in revolution and

self-conscious constitutional re-foundation. But its revolution com-

bined traditions with an untarnished modernity, as the discussion of

the historiography of republicanism indicates. Its history focuses on

a heroic act of purging the vices of the old world and creating some-

thing new.

Of course, there was always another civilizational form in the

Americas, another Atlantic zone that lay south of the border in the

Western hemisphere. Hispano-America’s traditions might be seen as

more traditional and steadfast. Creolism and Hispanicism in Latin

America create an ambience of tradition, not modernity. On this

basis it is easy to dismiss the idea of a Latin American version of

modernity.13 But those traditions are to a great extent the products

of exposure to European modernity and to internal Creole versions

of it. They are the artefacts of a modern history of intercultural

transactions. There were two particular moments of “global immer-

sion.” One arose when the empire crumbled during the Napoleonic

interlude and another in the post war era, when Latin American

republics were forced to confront externally-derived modernizing

strategies.14 Latin American modernities involved collective delibera-

tion and conflict over how to reconcile competing external models

12 Peter Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1994).13 As Constantin von Barloewen does in Cultural History and Modernity in Latin

America: Technology and Culture in the Andes Region (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995).14 Roniger, “Global Immersion,” in Roniger and Waisman, Globality and Multiple

Modernities.

312 chapter ten

of societal development with an internal and utopian project of a

good republican society. In other words, how would imported European

and Asian ideas stack up against internal understandings of ‘the

social’ which were incomplete and which did not have a clearly

defined citizenry to focus on. This modernity of Latin America opens

up moments of critical reflexivity that deserve more attention than

they have received in the past. There is no space to develop this

here. However, intercultural flows should be part of any considera-

tion of this issue and some conjectural comments on this in relation

to the current project are possible. Culturally, Hispanic influences

remain, even though nineteenth century liberal doctrine may have

denied this. The Iberian peninsular was still an important civiliza-

tional connection. However, there are other sources of intercultural

exchange. If Latin American civilization is modern in any way—

that is, if it is dynamic, reflexive and shifting—then it is due to the

flow of economic, political and cultural traffic. The passage of peo-

ple in the nineteenth century maintained the bonds with Europe.

British capital, migrants and liberal philosophy blended into the La

Plata region. Paris furnished philosophy for others. Its reception of

Enlightenment thinking had started with the Bourbons, but many

European sources were contributing to it by the nineteenth century.

Relativized notions of totality and modernity accept a flexible

understanding of both. One general observation is possible here.

Understanding how tradition and modernity are figured differently

in modern Latin America can dissolve the appearance of traditional

societies rooted in the past. While the process of state formation

evinces continuity—as I argue in the final chapters—the appearance

of a great burden of tradition can lead us away from cultural mod-

ernisms that are part of the Latin American fabric. Some balance

is therefore needed. Moreover, appearances, although powerful in

themselves, can be deceptive in general. America—the whole of

America—had a past that interfaced with two (perhaps three or

more) civilizational types more than it may have seemed to. Of

course, those civilizations are the Western and indigenous ones.

Centennial celebrations of statehood have occasioned protest and

reproach arising from the historical experiences of the ‘nations within’

in New World immigrant settler societies.15 Extensive protests dur-

15 See Montserrat Guibernau, Nations Without States: Political Communities in a Global


ing the 1992 Quincentenary of the Discovery of the Americas reminded

the world of America’s aboriginal age and were evidence of indige-

nous modernities.16 In place of the jubilation of commemorative cer-

emonies, indigenous coalitions spoke in a vernacular of resistance

and survival and, in some cases, articulated visions of differentiated

citizenship and sovereignty. In the midst of commemoration of the

past, movements against the Quincentenary inverted the relationship

of past and present. Instead of elevating the accomplishments of the

present to celebrate Columbus’ voyage, indigenous claims mobilized

other records of the past to highlight issues of the present. Public

acknowledgment of the stubborn endurance of Amerindian peoples

and their claims to continuing sovereignty was troubled and con-

troversial and mostly remains so. In the context of consolidated multi-

culturalisms, the autonomies claimed by indigenous movements

throughout the Americas takes on added force. What they express

is an ongoing feeling of coloniality held by distinct peoples within

nations that declare that they are survivors and independent of the

dominant state. To be sure, the pasts that indigenous people point

to haunt the American present and do so partly because the move-

ments that assert them are exercising modern political self-con-

sciousness—some make claims to limited sovereignty—in doing so.

The civilizational friction between the modernity of Euro-America

and the modernity of aboriginal America, along with the mutually

ambivalent regard that Western Europe and America have for each

other with, is the political and cultural corollary of the transatlantic

modernity of state formation, capitalist development and civilizational

interaction. These potent legacies of the past remind that the New

World in itself is an interaction of several old worlds.

Age (Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 3; and Augie Fleras and Jean Leonard,The ‘Nations Within’: Aboriginal-State Relations in Canada, the United States and New Zealand(Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1992).

16 On the notion of indigenous modernity, developed in relation to Australia’scivilizational experience, see Rundell, “From Indigenous Civilization to IndigenousModernities,” in Arjomand and Tiryakian, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abernethy, David B. The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415–1980. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Adcock, Michael, Emily Chester, and Jeremy Whiteman, eds. Revolution, Society andthe Politics of Memory: Proceedings of the Tenth Rude Seminar on French History andCivilization. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1996.

Albanese, Denise. New Science, New World. Durham and London: Duke UniversityPress, 1996.

Aldrich, Robert Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. London: Macmillan,1996.

———, and John Connell. France’s Overseas Frontier. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992.

Allain, Mathé (1984). “French Colonial Policy in America and the Establishmentof the Louisiana Colony.” PhD diss., University of South-West Louisiana, 1984.

Almond, Philip C. Adam and Eve in Seventeenth Century Thought. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999.

Altman, Ida, and James Horn. ‘To Make America’: European Emigration in the EarlyModern Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Amin, Samir. Unequal Development. New York: Harvester Press, 1974.Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism.

London: Verso, 1989.Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British

North America, 1754–1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.Andrews, Kenneth R., Nicholas P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair. The Westward Enterprise:

English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America 1480–1650. Liverpool: LiverpoolUniversity Press, 1978.

Andrews, Stuart. The Rediscovery of America: Transatlantic Crosscurrents in an Age ofRevolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Andrien, Kenneth J. “The Sale of Fiscal Offices and the Decline of Royal Authorityin the Viceroyalty of Peru 1633–1700.” Hispanic American Historical Review 62,no. 1 (1982): 49–71.

———, and Rolena Adorno, eds. Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in theSixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Anna, Timothy. “Spain and the Breakdown of the Imperial Ethos.” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 62, no. 2 (1989): 254–72.

Annino, Antonio. “The Long Seventeenth Century in Latin America.” Itinerario 21,no. 2 (1997): 20–32.

Appleby, Joyce. Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s.New York: New York University Press, 1984.

———. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1992.

———. ‘Republicanism in Old and New Contexts’. William and Mary Quarterly 43,no. 1 (1986).

Arciniegas, Germán. America in Europe: A History of the New World in Reverse. Translatedby Gabriela Arciniegas and R. Victoria Arana. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1986.

Arjomand, Said, and Edward Tiryakian. Rethinking Civilizational Analysis. London:Sage, 2004.

316 bibliography

Armitage, David. ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Language of Empire’. TheHistorical Journal 35 (1992).

———. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2000.

———. Theories of Empire 1450–1800. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1998.———, and Michael J. Braddick, eds. The British Atlantic World 1500–1800. London:

Palgrave, 2002.Arnason Johann P. Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions.

Leiden: Brill, 2003.———. “Culture and Imaginary Significations”. Thesis Eleven, 22 (1989): 25–45.———. “The Imaginary Institution of Modernity.” Revue Europeenes de Sciences Sociales

27, no. 86 (1989): 323–37.———. The Peripheral Centre: Essays on Japanese History and Civilization. Melbourne:

TransPacific Press, 2002.———. Social Theory and Japanese Experience: the Dual Civilization. London: Kegan Paul

International, 1998.———. ‘Social Theory and the Concept of Civilization’. Thesis Eleven 20 (1998): 87–105.———, S. N. Eisenstadt, and Bjorn Wittrock, eds. Axial Civilizations and World History.

Leiden: Brill, 2004.Arneil, Barbara. (1996). “‘The Wild Indian’s Venison’: Locke’s Theory of Property

and English Colonialism in America.” Political Studies 44 (1996).Aron, Raymond. The Imperial Republic. London: Weidenfeld, 1974.Aston, Margaret. The Fifteenth Century: The Prospect of Europe. London: Thames and

Hudson, 1968.Axtell, James. Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America. New York: Open Uni-

versity Press, 1992.Baechler, Jean, John Hall, and Michael Mann. Europe and the Rise of Capitalism. Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1988.Bagby, Philip. Culture and History: Prolegomena to the Comparative Study of Civilizations.

London: Longmans, 1958.Bailyn, Bernard. “The Idea of Atlantic History.” Itinerario 20 (1996): 19–44.———. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the People of America on the Eve of the Revolution.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.———, and John B. Hench. The Press and the American Revolution, Worcester, MA:

American Antiquarian Society, 1980.Banning, Lance. “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the

New American Republic.” William and Mary Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1986): 3–20.Barager, Joseph A. “The Historiography of the Rio de La Plata Area Since 1830.”

Hispanic American Historical Review 39, no. 1 (1959).Barbier, Jacques A. “The Culmination of the Bourbon Reforms 1787–1792.” Hispanic

American Historical Review 57, no. 1 (1977): 51–68.———. “Elites and Cadre in Bourbon Chile.” Hispanic American Historical Review 52

(1972): 416–35.———. “Peninsular Finance and Colonial Trade: The Dilemma of Charles IV’s

Spain.” Journal of Latin American Studies 12, no. 1 (1980).Barloewen, Constantin von. Cultural History and Modernity in Latin America: Technology

and Culture in the Andes Region. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995.Bartlett, Robert. The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950–

1350. London: Allen Lane, 1993.Baudot G. La Coruna y la fundacion de los reinos americanos. Valencia: Association

Francisco Lopez de Gomara, 1992.Bauman Zymunt. Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding. London:

Hutchinson, 1978.Bayly, Christopher A. Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830.

London: Pearson Education, 1989.

bibliography 317

Beik, William. Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth Century France: State Power and ProvincialAristocracy in Languedoc. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Ben-Rafael, Eliezer, and Yitzhak Sternberg, eds. Comparing Modernities: Pluralism VersusHomogeneity, Essays in Homage to Shmuel N Eisenstadt. Leiden: Brill, 2005.

Bentley, Jerry. Old World Encounters: Cross Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-ModernTimes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Bernstein, Peter L. The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession. New York: John Wileyand Sons Inc., 2000.

Bethell, Leslie, ed. Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985.

Biggs, Michael. “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory and EuropeanState Formation.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 2 (1999): 374–405.

Birn, Raymond. Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648–1789/91. Hinsdale, IL:Dryden Press, 1977.

Black, Jeremy. Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1997.

Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern,1492–1800. London: Verso, 1997.

———. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776–1848. London: Verso, 1988.Blaug, Mark, ed. Francois Quesney 1694–1774. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing,

1991.Blaut, J. M. “On the Significance of 1492.” Political Geography 11, no. 4 (1992): 355–85.Bleicher, Josef. The Hermeneutic Imagination: Outline of a Positive Critique of Scientism and

Sociology. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982.Bliss, Robert. Revolution and Empire: English Politics and the American Colonies in the

Seventeenth Century. New York: Manchester University Press, 1990.Bloch, Ruth H. Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought 1756–1800.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Blusse L., and F. Gaastra. Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies

during the Ancien Regime. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981.Bodmer, Beatriz Pastor. The Armature of Conquest: Spanish Accounts of the Discovery of

America 1492–1589. Translated by Lydia Longstreth Hunt. Stanford, CT: StanfordUniversity Press, 1992.

———. El Jardin y el Peregrine: Ensayos Sobre el Pensamiento Utopico Latinoamericano1492–1695. Amsterdam; Atlanta: GA, Rodopi, 1996.

Bonomi, Patricia. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Bosher, J. F. The Canada Merchants 1713–1763. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.Bowen, H. V. Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire 1688–1775.

London: MacMillan, 1996.Bowen, T. H. “British Conceptions of Global Empire 1756–83.” The Journal of

Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 3 (1998): 1–27.Braddick, Michael. “The Early Modern English State and the Question of Differen-

tiation from 1500–1700.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 1 (1996):92–111.

———. State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000.

Brading, David. “Government and Elite in Late Colonial Mexico.” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 53 (1973): 389–414.

Bradshaw, Brendan, and John Morrill, eds. The British Problem c. 1534–1707: StateFormation in the Atlantic Archipelago. London: MacMillan, 1996.

Braithwaite, Edward. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770–1820. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1971.

318 bibliography

Brandon, William. New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and their Effect onthe Development of Social Thought in Europe 1500–1800. Athens, OH: Ohio UniversityPress, 1986.

Braude, Benjamin. “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geo-graphical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” The Williamand Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 103–42.

Braudel, Fernand. The Identity of France. 2 vols. London: Fontana Press, 1991.———. The Perspective of the World. London: Fontana Press, 1985.———. The Wheels of Commerce. London: Fontana Press, 1985.Brecher, Frank W. Losing a Continent: France’s North American Policy 1753–1763. London:

Greenwood Press, 1998.Brenner, Robert. Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s

Overseas Traders 1550–1653. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688–1783. New

York: Harvard University Press, 1989.———, and Susan Staves. Early Modern Conceptions of Property. New York: Routledge,

1995.Bridenbaugh, Carl. Cities in Revolt: Urban life in America 1743–1776. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1955.Buisseret, David. Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool

of Government in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.Burkholder, Mark A., and D. S. Chandler. “Creole Appointments and the Sale of

Audiencia Positions.” Journal of Latin American Studies 4, no. 2 (1972): 187–206.Burke, Peter, ed. A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien Febvre. London:

Routledge, 1973.Cain, Peter J., and Antony G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion

1688–1914. London; New York: Longman, 1993.Calhoun, Craig. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.———, ed. Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997.Calhoon, Robert M. The Loyalists in Revolutionary America. New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich Inc., 1973.Campbell, Leon. “A Colonial Establishment: Creole Domination of the Audiencia

of Lima during the Late Eighteenth Century.” Hispanic American Historical Review52 (1972): 1–20.

Campbell, Peter R. Power and Politics in Old Regime France 1720–1745. London:Routledge, 1996.

Canny, Nicholas P. The Elizabethan Conquest: A Pattern Established 1565–1576. New York:Barnes & Noble Books, 1976.

———. Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500–1800. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1994.

———. Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World 1560–1800. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1988.

———. Making Ireland British 1580–1650. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.———, ed. The Origins of Empire. The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.———. “Writing Atlantic History, or Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British

America.” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 1093–1114.———, and Anthony Pagden. Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World 1500–1800.

Princeton: Pricenton University Press, 1987.Cardoso, F. H., and Enzo Faletto. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1979.Castoriadis, Cornelius. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987.Centano, Miguel Angel, and Fernando Lopez-Alves, eds. The Other Mirror: Grand Theory

through the Lens of Latin America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

bibliography 319

Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. London: Duke UniversityPress, 1991.

Choquette, Leslie. Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of FrenchCanada. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Ciaramelli, Fabio. “The Self-Presupposition of the Origin: Homage to Cornelius Cas-toriadis.” Thesis Eleven 49 (1997): 45–67.

Clark, Samuel. State and Status: The Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in WesternEurope. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995.

Clastres, Pierre. Society against the State: The Leader as Servant and the Humane Uses ofPower among the Indians of the Americas. New York: Zone Books, 1987.

Clemens, Paul E. “The Rise of Liverpool 1665–1750.” Economic History Review 29,no. 2 (1976): 211–25.

Clough, Cecil H., and P. E. H. Hair, eds. The European Outthrust and Encounter: TheFirst Phase c.1400–1700. Essays in Tribute to David Beers Quinn on his Eighty-FifthBirthday. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994.

Coleman Donald C., ed. Revisions in Mercantilism. London: Metheun, 1969.Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1995.Collins, Randall. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change.

London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.Cornblit, Oscar. Power and Violence in the Colonial City: Oruro from the Mining Renaissance

to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru 1740–1782. Translated by Elizabeth Ladd Glick.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Crone, Gerald R. Maps and their Makers: An Introduction to the History of Cartography.London: Hutchinson, 1968.

Damas, German Carrera, ed. Escritos Fundamentales. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1982.Daniels, Christine, and Michael Kennedy, eds. Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries

in the Americas 1500–1820. London; New York: Routledge, 2002.Datson, Lorriane, and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750.

New York: Zone Books, 1998.Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. New York: Cornell University Press, 1973.Delanty, Gerard. Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality. London: Macmillan, 1995.Desbarats, Catherine M. “France in North America: The Net Burden of Empire

during the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.” French History 11, no. 1 (1997):1–28.

Deutsch, Karl W. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundationsof Nationality. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1966.

Diamond, Stanley, ed. Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. New York:Octagon Books, 1981.

Dickason, Olive Patricia. The Myth of Savage: And the Beginnings of French Colonialismin the Americas. Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 1984.

Doering, J. G., and G. L. Villena. Lima. Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.Doyle, William. The Old European Order 1660–1800. New York: Open University Press,

1978.Drescher, Seymour, and Stanley L. Engerman. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Duara, Praesenjit. “The Discourse of Civilization and Decolonisation.” Journal of World

History 15, no. 1 (2004): 1–6.Dumount, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1980.Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West

Indies, 1624–1713. Williamsburg, VA: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.———, and M. M. Dunn, eds. The World of William Penn. Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

320 bibliography

Durkheim, Emile, and Marcel Mauss. “In Between Sociology and Anthropo-logy: Note on the Notion of Civilization.” Social Research 38, no. 4 (1971):805–813.

East, Robert, and Jacob Judds, eds. The Loyalist Americans: A Focus on Greater NewYork. New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975.

Eccles, William J. The Canadian Frontier 1534–1760. Montreal: Holt, Reinhart andWinston, 1969.

———. Canada under Louis XIV 1663–1701. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.———. France in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.———. “The Social, Economic and Political Significance of the Military Establishment

in New France.” Canadian Historical Review 52, no. 1 (1971): 1–22.Echeverria, Durand. Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of America to 1815.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.Edmundson, Locksley. “Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the Internationalization of Race.”

Caribbean Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1976): 5–23.Edward, Karen L. Milton and the Natural World: Science and Poetry in ‘Paradise Lost.’

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Egnal, Marc. A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1998.———. New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. “The Civilizational Dimension in Sociological Analysis.” Thesis

Eleven 62 (2000): 1–21.———. “The Civilizations of the Americas: The Crystallization of Distinct Modern-

ities.” Comparative Sociology 1, no. 1 (2002): 43–61.———. Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities. Leiden: Brill, 2002.———. European Civilization in a Comparative Perspective: A Study in the Relations between

Culture and Social Structure. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1987.———. The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1986.———, ed. Patterns of Modernity. Vol. 1. London: Francis Pinter, 1987.———, and Wolfgang Schlucter. “Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities: A Com-

parative View.” Daedalus 127, no. 3 (1998): 1–18.Ekberg, Carl J. French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial

Times, Urbana and Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.———. State Formation and Civilization. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982.Elliot, John H. “A Europe of Composite Monarchies.” Past and Present 137 (1992): 48–71.———. The Old World and the New 1492–1650. Cambridge: Canto, 1970.———. The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain 1598–1640. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1964.Ellis, Steven. Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End

of Gaelic Rule. London: Longman, 1998.Eltis, David. “Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery: An Interpretation.”

American Historical Review 98, no. 5 (1993): 1399–1423.———, and David Richardson, eds. Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality

in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass and Company, 1997.Endy, Melvin B., Jr. “Just War, Holy War.” William and Mary Quarterly 42 ( January

1985).Epstein Stephan R. Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe

1300–1750. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early

Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Etzioni-Halervy, Eva. Social Change: The Advent and Maturation of Modern Society. London:

Routledge, 1981.

bibliography 321

Evans, John Martin. Milton’s Imperial Epic: Paradise Lost and the Discourse of Colonialism.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Eyzaguirre, Jaime. Ideario y Ruta de la Emancipacion Chilena. Santiago de Chile: EditorialUniversitaria, 1971.

Fabregat, Claudio Esteva. La Corona Espanola y el Indio Americano. Valencia: AssociationFrancisco Lopez de Gomara, 1989.

Farnie, D. A. “The Commercial Empire of the Atlantic 1607–1783.” The EconomicHistory Review 15, no. 2 (1962): 205–18.

Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean. Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing1450–1800. London: New Left Books, 1976.

Feest, Christian F., ed. Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays. Lincoln,NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. The Americas: The History of a Hemisphere. London: Weidenfeldand Nicholson, 2003.

———. Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic1229–1492. London: MacMillan, 1987.

———. Civilizations. London: Macmillan, 2000.Ferro, Marc. Colonization: A Global History. London: Routledge, 1997.Fieldhouse, David Kenneth. The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth

Century. London: Macmillian, 1982.Fiering, Norman S. “The Transatlantic Republic of Letters: A Note on the Circulation

of Learned Periodicals to Early Eighteenth Century America.” William MaryQuarterly 33, no. 4 (1976): 642–60.

Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early ModernItaly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Finer, Samuel E. The History of Government from the Earliest Times. 3 Vols. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1997.

Fisher, John. “The Intendant System and the Cabildos of Peru 1784–1810.” HispanicAmerican Historical Review 40 (1960): 430–53.

Fitzmaurice, Andrew. “Classical Rhetoric and the Promotion of the New World.”Journal of History of Ideas 58, no. 2 (1997): 221–43.

———. Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation 1500–1625.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Fleras, Augie, and Jean Leonard. The ‘Nations Within’: Aboriginal-State Relations in Canada,the United States and New Zealand. Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1992.

Flood, Roderick, and Donald. McCloskey. The Economic History of Britain since 1700.Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Fox, Christopher, Roy Porter, and Robert. Wokler, eds. Inventing Human Science:Eighteenth Century Domains, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene Genovese (1983). Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slaveryand Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Frank, Andre Gunder. Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1998.

Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to theSeventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. London: Sheed & Ward, 1975.Galenson, David W. Traders, Planters and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early English America.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Games, Alison. (1991). Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Gasper, David Barry, and David Patrick Geggus. A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution

and the Greater Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.Gauchet, Marcel. The Disenchantment of the World. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1997.

322 bibliography

Geggus, David Patrick, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.

Gerbi, Antonello. Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernandezde Oviedo. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

Gibson, James R., ed. European Settlement and Development in North America: Essays inHonour and Memory of Andre Hill Clark. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.

Giddens, Anthony. The Nation State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985.Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1993.Gingerich, Owen, ed. The Nature of Scientific Discovery: A Symposium Commemorating the

Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus. Washington: SmithsonianInstitution Press, ISA, 1975.

Glete, Jan. War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic, andSweden as Fiscal-Military States 1500–1660. London: Routledge, 2002.

Goldstein, Jack A. “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World.” Journal of theEconomic and Social History of the Orient 41 (1998): 249–83.

Gongora, Mario. Studies in the Colonial History of Spanish America. Translated by RichardSouthern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Gonzalez, Antonio. Cadiz y el Atlantico 1717–1778: El comercio colonial espnaol baja elmonopolio. Sevilla: Escuela de estudios hispano-americanos, 1976.

Gonzalez, Anibal. Journalism and the Development of Spanish American Narrative. NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Gonzalez, R. D. “El monopolio estatal del murcurio en Nueva Espana durante elsiglo XVIII.” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 4 (2002), 685–718.

Goudsblom, Johan, ed. Human Figurations: Essays for Norbert Elias. Amsterdam:Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 1977.

Gould, Eliza H. The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the AmericanRevolution. Chapel Hill, NC and London: Published for the Omohundro Instituteof Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the Universityof North Carolina Press, 2000.

Grafton, Anthony. Defenders of the Text: The Tradition of Scholarship in an Age of Science.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

———. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: the Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery.Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. New York:Clarendon Press, 1991.

Greene, Jack P. Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History.Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 1994.

———. Peripheries and Centres: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of theBritish Empire and the United States 1607–1788. Athens, GA: University of GeorgiaPress, 1986.

———. The Re-interpretation of the American Revolution 1763–1789. New York: Harperand Row, 1968.

———, and J. R. Pole. Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the EarlyModern Era. London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Greengrass, Mark. Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early ModernEurope. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Greer, Allan. Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740–1840.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.

———. The People of New France. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.Griffin, Patrick. The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, Irish, and the Creation

of a British Atlantic World 1689–1764. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.Gruzinski, Serge. The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the

Western World, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.

bibliography 323

Guibernau, Monserrat. Nations Without States: Political Communities in a Global Age.Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Guicciardini, Francesco. The History of Italy. Translated by Sidney Alexander. NewYork: Macmillan, 1968.

Guy, Donna S., and Thomas Sheridan. Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on theNorthern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire. Tucson: University of ArizonaPress, 1998.

Haase, Wolfgang, and Meyer Reinhold. The Classical Tradition and the Americas. NewYork: Walter de Gruyter, 1994.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into aCategory of Bourgeois Society. London, Polity Press, 1989.

Haight, Frank A. A History of French Commercial Policies. New York: MacMillan, 1941.Hale, John. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. London: HarperCollins, 1993.Hamnett, Brian R. The Mexican Bureaucracy Before the Bourbon Reforms 1700–1770: A

Study in the Limits of Absolutism. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1979.Hancock, David. “The British Atlantic World: Coordination, Complexity and the

Emergence of an Atlantic Market Economy 1651–1815.” Itinerario 23, no. 2(1999): 107–126.

———. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the English AtlanticCommunity 1735–1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Harpe-Martinez, Teodoro. “The Diffusion of Books and Ideas in Colonial Peru: AStudy of Private Libraries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” HispanicAmerican Historical Review 36, no. 1 (1956): 211–33.

Hart, Jonathan. Comparing Empires: European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansion to theSpanish-American War. London: Palgrave, 2003.

Hartz, Louis. The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States,Latin America, South Africa, Canada and Australia. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1964.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of CulturalChange. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Hatch, Nathan O. The Sacred Cause of Liberty, Republican Thought and the Millennium inRevolutionary New England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Hattendorf, John B. Maritime History. Florida: Kriegar Publishing Co, 1996.Hay, Denys. Europe: the Emergence of an Idea. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

1968.Headley, John. “The Sixteenth Century Celebration of the Earth’s Total Habitability:

The Issue of the Fully Habitable World for Renaissance Europe.” Journal ofWorld History 8, no. 1(1997): 1–27.

Heckscher, Eli. Mercantilism. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1935.Henshall, Nicholas. The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern Europe.

New York: Longman, 1992.Herr, Richard. Spain. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.Hill, Chrisopher. The Century of Revolution 1603–1714. Berkshire: Van Nostrand

Reinhold, 1980.Hilton, Rodney. Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism. London: Verso, 1985.Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomienderos of New Spain 1521–1555. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1991.Hirschmann, Albert O. The Passions and the Interests: Political Argument for Capitalism

Before its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.Hobsbawn, Eric J. Industry and Empire. London: Penguin, 1990.———. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Canto,

1991.Hoffman, Ronald, ed. The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period 1763–1790.

Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988.

324 bibliography

Honneth, Axel, and Hans Joas, eds. Communicative Action: Essays on Jurgen Habermas’Theory of Communicative Action. Translated by Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones.Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.

Honour, Hugh. The European Vision of America: A Special Exhibition to Honor the Bicentennialof the United States. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

Horn, James. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake.Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Houston, Alan, and Steve Pincus. A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Howe, Daniel W. American History in an Atlantic Context: An Inaugural Lecture Deliveredbefore the University of Oxford on 3 June 1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Huff, Toby E., ed. On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science and Civilizations: SelectedWritings of Benjamin Nelson. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492–1797. NewYork: Metheun, 1986.

Humphreys, Robert H. “The Historiography of the Spanish American Revolution.”Hispanic American Historical Review 36, no. 1 (1956): 81–93.

Hunter, Phyllis Whitman. Purchasing Identity: Massachusetts Merchants 1670–1780. Ithaca,NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Hutchins, Robert Maynard, ed. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 38. Chicago:Encyclopedia Britannica, 1958.

Jacob, Margaret C. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. New Yorkand Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Jacobs, Margaret, and James Jacobs. The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism. London:Allen and Unwin, 1984.

Jaenen, Cornelius J. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.New York: Vintage Books, 1963.

Jane, C., ed. Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus. London: TheHakluyt Society, 1932.

Jara, Rene, and Nicholas Spadaccini. Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Jardine Nicholas, James A. Secord, and Emma C. Spary, eds. Cultures of NaturalHistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Jensen, De Lamar. The Expansion of Europe: Motives, Methods and Meanings. Lexington,MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1967.

Joas, Hans. “Institutionalization as a Creative Process: The Sociological Importanceof Castoriadis’ Political Philosophy.” American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 5 (1989):1184–99.

Kamen, Henry. European Society 1500–1700. London: Unwin Hyman, 1984.Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.Karras, Alan L., and J. R. McNeill. Atlantic-American Societies: From Columbus through

Abolition 1492–1888. London: Routledge, 1992.Kaufman, Will, and Heidi Slettedahl MacPherson, eds. New Perspectives in Transatlantic

Studies. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002. (Oxford UniversityPress of America, 2002).

Kerber, Linda. “The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation.” AmericanQuarterly 37, no. 4 (1985): 474–96.

bibliography 325

Kidd, Colin. British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the AtlanticWorld 1600–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Kiernan, Victor G. State and Society in Europe 1550–1650. New York: Pantheon Books,1982.

Koehn, Nancy F. The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First BritishEmpire. New York and London: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Koenigsberger, Helmut G. “Composite States, Representative Institutions and theAmerican Revolution.” Historical Research 62 (1989): 135–53.

———. The Government of Sicily under Philip II of Spain: A Study in the Practice of Empire.New York: Staples Press, 1951.

———. The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–1660. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1971.

———. Monarchs, States-General and Parliaments: The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and SixteenthCenturies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Konvitz, Josef W. Cartography in France 1660–1848: Science, Engineering and Statecraft.Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987.

Kramnick, Isaac. Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

———. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth CenturyEngland and America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Krejcí, Jaraslov. Before the European Challenge: The Great Civilizations of Asia and the MiddleEast. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990.

———. The Human Predicament: Its Changing Image: A Study in Comparative Religion andHistory. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, ed. America in European Consciousness 1493–1750. ChapelHill, NC; London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

———. Indians and English: Facing off in the Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 2000.

———. “Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation inthe Early Years of Colonization.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997):193–228.

Kurasawa, Fuyuki. “The Ethnological Counter-Current in Sociology.” InternationalSociology 15, no. 1 (2000): 11–31.

———. The Ethnological Imagination: A Cross-Cultural Critique of Modernity. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Labaree, L.W Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System before1783. New York: Ungar, 1958.

Lang, James. Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in the Americas. New York:Academic Press, 1975.

Langley, Lester. The Americas in the Age of Revolution 1750–1850. New Haven, CTand London: Yale University Press, 1996.

Le Goff, Jacques. The Medieval Imagination. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Lebovics, Herman. “The Uses of America in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.”Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 567–79.

Leledakis, Kanakis. “An Appreciation of Cornelius Castoriadis: Theorist of Autonomyand Openness.” European Journal of Social Theory 2, no. 1 (1999): 95–98.

Lestringant, Frank. Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in theAge of Discovery. Translated by David Fausett. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.

Liebersohn, Harry. Aristocratic Encounters: Europeans Travellers and North American Indians.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Liss, Peggy K. Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution 1713–1826. Baltimoreand London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Litvinoff, Barnet. Fourteen Ninety Two: The Year and the Era. London: Constable, 1991.

326 bibliography

Lockhart, James. Spanish Peru 1532–1560: A Colonial Society. Wisconsin: University ofWisconsin Press, 1968.

———, and Enrique Otte, eds. and trans. Letters and People of the Spanish Indies,Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Lorimer, Joyce, ed. Settlement Patterns in Early Modern Colonization, 16th–18th Centuries.Aldershot: Variorum, 1998.

Louder, Dean R., and Eric Waddell, eds. French America: Mobility, Identity, and MinorityExperience across the Continent. Translated by Franklin Philip. Baton Rouge andLondon: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

Lovejoy, David S. The Glorious Revolution in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.———. Religious Enthusiasm in the New World: Heresy to Revolution. Cambridge MA:

Harvard University Press, 1985Lynch, John. “British Policy and Spanish America 1783–1808.” The Journal of Latin

American Studies 1, no. 1 (1969): 1–30.———. “Intendants and Cabildo in the Viceroyalty of La Plata 1782–1810” Hispanic

American Historical Review 35 (1955): 337–62.———. The Spanish Americans Revolutions 1808–1826. New York: W. W. Norton and

Company, 1973.MacFarlene, Alan. The British in the Americas 1480–1815. Essex: Longman, 1992.McAlister, Lyle N. Spain and Portugal in the New World: 1492–1700. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1984.McCusker, John J., and Kenneth Morgan, eds. The Early Modern Atlantic Economy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.MacDonald, L. R. “France and New France: the Internal Contradictions.” Canadian

Historical Review 52, no. 2 (1971): 121–43.McLachlan, Colin M. Spain’s Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional

and Social Change. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.McLellan, James A. Colonialism and Science: St Domingue in the Old Regime. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University, 1993.McNeill, William. “The Rise of the West after Twenty-Five Years.” Journal of World

History 9, no. 2 (1998): 1–21.Mancke, Elizabeth. “Another British America: A Canadian Model for the Early

Modern British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25, no.1 (1997): 1–36.

———. “Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of Oceanic Space.”Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (1999): 225–37.

———. “Early Modern Imperial Governance and the Origins of Canadian PoliticalCulture.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 1 (1999): 3–20.

Mandalios, John. “Being and Cultural Difference: (Mis)understanding Otherness inEarly Modernity.” Thesis Eleven 62 (2000): 91–108.

———. Civilization and the Human Subject. Oxford: Roman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999.Margusson Lars. Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language. London: Routledge,

1994.Marshall, Peter J. The Eighteenth Century. The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol.

2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–99.———, and Glyn Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution.

London: Frank Cass and Co Ltd., 1980.———, and ———. The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the

Age of Enlightenment. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1982.Martin, John Frederick. Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New

England Towns in the Seventeenth Century. Chapel Hill and London: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1991.

Martin, L. F. El Movimiento Comunero en Los Tierra de Campos. Leon: Centro de Estudiose Investigacion San Isidoro, 1979.

bibliography 327

Marx, Karl. Capital. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974.———. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Middlesex: Penguin, 1976.———. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Middlesex:

Penguin, 1973.———. Theories of Surplus Value. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963.Marzagalli, Silvia. “The French Atlantic.” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 70–83.Marzahl, Peter. “Creoles and Government: The Cabildo of Popayan.” Hispanic

American Historical Review 54 (1974): 636–56.Mason, Peter. Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other. New York: Routledge,

1990.Matson, Cathy, and Peter Onuf. “Towards a Republican Empire: Interest and

Ideology in Revolutionary America.” American Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1985): 496–532.Mazlish, Bruce. Civilization and Its Contents. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.———. “Civilization in a Historical and Global Perspective.” International Sociology

16, no. 3 (2001): 293–300.Meadows, R. “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community

1789–1809.” French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 67–102.Meinig, Donald W. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 years of

History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.Melluish, Gregory. “The Clash of Civilizations: A Model of Historical Development?”

Thesis Eleven 62 (2000): 109–20.Merquior, Jose G. “El Otro Occidente: Un Poco de Filosofia de la Historia desde

Latinoamerica.” Cuardernos Americanos: Nueva Epoca 13 (1989): 9–23.Mettam, Roger. Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s France. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonisation.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995.Mignone, Mario B. Columbus: Meeting of Cultures: Proceedings of the Symposium held at

The State University of New York, October 16–17, 1993.Milobar, David. “Conservative Ideology, Metropolitan Government, and the Reform

of Quebec, 1782–1791.” International Historical Review 12, no. 1 (1990): 45–64.Mintz, Sidney W., and Richard Price. An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American

Past: A Caribbean Perspective. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of HumanIssues, 1977.

Miquelon, Dale. New France 1701–1744: “A Supplement to Europe.” Toronto: McClellandand Stewart, 1987.

Mooers, Colin. The Making of the Bourgeoisie: Absolutism, Revolution and the Rise of Capitalismin England, France, and Germany. London: Verso, 1991.

Moogk, Peter N. “Rank in New France: Reconstructing a Society from NotarialDocuments.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 8, no. 15 (1975): 34–48.

———. “Reluctant Exiles: Emigrants from France in Canada before 1760.” TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly 46, no. 3 (1989): 463–505.

Moote, Lloyd. The Revolt of the Judges: the Parlement of Paris and the Fronde 1643–1652.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Morgan, Hilary. “Mid-Atlantic Blues.” Irish Review 11 (1991/2): 50–55.Morgan, Ted. Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent. New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Morner, Magnus. Race Mixing in the History of Latin America. Boston: Little, Brown

and Company, 1967.Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Rewriting History: Civilization Theory in Contemporary

Japan.” Positions 1, no. 2 (1993): 526–549.Murphy, Peter. “Peregrini.” Thesis Eleven 46 (1996): 1–32.Murphy, Thomas K. A Land without Castles: The Changing Image of America in Europe

1780–1830. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001.Nader, Helen. “The End of the Old World.” Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992): 791–807.

328 bibliography

Nassaney, Michael N., and Kenneth E. Sassaman. Native American Interactions: MultiscalarAnalyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands. Knoxville, TN: University ofTennessee Press, 1995.

Ogg, David. Europe of the Ancien Regime 1715–1783. Glasgow: Collins, 1965.O’Gorman, Edmundo. The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of

the New World and the Meaning of its History. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1961.

O’Shaughnessy, Andrew. An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the BritishCaribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Ohlmeyer, Jane E. “Seventeenth Century Ireland and the New British and AtlanticHistories.” American Historical Review 104 (1999): 446–62.

The Oxford History of the British Empire. Editor-in-chief Wm. Roger Louis. 5 vols.Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1998–1999.

Pagden, Anthony. “The ‘Defence of Civilization’ in Eighteenth Century SocialTheory.” History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (1999).

———. European Encounters with the New World. New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1993.

———. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of ComparativeEthnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

———, ed. The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002.

———. The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe. London: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986.

———. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Paquette Robert, and Stanley L. Engerman. The Lesser Antilles in the Age of EuropeanExpansion. Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Dutch Revolt. Middlesex: Penguin, 1977.Parry, John H. The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement 1450–1650.

London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1973.———. The Discovery of America. London: Paul Elek, 1979.———. The Establishment of the European Hegemony 1415–1715: Trade and Exploration

in the Age of the Renaissance. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.———. Europe and the Wider World 1415–1715. London: Hutchinson, 1966.———. The Spanish Seaborne Empire. London: Hutchinson, 1966.Patterson, Orlando. The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and

Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica. London: Associated University Presses, 1969.Patterson, Thomas C. Inventing Western Civilization. New York: Monthly Review Press,

1997.Pennington, Donald H. Europe in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Longman, 1989.Perez-Diaz, Victor. “State and Public Sphere in Spain during the Ancient Regime.”

Daedulus 127, no. 3 (1998): 251–79.Peruzzotti, Enrique. “The Weimarization of Argentine Politics and State Autonomy.”

Thesis Eleven 34 (1993): 59–82.Peterson, Mark. The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.

Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1997.Phillips, Carla Rahn. “The Iberian Atlantic.” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 84–106.Picon-Salas, Marianne. A Cultural History of Spanish America: From Conquest to Independence.

Translated by Irving A. Leonard. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.Pilgram, Donald G. “France and New France: Two Perspectives on Colonial

Security.” Canadian Historical Review 55, no. 4 (1974): 381–407.Pincus, Steve. “Neither Machivellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial

Society and the Defenders of the English Republic.” American Historical Review103, no. 3 (1998): 705–36.

bibliography 329

Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the AtlanticRepublican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

———. “The New British History in Atlantic Perspective.” American Historical Review104, no. 2 (1999): 490–500.

———, ed. Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1980.

———. Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History Chiefly inthe Eighteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Poggi, Gianfranco. The Development of the Modern State. London: Hutchinson, 1978.Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.Potter, Janice. The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.Price, Jacob M. Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake

1700–1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.Pritchard, Margaret Beck, and Henry G. Taliaferro. Degrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial

America. Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2002.Quesada, M. A. L. Los reyes catolicos: La coruna y la unidad de espana. Valencia:

Association Francisco Lopez de Gomara, 1989.Quinn, David Beers. Ireland and America: Their Early Associations 1500–1640. Liverpool:

Liverpool University Press, 1991.———. Raleigh and the British Empire. London: Hodder and Stoughton for English

Universities Press, 1947.———. The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590, Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to

North America under the Patent Granted to Walter Raleigh in 1584. London: HakluytSociety, 1955.

———. The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. London: TheHakluyt Society, 1940.

Quinn, Frederick. The French Overseas Empire. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.Reid, Allana G. “Representative Assemblies in New France.” Canadian Historical

Review 27 (1946): 19–26.Reinhold, Meyer. Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States.

Detroit: Wayne State University, 1984.Roach, J. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1998.Rodriguez, Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998.Roggett, Rachel, ed. New World of Wonders: European Images of the Americas 1492–1700.

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992.Romm, James S. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration and

Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.Roniger, Luis, and C. H. Waisman. Globality and Multiple Modernities: Comparative North

American and Latin American Perspectives. East Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2002.———, and M. Sznajder. Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres: Latin

American Paths. Brighton: Sussex University Press, 1998.Rowse, A. L. R. The Elizabethans and America. London; Macmillan, 1959.Rundell, John F. Origins of Modernity—The Origins of Modern Social Theory: From Kant

to Hegel to Marx. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987.———, and Stephen Mennell, eds. Classical Readings in Culture and Civilization. London:

Routledge, 1998.Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the

University of Oxford 1987–1988. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.Ryan, Michael. “Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.”

Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981): 519–38.

330 bibliography

Sachsenmaier, Dominic, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Reflections on MultipleModernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Sacks, David Harris. The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1991.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.Sautman, Francesca Canadé, et al., eds. Telling Tales: Medieval Narratives and the Folk

Tradition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.Savelle, Max. Empires to Nations: Expansion in America 1713–1824. Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota Press, 1974.Sayer, D. “A Notable Administration: English State Formation and the Rise of

Capitalism.” American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 5 (1992): 1382–1415.Schaeper, Thomas J. The French Council of Commerce 1700–1715: A Study of Mercantilism

after Colbert. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983.Schaer, Roland, et al., eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.Schwartz, Stuart B., ed. Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the

Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994.

———. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views on the Conquest of Mexico. Boston,MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Seaby, Peter. The Story of British Coinage. London: Seaby, 1985.Seed, Patricia. American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches.

Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2001.———. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World 1492–1640.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Sharp, William F. Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: the Colombian Choco 1680–1810.

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976.Sheridan, R. B. “The Commercial and Financial Organization of the British Slave

Trade 1750–1807.” Economic History Review 11, no. 2 (1958): 249–63.Slattery, Brian. “French Claims in North America 1500–1559.” Canadian Historical

Review 59, no. 2 (1978): 139–69.Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. London: Penguin Books, 1986.Smith, Jeremy C. A. “Theories of State Formation and Civilisation in Johann P.

Arnason and Shmuel Eisenstadt’s Comparative Sociologies of Japan.” CriticalHorizons 3, no. 2 (2002): 225–51.

Smith, Michael E., and Marilyn A. Masson. The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica:A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.

Smith, Pamela, and Paula Findlen. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce and the Representationof Nature in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Solow, Barbara L., ed. Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991.

Sosin, J. M. English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and theStructure of Provincial Government. Lincoln, NE; London: University of NebraskaPress, 1982.

Stanbridge, K. A. “England, France and their North American Colonies: An Analysisof Absolutist State Power in Europe and in the New World.” Journal of HistoricalSociology 10, no. 10 (1997): 27–55.

Steele, Ian. The English Atlantic 1675–1740. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Stein, Robert L. The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business.

Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.Stein, Stanley. “Bureaucracy and Business in the Spanish Empire 1759–1804: Failure

of a Bourbon Reform in Mexico and Peru.” Hispanic American Historical Review61, no. 1 (1981): 2–28.

Suarez, Thomas. Shedding the Veil: Mapping the European Discovery of America and theWorld. London: World Scientific Publishing, 1992.

bibliography 331

Swann Julian. Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy1661–1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have ShapedOur World View. London: Random House, 1991.

Thernborn, Goran. “Entangled Modernities.” European Journal of Social Theory 6, no.3 (2003): 293–305.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870. NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Oxford:Polity Press, 1994.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400–1680.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States 900–1990. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,1990

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: Harper& Row, 1992.

Tracy, James C., ed. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991.

Tucker, Robert W., and David C. Hendrickson. The Fall of the First British Empire:Origin of the War of American Independence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1982.

Tully, James. An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993.

Tyler, S. Lyman. Two Worlds: The Indian Encounter with the Europeans 1492–1509. SaltLake City: University of Utah Press, 1988.

Veliz, Claudio. The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1980.

Vilar, Pierre. A History of Gold and Money: 1450–1920. London: Verso, 1991.Villalobos, Sergio R. Tradicion y Reforma en 1810. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de

Chile, 1961.Wagner, Peter. A Sociology of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1994.———. Theorizing Modernity. London: Sage, 2001.Wallerstein, Immanuel. Historical Capitalism. London: Verso, 1983.———. The Modern World System. 3 vols. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989.Washburn, Willcomb E. “The Meaning of ‘Discovery’ in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth

Centuries.” American Historical Review 68, no. 1, (1962): 1–21.Waterhouse, Richard. A New World Gentry: The Making of a Merchant and Planter Class

in South Carolina 1670–1770. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1989.Weaver, Muriel Porter. The Aztecs, Maya and their Predecessors: Archaeology of Mesoamerica.

New York and London: Seminar Press, 1972.Weber, David J., and Jane M. Rausch, eds. Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin

America. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994.Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1978.———. General Economic History. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981.White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes

Region 1650–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Wilber, Charles K., ed. The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment. New

York: Random House, 1973.Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina

Press, 1994.Williams, T. D., ed. Historical Studies: Papers Read Before the Second Irish Conference of

Historians. Cork: Cork University Press, 1987.Williamson, James. A Short History of British Expansion: The Old Colonial Empire. London:

Macmillan, 1943.

332 bibliography

Wilson, Kathleen. The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England1715–1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Wilson, Samuel M., ed. The Indigenous People of the Caribbean. Gainsville, FL: UniversityPress of Florida, 1997.

Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787. Williamsburg, VA:University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

Yewell, John, Chris Dodge, and Jan Desines, eds. Confronting Columbus: An Anthology.Jefferson, Missouri: McFarland and Co., 1992.

Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London: Routledge,1990.

Zagorin, Perez. Rebels and Rulers 1500–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1982.

Zakelich, Nuala. “Making Mercantilism Work: London Merchants and AtlanticTrade in the Seventeenth Century.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6thseries, no. 9 (1999): 143–58.

Zavala, Solvio. New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America. New York: Russelland Russell, 1968.

———. The Political Philosophy of the Conquest of America. Mexico: Editorial Cultura,1953.

Arnason, Johann P. 24, 26–27,142–143, 301

art 31, 77, 97, 112, 118, 120,264–265, 303

asiento 51, 179–180, 235Atlantic Ocean 12, 83–84, 90, 102Atlantic studies 5, 10–12, 71audiencia 60, 196, 202, 206, 245, 271,

286, 287Augustine 101Australasia 289–290, 308

Bailyn, Bernard 19banking 60, 144, 148, 187Barbados 60, 166, 177, 178baroque culture 41–1, 98, 131,

201–203, 222bishoprics 89, 201Blackburn, Robin 140, 164 n. 52,

165 n. 58, 182, 278, 296Board of Trade 62, 149, 155–156,

179, 182, 217, 236, 238–239, 244Bodin, Jean 126Bolivar, Simon ix, 7, 267, 269, 283,

284–286Bordeaux 162, 166, 169, 180, 184Borkeneu, Frank 24 n. 4Boston 171, 239, 261botany 109, 119, 120, 137, 294, 303Bourbons 101

French 40–41Spanish 46, 59, 60, 150, 153–154,206–207, 235–236, 243–248

Braudel, Fernand 10, 39 n. 3, 140Brazil 57, 160, 163, 165 n. 57, 169,

170, 182, 279Bristol 11, 178, 260Buenos Aires 47, 153, 245, 285bureaucracy 39 n. 3, 17, 50, 59, 60bureau des colonies 70bureau de commerce 69

cabildo 50, 58, 60, 196, 202–203,205–206, 271, 286–288see also urban government

Cadiz 46, 150, 151, 163, 169, 247

INDEX

abolitionism 183, 208, 277–278, 296absolutism 15–16, 17, 37–45, 59,

71–72, 228, 245, 306–307academies 80, 82, 110, 119, 131,

147, 264, 305accounting 160, 167, 191, 309Africa 10–11, 22, 50, 51, 87, 118,

126, 161, 167, 171 n. 75, 176, 191,241, 297, 301, 308see also West Africa

alcalde mayor 202, 203 n. 24American Revolution 6, 219, 221,

238, 250, 252, 256, 270–271,277–278, 282–283, 289, 297

Amerindians 3–4, 22, 30–31, 34–35,54, 65–66, 94–95, 105, 108 n. 10,114–115, 117, 119, 121, 128–139,183, 195–201, 207, 210, 213, 219,221, 223, 236 n. 7, 240–241,257–258, 266, 268–269, 299–302,304, 312–313Abenaki 66Aztec 100 n. 81, 112, 131–132,

198, 199Huron 210 n. 41, 304Incan 112, 132, 199Iroquois 65–66, 68, 210 n. 41Meztizos 115, 268–269, 284, 288Micmac 66, 304see also civilizations

Amis des Nois 277Anderson, Benedict 205, 228, 253 n.

3, 254 n. 6, 287anthropology 2, 26–27, 122–123, 133

n. 80, 300anthropography 79, 117, 123, 124,

134, 137Antipodes 1, 74, 82–83antiquity 77, 81, 100–101, 124, 229Aquinas, Thomas 101Argentina 285, 287Argentine Confederation 286aristocracy 39–45, 85, 188, 195,

199–200, 208, 210–211, 225–226, 229Aristotle 119, 275Aristotleanism 79, 106, 124

334 index

calculative rationality 164, 167,191–192

Calonne, Charles Alexandre de 280Canada

see New Francecapital 25, 144, 147, 150, 166, 167,

176, 182, 185–190, 200–201,237–238, 244, 298, 309

capitalism 18–20, 21–22, 88 n. 46,89, 139, 140–192, 213–214, 290,293, 294, 304, 308, 309–310

Cardinal Fleury 69Caribbean, the 47–48, 56–57, 68–71,

90, 91, 103, 116, 134, 155, 159,160, 161–162, 165 n. 57, 166,168–170, 172–173, 176–182,184–185, 191, 207–208, 219,220–221, 237, 251–252, 254, 266,276–280, 291, 296see also West Indies

cartography 81–82, 105, 109,129–131, 137, 146–147, 160, 236 n.7, 303

Casa de Contratacion 46, 51, 59–60,130, 149, 150see also mercantilism

Castile 41, 59, 91–92, 99Castoriadis, Cornelius 31–33catholicism

see church, PapacyCato 272ceremony 202–203Chambers of Commerce (French) 50,

58, 277Charles V (Spain) 98, 100Charlestown 166, 171chartered companies 57, 175–178,

182–184, 209see also joint-stock companies

Cheasapeake Bay 155, 163, 176, 222Christendom 74, 76, 82, 89–90,

97–101, 148, 304church 2, 42, 79, 92, 196–197,

198–199, 201, 224, 264, 272–273Cicero 272Civil War (English) 42–44, 60–62civilizations 4, 12–14, 22, 35–36,

76–77, 112, 231–232, 292–313Andoamerican 29, 103, 125, 134,

299–300, 304Byzantine 18, 77, 78, 84, 305European 8–9, 74–75, 76–77,

103–104, 109, 257, 293–298indigenous, see Amerindiansinter-civilizational exchange 4–5,

30–31, 50, 101, 105, 137, 291,294–295, 301, 305–306

Islamicate 1, 84, 90–91, 103, 124Mesoamerican 29, 103, 112, 121,

125, 134, 198–199, 299–300, 301,304see also sociology, civilizational

civility 125, 133, 134–136, 222, 292,297, 301, 303

civilizational imaginary 75, 77, 102,105, 115, 124–127, 137–139,300–301, 305–306

civilizing process 90, 93, 96, 125,135, 136 n. 87see also Elias, Norbert

clash of civilizations thesis 23, 209see also Huntington, Samuel

class struggle 16 n. 22, 42clergy 110, 196–197

see also theologiansColbert, Jean-Baptiste 56–57, 64, 65,

146, 177–178, 188, 189, 208,211–212, 225

Cold War 23, 299colonial autonomy 6–7, 70–71, 158,

193–232, 244–245see also colonial order

colonial order 48–49, 141, 149,193–232, 233–234, 251–291, 298,306, 307defined 44–45, 193–194, 230British 158–160, 212–218,

239–244, 258–260, 263French 162–163, 177–178,

207–212, 225–227, 276–280Hispanic 151–154, 194–207,

228–230, 245–149, 257–258,264–266, 284–289

colonialism 4, 15, 53–55, 56–57, 84,89–97, 101–103, 105–106, 125,299–300, 303–304

Columbus, Christopher 82–83, 86–87,88, 90, 106, 114, 116, 117 n. 33,120, 124, 128, 130, 313

common law 177, 148, 242, 272Compagnie des Indies 183–184composite monarchy 43–44, 59, 93, 96comunero revolt 41, 42, 92, 99Congress of Panama 285Congress of Vienna 282, 284conquistadores 3, 92–93, 103consejos 50, 70, 92contraband trade 51, 149, 152,

158–159, 185, 245–247Convention, The 278, 279

index 335

corregidores 60, 152–153Cortes, Hernan 100

see also conquistadorescortes 92, 289Cortes of Cadiz 285corruption 7, 149, 155, 206, 245, 268cosmology 76, 107, 124counseil soverain 211–212court society 39–41, 45

see also Elias, Norbert and aristoc-racy

credit 144, 147, 155, 166, 167, 179,189, 191, 310

Creoles 128, 154, 201, 203–207, 223,229–230, 244–249, 264 n. 32, 264,269, 285–289, 296

Creolism ix, 5, 93, 128, 173, 192,194–195, 198–200, 223–230, 231,233–234, 257–260, 267–269, 282,288, 311

Cromwell, Oliver 92crusades 89–92, 103

see also reconquistacurrency

see money

de Acosta, Jose 123 n. 54, 126de Campillo, Jose 245de Champlain, Samuel 136de las Casas, Bartoleme 2, 86 n. 37,

123, 126de Montaigne, Michel 14, 122

n. 41, 126de Pauw, Cornelius 114–115de Pontchartrain, Jerome 70dialectics 103, 127, 143difference 3, 31, 108, 115, 116–118,

132, 135, 223, 296see also otherness

diplomacy 4, 31, 174, 180–181, 186,255, 290, 304

Directory, the 281discovery ix, 75–76, 80, 82, 104,

105–139, 295, 303Dominicans 113, 196Dumount, Louis 24Durkheim, Emile 14, 23, 26–27, 122

n. 51, 301Dutch empire 40, 42–42, 52, 69

Eden Treaty 280–281education 197, 262Eisenstadt, Shmuel N 3 n. 4, 253

n. 3, 24, 301Elias, Norbert 17–18, 24 n. 4, 39

enclosure 53–54, 72, 103, 135, 144,151, 188, 214–215, 231, 303

encomienda 4, 65, 151, 154, 195–201,202, 204, 304

encomienderos 55–56, 195–201end of history thesis 23enlightenment philosophy 114–116,

125, 223, 288–289, 296ethnicity 31, 154, 219–222, 223,

228–230, 231, 248, 251, 254, 257,266–269

ethnological imagination 22, 75, 76,77, 106 n. 5, 109, 122–123, 138, 303

evangelism 84, 85, 86–87, 90evolutionism 105, 114–116, 121, 123,

127, 134–135, 138exotica 112, 117–119, 187exploration 46, 49, 52, 74, 75–76,

78–84, 102, 130–131extermination 3, 198–199

Febvre, Lucian 24 n. 4federalism 254, 261, 273–276Ferdinand VII 283, 287feudalism 67 n. 76

see also seignorialityfishing 56, 160–161, 211Fleury, Cardinal 69Floridas, The 57, 160, 237, 256Forts 6, 66, 70, 85, 174, 177, 209,

231, 295, 304, 305Free Ports Act (1766) 159–160free trade 153, 162–163, 180, 280French and Indian War

see Seven Years WarFrench Revolution 69, 208, 252,

277–279, 282–283, 289, 297Freud, Sigmund 14Fronde, the 40, 42, 146Frontenac, comte de 211–212Fukuyama, Francissee end of history thesisfur trade 56, 65–66, 160–161,

209–210, 211, 240

Galileo, Galilei 124gardens 53, 118, 305Gauchet, Marcel 24 n. 4genealogy 199gentility 96, 170–171, 224see also civilitygeography 48, 76, 79, 105, 111, 120,

124, 128–129, 132gold 85–87, 103

336 index

‘Golden Age’ 2, 116–117, 125see also utopianism

governorship 70, 157, 180, 190,215–216, 217, 223, 225, 227, 236,239

Gran Colombia 285Granada 92Greenblatt, Stephen 121Grenville, George 237, 241, 249Grotius, Hugo 124Guadaloupe 175, 180, 184, 279

Habsburg dynasty 41, 46, 59, 60, 92,99–100, 235–236, 248see also Charles V

hacienda 151, 200, 273Haitian Revolution 165 n. 57, 208,

252, 258, 278–280, 288see also Toussaint

Hakluyt, Richard 126Harrington, James 275Hartz, Louis 9Havana 47, 48, 153, 237Heckscher, Eli 141 n. 5, 145hemeneutics 12–13, 78, 104, 112, 301historicity 115, 194, 198–199, 272historiography 18, 40, 105, 114–115,

134, 160, 204–205, 252–257,272–276, 286, 289, 303, 311

Hobsbawn, Eric 143, 252, 254Huguenots 56, 64, 160, 175, 211humanism 1, 75–76, 78–81, 100–101,

102, 108 n. 10, 109, 110–111, 302Huntington, Samuel 23, 30 n.13

ilustracion 235–236, 246, 258, 266immigration 127–128, 231, 295

British 93, 95, 213, 221–222French 220–221Spanish 219–220see also population

imperialism 15–17, 44–45, 48–49,51–52, 58, 129, 130–131, 139,233–239, 251, 289–291British 52–55, 60–62, 93–96,

165–158, 215–218, 236–239,241–244

French 56–58, 62–71, 160–162,225–226, 276–282

Spanish 55–56, 58–60, 90–93,98–100, 149–151, 234–236,282–284

indigenous peoplessee civilization, Amerindian

indigeneity 127, 219, 312–313indenture 171, 175, 220industrialization 18, 143, 294, 308inequality 208, 210–211, 218–220,

224–225, 228, 231, 237–238, 251,266, 276, 296

Inquisition, Holy Office of the 265, 282insurance 167, 189, 191, 310intendants 70, 211–212, 245, 248Italy 41, 99, 113, 114Ireland 11, 78, 93–96, 103, 126, 258,

302

Jaspers, Karl 24 n. 4Jacobinism 200, 252, 277–278, 283Jamaica 60, 178Jefferson, Thomas 7, 260Jerusalem 84, 89Jesuits 64, 65, 123 n. 54, 175, 304joint-stock companies 84–85, 168,

189, 247–248judges 92, 205 n. 28, 205 n. 29, 216,

248see also oidores

jurism 97, 197–198, 211–212,216–217, 301

just war, conceptions of 92–93, 243 n. 32

Justices of the Peace 216

La Plata 47, 150, 153, 245, 265,285–286, 287, 312

labor 42, 55, 92, 145, 151, 163–193,186, 195–201, 303

labor laws 144, 145Lafitau, Joseph Francois 123 n. 54, 136Lahontan, Louis-Armand de Lom

d’Arce 133, 136Language 112, 121, 128–129,

131–132, 198, 223, 225, 254Law of Burgos 196l’exclusif 162–163, 177, 179–180, 184l’homme sauvage

see savagismliberalism 142–143, 235, 274, 282,

288–289, liberalization of trade 142–143,

153–154, 159–160, 162–163,186–187, 234, 247, 280–281, 284

liberties 49, 90, 92, 117, 174, 197,203, 216, 227–228, 242–243, 260,272, 277–278

libraries 118, 264, 305Lima 47, 153, 202, 203, 245, 265

Liverpool 11, 169, 178, 260Locke, John 54, 273–275London 157, 163, 166, 168, 169,

176, 178–179, 189–190, 238, 239,241, 244, 249, 250, 258, 259, 260,261, 277, 282, 298

Louis XIV 64, 65, 188Louisiana 183, 207, 237loyalism 7, 61 n. 51, 218, 233, 251,

253–254, 257, 258–260, 266

McNeil, William 23Madrid 39, 46, 153, 196, 206, 245,

247, 249–250, 257, 298Mandeville, Sir John 82manumission 173maps 31, 77–82, 83, 129–131,

146–147, 305Marco Polo 82marine de guerre 68Martin, Jose San 269, 285Martinique 175, 180, 184, 279Martyr, Peter 83, 116Marx, Karl 14, 19, 27, 88 n. 46,

140, 143, 163–165, 281Maurepas, comte de 69Mauss, Marcel 14, 23, 26–27, 33–34,

301Mediterranean 2, 12, 81, 84, 87, 89,

222, 297, 301Meinig, Donald 45–46, 47Mercator, Gerhardus 124, 130

see also cartographymerchants 48, 81, 85, 145, 150–151,

153, 155, 157–158, 158–159, 168 n.62, 169, 170 n. 70, 180, 186–187,189–190, 191, 204, 224, 237–239,241, 247, 248, 260, 264

mercantilism 19, 50–51, 59–60, 75,78, 84–89, 103, 140–163, 237–239,240, 247, 260–261, 302, 309–310see also casa de contratacion, Board

of trade, pacte colonialMexico 206, 246, 265, 287Mexico City 47, 153, 202, 203migration

see immigrationmillennialism 243, 297Milton, John 97–98, 120mining 4, 47, 51, 59–60, 149,

150–151, 200minting 88, 144, 147–148Miranda, Francisco de 203miscegenation 4, 219–220

missions 65, 90, 119, 126, 196, 264,304

Moctezuma 121mode of production 135, 164–165modernity 64, 232, 236

Atlantic xi–xii, 8–20, 36, 292–313Early xii, 12, 129, 307European xii, 293–298Latin American 307–308, 311–312indigenous 299, 312–313political 269–271, 297

money 54, 66, 88–89, 145, 146–147,309

Montesquieu, Charles 122 n. 51, 275,277

Montreal 49, 64, 208, 210, 212, 225,256

mullatoes 219, 279multiple modernities xii, 8–9,

292–294, 301Munster, Sebastian 124

see also cartographyMuscovy Company 182Museums 118, 305mutual dependence 5–6, 72, 193,

218, 307

Nahuatl 132see also Mexico, Aztec

Nantes 161, 163, 180, 184Napoleon, Bonaparte 279, 280, 282,

283, 289Napoleonic Wars 6, 251, 258,

279–280, 283–284, 286natural philosophy 77, 80–81,

110–111, 114, 118, 119see also science

nautical technology 81–82, 130 n. 71Navigation Acts 62, 157–158, 215,

237, 238–239navy 175, 181, 184, 244, 245, 276Nelson, Benjamin 24 n. 4, 75 n. 2New England 53, 194, 222, 223, 261

n. 21New France 57, 65–68, 161–162,

193, 207, 208–209, 211–212, 220,225–227, 239, 241, 252, 254–256,280, 291

New Granada 196, 268, 278, 282,287

New Laws (1542) 196New Spain 47, 131, 154, 196–197,

203 n. 24, 287New York 171, 238, 239, 261

index 337

338 index

newspapers 262, 265–266see also print media

Noahic origins, myth of 77see also anthropographynobility

see aristocracyNova Scotia 235, 255, 256

oidores 60, 203 n. 24, 248oligarchy 270ordonnateurs 70otherness 31, 77, 102, 107, 133–134,

294, 305see also differenceOttoman Empire 8, 76, 87, 88, 102,

297, 305

pacte colonial 57, 149paganism 134, 135, 303–304Papacy 90, 92Paradise Lost (Milton) 120Paraguay 268, 285, 287Paris 70, 146, 180, 226, 277,

278–279, 283, 298, 312Parliament (British) 52, 53, 62,

155–156, 157, 215, 217, 238,241–242, 261

patronage 39–42, 71, 79, 152, 153,178, 188, 203–204, 206, 231, 233,277, 290, 306

peninsulares 6, 153, 154, 199, 203 n. 24, 204–207, 219, 228–229,245–246, 249, 264 n. 32, 267–269,296

Penn, William 53, 94Perspectivism 79, 119, 129–130Peru 153, 194, 196, 203 n. 24, 206,

246, 268, 270 n. 44, 278Philadelphia 171, 261philosophers 80, 112, 226, 283philosophy ix, 7, 78–79, 102,

110–111, 113, 264–265, 272–276,282, 290, 307–308, 312

philosophy of empire 6, 280–282Physiocratism 235–236, 280–281pictography

see languagespiracy 51, 160, 174, 185

see also contraband tradePitt, William the Elder 243 n. 33, 249plantation 68, 95–96, 171–172,

174–175, 225, 238, 302see also colonialism, population

planters 165, 166–173, 176, 180,182–183, 207–208, 224, 277–278see also slavery

Pocock, J G A 273–275political economy 151, 165, 182–183,

234–236population 63–64, 155, 171–172,

183, 208, 219–222, 261, 266–269,295–296, 306

portolan charts 130Portugal 40, 81, 83, 85, 86, 90, 97,

98–99, 130post-Weberianism 27–29

see also Arnason, Johann Ppostcolonial critique 14, 163, 313power 17–18, 27–28, 71, 290–291, 300praetorianism 270–271, 288, 308primitive accumulation 19, 140, 143,

166see also capital

print media 106 n. 8, 113, 261–262,264–266see also newspapers

Privy Council 53, 62, 155, 157, 217,241

Protestantism 18, 53–55, 113,134–135, 140, 224, 304

proto-nationalism 251, 252–7provincial and municipal order 40,

41–45, 58, 141, 144–148, 149, 155, 163, 186, 194, 230, 231, 290,307

Ptolemaic conception 82–83, 107Ptolemy, Claudius 124Ptolemy of Lucca 101public sphere 119–120, 126, 136, 174,

251, 257, 260–266, 271, 273, 297puritans 214 n. 51, 214 n. 55, 135, 155

Quakers 156, 225Quebec 56, 64, 160, 206, 211, 225,

256Quincentenary (1492–1992) 106,

312–313Quinn, David 94–95

Racismsee otherness, difference

Raleigh, Walter 94rationalism 35, 236, 272, 289Raynal, abbe ix, 114, 277reconnaissance 3, 52, 56, 81–82,

87, 160

reconquista 55, 89, 103redemptive cultures 135–136,

199–200Reformation 131, 294Renaissance 1–2, 74, 75 n. 2, 76–77,

78–84, 86, 87, 97, 107, 123repartimiento 4, 47, 151–154, 200,

245–246, 304republicanism 7, 21, 170, 200,

233–234, 243, 250, 251–291,307–309

requerimiento 91Richelieu, Cardinal 57, 148, 177romanticism 1, 116–118, 123, 272

see also utopianism, ‘Golden Age’Rome 74, 75, 78, 97–98, 100, 102,

125, 242 n. 28, 284, 302, 306Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 14, 122 n.

51, 133, 277, 284Royal African Company 170 n. 70,

175, 176–177see also slavery

St Domingue 184, 226, 278–279St Lawrence Delta 48, 56, 63, 65,

67, 175, 207, 209, 256Said, Edward 27Santiago 153salons 280savagism 34, 121, 123, 125, 128,

133–137, 303see also wild man, myth of

science 75, 77, 80–81, 97, 102, 105,114, 122, 126–127, 138, 226

scientific revolution 75seignoriality 67–68Seven Years War 64, 66, 126, 160,

162, 180, 208, 212, 218, 227, 234,236, 239 n. 16, 240, 243, 249,255–256, 259, 278, 280, 308

Seville 46, 51, 150–151, 247Sicily 41Simmel, Georg 14slave rebellions 173, 208, 220, 257slavery 19–20, 47, 65, 68, 140, 141,

144, 149, 160, 163–193, 207–208,213, 219–222, 231, 277–280, 284,295–296, 298, 304

Smith, Adam 141 n. 5, 163–166social imaginary 31–33, 35, 74

see also Castoriadissociology 36, 122 n. 51, 140, 190–191

classical 14, 23–24, 299

civilizational 14, 22, 24–35, 105,137, 299–301

historical ix, 105, 143South Africa 239–290sovereignty 17–18, 54, 68, 98, 145,

193, 213, 215, 233, 234, 286, 288sovereignty, theories of 215–218,

241–244specie 86, 88Stamp Act 239, 273Stuart dynasty 15, 43–44, 52–54, 94,

95 n. 64, 216, 228style of life 170–172, 192, 194,

202–203, 211, 220–228, 305sugar trade 6, 68, 161, 165, 167,

169, 176, 180–182, 184–185, 208

taxation 59, 67, 70, 150, 160, 174, 179,216, 239–241, 243, 247, 259, 268

theologians 78, 91, 99, 134, 196theology 75, 78–79, 91, 102, 113, 124Thomism 78–79, 100–101tobacco trade 6, 165, 167, 69–70, 176topography 31, 128–129, 131–132,

137, 147, 295, 303Toussaint, L’Ouverture 279Toynbee, Arnold 24 n. 4trade

See contraband trade, free trade, furtrade, liberalization of trade, sugartrade, tobacco trade, triangular trade

translation 31, 110, 120–121Treaty of Paris 220, 239–242,

243–244, 308Treaty of Utrecht 179, 181, 208,

221, 234–236, 238, 255triangular trade 6, 167–169travel 105, 115, 119–121, 228–230, 295travel writing 31, 34, 82–83, 303travelers 81, 112, 113, 119–121, 136, 137

United Nations 299United States 255, 269, 282, 284,

290, 310–311Universal Monarchy 55, 75, 78,

97–101, 102universities 110, 264–265urban government 17, 141, 144–148,

202–204, 212Uruguay 285urbanization 90, 172, 194, 201–204,

210, 214, 221–222, 225–226,229–230, 231, 260–266, 295

index 339

340 index

Utopia (More) 116utopianism 2, 116–117, 137, 295,

311

Valladolid Controversy (1550) 2, 123,134see also de las Casas and deSepulveda

verleger system of production 145Versailles 39, 185, 298Vespucci, Amerigo 106, 124, 130viceroyalties 7, 60, 150, 152, 190,

195, 200, 202, 245–246, 264, 283Virginia 60, 95, 223, 238 n. 15virtue 7, 84, 134, 136, 170, 199, 235Viscardo, Francisco de 7

vistadores 245visuality 79–80, 118, 129

Walpole, Robert 236, 239 n. 16Wallerstein, Immanuel 39 n. 3, 140,

142 n. 6Weber, Max 14, 17–18, 23, 140, 169West Africa 85, 86, 88, 102, 163,

167, 169, 173–178West Indies 68, 95, 168, 178,

184–185, 222, 226, 276–280West Indies Company (French) 162Westphalia, Treaty of 51, 144, 174, 302wild man, myth of 118world history 29–30, 190, 301World Systems Theory 5, 140, 309

Date post:	27-Dec-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	jeremy-smith
View:	217 times
Download:	2 times