Spain: colonizer and colonized

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

From "The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?"
by Henry Kamen
Past and Present, Volume 0, Issue 81 (Nov. 1978)

It is an accepted view among economists that the underdevelopment of Latin
America has its origins in the colonial trade relations with metropolitan
Spain. Little attention has been paid to the impact on Spain itself. The
fact is that where discovery should have led to America becoming dependent
on Spain, it led to the latter becoming dependent on foreign countries with
a trading interest in America. The peninsula became colonized through its
Indies. "Spain has become an Indies for the foreigner", to cite a phrase
that originated in the Cortes of Valladolid in 1548 but was echoed by many
others. Andalusia, the initial recipient of bullion, received the new
deluge through its ports. In the 1660s annual exports from Andalusia to
western Europe did not exceed in volume the cargo of six vessels of 300
tons (toneladas) each. By contrast, in 1670 over 13 million pesos worth of
foreign trade passed through Andalusia. Of this, only 11-5 per cent
remained in Spain, while 88-5 per cent went to America, forming the bulk of
shipments from the peninsula. "The trade in this port of Cadiz", wrote the
French consul to Colbert in 1670, "is the greatest and most flourishing in
Europe". But five-sixths of this trade was not in the hands of Spaniards.

In studies of underdevelopment the classic pattern of dependency is one
where the dominated economy tailors its production to the demands of an
external dominant market. The wool trade had set Spain on this path.
Because of the terms of trade, which favoured foreign imports, internal
production became depressed: thus inflation in Spain was further aggravated
by the changes in money supply relative to low changes in real output.
Inflation consequently continued at a high rate in Spain when it was
falling in all other western countries. The fiscal needs of imperial policy
consolidated this unfavourable position. In order to maintain liquidity in
their foreign payments, the kings mortgaged sectors of the economy to
foreign and Portuguese financiers who could only recover their debts by
direct exploitation: hence the bitterness of all classes of Spaniards
against Italian, Flemish and Jewish finance. Foreign financiers came to
control the mercury mines at Almaden, the military orders, various taxes,
lands and offices. But the chief object of their endeavours was the wealth
from the overseas territories.

America thus helped Spain to become a colony of European interests. This
led to the last system of dependence experienced by ancien regime Spain:
dependence on French markets. Unlike the first two periods this was not
associated with an initial boom. From the early seventeenth to the late
eighteenth century, French economic domination of the peninsula was
unquestionable. Not only metropolitan Castile but also the regional
economies of America, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia and the Basque provinces
were alike subjected to the demands of French control. One-third of all the
non-Spanish goods leaving Cadiz for America in 1670 were French. It was
reported of the fleet that returned from Mexico in 1688 that the French
owned nearly half the wealth on board; and fourteen French warships sailed
from Cadiz harbour with the proceeds. In Catalonia French textile dominance
was categorized by a leading publicist in 1680 as "the ill suffered by our
principality, and its total ruin, leaving its people without money, and
manufactures and trade destroyed". An analysis in 1667 of the trade of
Alicante, Spain's second largest port, showed that over 37 per cent of
imports came from France. Thanks to the terms of trade, France also
received industrial help from the Basque provinces. In a notable dispute
between the two provinces of Guipiizcoa and Vizcaya in 1689, reference was
made to ten  French ironworks  near  Bordeaux operating exclusively with
Basque iron.

The most remarkable example is that of Aragon. In 1675 the total value of
its textile imports from all other parts of Spain was only 5-7 per cent of
the value of textiles brought in from France. In the same year wool made up
78 per cent of Aragon's exports to France, and textiles made up 51-6 per
cent of imports. Aragon was clearly a dependent colony of France, its
economy more closely tied to that of France than to that of Spain. The
consequences for Aragonese industry can be seen in the case of the town of
Calcena (near Tarazona), which in 1667 reported to the authorities in
Saragossa:

"This town, four hundred households in population, has since 1640 up to now
lost two hundred families, and this ruin has been caused by the lack of
sales for the fabric manufactured here. The French, with their industry,
have introduced merchandise, and the common people have clothed themselves
in it because of the novelty and the low price, without attention to its
poor durability, so that there is no way of selling even a yard of our
cloth .... Driven by their poverty and wishing to find sustenance for their
children, in this year alone fifty families have left, and most of them are
in Saragossa, where they are finding the same difficulty in selling their
cloth."

Calcena is an excellent example of the inadequacy of the concept of
"decline" to explain a phenomenon that was in reality one of dependence.
The vigorous attempts of Aragon to break out of this dependence  with
schemes to prohibit the export of wool, ban entry of foreign textiles,
expel all French, navigate the Ebro to the Mediterranean, and obtain a
seaport  reached their climax in the 1670s but were all doomed to failure.
Catalonia likewise tried to break out of the system in 1705 by rebelling
against the new French dynasty and setting up its own company, the New
Gibraltar Company, to trade to America. But the pattern of Franco-Spanish
trade up to the French Revolution showed the continued superiority of
French commercial control.

Spain thus remained a dominated colonial market at whose expense other
European nations progressed towards industrial growth. The dominant
markets, their interest concentrated on Spanish and American raw materials
such as wool, bullion, oil, salt, iron, dyes, soda and other items,
dictated the evolution of Spain's economy. The opportunities for Spanish
expansion available in its European territories and above all in America,
were frustrated and never realized. The Spanish soldier occupied half
Europe, and with him Spanish culture penetrated everywhere; but the
homeland remained retarded in its growth.



Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org