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This
work is based on a wider study that the authors are carrying out
on the role played by foreign merchants in eighteenth-century Spain. The first phase covered a number of the families of Flemish
merchants; in this study we seek to deal with some of the defining
characteristics of Irish merchants.
Information
on the Irish presence in the city of Seville
is fairly sketchy compared to that on other colonies formed by
British subjects on the Iberian Peninsula, among which Cádiz,
Málaga and Bilbao are most prominent. Sources used up till now do not allow for
a comprehensive understanding of the volume of trade between Seville
and other places; caution is therefore advised when judging
the importance of this trade. The gradual silting of the (Guadalquivir) river made it navigable only to vessels of shallow draught,
usually Dutch or Swedish. Even these vessels in dry years
found it difficult to travel beyond Puebla del Río, and for
that very reason the moorings there came to be used
frequently. Water-borne traffic used the following route: a
Spanish vessel - often a kind of sloop known as a
‘balandra’ - would bring cargo from Seville to either Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz or Puerto de Santa
María. The load would then be transferred at one of these
three ports to a ship with greater draught - usually a foreign
vessel - destined for a port outside Spain. The entire process was overseen by a merchant based at the
port and by the ship’s mate.
This
practice is what restricts our information about merchandise
sent from Seville, or imported through that city, if we only follow vessels’
point of origin and destination. For this reason we have
turned to the slow and often haphazard study of paperwork and
legal documentation. The twenty-four surviving official
documents we have traced - promissory notes, reports of losses
of ships or damage, demand notes, sales of products, powers of
attorney, bankruptcies, wills, inventories of goods, dowries,
sales and rentals of furniture, together with other written
material, permit us to draw as accurate a profile as possible
of the situation of Irish people in the city of Seville. In
general, however, this documentation does not permit us to
state the volume of trade or the category of merchandise
involved. This problem was highlighted in García-Baquero’s
now classic study, and the difficulty has been recognised in
other work (García-Baquero 1988: 479, Lario de Oñate 2000:
123). At any rate, using indirect evidence it is indeed
possible to offer a preliminary outline of commercial
activity.
From
this it is clear that Irishmen, together with their English
coreligionists, formed part of
Seville’s trade with the rest of Europe. This trade was of a lesser extent than the trade with
America, but was nevertheless of consequence in supplying those
primary materials that were needed for industry and food
consumption in the countries to the north. The Irish colony in
Seville was of lesser size than the very powerful Flemish community or
the extensive French community. Its presence dates at least
from the sixteenth century (Martín Murphy 2002: 487-489),
although it was during the eighteenth century that it reached
its zenith, in spite of Seville’s then declining importance as a trading city.
The
tradition of commercial interchanges with
England
in fact can be traced to the Anglo-Castilian treaty of 1254,
very shortly after the reconquista
of Seville from the Moors. We have no information on Irishmen settled in
the city until towards the end of the fifteenth century. The
nature of the trade was to remain unchanged for centuries:
wool, wine, oil, soap, cereals, leathers and furs exchanged
for goods such as textiles, wheat and fish. There is evidence
of trade with Ireland at this time - wine for fish (Ladero Quesada 1980: 98-99.
Childs 1978).
The
growth of the volume of English manufactures is closely linked
to the corresponding increase in the export of high-quality
Castilian wool. As is known, England was able to increase its production of wool, though of
inferior quality, by feeding its sheep on the abundant grass
yielded by its well-watered pastures. While the production of
high-quality wool in England decreased, there was an increase in demand for high quality
fabrics. This obliged English manufacturers to look elsewhere
for their supply and to come to
Spain
in search of what was then the finest wool available in
Europe. More than half the wool exported by Castile
left through the port
of Bilbao
in the eighteenth century, and wool exports increased even
more to satisfy the demand of countries such as Holland
and France (Bilbao, Fernández de Pinedo 1986: 343-359).
The
great success story of Castilian wool, it appears, is above
all something that evolved in the eighteenth century. In 1795
Castilian wool sent to England represented 60% of the total volume exported, a large increase
compared to the previous period. More interesting still is England’s loss of interest in importing Irish wool. At the
beginning of the century this represented 90%, while by the
1740s it amounted to only half the wool imported. Demand in England
switched decisively towards raw material of higher quality (Bilbao
1998). This circumstance, together with difficulties
occasioned by the heavy tax on the export abroad of articles
of Irish wool that was imposed by the Anglo-Irish parliament
in 1698, and the further tax the English parliament imposed in
the same year on the import of Irish goods to England and
Wales, caused many Irish merchant families to emigrate for
economic reasons. These joined the Wild Geese, who a
generation earlier had gone into exile following the military
defeats at the Boyne in 1690 and Aughrim in 1691 and the repression that followed
these defeats (O’Beirne Ranelagh 1999: 74-76).
The
role of the Irish in Spanish trade with
Europe: A survey of the Eighteenth Century
If
there is one city in which the Anglo-Irish colony was important
it is Cádiz, headquarters of the monopoly trade with the Americas
and Spain’s main port in the eighteenth century. There they formed
one of the most influential commercial colonies of the
eighteenth century, after the French and the Spaniards,
although with a much larger volume of earnings on an
individual basis (García Fernández 2005: 32-34). The Irish
were the dominant section of the Anglo-Irish community,
probably because they enjoyed preferential treatment as
compared to their English coreligionists, even though they too
were subjects of His Britannic Majesty. For example, they did
not have to participate in the registration of foreigners,
such as was carried out in 1791 and 1794. This was because
‘the Irish settled in these Kingdoms must be allowed hold
and maintain the privileges awarded them which give them
parity with natural-born Spaniards... in which regard once
settled in these kingdoms they are accepted as Spaniards and
do enjoy the same rights according to the decrees that have
been issued’ (Lario
de Oñate, 2000: 100, 124-130, 132-133, 137). The Irish
benefited from their situation by being able to avoid
restrictions, and the conflicts between the two kingdoms of Spain
and England, and to carry on business with fewer impediments than the
English.
In the town of Huelva, a small foreign merchant colony also settled. It became the
only customs point for the coast of Huelva Province, the
county of Niebla and the greater part of the Andévalo region,
and thus constituted a distribution centre for the towns in
these areas (Lara Ródenas, Peña Guerrero 1991). Foreign
trade was dominated by the Irish, who exported cereal, cork
and wine (González Cruz 1991), and maintained close relations
with Cádiz. The first Irish to settle in Huelva were Thomas and Pablo White or Blanco, brothers of Guillermo
Blanco, who had settled in Seville, and also related to other Blancos resident in Cádiz.
Coupled with these was the Archdekin or Arcediano family (Gozálvez
Escobar 1991: 271-292), from Waterford, and the Waddings from Carrick. These families engaged
primarily in the wholesale and retail trade and in shipping. |
