Spanish Mariners in a Global Context

Abstract

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish shipping, and the mariners employed therein, functioned in a global oceanic context that included the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the South China Sea. During the period in which Habsburg kings ruled Portugal as well as Spain – from 1580 to 1640 – that context also included the Indian Ocean. Trade and defence for both of the Iberian empires required ships, mariners, merchants, soldiers, bureaucrats, and civilian purveyors of food and equipment in staggering numbers. Mariners of all ranks might serve in a variety of venues in the course of their lives at sea, and they might alternate between mercantile or military fleets, and sailing vessels or galleys. Maritime bureaucrats might serve on land or sea, as the occasion demanded, and soldiers might serve on sailing ships or galleys as well as on land. To demonstrate the wide variety of Spanish maritime service, this chapter will begin with a brief discussion of the fluctuating demand for ships and men during the early modern period. Then it will turn to wages, individual career trajectories and venues for maritime labour, focusing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 The combined labour of tens of thousands of individuals on land and sea played a crucial role in developing, maintaining and defending the Spanish empire.2