The Temptations of Trade: Britain, Spain, and the Struggle for Empire, by Adrian Finucane

Abstract

Taking forward recent work by a number of scholars—particularly Satsuma Shinsuke in his excellent Britain and Colonial Maritime War in the Early Eighteenth Century: Silver, Seapower and the Atlantic (2013)—Adrian Finucane considers relations between Britain and Spain, notably over Caribbean trade in the early eighteenth century. The complexities of links, from government to the role of individuals, emerge clearly, although the context, in Britain, Spain and the Caribbean, was far from consistent. For example, the Tory ministry that negotiated a settlement with France in the Peace of Utrecht of 1713, ending British participation in the War of the Spanish Succession, was committed, in part in reaction to Whig interventionism on the Continent in the 1700s, to a policy of commercial growth and trans-oceanic expansion. There was also Tory political interest in the Pacific and in the lands around the estuary of the River Plate. However, those ideas lacked the military, economic and logistical practicability of power-projection and commercial penetration that was needed to develop the greater Caribbean, as key British interests more plausibly sought. Indeed, the Philippines and the Plate were marginal to the main thrust to the Spanish New World. In contrast, the Whigs, who came to power in 1714, lacked the Tory commitment to trans-oceanic possibilities. They focused, instead, in accordance with the wishes of George I (r. 1714–27), on European power politics and on trade in the Caribbean, rather than territorial expansion. The significance of trade to the Spanish New World in the Caribbean region was reflected in its being covered in maps produced in London.