Episodio 3: Primum non nocere

Economy (1680-1778)

Author: Ana Crespo Solana

(Institute of History, CCHS-CSIC, Madrid, Spain)

A New Experimental Method in an Old Historic Framework

The aim of this article is to offer some examples of possible use cases in the representation and study of mercantile networks focusing on the analysis of various types of cooperation between people that has emerged in response to specific demands of businesses. Certainly, as Eric Van Young indicated in his conclusion to an anthology of texts, the study of networks is overwhelmed by the huge quantity of compiled empirical data but still lacks a level of conceptualization that can truly serve as an interpretive framework.255 _{To my understanding, the application of the study}

to the ‘Social Networks’ is an analysis model that entails a review that comes from the field of economic and social history, of the theoretical frame of the complex networks whose consideration

255 Eric Van Young, ‘Social Networks: A Final Comment’, Nikolaus Böttcher, Bernd Hausberger y Antonio Ibarra (coords.), Redes y negocios globales en el mundo ibérico, siglos XVI-XVIII, (México: Iberoamericana, Vervuert, El Colegio de México, 2011), pp. 290-307.

raise the possibility of analysing the behaviour of systems made up of multiple interacting elements in a more global fashion and in which human actions have great importance. In short, the force of cooperation, communication, and human skills, as described by William and J. R. McNeill.256 _{The analysis framework of complex}

systems has recently come under study with the aim of applying it to interdisciplinary research and new theoretical contributions using the theoretical and epistemological approach are being offered.257

The nature of an expanding Atlantic world constantly demands more studies which take into account the interaction between elements which have given rise to new phenomena derived from the very interchange of products, people, and information between various regions linked during the centuries of what is known as the first Global Age. The vision of this world (during the centuries of the most-accelerated expansion which humanity has ever known) as a true complex system is particularly enriched by the idea of stability in non-linear systems.258 _{As far as its application to Social Science}

is concerned, until now some of the most innovative results have come about from the perspective of regional economic analysis and its spatial modelling.259 _{‘Spatial trade modelling’ is a growing area}

of research that offers us historians the possibility of representing models of spatial economic systems where the most important

256 J. R. McNeill & William McNeill, Las redes humanas. Una historia global del mundo, (Barcelona, Crítica, 2004), Introducción, pág. 6.

257 Rolando García, Sistemas complejos, conceptos, método y fundamentación epistemológica de la investigación interdisciplinaria, (Gedisa, 2007).

258 Ricardo V. Solé, Susana C. Manrubia, Orden y Caos en sistemas complejos. Aplicaciones. (Barcelona, Ediciones UPC, 2001), pp. 52-61.

259 G.J.D. Hewings, Michael Sonis & D. Boyce (eds.) Trade, Networks and Hierarchies. Modelling Regional and Interregional Economics, Springer Verlag Berlín, Heidelberg New York, 2002. Cf. Introducción, pp. 1-11. Frank Schweitser et al. ‘Economic Networks: The New Challenges’, Science, 325, (2009), pp. 422-

questions for the commercial logistics of a specific historic period can be visualised, such as the location of the most geostrategic port cities, the possibilities of distribution of resources and goods, people, and information, and all this through specific network establishments. The commercial expansion of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries has offered different connected scenarios for historians who are specialists in this subject.260 _{From Braudel to}

Wallerstein (with his sociology-based theory of the world economy) this vision has recently been enriched by the contributions of André Gunder Frank.261 _{This framework is innovative because it proposes}

the review of the knowledge already acquired in the study of the different models of colonial expansions and the system or systems generated by them, putting greater emphasis on the connections rather than on the empires, as Fréderique Langue noted in an interesting review.262 _{In reality, it is a framework that could mean a}

transition from Atlanticism to Global History and which is above all characterised by the return to the ‘spatial turn’.263

From the point of view of the areas of economic interaction and the cooperation of merchants in the Hispanic world, the existing historiography on this subject–which is particularly dense in the Spanish language (little known in the English-speaking world

260 Ana Crespo Solana, ‘Geoestrategy of a System? Merchant Societies and Exchange Networks as Connection Centres in the Spanish Atlantic Trade in the First Global Age’, Mukherjee, Rila (eds.) Networks in the First Global Age: 1400-1800, (Delhi, Primus book, 2011), pp 11-35.

261 Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, (Berkeley Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998). Unas revisiones de la historia Atlántica en: Michel Morineau, ‘Le Systeme atlantique au péril de l’histoire’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 43, 2006, pp. 301-316. 262 Fréderique Langue, ‘El espacio Atlántico: conexiones imperiales, revoluciones y comunidades mercantiles’, reseña en Nuevos Mundos, Mundos Nuevos, 2010, online.

263 Pieper, Renate y Peer Schmidt (eds.). Latin America and the Atlantic World. El mundo atlántico y América Latina (1500-1850). Essays in honor of Horst Pietschmann. (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), Introduction, pp. 9-17, p. 17.

and sometimes even completely ignored)–is fundamental in order to define the Atlantic commercial system as a ‘social environment’ which has a clear systemic nature, derived from the different models of European imperialist expansion but which underlies the analysis of other phenomena that have arisen from the very needs of the exchange led by agents on the move. The example of Spanish Atlantic commerce is a paradigm of network interactions, which would never have worked without their operation. Precisely, the Historiography on Spanish colonial trade stresses the essential role played by non-Hispanic mercantile networks in the economic expansion in the Atlantic. Within the Iberian Peninsula proper, colonies of Anglo-Irish, French, Flemish, and Dutch and of other nationalities maintained a prosperous trade from the main urban nuclei. Late in the second half of the Seventeenth Century and throughout the Enlightened Eighteenth Century, the old enemies of the Hispanic Monarchy had developed certain sophisticated operations within the framework of trade between Spain and America, from within the very heart of the state monopoly, first Sevilla and Cádiz from the second decades of the Seventeenth Century and overall since 1717264_.

The first step to explain the working of this system has a marked sociological and historical theoretical aspect and refers to the description of the mercantile societies and the functionality of the commercial agents spread across the diverse port cities connected to the European commercial expansion and tied to the businesses around the Spanish Carrera de Indias. It was common, given the socio-cultural characteristics of modern Europe, for these

agents as a general rule, to almost always be part of consulates or what are called ‘merchant nations’. They were in any event mercantile communities and describing them in general, and specifically in the case of each nation, leads to a methodological shift toward types of comparative analyses for which there are already established criteria based on sociological, historical, economical, and anthropological conceptual problems.265 _{The role}

which the colonies of merchants played both on a local level and in the connection of port cities on different commercial scales is fundamental in order to understand the European expansion in the centuries of the Modern Age. In the specific case of the Spanish Monarchy’s trade, these communities operated as agents that promoted interaction on many levels and can be described as specialized micro-societies around the emerging world of trade and international finance and in many cases, self-defined as ‘nations’.266

The cities where these colonies of cosmopolitan merchants and people of diverse geographic origins were located were converted into a social laboratory which experienced an important degree of interculturality, exchange of information, biological inbreeding and symbiosis but also religious and political conflicts, new forms of social integration and adaptation due to the interculturality itself and the new economic opportunities. From this context the explanation of the funcionality of agents, communities and networks, on their three respective levels, is made possible using two principal analysis frameworks which are used complementarily. One of them is the relational analysis within one group with dif-

265 Ana Crespo Solana, ‘Introducción’ Comunidades Transnacionales. pp. 9 and next. 266 Crespo Solana, Comunidades transnacionales, p. 61.

ferent types of links between them, also complemented by a qualitative analysis, studying the links between the agents and the reasons they had for the exchange, collaboration, or conflict. This method of analysis has produced important results in the study of social groups of the Modern Era.267 _{Secondly, and this is still in}

an experimental phase, there is the reconstruction and analysis of networks, applying new technologies derived from the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Here, the network is not just a metaphor for a series of complex social relationships but rather serves to visualize and represent these relationships with the help of new tools that are being implemented. The merchant network connects with the abstract definition of ‘Networks’ which is conceptualised as ‘mongrel hybrids, located somewhere in the obscure zone between the alleged ideal types or markets and hierarchies’268_{; but also with the idea of social connection where}

elements of reciprocity, collaboration, altruism, competition or conflict and even betrayal prevail, which characterise to a great extent the social environments where new forms of behaviour emerge under the cover of new challenges posed by social, economic, or political media. As something fundamentally complementary to this first sense, the networks interrelate through economic systems run by or perhaps also defined as ‘information systems’, which started to be structured from the very beginning of European expansion, at the end of the Fifteenth Century, or even before.269

267 José María Imizcoz Beunza, ‘Las redes sociales de las elites. Conceptos, fuentes y aplicaciones’, Enrique Soria Mesa, J. Jesús Bravo Caro y J. Miguel Delgado Barrado (eds.) Las elites en la época moderna: La Monarquía Española, Vol. 1: Nuevas Perspectivas, (Córdoba, Universidad de Córdoba, 2009), pp. 77-111. 268 Gernot Grabher, ‘Trading routes, bypasses, and risky intersections: zapping the travels of ‘networks’ between economic sociology and economic geography’, Progress in Human Geography, 30, 2 (2006), pp. 163-189.

The study of the functionality of trade networks is decidedly a subject of research that is also fundamental to the application of this methodology, which will complement the theoretical definitions of its make up and operation, as Jonathan Israel has suggested in the case of the Jewish communities of the Caribbean, classifying them as a ‘multi-functional economic Framework’.270 _{Other studies}

of the Jewish networks have described these activities as being wrapped up in a varied economic enterprise which combines rural and urban life, something that was typical in the West Indies, dedicated to both shipping activities and finance as well as farming. Moreover, the cases of the Sephardic Jews and other communities, such as the Dutch, the English or the Irish, have already provided results in studies of the Atlantic connections beyond the limited enclaves of these colonies and offer large quantities of data about shipping and commerce.271

With the purpose of analyzing the interactions between agents and networks in what has been called the ‘Spanish Atlantic system’, a broad database of the interconnections that were created in this oceanic area between 1680 and 1778 is being put together, taking into account considerable data on general European commerce, connected directly or indirectly with the ‘Spanish System’, since in this way the different phenomena relating to the

entre Europa y América, 1520-1525’, Böttcher, Hausberger & Ibarra (coords.), Redes y negocios globales, pp. 11-25.

270 J.I. Israel, The Jews of Curaçao, New Amsterdam and the Guyanas: a Caribbean and trans- Atlantic network (1648-1740)’, Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, crypto-Jews and the world maritime empires (1540-1740), (Leiden, Brill, 2002), pp. 511-532.

271 Catia Antunes, Lisboa e Amesterdâo, 1640-1705. Um caso de Globalizaçao na História Moderna, (Lisboa, Livros Horizontes, 2009); David Hancock, ‘The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scot’s Early-Modern Madeira Trade’, Business History Review, 79 (2005), pp. 467-491; Ana Crespo Solana, ‘Dutch Mercantile Networks and the trade with the Hispanic Port Cities in the Atlantic (1648-1778)’, Böttcher, Hausberger & Ibarra (coords.), Redes y negocios globales, pp. 127-142; El comercio marítimo entre Cádiz y Amsterdam, 1717-1778, (Madrid, Serie Estudios de Historia Económica,Madrid, Banco de España, 2000).

Atlantic exchanges can be analyzed and the characteristics and effects of Spanish expansion in its context can be studied.272 _Since

1492 Spain played a decisive role in the stages of the expansion. This ‘Spanish Atlantic system’ and its colonial trade with America is called the Carrera de las Indias and has, from the outset, certain institutional and socio-political features that somehow determined the remaining European ‘expansions’. In fact, the term Carrera de las Indias referred to maritime activity between the Iberian Peninsula and the American colonies as well as every business and other endeavours related to that activity. When a trader engaged in American trade by loading his merchandise onto the fleets and galleons, it was said he was involved in the Carrera de las Indias. After all, this term defined a historical category that entailed the development of a definitive way of life, which was strongly linked or even subjected to, the evolution of a specific, but not limited, mercantile-geographical system, for this system was connected to other trading areas that did not belong to the Spanish empire but were intrinsically linked to it.273

The ‘Crespo DynCoopNet Data Collections’ database contains several queries about actions, agents, cooperation, fleets and ships. All data have identifiers that relate tables. It has 21 full forms that give information on cooperation among agents while identifying partners. Lists with goods and ships are included. A table named ‘COOPERATIONS’ is also defined, in which all forms of commercial relationships – business, Company, Society, etc. -are represented which take place between agents. This again is new as the study is

272 The data base is: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/28394. Database on Atlantic Network oriented to a Spatio-Temporal GIS, funding by MICINN Ref: MEC/AACC: SEJ2007-29226-E/SOCI.

not limited to a specific type of commercial operation but has been extended to all types of goods transactions in which two or more agents are involved, be it legal or illegal, be the goods slaves or metals. The objective is to identify all types of commercial networks. In fact, as agents we have people, Societies, Companies, Institutions, etc. There is also a table named ‘ACTIONS’ where all activities or actions are entered, such as money lending, job commissioning, etc., that occurred within cooperation and were quoted by the sourced used. This table is related to another, very important one – ‘SHIPS’. Many of the remaining tables in the initial Access® database store typologies - places, professions, etc. Having chosen the previously described tables as primary (Agents, Cooperation, Actions and Ships) allows us to analyze the various commercial, professional and interpersonal relationships between the various agents, laying the emphasis on their geographic location, chronologic moment and degree of kinship; in short, the cooperation networks they built. (e.g. the importance of Nicholas Magens as a merchant, or that of the Roo or the Amsick families, whose range of action could spread from Alicante to Elche in Spain or from Cadiz to Manila via Mexico. A very important aspect is the data’s temporal component. In most cases two fields have been set up for the date value – a date- format one and a text one for when the source does not provide a precise date or the details are inconclusive. We face the same issue with regards to the spatial component – two fields have been set up, one stores the precise name of the spot and another for additional information (e.g. temporary residency) or when the current name of the place is unknown and only the old one is quoted. However, in this first database the places’ geographic coordinates –latitude and

longitude - were never input. In relation to this component, a new, differentiating, feature of this project is its geographical scope. Although based on a previous scope, the Atlantic, when sources were investigated, specially those on trips and family networks, the scope widened to encompass the Mediterranean Sea, the Pacific and even the Indian Ocean – the latter is specially relevant when studying the pirates’ actions. That is to say, despite having started from a pre-determined spatial range, we have not relinquished the rest of the areas. Thus it is highlighted the importance of the cooperation networks that existed in the period studied and the already existing process of globalization. On all tables the fields NOTES and SOURCES have been added so that every record has attached its own remarks and source quoted. Even on the tables for typologies fields have been added for remarks and definitions for those terms that are disused, obsolete or unknown, in an attempt to add clarity when doubts arise.

The material compiled has been limited to a time frame coinciding with a paradoxical age of lengthy revolution, characterised by continual crises and states of war due to colonial competition and maritime hegemony and in which diverse factors combined that encouraged integration and inequality among the areas of production and the markets. The historical context led to macroeconomic alterations between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, producing an increase in demand, greater availability of capital, demographic growth, improvements in agricultural exploitation, an increase of manufacturing production in some regions of Europe and other developments which resulted in changes in the lifestyle of the populations as well as in the