Mercantilist Ideology versus Administrative Pragmatism: The Supply of Shipbuilding Timber in Eighteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

The mobilisation of resources for warfare has traditionally been analysed as an economic and logistic problem. There are, however, other factors like politics or ideology that might also determine the contractor state’s level of efficiency. Drawing on an investigation of how Spain solved its eighteenth-century shipbuilding timber supply needs, we look at how a given mercantilist-leaning political outlook affected the provision of material, with the government turning solely to national production and suppliers. The aim of this article is to analyse the timber supply policy and, therein, the uneasy alliance of a mercantilist ideology with administrative pragmatism. We conclude from this that the Spanish state’s mercantilist ideas ran like a thread through its supply policies; at the same time, paradoxically, the state was the party responsible for most breaches of this policy. These breaches were usually caused by a growing awareness of the advantage of bringing in foreign contractors. The study of the supply of shipbuilding timber shows that foreign contractors, Dutch and merchants from the Baltic, offered not only lower prices but also greater distribution efficiency, while also helping the state to strengthen its sovereignty and authority. The collaboration between the state and the contractors turned mercantilist ideas, in actual practice, into a mere Utopia.

Keywords:

• contractor state
• mercantilism
• timber
• Spain
• eighteenth century

Acknowledgements

Work on this article was supported by a research project funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades del Gobierno de España, PGC2018-096194-B-I00: Guerra, Estado y Sociedad. La movilización de recursos militares en la construcción de la monarquía española en el siglo XVIII, coordinated by Rafael Torres-Sánchez. For more information on the Contractor State Group, see https://www.unav.edu/web/contractor-state-group/.

Notes

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25 Jaume Carrera i Pujal, Historia de la Economía Española, Volume III (Barcelona: Bosch, 1945), 68.

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27 Alvaro Aragón Ruano, ‘Mar de árboles, vorágine de jurisdicciones: La complicada relación entre la Real Armada Española y los bosques del pirineo occidental peninsular en el siglo XVIII’, in Rosa Varela Gomes and Koldo Trápaga Monchet (eds), Árvores, barcos e homens na Península Ibérica (séculos XVI-XVIII), (Zaragoza: Pórtico Librerías, 2017), 41–54.

28 A. J. Martínez González, ‘Bosques y política naval atlántica: las reformas normativas e institucionales de José Patiño (1717-1736)’, Revista Hispanoamericana 3 (2013), 1–26, 11.

29 Agustín González Enciso, ‘Between Private and Public Interests: The Moral Economy of Collaboration in Eighteenth-Century Spain’, in The War Within: Private Interests and the Fiscal State in Early-Modern Europe, Joël Félix and Anne. Dubet (eds), (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 171–93.

30 Rafael Torres-Sánchez, Pepijin Brandon and Marjolein T’Hart: ‘War and Economy. Rediscovering the Eighteenth-Century Military Entrepreneur’, Business History 60:1 (2018), 4–22.

31 Archivo General de Marina Viso del marqués, (henceforth AGMVM) Madrid, 15-11-1717, Ferrol, leg.4. Viso.

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33 Manuel Herrero Sánchez and Klemens Kaps (eds.), Merchants and trade networks between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean (1550-1800). Connectors of commercial maritime systems (New York: Routledge, 2017).

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35 Francisco Andújar Castillo ‘Juan de Goyeneche: financiero, tesorero de la reina y mediador en la venta de cargos’, in Navarros en la Monarquía española en el siglo XVIII, edited by Agustín González Enciso (Pamplona, Eunsa, 2007), 62–88.

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37 Archivo General de Simancas, Valladolid, (henceforth AGS), DGT, Inv. 25, leg. 15. Madrid, 30 June 1742.

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39 Aaron Graham, ‘Corruption and Contractors in the Atlantic World, 1754–1763’, English Historical Review (2018), 1–27.

40 Cases in point are the Catalan asentistas Vicente Puyol, Valparda, Florenza, Jaime Planell: Sergio Solbes Ferri, ‘Campillo y Ensenada: el suministro de vestuarios para el ejército durante las campañas de Italia (1741–1748)’, Studia historica. Historia moderna, 35 (2013), 201–34; Sergio Solbes Ferri, ‘Gasto militar y agentes privados. La provisión de uniformes para el ejército español en el siglo XVIII’, Tiempos modernos: Revista Electrónica de Historia Moderna, 8, 30, (2015); Sergio Solbes Ferri, ‘The Spanish monarchy as a contractor state in the eighteenth century: Interaction of political power with the market’, Business History, 60:1 (2018), 72–86.

41 Eduard Martí Fraga, ‘La logística de la expedición a Sicilia de 1718: “Never has a better supplied army been seen before”’, Desperta Ferro: Historia moderna 39 (2019), 28–34.

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54 Eugenio de Mena, Madrid 28–2–1751. La ampliación a Cádiz, Julián de Arriaga 8–8–1752, AGS, Marina, Leg.787.

55 Torres-Sánchez, Military Entrepreneurs, 85–6.

56 Raimundo de Soto, Cádiz 30-4-1760, AGS, DGT, Inv. 25, lg.15.

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62 AGS, SSH, leg.10.

Additional information

Funding

Work on this article was supported by a research project funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades del Gobierno de España, PGC2018-096194-B-I00: Guerra, Estado y Sociedad. La movilización de recursos militares en la construcción de la monarquía española en el siglo XVIII, coordinated by Rafael Torres-Sánchez. For more information on the Contractor State Group, see https://www.unav.edu/web/contractor-state-group/.

Notes on contributors

Rafael Torres-Sánchez

Rafael Torres-Sánchez is Professor of History at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. Since 2004 he has been running the international research group ’Red Imperial. Contractor State Group’, which pools the research effort of 17 national and international universities: https://www.unav.edu/web/contractor-state-group. Its remit is to study the relationship between state construction and warfare in Spain and Europe during the long eighteenth century, doing so on the basis of the mobilisation of warfare resources. He is the author of Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, (2016), Constructing a Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Spain, Palgrave-Macmillan, Hampshire, UK, (2015); El precio de la guerra: El estado fiscal-militar de Carlos III, 1779-1783, Marcial Pons, Madrid, (2013); War, State and Development: Fiscal-Military States in the Eighteenth Century, Eunsa, Pamplona, (2007); he has also collaborated with Stephen Conway on an edition of The Spending of the States: Military Expenditure during the Long Eighteenth Century: Patterns, Organisation and Consequences, 1650-1815, VDM, (2011). A particularly significant article is Rafael Torres-Sánchez, Pepijn Brandon and Marjolein T’Hart: ‘War and Economy. Rediscovering the Eighteenth-Century Military Entrepreneur’, Business History, volume 60, Issue 1, 2018, pp. 4–22.