Cannabis Yarn in the Spanish and English Empires. Different Policies, but the Same Results?

Abstract

Since the 16th century, the maritime empires of Spain and England faced a major logistical problem to supply their merchant and military fleets with materials made of hemp. This difficulty increased as both empires were incorporating the new American territories into their possessions, because of the impact that this expansion had on the increase in the number of vessels needed to keep the parts of the empire connected. Since most of Europe’s hemp came from the Russian Empire, what to do when trade with the Baltic was interrupted by the war, and, in addition, in the American biota, hemp did not exist? This article uses a comparative methodology to focus on and analyse the measures implemented to achieve the objective of sufficiency of a strategic commodity such as hemp.

Keywords:

• hemp
• empires
• globalisation
• crops
• strategic commodities

Notes

1 The discussion of the contractor state has produced a rich historiography of texts that have addressed this concept from different approaches. A sample in Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the fleet, 1793–1815: war, the British Navy and the contractor state, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010); Rafael Torres-Sánchez, Military entrepreneurs and the Spanish contractor state in the eighteenth century, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Richard Harding and Sergio Solbes-Ferri (eds.), The contractor state and its implications, 1659–1815, (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2012).

2 J. K Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Study in Anglo-Polish Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Milton E. Miller, ‘Naval Stores and Anglo-Russian Encounters in the Baltic: The English Expedition of 1715’, in Ships, Seafaring, and Society: Essays in Maritime History, ed. Timothy J. Runyan and Great Lakes Historical Society (Detroit: Published for the Great Lakes Historical Society by Wayne State University Press, 1987), 167–82; Chris Evans and Göran Rydén, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004161535.i-360; Lennart Bes, Hanno Brand, and Edda Frankot, Baltic Connections Archival Guide to the Maritime Relations of the Countries around the Baltic Sea (Including the Netherlands) 1450–1800 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007); James Davey, ‘Securing the Sinews of Sea Power: British Intervention in the Baltic 1780–1815’, International History Review 33, no. 2 (2011): 161–84.

3 A. W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

4 Bernd Hausberger, Historia mínima de la globalización temprana (México: El Colegio de México, 2018), 11.

5 Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘When Did Globalisation Begin?’, European Review of Economic History 6, no. 1 (2002): 23–50, https://doi.org/10.3386/w7632; Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘Once More: When Did Globalisation Begin?’, European Review of Economic History 8, no. 1 (2004): 109–17.

6 Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, ‘Path Dependence, Time Lags and the Birth of Globalization: A Critique of O’Rourke and Williamson’, European Review of Economic History, 8,1 (2004), 81–108; Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, ‘Born Again: Globalization’s Sixteenth Century Origins (Asian/Global versus European Dynamics)’, Pacific Economic Review, 13, 3 (2008), 359–87; Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century (Surry: Ashgate Variorum, 2010); Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, ‘Los Orígenes de la Globalización en el siglo XVI’, in Oro y Plata en los Inicios de la Economía Global: de las minas a la moneda, ed. Bernd Hausberger and Antonio Ibarra (México, D.F.: El Colegio de Mexico. 2014), 29–76.

7 Pieter Emmer, ‘The myth of early globalization: the Atlantic economy, 1500–1800’, European Review 11, no. 1 (2003): 37–47; Pieter Emmer, ‘The Myth of Early Globalisation: The Atlantic Economy, 1500–1800’, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos., 2008, 1–10, https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.42173.

8 Jerry H. Bentley, ‘Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization’, Globalizations, 1 (2004), 69–81; Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, The Cambridge World History, 6, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139194594.

9 Díaz-Ordóñez ,‘Las nuevas periferias americanas’, 190–1.

10 Hausberger, 18; Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘El “triunfo” de la administración directa en el abastecimiento estratégico de jarcia y lona a la Real Armada española en el arsenal de Cartagena en 1751’, Obradoiro de Historia Moderna, 26 (2017), 149–77.

11 Sanja Subrahmanyam, ‘A Tale of Three Empires: Mughals, Ottomans, and Habsburgs in a Comparative Context’, Common Knowledge, 12, 1 (2006), 66–92; J. H Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

12 A.W. Crosby, America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon: American Trade with Russia and the Baltic, 1783–1812 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), 6; Nadra O. Hashim, Hemp and the Global Economy: The Rise of Labor, Innovation, and Trade (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017), 27–8.

13 Crosby, America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon, 17.

14 Hashim, passim.

15 Ramón María Serrera Contreras, Cultivo y manufactura de lino y cáñamo en Nueva España, 1777–1800 (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1974); José Patricio Merino Navarro, ‘Cultivos Industriales: El Cáñamo En España (1750–1800)’, Hispania: Revista Española de Historia, 35, 131 (1975), 567–84; Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘La Burguesía Barcelonesa, El Asiento de Jarcia y El Comercio Con América’, in John R. Fisher (ed), Actas Del XI Congreso Internacional de AHILA (Liverpool: Inst. de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 1998), 156–83; Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘El Cáñamo y La Corona Española En Ultramar: América y Filipinas (Siglos XVI-XVIII)’, Revista de Historia Naval, 90 (2005), 45–60; M. Díaz-Ordóñez, Amarrados al negocio: reformismo borbónico y suministro de Jarcia para la Armada Real (1675–1751) (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, Secretaría General Técnica, 2009); Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez and José Antonio Rodríguez-Hernández, ‘Cannabis sativa y Chile (1577–1700): un insumo al servicio del imperio’, TEMPUS Revista en Historia General, 6 (2017), 1–21.

16 Hashim, 66.

17 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 275.

18 Joaquin García Icazbalceta, Colección de documentos para la historia de México, vol. 1 (México: Librería de J. M. Andrade, 1858), 244; Antonio Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor de la isla española de Santo Domingo, (Santo Domingo: Imprenta nacional, 1862), 50; Juan López de Velasco, Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias: desde el año 1571 al de 1574 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Fortanet, 1894), 95; Alonzo de Zorita, Historia de la Nueva España, vol. 1 (Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, 1909), 128.

19 Jonas Howe, Early Attempts to Introduce the Cultivation of Hemp in Eastern British America (Saint John: New Brunswick Historical Society, 1892), 1; William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1740), 161.

20 Francis Higginson, New-England’s Plantation: Or, a Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of That Country (London: T. C. and R. C. for Michael Sparks, 1630), 7; J. Leander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860, vol. I, (Philadelphia: E. Young & Co., 1861), 16 and 27; Richard Hakluyt, A Discourse Concerning Western Planting, written 1584, (Cambridge: Press of J. Wilson, 1877), 155.

21 Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Indiferente, 100. Andrés Gómez to José de Gálvez; Madrid, 6 May 1778. J. Juan and A. de Ulloa, Noticias secretas de América. (London: Printed by R. Taylor, 1826), 62; Lee J Alston, Shannon. Mattiace, and Tomas Nonnenmacher, ‘Coercion, Culture, and Contracts: Labor and Debt on Henequen Haciendas in Yucatán, Mexico, 1870–1915’, The Journal of Economic History, 69, 1 (2009), 104–5.

22 AGI, Contratación 4675A, L. 2, Libro de cargo y data, F. 258

23 AGI, México, 1068, L. 2, Real Cédula; Medina del Campo, 20 March 1532.

24 Andrés Cavo, Los tres siglos de Méjico durante el gobierno español, hasta la entrada del ejército trigarante. (México: Imprenta de J. R. Navarro, 1852), 34; Laura Maria Iglesias Gómez, La Transferencia de Tecnología Agronómica de España a América de 1492 a 1598 (Madrid: Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio. Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas, 2008), 268, 300.

25 Luis Correa Vergara, Agricultura chilena., vol. 2 (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Nascimento, 1938), 310.

26 Bishop, I, 310; Paolo Ronchetti, ‘The Barriers to the Mainstreaming of Lime-Hemp: A Systemic Approach’, M.Sc. thesis, (Dublin: Dublin Institute of Technology, School of Spatial Planning, 2007), 16.

27 Ernest Small and David Marcus, ‘Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America’, in Trends in New Crops and New Uses, ed. Jules Janick and Anna Whipkey (Alexandria: ASHS Press, 2002), 284–326.

28 Ronchetti, 15.

29 Alexander Brown, The Genesis of the United States; a Narrative of the Movement in England, 1605–1616, Which Resulted in the Plantation of North America by Englishmen, Disclosing the Contest between England and Spain for the Possession of the Soil Now Occupied by the United States of America (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890), 492; Lewis Cecil Gray and Esther Katherine Thompson, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1933), 25; Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds, Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 319.

30 Anonymous, American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the Soil, Climate, Production and Agriculture, of the British Colonies in North-America and the West-Indies; … By an American. In Two Volumes, vol. 1 (London: J. Bew, 1775), 143, 151, 162; A History of American Manufactures, I, 27–8.

31 Crosby, America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon, 6.

32 Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘European Imperialism, War, Strategic Commodities, and Ecological Limits. The Diffusion of Hemp in South America and its Ghost Fibers’, in American Globalization. On the introduction of Old World’s goods in the Americas (c. 1492–1898), ed. By Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, Ilaria Berti and Pedro Omar Sriz Wucherer (In press, Routledge).

33 Juan and de Ulloa, 62; A. de Ramón, ‘La Encomienda de Juan de Cuevas a La Luz de Nuevos Documentos 1574–1583’, Boletín de La Academia Chilena de La Historia, 62 (1960), 90; Agricultura chilena, 2, 310; ‘Cannabis sativa y Chile (1577–1700)’, 8.

34 Bishop, I, 49; A. S. Dewing, A History of the National Cordage Company with a Supplement Containing Copies of Important Documents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 5.

35 Thomas Mun, La riqueza de Inglaterra por el comercio exterior: Discurso acerca del comercio de Inglaterra con las Indias Occidentales (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1954), 59.

36 Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania and New-Jersey in America: Being a True Account of the Country; with Its Produce and Commodities There Made. And the Great Improvements That May Be Made by Means of Publick Store-Houses for Hemp, Flax and Linnen-Cloth; Also, the Advantages of a Publick School, the Profits of a Publick-Bank, and the Probability of Its Arising, If Those Directions Here Laid down Are Followed. With the Advantages of Publick Granaries. (S.l: William Bradford, 1685), 13.

37 Francisco Martínez de Mata, Los ocho discursos de Francisco Martínez de Mata, con uno de nuevo sobre el comercio nacional, en que se presentan las observaciones, que parecen adaptables al estado presente (Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1777), 97.

38 L. R. Lewitter, ‘Russia, Poland and the Baltic, 1697–1721’, The Historical Journal 11, 1 (1968), 25; Roger P. Bartlett and Gabriela Lehmann-Carli, eds., Eighteenth-century Russia: society, culture, economy: papers from the VII International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia (Berlin; London: Lit, 2008); David Denis Aldridge, Admiral Sir John Norris and the British Naval Expeditions to the Baltic Sea 1715-1727 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2009).

39 Archivo Histórico Nacional. Diccionario de gobierno y legislación de Indias. Codices, leg. 729 Tom. I (CAB-CER).

40 Patronato Nacional. Real Biblioteca del Palacio Real de Madrid, Manuscritos, II/622, f. 74v–82v.

41 ‘America and West Indies: December 1702, 21–31’, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 21, 1702–1703, ed. Cecil Headlam (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1913), 57–80. British History Online <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/america-west-indies/vol21/>, [accessed 23 May 2018], 57–80.

42 David Goodman, Spanish naval power, 1589–1665: reconstruction and defeat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

43 Bishop, I, 27–8.

44 Ibid. 328.

45 Joseph Gee, Considerations on the Expediency of a Bounty upon Hemp and Flax of Home Growth (London: s. n., 1767).

46 Bishop, I, 328.

47 Joshua Gee, Consideraciones sobre el Comercio, y la Navegación de la Gran Bretaña (Madrid: J. de San Martin, 1753), 101. Joshua Gee (1667–1730) is not to be confused with Joseph Gee from Lincolnshire who wrote Considerations on the Expediency of a Bounty upon Hemp and Flax of Home Growth in 1767 and others works at late 1760s.

48 Anonymous, Reasons for encouraging the manufacture of British sail-duck, and the growth of hemp and flax in Great-Britain (n.p., 1720), in L. W. Hanson, Contemporary Printed Sources for British and Irish Economic History 1701–1750, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 277.

49 Charles McLean Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622–1675 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1908).

50 Bishop, I, 334; Dewing, 5; Robert Deitch, Hemp: American History Revisited: The Plant with a Divided History (New York: Algora Pub., 2003), 181; Robert A. Nelson, ‘A History of Hemp’, Rex Research Civilization Kit, <http://rexresearch.com/hhist/hhist2.htm> [accessed 10 July 2016].

51 Luis Jerónimo de Uztáriz, Theorica y practica de comercio, y de marina: en diferentes discursos, y calificados exemplares, que con especificas providencias, se procuran adaptar a la monarchia española, para su prompta restauracion … (Madrid: Imprenta de A. Sanz, 1742), 216.

52 Ibid., 221.

53 Juan and de Ulloa, 62, 84.

54 Silvia Marzagalli, Les Boulevards de la Fraude: le négoce maritime et le Blocus continental, 1806–1813: Bordeaux, Hambourg, Livourne (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999); Silvia Marzagalli, James R Sofka and John J. McCusker, eds., Rough Waters: American Involvement with the Mediterranean in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (St. John’s, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2019), https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780986497346.001.0001.

55 Patrick O’Brien, ‘Was the First Industrial Revolution a Conjuncture in the History of the World Economy?’, Economic History Working Papers (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2017), 22, https://nls.ldls.org.uk/welcome.html?ark:/81055/vdc_100047993521.0x000001, [accessed 15 August 2018] .

56 John Rutherfurd, The Importance of the Colonies to Great Britain with Some Hints towards Making Improvements to Their Mutual Advantage: And upon Trade in General (London: Printed by J. Millan, 1761), 5.

57 Anonymous, ‘Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, II’, The American Historical Review 27, 1 (1921): 743; Anonymous, ‘Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I’, The American Historical Review 26, 4 (1921), 726.

58 Norman E. Saul, ‘The Beginnings of American-Russian Trade, 1763–1766’, The William and Mary Quarterly 26, 4 (1969), 597.

59 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, Museum Rusticum et Commerciale, Or, Select Papers on Agriculture, Commerce, Arts, and Manufactures, vol. IV (London: R. Davis, 1764), 109.

60 Edmund Quincy, A Treatise of Hemp Husbandry; … with Some Introductory Observations, upon the Necessity Which the American British Colonies Are under, Generally to Engage in the Said Production, etc. (Boston: Green & Ruffell, 1765), 32.

61 Joseph Gee, Considerations on the Expediency of a Bounty upon Hemp, passim; ; J. Bradley Borougerdi, Commodifying Cannabis: A Cultural History of a Complex Plant in the Atlantic World. (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), 45.

62 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, 416–18.

63 Deitsch, 180.

64 Antonio Muñoz, Discurso sobre economía política (Madrid: Ibarra, 1769), 257.

65 Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘Pedro de Mora y Salazar: Marino, Espía y Administrador de La Comisión de Cáñamo de La Real Armada En Granada’, in La Economía Marítima En España y Las Indias: 16 Estudios, ed. José González Quintero, Carlos Martínez Shaw, and Marina Alfonso Mola (San Fernando: Ayuntamiento de San Fernando, 2015), 233–54; Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘La comisión del cáñamo en Granada. Sustituir la dependencia báltica como estrategia defensiva del Imperio español en el siglo XVIII’, Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia, 16 (2016), 93–123.

66 Serrera Contreras, 61.

67 Serrera Contreras, 267–84.

68 Díaz-Ordóñez, ‘Radiografía de un fracaso angloespañol’, 281.

69 S.A. Mosk, ‘Subsidized Hemp Production in Spanish California’, Agricultural History 13, 4 (1939), 175.

70 J. M. de Aurrecoechea, Memoria geográfico-económico-política del Departamento de Venezuela (Cádiz: Imp. Hércules, 1814), 35–36.

71 Mosk, 175.

72 D. Barros Arana, Historia general de Chile, vol. 8 (Santiago de Chile: Jover, 1890), 374.

73 Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, ‘Trading with the Enemy: Clandestine Networks during the Napoleonic Wars’, Quaderni Storici 48, no. 143 (2) (2013): 541–65, www.jstor.org/stable/43780113.

74 Howe, 1.

75 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Microfilm, CIHM_54860.

76 Charles Taylor, Remarks on the Culture and Preparation of Hemp in Canada: Communicated at the Desire of the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council for Trade and Plantations (Quebec: Printed by John Neilson, 1806), 4.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad – Gobierno de España under Grant HAR2014-53797-P Globalización ibérica: redes entre Asia y Europa y los cambios en las pautas de consumo en Latinoamérica and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad – Gobierno de España; under Grant HAR2016-80673-P Guerra, ejército y poder en la lucha por la conservación de la monarquía de Carlos II.

Notes on contributors

Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez

After obtaining his Ph.D. in Early Modern History at the University of Barcelona, Manuel Díaz-Ordóñez joined the University of Seville as a lecturer in Economic History, and he is Director of the Masters Degree in History and Digital Humanities of the Pablo de Olavide University. His research focuses on the study of the naval rigging of the Spanish Real Armada in the 18th century; he is currently interested in hemp expansion from Europe to the Americas and methodologically learning global and comparative history. In addition, he is presently Research Fellow in Global Encounters between China and Europe (1680–1840) GECEM Project – 679371. Horizon 2020, ERC - Starting Grant.

Antonio José Rodríguez-Hernández

After obtaining his Ph.D. in Early Modern History at the University of Valladolid, Antonio José Rodríguez-Hernández obtained a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Almería. Currently, he is a lecturer in Early Modern History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). His research focuses on the study of the Spanish army in the 17th century, paying special attention to the analysis of the figure of the soldier in the social context. He is a specialist in the field of military history, and one of his works won the Research Award in Humanities and Social Sciences in 2006. He has also published more than 50 papers, mostly focused on topics like the recruitment of soldiers, the development of war in the Early Modern Age and the relationship between soldiers and civilians.