92 CHAPTER 4 THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF COLONIAL LIFE
thirst, seasickness and scurvy at sea, and yellow
fever and malaria in tropical harbors like Veracruz
and Portobelo were familiar affl ictions. Storms at
sea took a heavy toll of ships; foreign pirates and
privateers posed a chronic threat. Gluts of goods
in the colonial markets as a result of competition
from foreign smugglers and frequent confi scation
of silver by the crown, with tardy or inadequate
compensation, often reduced merchants’ profi ts to
the vanishing point.
Spanish industry, handicapped by its guild or-
ganization and technical backwardness, could not
supply the colonies with cheap and abundant man-
ufactures in return for colonial foodstuffs and raw
materials, as required by the implied terms of the
mercantilist bargain. Indeed, it was not in the inter-
est of the merchant monopolists of Seville and Cádiz,
who thrived on a regime of scarcity and high prices,
to permit an abundant fl ow of manufactures to the
colonies. Prices to the colonial consumer were also
raised by a multitude of taxes: the avería (convoy
tax), the almojarifazgo (import duty), and the alca-
bala. Inevitably, the manufacturers and merchants
of the advanced industrial nations of northern Eu-
rope sought to enter by force or guile the large and
unsatisfi ed Spanish-American markets. The am-
bitious monarchs of those lands scoffed at Spain’s
claim of dominion over all the Western Hemisphere
except that portion that belonged to Portugal. They
defi ed Spanish edicts forbidding foreigners to navi-
gate American waters or trade on American coasts
on pain of destruction of ships and crews. The ironic
query said to have been addressed by Francis I of
France to the kings of Spain and Portugal summed
up the foreign viewpoint: “Show me, I pray you, the
will of our father Adam, that I may see if he has re-
ally made you his only universal heirs.”
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, PIRACY,AND
FOREIGN PLUNDER
England soon emerged as the principal threat to
Spain’s empire in America. The accumulation of
capital and development of manufacturing under
the fostering care of the Tudor kings produced an
explosion of English commercial energies in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The Old World did not
provide suffi cient outlets for these erupting ener-
gies, and England’s merchant adventurers eagerly
turned to America. The historic slave-trading voy-
age of John Hawkins to the West Indies in 1562
opened England’s drive to break into the closed
Spanish-American markets. Half honest trader,
half corsair, Hawkins came to the Indies heavily
armed and ready to compel the colonists to trade
with him at cannon point, but he showed himself
scrupulously honest in his business dealings with
the Spaniards, even to the point of paying the royal
license and customs dues. Hawkins owed the suc-
cess of his fi rst two American voyages to the needs of
the Spanish settlers, who were ready to trade with a
Lutheran heretic or the devil himself to satisfy their
desperate need for slave labor and European wares.
To cover up these violations of Spanish law, the ve-
nal local offi cials made a thin pretense of resistance.
But by 1567, the pretense had worn too thin, the
Spanish government had taken alarm, and angry
orders went out to drive away the English smug-
glers. Stiffening Spanish resistance culminated in
the near-destruction of Hawkins’s trading fl eet by a
Spanish naval force at Veracruz in 1568.
Only two of the English ships managed to get
away: one commanded by Hawkins and one by his
cousin, Francis Drake. Four years later, Drake left
England with four small ships, bound for the Isth-
mus of Panama. In actions marked by audacity
and careful planning, he stormed and plundered
the town of Nombre de Dios, escaping at dawn.
Later, he made the most lucrative haul in the his-
tory of piracy by capturing the pack train carrying
Peruvian silver from the Pacifi c side of the isthmus
to Nombre de Dios. In 1577 Drake set sail again
on an expedition that had the secret sponsorship
and support of Queen Elizabeth. Its objects were
to “singe the King of Spain’s beard” by seizing his
treasure ships and ravaging his colonial towns; to
explore the whole Pacifi c coast of America, taking
possession of the regions beyond the limits of Span-
ish occupation; and to display English maritime
prowess by means of a second circumnavigation
of the globe. The expedition of 1577 led by Francis
Drake achieved these goals. In the 1580s, Drake
made other voyages of reprisal against Cartagena,
St. Augustine, and Santo Domingo. It is small won-