Earnings beyond the Profession: Spanish Naval Officers’ Investments and Businesses throughout the 19th Century

Abstract

Despite the initial decline and the swinging that the Spanish Navy experienced during the nineteenth century, the Spanish naval officers formed a social and professional group that had a relevant position and recognized prestige. Due to the mobility that they had around the empire, these individuals were placed at the intersection of a large number of political, social, economic and cultural networks, which facilitated them to access the fields of investment and economic benefit. The objective of this present work is to find out the investments and businesses that these officers had throughout this century, i.e., apparently a part of the naval officers participated in the economy of the nineteenth century and this article focuses on how they managed their capital beyond the fact of being employees of the State. By having as key questions where did they invest, how did they carry out and what risk did they assume, the work concludes that a group of the naval officers was involved in the dismantling of the old colonial trade and that during the second half of the century many officers invested in very different economic sectors of the incipient capitalism.