British Perceptions of the Spanish Atlantic World, c. 1740-1830

Abstract

As Spain undertook the reform of its peninsular and overseas kingdoms in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, its statesmen often emulated the practices and policies of both their rivals and allies. Given Britain’s emerging maritime and colonial supremacy, it is not surprising that Spanish observers pointed to their long-time rival’s economic policies and institutions with a combination of envy, loathing, and curiosity 3. Yet the interest was far from one-sided. Though British perceptions of Spain were influenced strongly by the still ubiquitous Black Legend, the constant warfare between Spain and Britain, the proximity of their colonial possessions, British commercial ambitions in Spanish American markets, and Spain’s efficacious colonial reforms in the period after 1760 meant that Spain was written about, debated, and discussed in British public life with great frequency and ferocity after 1750. In the period after 1808, British involvement in the Peninsular War and the public interest in the struggles culminating in Spanish American independence led to a revival as well as a renewal of Britain’s fascination with the Spanish Atlantic World, an interest which was maintained until at least 1830. This article offers a brief survey and analysis of British observers perceptions and conceptions of Spain and its empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and how those understandings and perceptions made their way into British debates about population, effective governance, and trade. It seeks to establish that British interest was ubiquitous and surprisingly influential.