Freedom and Prohibition. Oscilations in Spanish Commercial Policy in the Baja California Pacific, 1768-1787

Abstract

In the final decades of the 18th century, the Californian peninsula was the scenario of a historic but resolvable contradiction: the free-trade reforms inaugurated in 1768 by José de Gálvez (Chief Investigator of New Spain) coincided in time and space with the prohibitionist regime that impeded any sort of commercial relations with the galleons of the Philippines during their strategic stopovers in the Californian territory, after their very long crossing from Manila to the port of Acapulco. In this article, the review of this process and, in particular, the paradigmatic case of the frigate San José de Gracia, reveal how certain practices of a restrictive nature, associated with old mercantilist and monopolistic traditions, remained practically intact alongside the Bourbon Crown’s modernization efforts regarding the liberalization of trade.