CONCLUSION The interval between the declaration of war by Spain and the cessation of hostilities corresponds roughly to the viceregency of Martin de Mayorga. News of the declaration of war reached Mexico City on August 13, 1779; Mayorga entered the capital to begin his duties on August 23, 1779. The order to cease hostilities arrived at Mexico City on May 19, 1783; Mayorga surrendered his office to Matías de Gálvez on April 28, 1783. A real cedula ordering the residencia of Mayorga's administration was issued on September 19, 1783. Included in the evidence collected for the judicial review of the Viceroy's conduct in office is a group of papers entitled "Orders, Drafts, Certificates concerning the cost of the war. 1 Among these statements is an account of all shipments made from the port of Veracruz during Mayorga's tenure of office. The detailed analysis of goods which left the port is invaluable for two reasons: the period covered corresponds almost exactly to the duration of the war in America, and Veracruz was the only port on the east coast of New Spain through which war materiel moved to other ports of the eastern seaboard and to the dependencies of New Spain in the gulf area. 2 The original paper, a long, fold-out ledger sheet, enumerates types of cargoes shipped to each port, quantities of each item, and the total value of all money and goods sent to each port, year by year, from August 16, 1779, to May 20, 1783. The cost of individual items is not given, e.g., 1,762 barrels of meat and 1,116 cartons of gunpowder were sent to Havana in 1780, but what each cost must remain unknown. The two commodities cited are among fifteen categories of aid shipped to different ports, and evaluated in terms of total cost per year. The distribution was as follows: General and comprehensive statement of the funds, provisions, goods, munitions of war, impressed seamen, troops of the Infantry Regiment of the Crown of New Spain which in obedience to the orders of His Excellency Senor Viceroy have left this port Veracruz for other places, which is expressed below, since the sixteenth of August of 1779 when the war was proclaimed in this city until the twentieth of May of 1783, when there departed from this port the warship Santo Domingo, in which the Most Excellent Senor don Martin de Mayorga embarked, whose values are expressed in terms of the prices that prevailed at the time of their shipment, and it is in the following form. 1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
Note: to the total sum of this statement have been added the expenditure for the impressed seamen embarked for Havana, likewise there have been added the expenses of the embarkation of the Regiment of the Crown.
From this account it appears that within a period of less than four years New Spain disbursed to its West Indian dependencies (and indirectly to France and the United States) treasure and goods whose total values were greater than that of all situados paid to the same colonies between 1764 and 1777, a period of fourteen years. The wartime payments represented approximately one-half of the total crown income in the viceroyalty.5 After the war ended, the situados sank to their pre-war level. In the years 1788-1792 an average of 3,500,000 pesos passed annually from New Spain to other Spanish colonies. This figure represented approximately one-sixth of all money collected from the rentas of the Real Hacienda.6 Reference
has.been made in previous chapters to evidence found in Mayorga's correspondence
that he felt the demands made upon the resources of New Spain exorbitant
and that he suspected wastage of money and supplies by the officials
of Cuba. It is apparent that the treasury officials of Mexico shared
his suspicions. The following declaration, which is included in the
mass of testimony taken for Mayorga's residencia, not only states that
New Spain met its obligations promptly and in full; it seems
Although the Viceroy and the royal officials of Mexico suspected incompetence and malversation on the part of Cuban officials who spent the money which New Spain was at such pains to produce, they could prove nothing. There was, however, incontestable evidence that a substantial portion of the food collected at Veracruz for shipment to the West Indies had been wasted through the inability of Havana to establish and maintain a regular and frequent schedule of food transport.9 Further wastage and spoilage occurred in transit, because of carelessness in handling by royal ships. On one occasion in 1777, prior to the outbreak of war, when there was the normal flow of maritime traffic between Veracruz and Havana, José de Gálvez went so far as to recommend to Viceroy Bucareli that foodstuffs be shipped exclusively by merchant ships rather than by ships of the Real Armada. The loss of food through improper handling aid stowage was prohibitive, therefore: "Let it be done by merchantmen, because it is more profitable to pay the freight if they [provisions] arrive in good, condition, than to be forced to buy other provisions to make up for their lack.10 In addition to money and food, New Spain export e6 great quantities of gunpowder during the war, for the factory at Chapultepec was the sole source of supply for this essential commodity. All of Spanish North America depended upon this establishment in Mexico City for explosives until Mayorga built another factory in 1780. The demand for their products sometimes exceeded the supply, and again Havana was the chief offender. In 1780 Mayorga warned José de Gálvez that unless the Cuban officials moderated their demands for gunpowder, the combined production of the two Mexican powder mills would be insufficient to satisfy the requirements of the island. The Viceroy complained that Havana could not possibly consume so much gunpowder. He asked: "What has happened to those immense quantities?" a question which was never answered.11 Although during the war Viceroy Mayorga endured almOst constant harassment from José de Gálvez, who found fault with New Spain's war effort, the verdict of the Juez de residencia, Francisco de Anda,12 and his court was one of approbation. While historians have warned that the judgment of a residencia is far from trustworthy,13 in this case it seems apt to quote the conclusion reached by Anda and his associates. Comment on New Spain's role in the war was reserved for the last paragraph of the statement of the court's findings:
The force of this statement is lessened by its poor organization, and the presentation of its factual material is badly made. Yet its content is substantially correct, although how much the response of the viceroyalty to the challenge of the war owed to the personality of Mayorga is uncertain. Bernard E. Bobb, in his study of the Viceroy Bucareli, confessed that he had been unable to determine whether the success of his subject as an administrator was due to his personal ability or to the general and increasing prosperity of the Spanish empire under Carlos III. The same statement may be made in regard to Martin de Mayorga. Actually, as far as the contribution of New Spain to the war for America is concerned the measure of Mayorga the man is an interesting subject but one of secondary importance. The accident of his accession to power, the animosity of the Gálvez family, and his dramatic death during his long voyage home just as his ship made a landfall at Cádiz, all tend to divert attention from consideration of the specific measures taken by the government of New Spain to meet the wartime emergency. The enigma of the personality of Mayorga should not obscure other and more pertinent questions to which there are at present no answers. Did the unprecedented income of the rentas of the Real Hacienda result from efficient administration by royal officials and economy in the internal spending by the government or did it result from the increased taxes imposed during the viceregency of Mayorga? The answer to that question must await a detailed analysis of all the sources of crown revenue during the war years, its disbursement, and a comparison with analyses of equivalent pre-war and post-war periods. Such studies have never been made because of the sheer labor involved. 15 For whatever reason, the total renters from all branches of the treasuries increased substantially during Mayorga's viceregency, a gain which was reflected in the heavy disbursements made to the dependencies of the kingdom. The "Representacion" previously cited stated with unusual clarity and brevity: "He was vigilant in the conversation, increase and promotion of the interests of the Real Hacienda, and he accomplished the considerable increase of more than four million during his government, this compared to previous ones.16 Should the Viceroy and the port officials of Veracruz be held responsible for the frequent congestion of storage facilities on the coast and the consequent spoilage of perishable materiel? Could the officials of Havana have moved cargoes from Mexico to points where they were needed more efficiently and swiftly? In order to answer these questions an investigator would have to determine the number and types of vessels available for the royal service in the area during the war years and whether they were wisely employed. It is highly unlikely that even painstaking research could produce definitive statement of the number of ships available at the time, their routing and their cargoes.17 Finally, were the funds and the supplies sent from New Spain sufficient to meet the needs of the military and naval establishments which were dependent upon the resources of Mexico, or did maladministration in Cuba and elsewhere cause temporary shortages of money, gunpowder and food? Here again is a question likely to defeat the most assiduous investigator. Even if it were possible to trace every shipment of money, food and materiel of war from New Spain to its ultimate destination, more questions would immediately arise: were these aids properly used: were ships and shore establishments properly maintained and their personnel paid, fed and clothed? Conclusions drawn from examination of the records of military and naval units could be grossly inaccurate and misleading. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulúa demonstrated with a wealth of evidence that the records kept by the armed forces were more often false than not; that paymasters and supply officers, both ashore and afloat, habitually defrauded service personnel of their rations and money and withheld weapons and gear for sale to private individuals or to the crown itself.18 Because
of these questions it is at present impossible to assess exactly the
efficacy of New Spain's aid in the war against England, and consequently
this study must be called provocative rather than definitive. Yet even
with the lacunae in the available data it is clear that during the war
New Spain was virtually the sole support of Spanish arms in America
and that the kingdom made. for the. mother country and her allies a
contribution unmatched in the history of colonial Spanish America. Footnotes to Chapter VI 1. Decretos, Pianos, Certificaciones sobre la costa de la guerra, Archivo Historico Nacional, Consejo de Indies, legajo 20721, cuaderno V, folios 77-109. 2.
In describing the contribution of New Spain to the war effort the writer
has not included remissions to the Philippine Islands except to illustrate
the shortage of ships and trained personnel on the Pacific Coast of
the viceroyalty. The dissertation concerns the war in America, and,
in any case, the islands did not figure in the war; neither Manila nor
the annual galleon was attacked. In one respect the Philippine Islands
were unique among the nominal dependencies of New Spain. Although they
received a situado fixed in 1700 at 140,000 pesos, Jose de
Vasco y Vargas, Governor during the war years, established in 1779 a
state tobacco monopoly whose receipts made the captaincy general financially
self-sustaining. Schurz, Manila Galleon, pp. 54-55, 182. 4. This French-controlled port of Santa Domingo had been designated two years earlier as a rendezvous point for the combined French and Spanish fleets before their attack on Jamaica. The movement of this quantity of gunpowder and projectiles to El Guarico, long after Rodney's defeat of de Grasse, indicates that the Spanish had never given up hopes for an invasion of the island. One historian has stated that another attempt was planned, but the project was abandoned after peace negotiations began. Caughey, Gálvez, p. 144. 5. According to Humboldt, 33,851 pesos were paid out in situados during the years indicated. It must be emphasized that it is impossible at this point to prove the absolute accuracy of these figures. The reasons for accepting Humboldt's figures have been stated in note 36 of this chapter. Humboldt, Ensayo politico sobre is Nueva España, IV, p. 442. 8. Ibid., p. 181. 7. This must be a reference to a swift turnaround of azoques in the harbor of Veracruz. Certainly the mercury carriers did not come regularly from Spain, for a shortage of quicksilver during the war reduced the production of Mexican silver. 8. Interrogatorio y certificaciones en cuanto a la guerra," AHN, Consejo de Indias, legajo 20720, cuaderno II. 9. 0n one occasion in 1782 thousands of pounds of spoiled flour had to be dumped into the sea at Veracruz where it had rotted while awaiting shipment. 10. José de Gálvez to Bucareli, April 8, 1777, AGNM, RC, Vol. 110, expediente 263, fol. 298. 11. See pp. 133. 12. The Real Audiencia of Mexico in the eighteenth century was divided into oidores (judges)j who had jurisdiction over civil cases; alcaldes del crimen (judges of criminal cases); and fiscales (attorneys for the crown). Juan Francisco de Anda was one of the five alcaldes del crimen). Haring, The Spanish Empire in America, p. 120. 13. Haring has stated that witnesses were notoriously unreliable. He paraphrased Ernesto Shafer's allegation that judgment of a dead official was likely to be lenient. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America, pp. 141-142. 14. Representacion que Don Juan Francisco de Anda cómisionado para la residencia del Virrey que fue de Nueva España Do Martin de Mayorga, haze a V.M. en relacion de lo actuado en complmto de dicha comision, conforms a lo que se le previno por Real Cedula de 19 de Septre de 1783 anos," AHN, Consejo de Indias, legajo 20720. 15. Lira Gonzalez, Aspecto fiscal de la Nueva España, p. 389. 16. The increment of revenue given here agree with the sums listed by Humboldt for the years 1779 through 1783: 15,544,574 pesos, 15,010,974 pesos, 18,191,639 pesos, 19,594,490 pesos, 19,579,918 pesos. Humboldt, Ensavo politico sobre el reino de la Nueva España, IV, p. 442. Representacion, AHN, Consejo de Indias, legajo 20720. 17.
Many Spanish vessels had the same name, and many of these ships were
often in operation in American waters at the same time. Furthermore,
there was no rigid classification of ship types, and the same craft
might be described in different terms in different records. Richado
Cappa, Estudios criticos acerca de la dominación
española en America, 26 Volumes (Madrid: Libreria Catolica
de Gregorio del Amo, 1880-1894, Vol. XI, Industria Naval, p.
3.
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