Castro, on Chiloé Island, traded its famous bacon and lard and planks of hardwoods (chiefly alerce) for manufactured goods, and maintained a sturdy if isolated existence; Osorno was little but a fort; Valdivia, with its port of Corral, was carefully guarded, since it was considered as the key to the South Sea, and five or six forts covered the bay and the waterway to the city. In 1720 there were a couple of thousand people here, chiefly convicts of Peru and Chile sent south during their period of punishment, and the garrisons were maintained by Spanish and Peruvian Indian soldiers. Concepción was not only a Spanish stronghold, but a genuine agricultural colony, its splendid soil and enchanting climate, bright, balmy and temperate, bringing the settler who forms the backbone of Chilean society. Valparaiso was nothing but a shabby port, lacking a customhouse, all goods being shipped by mule-back to Santiago, ninety miles inland, or rather, 120 miles by the Zapata pass and Pudahuel, the only road then existing. It was fairly well defended by upper and lower forts overlooking the curve on the bay’s south where the houses of Valparaiso lay along a narrow strip of beach. Santiago was a well-built city, the centre of a fortunate agricultural and pastoral region; northwards lay but one settlement of note, La Serena (Coquimbo), with Copiapó, a prosperous silver mining centre, farther north.
The changes affecting Spanish America were not limited to the entry of the French. Philip V, to induce Queen Anne of England to sign the Peace of Utrecht, agreed to give the right of supplying slaves (asiento) to the South Sea Company, for thirty years, from 1713 to 1743; by this agreement 4800 Negroes were to be annually taken to the Plate, and as a further and extraordinary concession the company was allowed to send one ship each year to the Porto Bello fair (below Panama, on the Atlantic coast). At the same time a peremptory stop was put to the overseas commerce of the French, who had been allowed by Louis XIV during the War of the Spanish Succession to trade from St. Malo to the American colonies of Spain, herself too much involved to aid them with supplies.
The war of 1739 between England and Spain put an end to the English traffic for nine years, but the terms of peace included an indemnity to be paid to the South Sea Company for their trading rights, a British merchant in Buenos Aires carrying on for a few years (until 1752) the transportation of African slaves; after this time a group of Spanish merchants took up this traffic. It was in 1748 that Spain, finding her commerce with the colonies greatly reduced by home troubles, and the more or less legitimate efforts of other nations, from the 15,000 or even 25,000 tons of shipping formerly sent each year under convoy across the Atlantic, stopped the yearly visits of the famous galleons and the protecting warships. This fleet had sailed annually for 200 years. A system of unguarded merchant boats was licensed, ships sailing for the Plate six times a year.
In 1774 the rules forbidding the Spanish American colonies to trade with each other were relaxed by Charles III, and the effect of this is illustrated by the figures of Spanish merchant shipping sailing for the Americas in 1778, the year of the erection of a Viceroyalty in Buenos Aires, the fourth of Spanish America; no less than 170 vessels sailed, as against twelve to fifteen in the days of the yearly fleet of jealously licensed vessels.
In 1785 there was further relaxation, all the ports of Spain and all the ports of Spanish America being allowed to trade mutually, and as other proof of liberal ideas there came, in 1788, the appointment of Ambrose O’Higgins as Governor of Chile. This excellent organiser was born in Ireland, in County Sligo, and spent part of his barefoot youth in running errands for the great folk of his native village; he went as a youth to Spain, enlisting in the Spanish army, as many adventurous Irish did about this time, and later made his way to the Spanish American colonies. He distinguished himself in the Araucanian wars, was made a colonel, and in 1788 was nominated to the Chilean captain-generalship by Teodoro de Croix, the Viceroy of Peru, a native of Lille. The name of Ambrose O’Higgins is as much respected in Chile today as that of his son, Bernardo, born in Chillan, who became Supreme Director during the early days of Chilean independence.
Reproductions from Gay’s “History of Chile” (1854)
Más a Tierra (Juan Fernández Group) in the 18th Century.
O’Higgins’ Parliament with the Araucanian Indians, March, 1793.