The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

CHAPTER I

When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed on the eleventh of April, 1713, the Spanish colonies in America felt as if they were entering upon a new era, an era of peace and unhindered growth and prosperity. They did not realize until the first elation over the establishment of peace had spent itself, that this treaty contained the seeds of future wars which were bound to be quickened by the powerful spirit of commercial rivalry, which had been awakened in the European nations and was alarmingly dimming the justice and righteousness of their policies. By losing the European possessions, the population of Spain had been so seriously diminished that it was entirely out of proportion to the area of her over-seas dominion. While the Bourbon king had nothing more to fear from France, even her pirates having palpably decreased their operations against the Spanish colonies in America, he had in England a rival and enemy whose power he had reason to dread. For all the maritime and commercial agreements of the treaty favored England.

George Bancroft justly characterizes the spirit of the period in the second volume of his "History of the United States" when he says (Chapter XXXV, p. 388):

"The world had entered on the period of mercantile privilege. Instead of establishing equal justice, England sought commercial advantages; and, as the mercantile system was identified with the colonial system of the great maritime powers of Europe, the political interest, which could alone kindle universal war, was to be sought in the colonies. Hitherto, the colonies were subordinate to European politics; henceforth, the question of trade on our borders, of territory on our frontier, involved an interest which could excite the world to arms. For about two centuries, the wars of religion had prevailed; the wars for commercial advantages were now prepared. The interests of commerce, under the narrow point of view of privilege and of profit, regulated diplomacy, swayed legislation, and marshalled revolutions."

Concerning the mooted problem of the freedom of the seas, discussed as ardently and widely then as at the present time, Bancroft had this to say in the same chapter (p. 389):

"To the Tory ministry of Queen Anne belongs the honor of having inserted in the treaties of peace a principle which, but for England, would in that generation have wanted a vindicator. But truth, once elicited, never dies. As it descends through time, it may be transmitted from state to state, from monarch to commonwealth; but its light is never extinguished, and never permitted to fall to the ground. A great truth, if no existing nation would assume its guardianship, has power—such is God's providence—to call a nation into being, and live by the life it imparts."

The great principle first formulated by the illustrious Dutch historian and statesman Hugo Grotius was touched upon in the treaty of Utrecht in the passage saying,—"Free ships shall also give a freedom to goods." The meaning of contraband was strictly defined; the right of a nation to blockade another's ports was rigorously restricted. As to the rights of sailors, they were protected by the flag under which they sailed.

But whatever credit belongs to England for her upholding of this principle was obscured by her exploitation of a monopoly, created by a special agreement of the same treaty. The "assiento," which established that most ignominious traffic in negro slaves, was to have disastrous effects, political, economic and racial, upon the American colonies, whether British, French or Spanish. The agreement had been specially demanded by the British representatives and had been approved by Louis XIV, who saw in its acceptance not only an advantage for England, but justly hoped his own colonies on the Gulf of Mexico to profit by it. It was worded simply as follows:

"Her Britannic Majesty did offer and undertake by persons whom she shall appoint, to bring into the West Indies of America belonging to his Catholic Majesty, in the space of thirty years, one hundred and forty-four thousand negroes, at the rate of four thousand eight hundred in each of the said thirty years."

The duty on four thousand of these negroes was to be thirty-three and a third pesos. But the assientists were entitled to introduce besides that number as many more as they needed at the minor rate of sixteen and two third pesos a head. However, no Frenchman or Spaniard or any individual of another nation could import a negro slave into Spanish America.