Free trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America

              FREE TRADE BETWEEN THE CANARY ISLANDS AND
SPANlSH AMERICA
This paper is based upon the results of a long scale research
project undertaken between 1977 and 1984 in Sevilla, Simancas
and Madrid. Its general aim has been to determine the results
for the commercial relations between Spain and its American
empire of the introduction of «free t r ade~i,n the second half of
the eighteenth century. The details of the free trade legislation,
and its motives, are well-known; to a certain extent so, too, are
its consequences. There has been disagreement, however,
among historians about the size of the increase in trade, the re-lative
importance of national and foreign goods in exports to
America, and the shares of trade enjoyed by the thirteen Spa-nish
ports enfranchised en 1778. The most important sources
for the study are the registers of the individual ships which sai-led
from and returned to Spain during the period 1778 - 1796,
which are located in the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla,
The year 1796 has been chosen as the terminal point for the
study because after that year the long cycle of war between
Spain and Britain destroyed the pattern of trade established by
the reforms of 1765 - 1789.
The paper begins with a summary of the principal conclu-
~iuiisu f the fiisi part uf ihe pi~jeci ,w hich was cüiiipleieíf en
198 1. This was concerned with exports from Spain to America.
It describes and explains the average increase of 400 per cent in
the value of exports between 1778 and 1796, the increase in the
share oftotal exports enjoyed by national products (from 38 per
cent in 1778 to 61 in 1794), and the relative shares of the ex-pert
tra& enjcyed by the thirtee:: enfrunchised Spanish ports.
Some emphasis is given to the 140 ships which are registered as
having sailed to America from Santa Cruz de Tenerife during
this period. The relative importance of Canarian exports within
total exports from Spain to America is also considered.
J. R. Fisher
The second part of the project, undertaken en 1982 - 1984,
analizes Spanish American exports to Spain between 1778
and 1796. Its aims have been to provide data upon the overall
vaues of exports, their ports and regions of origin in America,
and their distribution between the Spanish ports enfranchised to
receive Amencan goods. The main sources have again been in-dividual
ships' registers, of which 4,012 were found in Sevilla,
and data from general statements. One hundred and seventeen
of the 4.389 ships indentified unloaded their cargoes in Santa
Cruz de Tenerife, and particular attention is paid to these ves-sels
in the paper.
Virtually al1 histories of Spain and its empire in the eighteenth
century comment upon the central importance of the liberalization
of impreial trade to the general Bourbon reform programe. The pre-sent
paper considers the significance for the Canary Islands of the
free trade legislation of 1765 - 1789, and in particular its comerstone,
ihe famous decree oi'free irade oE 1.2 Ociober i 775, wiiich rcciuced
and rationalized customs duties, and opened thirteen Spanish ports,
including Santa Cruz de Tenerife, to the direct trade with America
hitherto virtually monpolized by Cadiz.
A basic aim has been to look beyond the details of the legisla-tion,
and its motives, which are generally well known -they centred
around the desire to develop the empire as a source of raw materials
for Spanjsh manufactures, and as a market for the industrial and
agricultura1 products of the mother country- and to use the regis-ters
of individual ships located in the Archivo General de Indias as a
means of measunng, initially for exports, first the overall and relati- .v., c .V,,l.~.,,I U GV,CIC~ ,o,. .p:,La i i l a i l a,..A i i u ~ u i ~ i &-i,i.,Aii:,i ic i b i i a i i u i a c :i, i i ~ A ~ U I LiL~JAu i-i iCd ,p,,:,a, i i i
to America between 1778 and 1796, and, second, the impact of free
trade upon individual ports and their hinterlands in the mother
country. The project was justifíed by the failure of earlier commen-tators
over the last two hundred years to agree on anything but the
importance of the commercial reform and the fact that trade expan-ded
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Their estimates of
the size of this expansion ranged from 200 percent to 700 percent,
and it was often unclear which years they were referring to. They
were aslo divided about the relative importance of trade with Ameri-
Free trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America 39 1
ca enjoyed by the thirteen Spanish ports enfranchised in 1778, about
the shares of Spanish and foreign products in exports to Amenca,
and the relative importance of different regions in America as mar-kets
for Spain's exports. A 1981 article suggested answers to these
and related questions'. It did not attempt to carry the analysis
beyond 1796 because the outbreak in that year of war between Spain
and Great Britain effectively destroyed the imperial commercial sys-tem
established by the reforms of 1765-1789. Nor did it probe dee-ply
into the question of contraband or the related issue of false mar-king:
it acknowledged their significance, but confined intself to a sys-tematic
analysis of the oficial data available on legal trade.
These oficial sources yielded details of 3,809 registered depar-tures
of ships from Spain to Spanish America between 1778 and
1796. The number of vessels actually making the crossing must have
been grearer, periiaps some 4,666 in aii, for some gaps in [he series of
individual registers, notably, for 1784- 1785, were filled by recourse
to general statements, prepared for the crown by customs officials,
which give overall values of exports from individual ports but not
the numbers of ships; on the other hand some allowance had to be
made in estimating the number of vessels for the fact some ships had
more than one register issued if they took on separate cargoes in dif-ferent
ports (many of the Málaga departures, for example, were of
vessels en route from Barcelona to Havana). A certain amount of
cross-checking between individual registers and general statements
was possible, and this confirmed the view that the former provided a
comprehensive coverage of oficial trade in the years under scrutiny.
The analysis of their contents, supplemented as apropriate by infor-mation
from general statements, produced the following principal
conclusions: (i) As Table 1 shows, free trade promoted a massive ex-pansion
in the overall value of exports from Spain to America, but
one which fe11 short of some conventional estimates. The rise was
uneven, with i 784- i 785 anci i 792 the most successíui years, foiio-wed
by troughs in 1787 and 1794. In the period 1782 - 1796 as a
whole the average annual value of exports was 400 percent higher
than in the base year of 1778. (ii) The share of Spanish products in
total exports from Spain to America rose from 38 percent in 1778 to
1. FISHER, J. R.(1981): «Imperial 'Free Trade' and the Hispanic Economy,
1778 - 1796)). Jotlrnal ofLatin American Studies. Vol 13, p.p. 2 1 -56.
TABLE 1: EXPORTS FROM ALL SPANISH PORTS TO SPANISH AMERICA, 1778-1796'")
Year Spanish Goods O/o Total Foreign Goods % Total Total Goods
1778 28,236,620 37.9 46,278,343 62.1 743 14,963
1782 57,144,642 50.7 55,536,524 49.3 112,681,166
1783 7 1,453,419 52.2 65,296,872 47.8 136,750,291
1784 195,885,361 45.1 238,923,2 19 54.9 434,808,580
1785 213,016,292 46.5 244,659,386 53.5 457,675,678
1786 170,449,692 50.2 168,901,970 49.8 339,35 1,662
1787 1 16,799,804 45.1 141,925,488 54.9 258,725,292
1788 153,75 1,922 50.3 15 1,7 10,850 49.7 305,46 1,772
1789 175,272,417 53.7 15 1,228,73 1 46.3 326,501,148
1790 149,276,199 5 1.1 142,891,067 48.9 292,167,266
179 1 184,758,576 49.9 185,524,293 50.1 370,282,869
1792 226,608,800 51.3 214,909,3 19 48.7 441,518,119
1793 164,181,459 53.4 143,116,406 46.6 307,297,865
1794 114,754,258 61.4 72,068,56 1 38.6 186,822,819
1795 165,725,521 58.8 116,355,835 41.2 282,08 1,356
1796 143,596,362 57 108,285,225 4 3 251,881,587
(") Unless otherwise stated, al1 trade figures in his paper are expresed in reales de vellón (20 reales = 1 peso or dollar)
Free trade between the Canary Zslands and Spanish America 393
an average of 52 percent in 1782 - 1796. In terms of their share of tra-de,
Spanish producers where most favoured en 1794, when they
achieved 61 percent, although the volume of trade in that year was
low, primarily because of the state of war between Spain and France,
which also had the effect of depriving Spanish merchants of French
goods for re-export. (%)Despite the impossibility of measuring with
precision the relative irnportance of Spanish manufactures and agri-cultural
goods in overall exports, there is a large body of evidence to
suggest that agricultura1 producers were able to take much greater
advantage than industrialists of the wider opportunities in the Ame-rican
market offered by free trade. The commercial reforms thus fai-led
to alter significantly the structure of the peninsular economy. (iv)
The decision in 1778 to break the virtual monopoly of trade enjoyed
by Cádiz did enable some ports (Barcelona, Málaga, Santander, La
Cnrr?iia!, tn deve!np cnmmercii! !inkr ~ i t .hA merici ef censider&!e
irnportance for their respective hinterlands. But, as Table 11 shows,
the eight others, together with three additional ports which despat-ched
occasional ships, enjoyed between them a were 2.7 percent of
total exports between 1778 and 1796. Cádiz at the other extreme,
was responsible for 76.4 percent, a figure which, despite its impor-tance,
is rather lower than that suggested by previous commentators.
(v) An examination of the destinations of vessels leaving Cádiz for
America between 1785 and 1796, or, in other words, of some three-quarters
of total Spanish exports in terms of value, confirmed that
the circum-Caribbean region as a whole was by far Spain's most im-portant
market. It consumed 67 percent of the exports of Cádiz, with
Vera Cruz alone accounting for 35 percent. In South America con-firmation
was found, too, of the economic expansion of the River
Plate, which absorbed 11 percent of the Cádiz exports (approximate-ly
the same as Venezuela); but silver-rich Peru, to which 22 percent
of the Cádiz exports were sent, provided a more impotant market
than the River Plate and Venezuela combined.
EXPORTSF ROM THE CANARIETSO AMERICA
In view of the fact that the total exports of thirteen minor Spa-nish
pnrtc tn America hetween !778 2nd !?o6 represented m!y 2.7
percent of al1 exports, it will come as no surprise that those from
Santa Cruz de Tenerife were relatively insignificant in terms of glo-
TABLE 11: % DISTRIBUTION OF SPANISH EXPORTS TO AMERICA, 1778-1796
Y ear Cádiz Barcelona Málaga Santander La Coruña Other Ports
1778
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
179 1
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
Average
Free trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America 395
bal trade. As Table 111 indicates, the average share of the Canaries in
registered exports between 1782 and 1796 was a mere 0.7 percent. In
terms of the share of trade, the best year was 179 1, when exports rea-ched
3,700,000 reales. One striking feature of the direct trade with
America enjoyed by the Canaries is that a very high proportion of
exports -on average 89 percent- consisted of national products,
which, in the case of the Canaries, almost invariably means wines.
The modest popularity of this product, coupled with the geographi-cal
position of the islands on the main trade route between Cádiz
and the Caribbean, gave Santa Cruz de Tenerife a share in total trade
more important that of the peninsular ports of Gijón, Palma, Sevilla,
Tortosa, and Alicante, but considerably less important than La Co-ruña,
Santander, and Málaga, each of which enjoyed between 3 and
5 percent of total exports. The figure of 140 registered departures is
something of an underestimate, fnr in e x r l i~dt~hso se for !784- 1785,
the numbers of which are not known. Morever, it incluides only
those ships which formally registered cargoes in Tenerife, and not
those called there to take on water and victuals, or for shelter and re-pairs.
It is likely that a certain amount of illicit trade was conducted
by vessels in this second category, but by definition this cannot be
measured. It is also dificult to evaluate the suggestion made by one
historian that «national» exports from the island tended to include
flour imported from the United States and then illegally re-exported
as a local product2. What can be stated is that a certain amount of
North American flour was legally re-exported to Havana, although
the principal Spanish port for this trade was Santander3. Havana was
by far the most important destination for cargoes registered in Tene-rife:
information is available on the destinations of 100 ships which
left there for America between 1782 and 1796, and it shows that no
less than 64 were registered for the Cuban capital; in second place
was La Guiara, which received 2 1 vessels; the remaining 15 were
spread between Vera Cruz (four), Cartagena (two), Puerto Rico
(one), Trinidad (one), Trinidad de Cuba (one), and -the only know
2. RAMOS, DEMETRIO (1979): «El problema de los embarques de harinas en
ios registros para America)). 11 Coioquio ue H~storla Canario-Amencana (1977). Vol
11, p.p. 33-44.
3. FISHER, Op. cit., p. 39.
TABLE 111: EXPORTS FROM SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE TO AMERICA 1778-1796
Year Ships Spanish Goods % Foreign Goods % Total Goods % All Exports
Free trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America 397
deviation from the circum - Caribbean region- Montevideo (one).
The vast majority of the ships were owned by Cádiz merchants rat-her
than those in the islands, and the cargoes which they took on in
Tenerife were of secondary importance to those registered in the
principal port of the peninsula.
IMPORTS INTO SPAINF ROM AMERICA
Although the study of exports to America is of some value as a
mirror of economic activity in the empire, the more obvious and di-rect
means of assessing the imperial response to free trade is the ana-lysis
of American exports to Spain. This has been the focus of the se-corid
part of ihe ,esearcli plojeci, -Ghich has s6aghi deiñiled infarma-tion
on the following points: first, the overall volume, as measured
by the registered values of cargoes landed in Spanish ports; second,
the distribution of these imports between the various Spanish ports
licensed to trade with America; third, the composition of these im-ports
in terms of ports and regions of origin in America; and, fourth,
the composition of the imports in terms of the products of which
they were composed. Cleary, in a paper of this length not al1 of these
themes can be discussed in detail. 1 propose, therefore, to concentra-te
on this occasion upon the first two, for this will enable me to eva-luate
the relative importance ot'the role of the Canaries as importers
of Amerkan products. This can only be done, of course, within the
context of a general apreciation of the volume of imports into al1
Spanish ports. The results of this analysis are shown in Tables IV
and V. Before commenting upon the significance of the data, it is
apropiate to point out that, as in the case of Spanish exports to Ame-rica,
the most direct and detailed sources available for an understan-ding
of the effects of free trade upon American exports to the mother
country are the registers of the individual ships which put into Spa-nish
ports between 1778 and 1796. A total of 4,012 registers has
been located in the Archivo General de Indias, and data on a further
377 arrivals has been located in the Archivo General de Indias, and
datz cm u fiurther 377 zirriva!r has heen prn~i&.l,particu!ar!y for the
early years, by annual statements produced by customs oacers. On
the whole the efforts of the crown to monitor the results of free trade
by producing annual general statements were unsuccessful. Such sta-tements,
of varying detail and reliability, were produced for the ini-
tia1 year of 1 778, 1748, 1 785, 1 788, and 1 792. The individual regis-ters
inevitably provide much greater detail, however -normally the
name, type and owner of the ship, ports of departure and destina-tion,
date of arrival in Spain, a detailed description of the cargo, va-lued
in reales de vellón, and the duties paid -and these have thus
been the preferred source for the bulk of the research. It would be
unrealistic, of course, to claim total accuracy for the findings on the
volume, composition, and distribution of imports from America, for
leaving to one side questions of fraud and contraband, it is likely that
some registers will have gone astray. A more complex problem,
which 1 will not discuss in detail, altrough other scholars who have
used shipping registers will understand its significance, is that from
1790 the cutoms officials in Cádiz expresed the values of imports
nn!y in ciirent prkes (precins corrientes de !a p!aza), wheres thnse
in al1 other ports continued to use the constant oficial values eta-blished
by the 1778 reglamento. Nevertheless, with these qualifica-tions
it is believed that the results achieved are reliable.
Table IV shows the overall volume of imports from Spanish
America into al1 Spanish ports between 1778 and 1796. It reveals a
'massive expansion of trade dunng the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, slow at first, as Spain recovered from her participation in
the War of American Independence, but soaring to great heights in
1785, 1791, and 1796. Within the period as a whole, the index of
growth, taking 1778 as 100, averaged over 1100. This average
growth was almost three times as great as that for exports to Ameri-ca.
Some of the discrepancy can be accounted for by the remission to
Spain of taxation revenue collected by the real hacienda in America,
but the transfer to the peninsula of private capital, or profits, was of
considerably greater importante.
Table V shows the distribution of imports into Spain between
the mriniis enfranchisec! ports. It revea!c heynnd any rhadnw nf a
doubt that the attempt to break the monopoly of trade enjoyed by
Cádiz had only a marginal effect upon the actual pattern of trade.
Throughout the period as a whole Cádiz received 84 percent of the
American products sent to Spain, and its preponderance was tending
to increase rather than diminish during the 1790's. In second place,
airhough a iong way behinci wiih oniy 7 pe r~enuif ioiai impuris, was
La Coruña. This may come as something of a surprise, for Barcelona
is generally thought of as the second port of the peninsula. In fact, in
al1 but three of the years under consideration (the exceptions were
TABLE IV: IMPORTS FROM SPANISH AMERICA IN'I'O
ALL PORTS, 1778-1796
Year Value of Goods lndex of Growth
1778
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
179 1
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
Total
1782, 1792 and 1793), imports into Barcelona were of considerbly
lower value than those into La Coruña. More ships put in at Barce-ioña,
'out ihey tended io be smaii vesseis carrying reiativeiy iow va-lue
cargoes, whereas the majority of the mail-boats (fragatasde co-rreo)
which maintained a regular service between La Coruña and the
Río de la Plata carried sizeable shipments of silver coin for private
individuals. Normally Barcelona was in third place as an importer of
American products. Although in certain years it was pushed into
fourth place by Santander, which developed a trade of considerable
importance for its regional economy with Havana: the principal pro-ducts
involved were flour, which was shipped to Havana. and sugar
TABLE V: % DISTRIBUTION OF IMPORTS FROM AMERICA, 1778-1796
Year Cádiz La Coruña Barcelona Santander Málaga Other Ports
1778
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
Overall
J. R. Fisher 40 1
and silver in the return trade. On average Santander's control of im-ports
from America -2.6 percent overall- was twice as important
as that of the fifth-placed port Málaga. At the other extreme one of
the thirteen ports enfranchised in 1778 -Almería- seems to have
been totally ignored by ships arriving from America. The remaining
nine ports (that is the seven enfranchised in 1778 -Alicante, Carta-gena,
Gijón, Palma, Sevilla, Tenerife and Tortosa-together with
Vigo and San Sebastián) enjoyed on average a mere 1.4 percent of
total imports form America. 1 will now turn to a consideration of the
role of Tenerife within this group of minor ports.
IMPORTS INTO THE CANARIEFSR OM AMERICA
!n ve- enceijiiuíial cases ships leauing ihe Caiiaiies for Ameri-ca
departed from island ports other than Santa Cruz de Tenerife. But
it seems that Tenerife acted as the distribution point for al1 the pro-ducts
brought into the islands by the 117 ships which are known to
have supplied it with American goods between 1778 and 1796. De-tails
of these arnvals are shown in Table VI. In 1778, the starting
point for al1 calculations, Tenerife recived goods worth 1,700,000
reales -or 86,000 pesos- from America, and was thus responsible
for 2.3 percent of al1 Spanish imports. In the next four years its tra-de
slumped to zero, following Spain's commercially disastrous deci-sion
to go to war with Britain, although formal confirmation that no
ships entered in a given year has been found only for 1782. Trade re-covered,
and, indeed, expanded beyond the 1778 leve1 in 1783, and
it soared ahead in 1784, as a combination of unsatisfied demand and
stockpiled export goods in America, and mercantile confidente in
Spain, unleashed a commercial boom. Dunng these two years Tene-rife
retained its share of a little over 2 percent of total import trade.
Thereafter,the vnliime of impnrts stahi!ized t~ z !eve! of &out 4.2
million reales- or 2 1 1,000 pesos -a year between 1785 and 1792.
This represented, of course, a considerable improvement upon the
1778 performance of 1.7 millon reales, but, in view of the much
greater expansion of trade enjoyed by other ports, it meant that Te-n.,
erife's share of trade fe11 significantly to less than 0.5 percent. The 1707 1 7 0 C ..,,,, ,,A:,.. ,.-l.. ---- ---- C- a T- -
j u u a I , l- ~ 1 1 7r' WGIG p a l i i ~ u L u i y puui ytxib, wuix NI 1 erierik
than for other ports, although trade as a whole declined, notably be-cause
of the effects of war between Spain and France. The final year
402 J. R. Fisher
TABLE VI: IMPORTS INTO TENERIFE FROM SPANISH
AMERICA, 1778 -1796
Year No of Ships Value of Goods O/o All Imports
1783
í 784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
179 1
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
Totals
under scrutiny, 1796, saw a significant recovery in the leve1 of im-ports
from America, for both Tenerife and Spain as a whole, before
Charles IV's decision to go to war with Britain utterly destroyed the
imperia~co irirfieicia: sysieíric siab:ishcd" v PhiSf aiher.
Throughout the period 1778- 1796 as a whole Santa Cruz de
Tenerife received 0.5 percent of al1 imports into Spain from Spanish
Free trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America 403
America. It was thus the second most important of the group of mi-nor
ports referred to above, and the seventh most important of al1
Spanish ports. It was marginally less important than San Sebastián,
which received fewer ships, usually only three or four a year, but
whose importation of cacao from La Guiara for the Philippine Com-pany
gave it 0.6 percent of al1 trade. We have already seen that the
majority of ships sailing from Tenerife to America went to Havana.
This pattern was repeated, not surprisingly, for the import trade. It
has not been possible to identify the ports of origin of 12 of the 117
ships which entered Santa Cruz de Tenerife between 1778 and 1796
(the omisions concern 5 of the 6 arrivals in 1778, and al1 7 of those
for 1785), but the remaining 105 arrivals are divided as follows: Ha-vana
76; Trinidad (Cuba) 1 ; La Guaira 19; Campeche 6; Vera Cruz
3. Two of the ships which began their voyages in Vera Cruz also
took on goods in Havana, as did 4 of those from Campeche. Thus no
less than 79 percent of these 105 ships bringing American products
to Tenerife came wholly or in part from Cuba. This is a reflection of
both that island's unprecedented prosperity in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, and also of the specific commercial relationship
which it enjoyed with the Canaries. For similar reasons Venezuela,
served by the port of La Guaira, was in second place as the Canaries'
trading partner, although a long way behind Cuba.
What general conclusions can be drawn from the above discus-sion
by those interested in the historical relationship between the
Canaries and America? Let us consider first the positive points. Du-ring
the last quarter or so of the eighteenth century, the islands ex-porteci
goocis to America, consisting ovenvheimingiy ol iocai pro-ducts,
worth about 2.2 millon reales -or 108,000 pesos fuertes- a
year; during the same period (1778, 1782- 1796), they imported
American products worth on average 4.1 millon reales -or 206,000
pesos- a year. The bulk of the exports consisted of wine; the bulk
of imported goods consisted of siiver coin, which represented, for
example, 91 percent ot total imports in 1783 and 84 percent in
1784. Trade between Santa Cruz de Tenerife and America, or to be
more precise Cuba and Venezuela, thus made a significant contribu-
404 J. R. Fisher
tion to the economic life of the Canary Islands in the late eighteenth
century. 1 am not able to quantify that contribution in a relative sen-se
for 1 do not have detailed information on the Canaries trade with
European countries, but 1 would assume that their trade with Ameri-ca,
that is Spanish America, represented only a small part of their to-tal
commercial relationship with the outside word. Pursuing somew-hat
further this rather more negative interpretation, while recogni-zing
that the trade of the Canaries with America increased twofold
between 1778 and 1796, this has to be seen within the context of a
much greater expansion of Spanish trade as a whole with America
during the same period. Thus, Santa Cruz de Tenerife's exports to
America, worth 1.6 percent of total exports in 1778, averaged only
0.7 percent between 1782 and 1796; the equivalent figures for im-ports
are 2.3 percent between 1782 and 1796 and 0.6 percent bet-ween
i782 aná i796. iií may be permittea to ao so in a Coiioquium
devoted to Canarian-American History, 1 feel that 1 should end by
stressing two points: first, Santa Cruz de Tenerife did not respond to
the same extent as other enfranchised ports to the unprecedented op-portunities
made available in 1778 to trade with America. Insofar as
it acted as an outlet for local products, this means that the Canaries
as a whole were less dynamic in this period than, for example. Anda-lusia,
Catalunia, and Old Castile in responding to the rapidly expan-ding
Amencan demand for imported goods; second, those wishing to
understand the economic history of the Cananes dunng the eigh-teenth
and nineteenth centuries, whilst recognizing the relative im-pact
of the Wars of Independence and the loss of America -need to
exercise caution in interpreting this as a dominant factor in the Is-lands'
prosperity.