Silver and Situados: New Spain and the Financing of the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

H E transfer of royal silver and gold from the American viceroyalties to the Spanish metropolis has long been judged by historians to constitute one of the key measures of the costs of empire for the Spanish American territories. It may be argued, however, that such a focus underestimates the total costs of empire and does not allow for a full understanding of the importance of the intra-American transfers of funds from royal treasuries (reales cajas) with financial surpluses to those with perennial deficits. It is the principal purpose of this essay to demonstrate that the maintenance of the Spanish civil and military administration in the Caribbean depended, during the eighteenth century, on large and rising transfers of silver from the royal treasuries of New Spain. These transfers bespeak the highly complex nature of the financial integration of the empire and reflect the fiscal interdependence of its different parts. Over the last decade, major progress has been made in the historical reconstruction of the finances of the Spanish Empire in the eighteenth century. The labors of a diverse cohort of scholars from Spain, the United States, Canada, and Latin America have illuminated the vast and complex nature of the fiscal structure of the Spanish monarchy both in the metropolis and in its overseas possessions, particularly in the Americas.' Such

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