The Defense of Cartagena

Abstract

C ARTAGENA, founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia on a sandy island west of the Magdalena entrance, had become a strategic Spanish American point by the eighteenth century. It ranked third among Spain 's new world ports, being surpassed only by La Habana and Lima (Callao).' Even more than Portobelo and Panama, it was the defensive key to Spanish trade with western South America. This commerce still traveled to and from the Pacific largely by way of the isthmus, though the old galeones fleet which was its former sole link with Spain, had now dropped in importance.2 With the creation of the Peruvian viceroyalty in 1542, the part of northern South America called New Granada became loosely appended to it and remained connected for nearly two hundred years. Then, to remedy a chaotic situation caused by the deposition of colonial president, Francisco Meneses Bravo, by the audiencia of Santa Fe de Bogota6 in 1715,3 New Granada was founded as a separate viceroyalty on May 27, 1717. Just at that time, moreover, the Spanish government of Philip V, dominated by Abbot Giulio Alberoni, was preparing operations for the recovery of Sardinia and Sicily.4 Spain thus faced another general European war only four years after the Treaty of Utrecht, and she thought the Caribbean coast needed. more protection than it could receive from the distant Peruvian viceroy at Lima. The new political unit consisted of the provinces of Santa Fe, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guayana, Popayan, and San Francisco de Quito, or in modernl terms Colombia, Venezuela, and The author is professor of history at the University of Illiiiois. 1 Cristobal Bernvddez Plata, Discursos leicdos ante la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras por los Seniores Don Crist6bal Bermiidez Plata y Don Celestino Lopez Martinez (Sevilla, 1931), p. 35. 2 Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (Oxford, 1936), p. 5. 3 Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco, Capitutlos de itna historia civil y militar de Colombia, 3d. ser. (Bogota, 1908), pp. 65-77. 4 Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de Espaina y si influencia en la historia universal, V (Barcelona, 1929), 51-59. Alberoni did not become a cardinal until July, 1717.

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