Richard Harding Sergio Solbes Ferri (Coords.) The Contractor State and Its Implications, 1659-1815 Richard Harding Sergio Solbes Ferri (Coords.) The Contractor State and Its Implications, 1659-1815 CONTRACTOR STATE GROUP 0CSG1 International Congress Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 16th-18th November 2011 The Contractor State and Its Implications, 1659-1815 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– CONTRACTOR STATE GROUP. International Congress (4º. 2011. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) The contractor state and its implications, 1659-1815 / Richard Harding (ed.), Sergio Solbes Ferri (ed.). -- Las Palmas de Gran Canaria : Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2012 1 archivo pdf (12,5 MB) ISBN 978-84-15424-57-4 1. Europa - Condiciones económicas - 1659-1815 - Congresos y conferencias 2. Europa - Política económica - 1659-1815 - Congresos y conferencias I. Harding, Richard, ed. II. Solbes Ferri, Sergio, ed. III. Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, ed. IV. Título 94(4)”1659-1815”(063) –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Programa Nacional de Investigación Científica del MICINN. Acciones Complementarias “HAR2010-11978-E (subprograma HIST)” © de los textos: Richard Harding y Sergio Solbes Ferri (Coords.) © de la edición: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Servicio de Publicaciones y Difusión Científica [email protected] www.servicios.ulpgc.es/publicaciones 1ª edición [versión electrónica pdf ], 2012 Producción: Servicio de Publicaciones y Difusión Científica de la ULPGC ISBN: 978-84-15424-57-4 Depósito Legal: GC GC 329-2012 IBIC: KCZ Producido en España. Produced in Spain Reservados todos los derechos por la legislación española en materia de Propiedad Intelectual. Ni la totalidad ni parte de esta obra puede reproducirse, almacenarse o transmitirse en manera alguna por medio ya sea electrónico, químico, óptico, informático, de grabación o de fotocopia, sin permiso previo, por escrito, de la editorial. Summary 0 Introduction..................................................................................................................7 Richard Harding (University of Westminster) and Sergio Solbes Ferri (Univ. de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) 1 Supplying the belligerent countries. Transnational trading networks during the Napoleonic Wars ..................................................................................................18 Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (University of Dusserdolf ) 2 Trading with the enemy. British private trade and the supply of arms to India, c. 1750-1820 ..............................................................................................................32 Huw V. Bowen (Swansea University) 3 Global power, local connections: The Dutch admiralties and their supply networks....54 Pepijn Brandon (University of Amsterdam) 4 Provisioning the Combined Army in Germany, 1758-1762: Who Benefited?............77 Stephen Conway (University of London) 5 Victualling Louis XV’s armies. The Munitionnaire des Vivres de Flandres et d’Allemagne and the military supply system ..........................................................99 Jöel Félix (University of Reading) 6 Who spends the Spanish Inquisition’s Money? ........................................................126 Eduardo Galván Rodríguez (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) 7 Buying cannons outside: when, why, how many? The supplying of foreign iron cannons for the Spanish Navy in the eighteenth century ..................................130 Agustín González Enciso (Universidad de Navarra) 8 Contractors, Warships of the Royal Navy and Sea Power, 1739-1748......................153 Richard Harding (University of Westminster) 9 War, Government and the Market: The Direction of the Debate on the British Contractor State, c. 1740-1815 ................................................................................169 Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox (Greenwich Institute, University of Greenwich) 5 The Contractor State and its Implications, 1659-1815 10 Contracts and the Role of the State. Portuguese military provisions supply system in the early nineteenth century ....................................................................193 Cristina Moreira (University of Minho) and Jari Eloranta (Appalachian State University) 11 A Global Perspective for the Comprehension of Fiscal State Formation across Eurasia from the Rise of Venice to the Opium War ................................................216 Patrick Karl O’Brien (London School of Economics) 12 The Royal African Company’s contractors................................................................236 Helen Julia Paul (University of Southampton) 13 Buying supplies from your enemy or how the French navy stocked up with products from the North in the eighteenth century..................................................246 Pierrick Pourchasse (University de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest-CRBC) 14 Contracting and Accounting: Spanish Army Expenditure in Wardrobe and the General Treasury Accounts in Eighteenth Century ..........................................266 Sergio Solbes Ferri (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) 15 The Transformation of Tokugawa Military Regime in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century in Japan: With Special Reference to Yoshimune’s Reformation..............................................................................................................287 Tamaki Toshiaki (Kyoto Sangyo University) 16 Contractor State and Mercantilism. The Spanish-Navy Hemp, Rigging and Sailcloth Supply Policy in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century ..................308 Rafael Torres Sánchez (Universidad de Navarra) 6 Introduction 0 Richard Harding and Sergio Solbes Ferri (editors) The relationship between private enterprise and the state has been one of the master narratives of European history. Whether it is an examination of the emergence of the modern state, the economic development of Europe, the distribution and exercise of power among its elites or the conduct of war between states, the links between states exercising power over defined territorial units and the production of wealth within those units are fundamental to an understanding of events. In the last quarter of the twentieth century historians’ interest in these links intensified and reflected a similar interest among political scientists and economists in the development of the modern state system. Positivist assumptions about economic systems and political rationality are increasingly challenged by world events and the development of theory. Two world wars had called rationality into question, while the trajectory of events in Western and Eastern Europe undermined a faith in both Anglo-Saxon economic exceptionalism or communist determinism. The modern study of state formation has come a long way since the 1970s and has depended heavily on historical analyses of different states and their paths to ‘modernity’. A major contribution to the debate came in 1989 with John Brewer’s concept of the Fiscal-Military State as an identifiable stage in the emergence of the British state between 1688-1783 (Brewer, 1989). He turned the traditional liberal idea of British political and economic development on its head. Instead of highlighting the relative weakness of the British state, which provided the political space for private enterprise to flourish and influence policy, he noted the strength of the state bureaucracy in being able to mobilise resources and deploy them to meet the ends of state policy, which in this period of European competition were almost exclusively military. This close 7 Richard Harding and Sergio Solbes Ferri connection between fiscal strength and military resources produced a military force out of all proportion to population and domestic natural resources. The elegance of Brewer’s explanation of British development provoked a major response among scholars interested in testing his proposition with more detailed studies of British history and those who wished to test it against the experience of other states. The results have been very fruitful. Brewer’s original thesis has been refined by some, restated or reframed by others. It remains a contested, but useful concept to shape research and debate. Part of the process of engaging with Brewer’s thesis is a long-term project started in 2004 by a group of scholars from Spain. They assembled an international group of historians interested in various aspects of the Fiscal-Military State and its relationship to economic and military development. The Contractor State Group (CSG) is now an international researching team with the objective of studying the process of growth and development of nation states. This present collection of essays is the result of their fourth conference which took place at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) between 16th and 18th November 2011. From the first conference of the group, it was clear that while a great deal of attention had been paid to how states raise money for war, much less was known about how they spent that money, how the economic-political systems within which the spending occurred responded and, consequently, what impact this had upon military success. The first collection of essays shed light on all these matters (Bowen and González Enciso, 2006). By the time the second collection of essays was published it was time to reflect on the concept of the Fiscal Military State and, as Professor Torres’ introduc- tion made clear, re-connect it to the key issues of economic development