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Spain, Geopolitics, and the American Revolution

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Spain, Geopolitics, and the American Revolution W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1994 Territorial Madness: Spain, Geopolitics, and the American Revolution Michael J. Devine College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the International Relations Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Devine, Michael J., "Territorial Madness: Spain, Geopolitics, and the American Revolution" (1994). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625926. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-q232-sx73 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TERRITORIAL MADNESS: SPAIN, GEOPOLITICS, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Michael J. Devine 1994 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, August 1994 A kiuUL James L. Axtell For Nicki 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................... v LIST OF MAPS................ vi ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................................vii PROLOGUE: CASTLES AND LIONS................................................................................2 CHAPTER I: IN AT THE KILLING: Spanish Military and Naval Policy to 1778.............. 9 CHAPTER II: BIDDING FOR COUNTERS: Diplomacy and the Spanish Navy, 1775-1779.......................................................... 21 CHAPTER III: “A PENNYLESS POCKET”: , The Spanish War Economy, 1775-1783.....................................................................44 CHAPTER IV: JACKAL WARFARE: Spanish Military Operations, 1779-1781......... 56 CHAPTER V: FRIENDSHIP FOR SALE: Spain’s Wartime Diplomacy, 1779-1782..................................................................73 CHAPTER VI: ALMOST PERFECT: Spain’s Climactic Campaigns, 1781-1782 .................................................................86 CHAPTER VII: A DIALOGUE OF MAPS: Spain and the Peace Negotiations, 1782-1783....................................................... 104 NOTES TO THE TEXT...................................................................................................... 122 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 162 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To research and write a paper of this length takes considerable time and effort under any circumstances. In my case, its production spanned four years of medical school. Without the support of numerous individuals, its successful completion would have been far less certain. To my parents, of course, goes my continuing gratitude, both for providing the space and free time physically to write this study, and for instilling in me, over many years, the discipline needed to see it through. My academic committee, headed by Professor James Axtell and including Judith Ewell and John Selby, read the draft and provided valuable suggestions for improving the substance of the finished paper. For help with research, I am indebted to the staff at the British Public Record Office (Kew), London; the British Library of Political and Economic Sciences, London; Swem Library at the College of William and Mary; the libraries of Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia; and the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Thanks are also due to Professor Philip Funigiello, the Department of History, and the Committee on Faculty Research at William and Mary for furnishing me with a Minor Research Grant to aid my work overseas, and to Michael Kruszczynski for his invaluable computer expertise. Finally, to my wife, Chris, who patiently listened to more stories and speculations about Galvez, Aranda, and Floridablanca than anyone rightfully should have to, thanks for all the rest. You’ve strengthened this paper and its writer in more ways than you know. v LIST OF MAPS Map Following Page The War in the West................................................................................................................. 8 The Western European Theater.............................................................................................. 40 West Indies Military Region....................................................................................................59 ABSTRACT This paper is a study of Spanish participation in the American Revolution, especially with reference to Spain’s discrete territorial goals in that struggle. For most participants, the war was about many things besides American independence, but the Spanish government of King Charles HI viewed it almost exclusively as an opportunity to recover possessions lost to Britain over several centuries. From Madrid’s perspective, the American rebels and their aspirations were merely an unpleasant distraction. Spain’s single-minded focus on conquering and bargaining for territory shaped her actions in the military, naval, economic, and diplomatic spheres. This thesis explores how Madrid coordinated all the elements of Spanish national policy in the service of acquiring as much territorial compensation as possible from Spain’s four-year participation in the war. Contemporary observers could not understand how the Spaniards, already masters of the world’s largest empire, could maintain their insatiable appetite for land when many of their existing domains were thinly settled and barely controlled. Spain seemed to believe that land itself was power, as much as military strength or trade could be. In a geopolitical sense—the one that mattered most to Madrid—Spain was undoubtedly a victor in the American Revolution, winning back the Floridas and Minorca from Britain while deflecting numerous attacks on her extensive empire. But that victory was bittersweet. The fondest hope of Spanish revanchists, the Rock of Gibraltar, held out against the fiercest military, naval, and diplomatic assaults that the combined Bourbon forces could muster. The Spanish leadership’s dissatisfaction with the war’s outcome, despite Spain’s outward success, shows its appreciation that it is not land per se, but the right land, that makes all the difference. TERRITORIAL MADNESS: SPAIN, GEOPOLITICS, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Prologue: CASTLES AND LIONS February 12, 1781— Sunrise heralded yet another frigid day on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan. The winter of 1781 was already the coldest in memory, but the forty-nine inhabitants of St. Joseph, a British trading post overlooking a river of the same name, were more grateful than annoyed. Their village, designated Fort St. Joseph in military parlance, had fallen prey to French marauders from distant Cahokia only two months earlier. The grip of winter promised at least temporary relief from further depredations. Inside fifteen buildings crowded within the palisades, the people of St. Joseph were asleep. Most of them were French Canadians or metis who made their living from the Indian fur trade. Two hundred Indians lived nearby, most of them Potawatomis, all tributaries of the British. This morning the fort was well stocked, a sizable shipment of maize having arrived from Detroit in anticipation of a spring campaign against American and French settlements to the south.1 As military outposts go, Fort St. Joseph was remarkable only for its anonymity. Even General Haldimand in Quebec considered it a “remote Quarter”—quite a tribute in a region as sparsely populated as the Illinois territory. As a trip-wire to warn Detroit against attacks from enemy-held Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia or St. Louis, the fort had a certain value, but seldom enough to warrant a garrison of more than eight British troops, its full contingent 3 but seldom enough to warrant a garrison of more than eight British troops, its foil contingent this morning.2 At seven o’clock, on the opposite bank of the ice-covered river, 125 men with quite different loyalties shouldered their muskets. They had camped here the previous night, seven miles west of the fort, after a river voyage and a twenty-day, three-hundred-mile overland march. Among them were sixty-five European militiamen from St. Louis and Cahokia, led by Captain Eugenio Poure. The rest were Indian allies, mostly Milwaukees whose leader, El Hetumo, had persuaded the commandant of St. Louis to organize the expedition.3 The motives of these two groups differed radically. In a dramatic reversal of previous attitudes, the Indians wanted plunder at St. Joseph, the whites revenge. In May 1763, only two years after its transfer from French to British possession, the fort had been caught in the sweep of Pontiac’s Rebellion, in a raid that left ten of the fourteen-man garrison dead and the rest prisoners. Since that time the local Indians had been quiescent, content to let St. Joseph exist as a trade depot, nothing more. So had it remained until the American Revolution drew France and other European
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