He was no stranger to the Spanish tradition (nor to the European) resort to the requisition or rental of boats or squadrons belonging to individuals or to hire the services of these to supply their naval needs, a practice from the Middle Ages[1] that continued to be used during a good part of modern centuries in competition with policies that favored the construction and direct administration of ships by the Crown, observing a continuous fluctuation in the preference for resorting to one or the other according to certain circumstances.
This circumstance was mainly due to the Monarchy's almost constant lack of liquidity and the structural shortcomings of its finances in terms of production, financing and collection, all typical of a pre-industrial state and not fully developed, which, moreover, hampered the existence of a permanent navy made up of ships built for that purpose , because although there used to be a certain number of combat ships administered by the Crown, they were generally formed armed only for specific occasions or purposes and preferably resorting to the requisition or lease of private ships or the construction of ships designed for said occasion, leaving those that were state-owned in the minority.
Direct administration system
The direct administration system was the one desired by the government, since it was Crown officials and not outsiders who were in charge of all the procedures. However, this system could never be applied in a general way to all Hispanic naval squadrons due to the enormous capital investment involved in its construction, equipment and supply, as well as the recruitment and maintenance of soldiers and sailors.
The Royal Commissioner for Royal Armies and Armies, headed by the Provider and General Commissioner for Royal Armies and Armies[2], was the body in charge of manage supply . Due to the urgency with which military operations were often carried out, it was not uncommon for supplies and ships to be requisitioned, which led to complaints from merchants and private owners due to how burdensome it was for their activities[3 ], even though royal officials promised to compensate them for their losses. Along with this, the administrative and technical limitations of the time meant that when supplies were needed, it was not strange that they were obtained in areas with a shortage of products and other areas with a better situation were ignored, since even if there were records and reports of agricultural yields sent to the administration by the local authorities, this information was outdated from one year to the next, preventing taking advantage of good harvest seasons to save costs, especially when these supplies were made to deal with military emergencies with little or no margin forecast. Thus, spending was higher and payments by the Royal Treasury to local suppliers and merchants could suffer delays that were very detrimental to them[4].
In addition to the above, there was also the problem of corruption of the officers, which was not something exclusive to this administration system, but it was still an irremediable evil that both the Board of Armed Forces and the War Council had to accept with resignation.
In this way, we see that the main problems of direct administration were the chronic lack of material and human resources, the lack of money, the government's problems in controlling to corrupt subordinates and an insufficient information base.
Administration system by seat
The alternative to direct administration was to resort to private administration through the signing of contracts, called “seats ”, with private businessmen who were called “asentistas”.
A seat consisted of a contract signed between the Crown, generally represented by the Treasury Council[5], and one or more businessmen, conferring on them a wide variety of administrative functions. Depending on the activities carried out by the absentee and the sector to which it was destined, the seats could be of a varied nature:financial, in kind or mixed, the latter being, together with the financial ones, the most common when it comes to provisioning the navy, the army or the prisons and receiving this denomination due to the fact that the asentista was in charge of both supplying supplies and making the cash deposits to carry it out.
As far as naval seats were concerned, they could deal with just one aspect, such as shipbuilding, supplying, or leasing, or cover all of them in a single contract. Moreover, there could even be a more specific type of seat called "factory" (very common in the 17th century), focused mainly on supplying squads. The factor had powers and facilities similar to those of an asentista, but the factor was a manager at the direct service of the Crown who was in charge of the administration and supply of its ships, while an asentista only focused on his own ships , not in those of the former, apart from the fact that this did not have as many powers as the factor (the recruitment of seafarers and warfare used to be paid by the administration, for example)[6].
It was considered cheaper the seating system because by running most of the risks on behalf of the absentee, it saved costs and manpower for the administration. Another advantage is that the commercial networks in which it operated were indirectly placed at the service of the Monarchy, something very useful in the event of having to bypass commercial blockades or obtain resources that were prohibited from it.
However, for many contemporaries these positive aspects were overshadowed by others. In the first place, the relationship that was created between the asentista and the King was more of legal reciprocity that of a vassal who obeys his lord, the King having to negotiate and reach an agreement with someone who was inferior to him, apart from the activities and way of earning a living of an asentista (representative of an incipient cosmopolitan capitalism and of the mercantilism that little by little was spreading throughout Europe) collided with the mentality and morality of a large part of society, which was more concerned with the morality of its financial practices than with its profitability or usefulness[7], these prejudices directed towards the interest, not infrequently usurious, that they charged for their services[8], and the perception of the seat as a means of private economic benefit rather than a service of fidelity to the Crown, and more so if they were charged with taxes to pay them previously received by the Crown[9].
In addition, the licenses granted to them, such as bags of silver or wheat from the kingdom (to be able to trade abroad) could serve as a double-edged sword, since, Although they could buy materials necessary for the Monarchy abroad, this could also be used by the enemies in said exchanges to access American silver, causing its decline in the peninsula.
Seats, on the other hand, did not guarantee better management than direct management, for although ships built or supplied per seat were often cheaper, they were not infrequently there were cases in which, in order to save costs, materials of dubious quality were purchased that could later cause problems in the operability of the ships. In any case, the asentistas generally used to also be harmed by the delay in payments by the Crown or by the lowering of prices previously agreed with it.
Conclusion
We can say that resorting to the seat system was a pragmatic measure that the situation forced us to adopt, given the structural shortcomings of the Monarchy, since otherwise it was preferred to manage the squads directly and its maintenance. Although the seats lowered costs, if the direct administration was really efficient, this advantage vanished and there was no need to hire them.
Bibliography
- ALCALÁ-ZAMORA AND QUEIPO DE LLANO, José. Spain, Flanders and the North Sea (1618-1639) , Barcelona, Planet, 1975.
- DOMÍNGUEZ ORTIZ, A., “The Old Regime:The Catholic Monarchs and the Austrians”, in ARTOLA M., History of Spain Alfaguara , Madrid, Editorial Alliance, 1976.
- FERNÁNDEZ IZQUIERDO, F., «Shipyards and naval construction in Spain before the Enlightenment», in Spain and the Hispanic overseas until the Enlightenment , I Conference on Maritime History, Monographic Notebooks of the Institute of Naval History and Culture, No. 1 (1989), Institute of Naval History and Culture, Madrid, pp. 35-61.
- GONZÁLEZ ENCISO, A., «Asentistas and manufacturers:the supply of arms and ammunition to the State in the 17th and 18th centuries», in Studia Histórica. Modern History , nº 35 (2013), University of Salamanca Editions, Salamanca, pp. 269-303.
- GONZALEZ ENCISO, A. (ed), A military state. Spain, 1650-1820 , Madrid, Proceedings, 2012.
- PI CORRALES, M. de P., «The Army of the Austrians», in ESTUDIS , nº 27 (2001), University of Valencia, Valencia, pp. 23-51.
- PI CORRALES, M. de P., «The seating system», in Desperta Ferro , Special Issue XIV (2018), p. 70-73.
- RODRIGUEZ HERNÁNDEZ, A. J., «Military seats and seaters in the 17th century:the example of bread and gunpowder»in Studia Hisórica, Historia Moderna , nº 35 (2013), University of Salamanca Editions, Salamanca, pp. 61-98.
- SANZ AYÁN, C., State, monarchy and finance. Studies of financial history in times of the Habsburgs , Madrid, Center for Political and Constitutional Studies, 2004.
- THOMPSON, I. A. A., «Aspects of naval and military organization during the ministry of Olivares», in ELLIOT, J. and GARCÍA SANZ, A. (coords.), La España del Conde Duque de Olivares . Valladolid, 1990, 249-274.
- THOMPSON, I. A. A., War and Decay. Government and administration in Habsburg Spain, 1560-1620 , Barcelona, Critique, 1981.
- ZOFÍO LLORENTE, J. C., «Industry in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries», in ALVAR, A. and others (eds.), The economy in modern Spain , History of Spain XIV, Madrid, Isthmus, 2006, pp. 291-369.
Documentary sources
- Proposed measures to form and support a new militia and a squadron for the preservation of the monarchy, by Diego Méndez de Londigu y Miranda, Seville, December 16, 1642, Archivo del Museo Naval de Madrid (A.M.N.M.), Fernández de Navarrete, volume 9, no. 29.
- Copy of the «Seat made for a period of 5 years with Martín de Guevara and Diego Cardoso for the sustenance, preparation and dispatch of 13 galleons that the Marquis of Valparaíso and D. Martin de Arana also made for seats in the Shipyards of the Province of Guipúzcoa and Señorío de Vizcaya. Year 1638», Archive of the Naval Museum of Madrid (A. M. N. M.), Fernández de Navarrete Collection, volume 9, nº 23.
Notes
[1] FERNÁNDEZ IZQUIERDO, F., “Shipyards and naval construction in Spain before the Enlightenment”, in Spain and the Hispanic overseas until the Enlightenment , I Conference on Maritime History, Monographic Notebooks of the Institute of Naval History and Culture, No. 1 (1989), Institute of Naval History and Culture, Madrid, pp. 47-48.
[2] THOMPSON, I. A. A., War and Decay. Government and administration in the Spain of the Habsburgs. 1560-1620 , Barcelona, 1981, p. 256.
[3] THOMPSON, op. cit. (note 2, 1981), p. 260-261.
[4] Ibid , p. 261-265.
[5] SANZ AYÁN, C., State, monarchy and finance. Studies of financial history in times of the Habsburgs , Madrid, Center for Political and Constitutional Studies, 2004, p. 82.
[6] SANZ AYÁN, op. cit. (note 5, 2004), p. 86.
[7] ZOFÍO LLORENTE, J. C., “Industry in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries”, in ALVAR, A. and others (eds.), La economy in modern Spain , Madrid, Isthmus, 2006, p. 298.
[8] THOMPSON, op. cit. (note 2, 1981), p. 316.
[9] Measures proposed to form and support a new militia and a squad for the preservation of the monarchy, by Diego Méndez de Londigu y Miranda, Seville, December 16, 1642, Archive of the Naval Museum of Madrid (A. M. N. M.), Fernández de Navarrete Collection, volume 9, nº 29, fols. 321 and 323.