Apogee of Empire

Once Europe's supreme maritime power, Spain was facing fierce competition from England and France on the Atlantic by the mid eighteenth century. Further, its efforts to reconstruct its metropolitan economy and create an effective ''colonial impact'' with its American colonies were seriously stalled. In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein continue the analysis begun in their acclaimed book Silver, Trade, and War, arguing that the ultimate failure of this policy lay in Spain's reluctance to undertake radical changes in its relationship with its colonies. The authors trace the resistance to reform measures undertaken in the homeland during the early 1790s; then they review the shift in focus to the colonies and the attempt to broaden, however cautiously, Spain's transatlantic trade system, especially with New Spain, through so-called free-trade within the imperial system. The policy of comercio libre, like Bourbon reformism in general, neither realized a colonial pact, nor improved Spain's competitive position in the Atlantic trading system; neither did it strengthen Spain's alliance with France. By the death of Charles III, the authors conclude, Spain had made superficial changes rather than profound transformation the situation demanded. The problems were too deeply entrenched to be solved through half-hearted measures, and by 1789 Spain and its wealthiest colony, New Spain, would find themselves ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America.