Post by jerry krausPost by Pete BarrettPost by jerry krausExcellent point, Pete. I think we get back to Benjamin Franklin, here,
"necessity is the mother of invention". You see, the Italians could
manage pretty well on their Mediterranean trade alone, while the Spanish
and the Portuguese were largely shut out. And without full scale
state support, it was very difficult to get enough military backing to
defend and support overseas colonies and trade. The ships could be
financed, but, the long term naval backing would not be available, and,
hence, the colonies would not survive. Does that make sense? The
Italian governments didn't think it was really worth the bother, from an
economic point of view, while for the Portuguese and the Spanish, it
was.
But Columbus wasn't thinking in terms of colonies when he set out on his
first voyage across the Atlantic - he just wanted to open up a route to
Asia; so why did he need state support? And for the matter of that, the
Catholic Monarchs didn't need to support him (and they don't seem to have
done, financially) - they could have waited to see if he was successful,
and given support to colonisation once he'd come back.
So what could F&I do for Columbus which no one else could? I think it
must be something to do with giving him a monopoly on any trade via the
Atlantic (hence the Admiral of the Ocean Sea title, and the position of
Viceroy for any lands he claimed for Spain). That would be worth a few
bob! But I think he could have gone without it, and then seen who bid
highest when he got back.
--
Pete BARRETT
Well, Pete, I would have thought that maintaining and enforcing an ocean trade route against piracy would require a good deal of naval support, if it was to be kept open and effective. Effectively, enforcing Columbus' monopoly would have required a good deal of state support in the form of heavily armed naval support ships. Columbus didn't just want to discover things, he wanted money and power, and, as it says in Proverbs 11:4
"Wealth is not profitable on a day of wrath, but righteousness rescues from death."
In other words, those Italian financiers could not possibly protect Columbus from violent, greedy pirates, but the Spanish State could!
I suspect if Columbus had simply wanted to discover a trade route to China, period, he wouldn't have needed Spanish backing. But, as you say, he wanted much more than that, and, the wealth and power he craved could never have been maintained without government military backing.
What is a 'pirate' when nation states routinely issue
Letters of Marque and Reprisal?
In this era there is generally no great difference between
a military warship and a trading vessel except for the
commission of the crew and the vessel, and the relative
trade off of weight for cargo, speed, and slots for
cannon.
Every ship on the ocean can cut more bays in the side and
fill them with cannon, and get letters of Marque and Reprisal
from their government and get portions of seized cargo that
they get from captured ships as a war prize.
When they do this however they sacrifice speed and cargo capacity.
However nearly every civilian trading vessel had some
cannon in their ports and could return fire if military
ships fired upon them. Some times this happened because
various nations were at war in the history of Europe
from the 1500s to the 1800s, and the authority to attack
ships and legally obtain partial ownership over the cargo
depended on the flag that they were flying.
Cannon on the side of the warship also gave advantage
to ships to defend against priacy or unreasonable
taxation in the seas near India or China as well or
in the East Indies. The local sailing ships, canoes, or
other warships did not often have cannon mounted in the ships,
and this helped to protect them if sailing either near large
empires or near islands inhabited by smaller local tribes. It
took some expertise to manufacture the cannon, but
comparatively less so to cut mounts for them in the ships.
When Jean Laffite died he was an admiral of Simon
Bolivar's Grand Columbia. He died when what appeared to be
Spanish trading ships fired after he attempted to take them.
After he left New Orleans after the War of 1812 he set up
a new camp on Galveston Island. As a theoretical Mexican
official, did he have the power to issue letters of Marque
and Reprisal to his men if they asked for them? It is
a puzzle.
Were they pirates? No - that is if they were acting
as legitimate agents of a legitimate government called
Mexico. (Did Mexico exist at the time? Well, maybe.)
This situation changed in the 1800s. Steamships were
able to carry more cargo of either materials for trade
or mounted cannon, but they became dependent on reliable
sources of fuel to power them. With the development of
ironclads in the later 1800s, however, warships became
specialized equipment that was not easily adapted from
or interchangeable with ships used for commerce.
The nations of the world then generally negotiated
treaties among them banning letters of Marque and Reprisal.
The U.S. however does not recognize the 1856 Paris Declaration
because it is an enumerated power of Congress in the U.S.
Constitution. In general, it has not issued letters of
Marque and Reprisal since the Civil War, however it might
have almost done so regarding Goodyear blimps during WWII
and more recent legislation that never passed.
Over all, however, if these trading ships encountered
canoes or junks or other vessels from various states in
India or Indonesia or elsewhere on the seas that they were
not trading with but were passing some distance from en
route they were not effectively defenseless.
Some times the navies of the flag that they were flying
might help them months or years later, but they generally
both had and were allowed to have arms of military
capacity on their ships because it was not expected that
any navy would clear the seas of piracy to the level of
safety that meant that ships could sail without firepower
on board for defense if they encountered a hostile ship
of unknown origin on the high seas.