British Imperial Strategies in the Pacific, 1750-1900

Jane Samson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780754619611
• eBook ISBN: 9781351954587
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The focus of this volume is Britain's trans-Pacific empire. This began with haphazard challenges to Spanish dominion, but by the end of the 18th century, the British had established a colony in Australia and had gone to the brink of war with Spain to establish trading rights in the north Pacific. These rights led to formal colonies in Vancouver Island and British Columbia, when Britain sought to maintain a north Pacific presence despite American expansionism. In the later 19th century the international 'scramble for the Pacific' resulted in new British colonies and protectorates in the Pacific islands. The result was a complex imperial presence, created from a variety of motives and circumstances. The essays selected here take account of the wide range of economic, political and cultural factors which prompted British expansion, creating tension in Britain's imperial identity in the Pacific, and leaving Pacific peoples with a complicated and challenging legacy. Along with the important new introduction, they provide a basis for the reassessment of British imperialism in the Pacific region.

1

Nootka Sound and the Beginnings of Britain’s Imperialism of Free Trade

Alan Frost

In 1786, the British government of William Pitt the Younger claimed half a continent when it decided to establish a convict colony at Botany Bay, Australia. In 1790, it used the Nootka Sound dispute to establish British control over half a continent bordering the northeastern Pacific. How are these moves best seen? – as fits of absence of mind? as reactions only to pressing domestic circumstances? – or as parts of a coherent imperial policy?

A good many historians – most recently, David Mackay and Mollie Gillen – have argued that the Pitt Administration had little imperial capacity. In Mackay’s words,

It requires some gifts of imagination to embody the foundation of the New South Wales colony into the substance of some wider imperial purpose … Those who put the foundation of the settlement in the context of a ‘swing to the east/and those who see its establishment as part of some great commercial endeavour, greatly overestimate the policy-forming resources and enterprise of the metropolitan government. They assume a capacity for long-term planning which did not exist. They assume the existence of a philosophy of empire without specifying exactly where such a philosophy might reside or how it might be expressed. In this way the New South Wales example poses the question of how well adapted the government was at this time to view any imperial question in a wider context of direction and purpose.¹

The Nootka Sound crisis in fact provides rich materials for the determination of these questions. This 1790 crisis arose from a combination of general and particular circumstances. There was Spain’s claim to the exclusive right to navigate in and trade about the Pacific Ocean; and there was Britain’s desire to overthrow this claim, thereby opening an extensive commerce, particularly with Spanish America. There was Chinese disinterest in European goods, which made it necessary for the English East India Company to purchase tea with bullion; and there was the fact that some of Cook’s crew had traded trifles for sea otter pelts with the Indians of what is now British Columbia, most of which they subsequently sold to a Russian merchant for up to £7 each, and the remainder at Canton, for up to £15.

The publication of the official narrative of Cook’s third voyage in 1784 alerted Europe to these commercial possibilities, and a host of adventurers were soon attempting their realization. The nation’s circumstances in the aftermath of the wars of 1776-83 led the members of the Pitt Administration to see both trades as being in the national interest.² On the one hand, Britain’s ‘Southern’ whalers were eager to extend their range of operation so as to increase their catch; and the American whalers, who had remained loyal, had lost their New England bases, so that an important and lucrative industry was in limbo. On the other hand, if sea otter pelts might be had cheaply on the northwest coast of North America and sold dearly in China, the pressure on the East India Company to find bullion might be lessened – a development that would greatly facilitate Pitt’s plan to expand revenue by so reducing the duty on tea as to make smuggling uneconomic.

Accordingly, in 1785-6 the Administration persuaded the East India Company and the South Sea Company to license the Southern whalers to hunt east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of Cape Horn. The Administration also persuaded a group of merchants headed by Richard Etches, and encouraged by Sir Joseph Banks, to make an experimental voyage to Nootka Sound to develop a fur trade with Japan, Korea, and China.³ Forming themselves into the King George’s Sound Company, Etches and his partners equipped two ships captained by Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, which departed in late August 1785. Sailing via the Falkland Islands and Cape Horn, these ships reached the northwest coast of North America in July 1786 and, after wintering at the Hawai‘ian Islands, returned there in 1787. The company also sent out two more vessels in 1786 under the command of James Colnett, which traded on the northwest coast in the summers of 1787 and 1788.

This officially sanctioned venture had some severe competition. James Hanna mounted two voyages, sailing from Canton in 1785 and 1786. At the end of 1785 James Strange took two vessels out from Bombay, which reached the northwest coast in June 1786. Simultaneously, John Meares and William Tipping took two ships out of Calcutta. Progressively, other would-be traders also appeared – William Bolts and his sometime colleagues on the Imperial Eagle, which arrived in 1787; and New England merchants, who sent out two vessels under John Kendrick in September 1787, which reached the coast twelve months later. Meares reappeared, now sailing out of Macau under a Portuguese flag. Spanish traders from the Philippines and Russian merchants from Kamchatka materialized as well.

These ventures had mixed results. Some of the early ones were very successful, while others, such as Tipping’s, were disastrous. In general, the trade did not realize expectations. The Canton market was soon glutted, and the traders failed to open new markets in Japan and Korea. Limited demand and falling prices were not, however, the only impediments. It was soon apparent that trade with the Indians might be more efficiently conducted if there were permanent coastal settlements. The Etches group had anticipated this, but Portlock and Dixon failed to follow their instructions to establish factories. Also quickly apparent was the need to have an intermediate base for reprovisioning ships and refreshing crews. The fur traders developed the habit of wintering at the Hawaiian Islands, which gave rise to the idea that the government should form a colony there.⁴ At the same time, the whalers realized the need for a base on the southern edge of the Pacific and accordingly proposed the island of Juan Fernandez and mounted the Emilia’s exploratory voyage around Cape Horn.⁵

The Pitt Administration responded to the whalers’ need by beginning to organize a surveying voyage by the sloop Discovery of islands in the South Atlantic and sections of the southern coasts of Africa not occupied by other European powers. The fur traders moved to solve their logistical problems by themselves. First, John Meares set about establishing a factory at Nootka Sound. Sailing from Macau with two vessels carrying Chinese smiths and carpenters, he reached Friendly Cove in May 1788. He obtained a site from Chief Maquinna, fortified it, erected a rudimentary shed, and began boat-building.⁶ In early 1789 Meares and his backers and the Etches party joined forces so as to pursue the fur trade in a more orderly fashion. The Etches’ captain, James Colnett, was given overall command of the combined group’s five vessels. When he sailed from Canton to renew the trade in April 1789, Colnett did so with orders to consolidate Meares’ beginning at Friendly Cove. The proposed factory was to be ‘a solid establishment, and not one that is to be abandon’d at pleasure.’⁷ To that end, Colnett took with him twenty-nine Chinese artificers and building materials, and a small vessel in frame.

By this time, however, the Spanish had begun measures to assert both their general claim to a monopoly of European activity in the South Atlantic and the entire Pacific Ocean, and their specific claim to the northwest coast of North America. In 1788, Madrid began mounting a scientific expedition to rival those of Cook, in the belief that ‘a carefully planned expedition with navigators and scientists of the highest calibre could do much to explore, examine, and knit together Madrid’s far-flung empire, report on problems and possible reforms, and counter the efforts of rivals to obtain colonial possessions at Spain’s expense.’⁸ Led by Alejandro Malaspina in two corvettes of 306 tons each, this expedition left Cádiz at the end of July 1789, but its extensive itinerary meant that it did not reach the northwest American coast until June 1791 (or Port Jackson until March 1793). In the meantime, in accordance with royal orders, the viceroy of Mexico despatched a force of two vessels under the command of Estéban Martínez to examine the coast as far north as Alaska for signs of the presence of other European nations and to take possession of sites suitable for settlement. Martinez found that the Russians had trading camps at a number of places, and that the governor of Kamchatka intended to establish a fortified factory at Nootka Sound.⁹ From them, too, Martinez learned of the activities of British and American traders. On his return to San Bias, he urged the viceroy to establish a base at Nootka Sound, from which these encroachments might be resisted. Accordingly, the viceroy sent Martinez north again in the spring of 1789.

On arriving at Nootka Sound on 2 July 1789, Colnett found that Martinez had already seized two of his group’s vessels, while leaving American ones untouched. When Colnett argued with Martinez about personal and national rights, Martinez seized Colnett’s Argonaut as well. He then seized a fourth ship, sending it and the Argonaut, with their crew imprisoned, to San Bias, where a number of the British sailors died. As he waited to be resupplied, Martinez used the Chinese labourers to begin establishing a base.

These actions in the North Pacific were paralleled by some on the coast of Patagonia, where in April 1789 a Spanish commodore ordered away the Sappho and Elizabeth and Margaret, two whaling ships which had called into Port Desire to wood and water. The British captains maintained that they did not understand Spanish sovereignty to extend over this ‘desert’ coast; the Spanish officer replied that indeed it did, as well as over the ocean adjacent, and that his orders were to see that no foreign ships frequented the one or the other. The stage was set for international conflict.

John Meares, who had stayed at Macau, learned about the events at Nootka when the American vessel Columbia reached Canton in November 1789; he immediately took ship for London. Meanwhile, a new viceroy of Mexico reported them to his Court, in dispatches which reached Madrid at the very end of the year. These dispatches (and perhaps also private communications between Mexico and Madrid) were sent by the chargé d’affaires in Madrid, Anthony Merry, to London on 21 January 1790, and were the first news received by the Pitt Administration. Although Merry’s first account was somewhat garbled, it conveyed the essentials.¹⁰ Three days later, Merry was able to forward a translation of a purloined letter which, except for identifying Meares’ vessel as a Portuguese one, reported the affair accurately.¹¹

In advance of instructions from London, Merry raised the matter tentatively with the Spanish foreign minister, Floridablanca, on 14 or 15 January. Floridablanca declined to discuss it in any detail, indicating instead that he was instructing his ambassador in England to represent Spain’s position to the British government.¹² The Pitt Administration received Merry’s second dispatch with its translation at the end of January; and the Marquis del Campo gave a Note to the Duke of Leeds, the British foreign secretary, on 10 February.¹³ These opening exchanges were certainly friendly enough, with Merry reporting on 28 January that Floridablanca was expressing ‘the strongest desire to see the harmony and friendly correspondence which at present so happily subsist between the two Courts improved as far as possible.’¹⁴ Del Campo’s letter was similarly conciliatory. Nonetheless, even at this early stage, both sides well knew what the great issues were: for the Spanish, a last attempt to assert that right, granted by the Pope (1493) and enshrined in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), to an exclusive navigation of the southwestern Atlantic Ocean and the entire Pacific Ocean, and possession of the southern and western coasts of the Americas; and for the British, the assertion of the right to navigate in the Pacific, to trade about its shores, and to establish sovereignty over areas not actually settled by Spain.

After his first tentative discussion with Floridablanca Merry expressed disappointment that the Spanish foreign minister did not bring up the subject of rights at their second meeting.¹⁵ Yet these were certainly foremost in the minds of the ministers of both countries. On 2 February, Leeds advised Merry that, if the subject arose, to be ‘extremely guarded in what you may have occasion to say…; as it is a matter of equal delicacy & importance in which you should be very cautious of giving even a hint which may be construed in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Pacific World
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Part One – Exploration and Trade
• Part Two – Colonies and Protectorates
• Part Three – Culture, Gender, and Environment
• Index