Hispanic Gulf-Caribbean Coastguard Privateers during the XVIII Century

Abstract

The origin of the Hispanic coast guard lies in the royal navies of the “guard” for the Atlantic coastal surveillance and the protection of the merchant fleets on their way to peninsular ports; which, from 1493, they extended their range of operation to the escort of West Indies Fleet merchant ships. Initially, State organs financed by the Crown and the overseas trade tax, when “dissolved” in regional patrols in the Spanish-American colonies, they began to be partially subsidized by royal funds, by local governments or by individuals, being used in patrol missions and combating smuggling, privateering and piracy at the regional level. The perpetual lack of royal ships and state funding to permanently maintain the Coast Guard service frequently forced colonial authorities to organize squads in conjunction with private initiative or by hiring privateer squads with shipowners and local neighbours. By focusing mostly on the study of the practice of privateering, traditional historiography has overlooked the in-depth analysis of the privateers' activity as coast guards, which evolved between regional geopolitical dynamics and monarchical interests adapted to various powers, resources and circumstances. Based on a broad historiographic analysis supported by first-hand sources, this study seeks to analyze, from the perspective of the long eighteenth-century, the so-called coastguard privateers who acted in the Gulf-Caribbean as part of the Spanish-American naval protection and surveillance system. In this sense, it will explain the origin, nature, organization and development of a public service that, in collaboration with civil society, constituted an instrument to fulfil state objectives and sustain authority at the imperial level, within the framework of the evolution of the centralization of powers and the construction of the modern Spanish state.