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BRITAIN AND THE WORLD
Britain’s Informal Empire

in Spain, 1830–1950
Free Trade, Protectionism and
Military Power
Nick Sharman
Britain and the World
Series Editors
Martin Farr
School of History
Newcastle University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Michelle D. Brock
Department of History
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA
Eric G. E. Zuelow
Department of History
University of New England
Biddeford, ME, USA
Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The
editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in
which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth cen-
tury to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World
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Britain and the World is made up of people from around the world who
share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider
world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities
around the world that study Britain and its international influence from
the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain
on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the
Britain and the World peer-reviewed journal.
Martin Farr (martin.farr@newcastle.ac.uk) is General Series Editor for
the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu.
edu) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric
G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une.edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the
post-1800 period.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795
Nick Sharman
Britain’s Informal
Empire in Spain,
1830–1950
Free Trade, Protectionism and Military Power
Nick Sharman
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, UK
Britain and the World

ISBN 978-3-030-77949-8 ISBN 978-3-030-77950-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77950-4
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Preface
Less than two weeks after the military uprising in Spain in July 1936,
Britain’s Conservative Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden abandoned the
democratically elected Republican government by denying it the supply of
arms. His non-intervention policy effectively guaranteed the eventual vic-
tory of the rebel army and its fascist supporters within and outside Spain.
A decade later, in January 1947, Britain’s reforming Labour Government,
many of whose members had vigorously supported the Republic during
the Civil War, refused to support United Nations initiatives to remove the
Franco dictatorship and return democracy to Spain in the aftermath of the
comprehensive defeat of European fascism. Both decisions were justified
by the immediate political issues of the day, appeasement in the 1930s,
anti-communism in the 1940s. The outcome, however, was the same,
government of Spain by an authoritarian, anti-democratic regime. Both
Britain’s major parties, committed in principle to democratic governance,
had decided that maintenance of social order by a fascist dictator in Spain
was preferable to the uncertainties of a return to democracy. This book
grew from my interest in this apparent paradox and my conclusion that
behind the unity of political purpose were the underlying economic inter-
ests of Britain’s industrial and trade-based empire. As I pursued this inter-
est, three interlocking themes emerged: first was the deeply entangled,
though unbalanced, relationship between the two countries’ economies.
The second was the substantial impact that the British Empire’s free trade
policy had on the development of the Spanish economy and its domestic
v
vi PREFACE
politics. The third was the Spanish protectionist movement’s resistance to

the imposition of free trade. The movement, often seen as no more than a
reactionary force, in fact had a strongly reformist and modernising agenda.
Seen together and drawing on Gallagher and Robinson’s concept of infor-
mal imperialism, these themes provide the basis for explaining both the
debilitating effects of Britain’s free trade imperialism on Spain’s economic
development and the political resistance it engendered within the country.
The story of Spain’s economic policy in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries begins with mercantilist protectionism, switches to an enthusias-
tic embrace of free trade before reverting to trade and investment protec-
tionism and, finally, to increasingly radical forms of autarkic economic
nationalism. My argument is that this trajectory was shaped in decisive
ways by two interlinked processes: the exercise of formal and informal
power by a dominant British Empire and the reaction of successive Spanish
governments as they sought to escape economic dependency, on Britain
and France in particular.
Overlaying these processes within Spain was the wider story of the
British Empire: its astonishing rise during the nineteenth century to
achieve global diplomatic and economic hegemony at the apogee of its
influence in the last quarter of the century. Over the first decades of the
twentieth century the Empire progressively declined, ever more rapidly
after the First and Second World Wars. By the 1950s, virtually every trace
of the formal and informal imperial power that had sustained Britain’s
dominant role in Spain for over a century had disappeared. This book
traces the story of the Anglo-Spanish relationship from the 1830s to the
1940s and concludes that throughout the period the two processes, the
exercise of British imperial power and Spain’s economic and political
development, were tightly intertwined.
My thanks for their consistent and enthusiastic support for the project
go to Chris Grocott, Gareth Stockey, Tony Kapcia, Steve Roberts, Mark
Gant and Manuel López Forjas all of whom made valuable suggestions to
earlier drafts. My thanks, too, go to two people who launched my interest
in Spain and its history: Pilar Membrilla who taught me the language
through her deep interest in Spanish culture and politics and Helen
Graham who sympathetically supervised and encouraged my initial
research. Many other friends and colleagues have helped me with their
PREFACE vii
support and encouragement, notably Lisa Newby, Teresa Itabor, Karenjit

Clare and Michael Lambert. Most of all though, my thanks go to my fam-
ily, Jo, Jamie and Imogen, for their unfailing support, patience and love.
Nottingham, UK Nick Sharman

September 2021
Translations from Spanish sources are by the author.

Contents
Part I British Informal Imperialism and Spain 1
1 Informal Imperialism and the British Empire 3

The Informal Imperialism Controversy 8
Spain and Informal Imperialism 18
The Spanish Reaction to Britain’s Informal Imperialism 25
2 Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal Monarchy,

1833–1856 35
3 Britain, Spain and the War of Africa, 1859–1860 65
4 The ‘Disaster’ of the Spanish-American War of 1898

and the Algeciras Conference of 1906 85
5 Informal Imperialism and Total War: Britain and Spain

in the First World War103
6 The Second World War: Revival and Demise of Britain’s

Informal Empire in Spain121
ix
x Contents
Part II Spain’s Response to Britain’s Informal Imperialism 147
7 The Spanish Challenge to Britain’s Free Trade

Imperialism149
8 The Rise of Economic Nationalism173
9 Economic Nationalism to Autarky193
10 Conclusion219
References225
Index233
PART I
Britain’s Informal Imperialism

in Spain
CHAPTER 1
Informal Imperialism and the British Empire
Britain and Spain have been strongly interconnected since the two coun-
tries first achieved a measure of national unity in the sixteenth century.
Although the relationship was one of the most consistently important for
both nations, it was rarely one of equals. In its ‘golden’ sixteenth century,
Spain was the first global empire and a dominant power in Western Europe,
while England, as it then was, lay on the margins of the continent. During
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Spain’s power declined, while
England, later Britain, itself established a worldwide commercial empire.
The result was an intense rivalry, focussed mainly on control of the
Mediterranean and Atlantic trade routes and the entangled American
empires of the two countries. The Napoleonic Wars were a watershed for
the relationship: French occupation and loss of its naval fleet, critical to
the protection of its colonies, left Spain severely weakened. Meanwhile,
Britain, already the world’s leading commercial power based on its naval
dominance, was set on an astonishing economic growth path springing
from its leadership of the Industrial Revolution.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 settled the peace and the relationship
between the great European powers and gave Britain a dominant role in
the continent’s diplomacy for the next century. In the following decade,
the loss of its South American colonies confirmed Spain’s marginal posi-
tion among the European great powers. For Britain, Spain’s main diplo-
matic interest now lay in the potential alliances it might make with the
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Sharman, Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain, 1830–1950,
Britain and the World,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77950-4_1
4 N. SHARMAN
other powers to threaten its Atlantic trade routes. This paramount con-
cern meant that Spain remained a vital imperial defence issue, right up to
the twilight of its Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War.
However, Britain’s concern with Spain had another, more openly eco-
nomic element: its substantial domestic and colonial markets and its
unparalleled mineral wealth. This combination of geopolitical and directly
economic factors led to a series of British interventions in Spanish politics,
from its military support for the liberal monarchists in the Carlist Civil War
of the 1830s to Churchill’s desperate attempts to prevent Spain from join-
ing the Axis powers in 1940. The consequence of this long-standing stra-
tegic and economic engagement was that Britain had a major influence in
shaping modern Spain. This book is about the interventions Britain made
to secure its imperial interests and the effects they had on Spain. It con-
cludes that, in effect, the country became an ‘informal’ colony of Britain,
a concept for which theoretical support was set out by Gallagher and
Robinson in their celebrated 1953 Economic Review article, ‘The
Imperialism of Free Trade’.1 Their central hypothesis was that, by the early
nineteenth century, Britain’s industrialisation was the foundation of an
extraordinary expansion of trade, people and investment, an ‘ever extend-
ing and intensifying development of overseas regions’. Britain’s imperial-
ism was ‘a sufficient political function of this process of integrating new
regions into the expanding economy’, one aspect of which was to ensure
guarantees of strategic protection for British interests.2 Their second major
proposition was that Britain’s approach depended on how far local elites
were prepared to cooperate: Britain would only take direct control of ter-
ritories if these elites were unable or unwilling to safeguard British inter-
ests. They summed this up in their well-known aphorism: ‘trade with
informal control if possible; trade with rule where necessary’.3
The story of the Anglo-Spanish economic relationship during the nine-
teenth and first half of the twentieth century closely fits this theoretical
framework. Britain used its imperial power, formal and informal, to shape
Spain’s economic and political development to ensure the strategic secu-
rity of its trade routes and the critically important raw materials and
markets for its industrial products. Spain was incorporated into Britain’s
1
Gallagher, J and Robinson, R ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review
Vol. VI, No 1, 1953.
2
Ibid. 5–6.
3
Ibid. 13.
1 INFORMAL IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE 5
‘informal’ Empire, exploited economically and dominated politically,

although, except for Gibraltar, never acquired as a formal dependency.
Only when domestic political circumstances in Spain threatened its trade
and investment interests did Britain need to intervene directly. Its readi-
ness to do so at moments of threat to its strategic concerns confirms the
imperial character of the relationship. Although France (and later in the
period, Germany) exerted a strong cultural and economic influence in
Spain, only Britain deployed military force during the period.4 For most of
the time, Britain’s commercial and diplomatic pressure was enough to
secure Spanish compliance with its economic and strategic aims.
The initial attraction was the consumer market that Spain and its colo-
nies offered to British textile and, later, machine tool and manufactured
exports. Britain exerted intense pressure on Spain to open up its markets
and draw Spain’s economy into its trading orbit. In parallel, Britain worked
to weaken and destroy Spanish competitors to its industries, most notably
the Catalan textile producers. Towards the end of the century, when
Spain’s mineral resources became crucial to the second wave of Europe’s
industrial revolution, Britain established a dominant role in the extraction
of the country’s copper, sulphur and iron ore resources. The export of
these minerals, rather than their processing within Spain itself, under-
mined the possible emergence of rival native industries. Combined with
French dominance of Spain’s financial credit market and its railway net-
work, this process contributed to Spain’s fragmented, underdeveloped
economy and to the country’s relative economic decline in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.
Explanations for Spain’s failure to use its abundant natural and human
resources to achieve industrial ‘take-off’ in the nineteenth century have
pointed to a wide range of domestic institutional and cultural factors.
Most have emphasised the co-existence of a small and unstable industrial
sector alongside a largely unmodernised, often quasi-feudal, agricultural
sector, creating a dual economic structure, ‘respectively growth-generating
and growth-resisting’.5 Others have emphasised the failure to achieve the
balance of elements necessary for successful industrialisation, citing an
4
France had intervened militarily in 1823 to support the absolutist regime of Ferdinand
VII but thereafter refused to become involved again, despite both British and Spanish appeals
for it to do so during the first Carlist Civil War. Britain on the other hand mobilised military
force, or threatened to do so, on at least five occasions between the 1830s and 1940s.
5
Trebilcock, C The Industrialization of the Continental Powers 1780–1914, Longman,
1981, 312.
6 N. SHARMAN
inadequate financial sector, oriented to funding public debt, an undevel-

oped entrepreneurial class and a weak state, all factors leading to consis-
tently poor policymaking.6 Many writers have pointed to the survival of
pre-capitalist agriculture, culture and institutions.7 Some early explana-
tions (including in Spain itself 8) rejected such structural causes in favour
of psychological features, an ‘inherent racial vice’, ‘a lack of practical sense
and an instinct for conspicuous consumption over efficient production’.9
Most of these various approaches, however, have had a common link,
namely that, ‘Spain’s backwardness is its own doing’.10 However, by over-
emphasising internal factors and underplaying the impact of external
forces on the Spanish economic development, these explanations of
Spain’s halting progress to industrialisation are incomplete. The most
important of these external factors was Britain’s dominant influence,
alongside France, on Spain’s trade and investment policymaking. The first
part of the book shows how Britain deliberately undermined Spain’s own
efforts to industrialise its economy and, as a result, further unbalanced the
country’s wildly uneven economy. Near-feudal agriculture in some regions
ran alongside highly industrialised centres in others, creating enormous
social and economic disparities. From these developed the fiercely opposed
factional and regional interests which distorted Spain’s politics through-
out the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At key moments of crisis,
Britain’s policies deliberately deepened these internal political divisions,
6
Nadal, J El fracaso de la Revolución Industrial en España, 1814–1913, Ariel, Barcelona,
1975, 226; Tortella, G Banking, Railroads and Industry in Spain 1829–1874, Arno Press,
1977, 12. Pro, J La Construcción del Estado en España, Madrid, 2019, 147 and 547. Pro
highlights the enormous task facing the liberal monarchists in reconstructing an effective
state to support the newly capitalist markets almost from scratch in the 1830s, an enterprise
that took over a century.
7
For example, Wood, E The Origin of Capitalism, Verso, 2017 (2002), 151.
8
Araquistáin, writer and leading politician in the Second Republic, argued that ‘the origi-
nal sin of Spain, the cause of our backwardness, is the moral decadence of the typical Spaniard.
What is rotten in Spain, what spreads the corruption, is the Spanish character’. Araquistáin,
L España en el Crisol, Barcelona, 1920, 234. In the wake of the 1898 ‘Disaster’ when the
country lost its last colonies in the Spanish-American War, Ortega y Gasset titled one of his
major polemical works ‘Invertebrate Spain’.
9
Carr, R Spain 1808–1939, Oxford, 1966, 27.
10
Tortella (1977) 4.
undermining the fledgling industrial class and supporting the landowners’

export of agricultural products.11
The second half of the book explores the reaction in Spain to Britain’s
imposition of economic hegemony. For Gallagher and Robinson, a crucial
factor that shaped British strategy was the attitudes of local elites towards
Britain’s commercial interests, especially its free trade policies. In Spain,
Britain’s powerful free trade campaign stimulated equally strong reactions,
both positive and negative. These responses are explored by assessing the
long-term effects of the British free trade campaign on the economic ideas
and policies of Spain’s political classes. Many among the liberal elite were
enthusiastic supporters of Britain’s proposals for an open economy, seeing
them as the path to modernity and the restoration of Spain’s status as a
great power. A significant section of the elite, however, were bitterly
opposed, seeing Britain’s free trade policies as a direct threat to Spain’s
interests. Initially this opposition centred on the influential protectionist
movement, sponsored by a Catalan textile industry facing destruction
from the uncontrolled import of inexpensive British cotton goods. Their
alternative route to national modernity was temporary protection of fledg-
ling industries backed by a programme of state-supported industrialisa-
tion. The resulting political and ideological conflict between free trade and
protectionist supporters contributed to the chronic instability of Spanish
governments for much of the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, resistance to growing foreign economic and political
pressures had led to the emergence of a strongly conservative economic
nationalist movement. In the aftermath of the First World War, these con-
flicts intensified, as protectionism evolved into extreme forms of economic
nationalism and Britain’s imperial power in Spain ebbed. Two decades
later, the Second World War created an existential crisis for both countries,
and Britain used its military force to reaffirm its strategic and economic
interests and the relationship once again reverted, albeit briefly, to one of
imperial domination. Only with the assertion of American power in
Europe in the post-war years were the last vestiges of Britain’s informal
empire in Spain finally swept away.
11
As Maluquer de Motes points out, ‘the industrial bourgeoisie, basically Catalan, were
able to intervene as a trigger for the bourgeois revolution and as an ally over the period but
were never able to become the dominant class in the process’ (p. 51). Maluquer de Motes, J
El socialismo en España 1833–1868, Barcelona, 1977, 51.
8 N. SHARMAN
Telling this story over the longue durée of a century highlights the
important—and often underappreciated—role the Anglo-Spanish rela-
tionship played in European history, most notably during the two world
wars. More broadly, it illustrates the combination of political and eco-
nomic processes by which Britain’s competitive market model was trans-
mitted to the weaker pre-capitalist societies of Europe and how different
sections of these societies resisted this model. In Spain, these opponents
were roughly divided into two groups: on the one hand, conservative
landowners and aristocrats, intent on preserving their traditional privi-
leges, and on the other, nationalist reformers, many of them industrialist
protectionists. Both these factions were bitterly opposed to a third group,
the commercial and political elites, most of whom were supporters of free
trade. The result was a chronic, often confused, conflict over objectives
and policies which a weak state consistently failed to resolve effectively.
The book concludes that Britain’s free trade campaign and Spain’s defen-
sive and contradictory reaction were two sides of a single process of infor-
mal economic imperialism, from which Britain gained by far the greater
advantage.
The Informal Imperialism Controversy

The use of Gallagher and Robinson’s concept of informal imperialism to
explain the process of Britain’s nineteenth-century economic expansion
has been controversial from the beginning. It is important therefore to
justify the general validity of the concept and to test the theory against
historical practice in Spain. This has been done by looking at three crucial
pillars of the Anglo-Spanish relationship, geopolitics, trade and finance to
show how in each area, Britain exercised a degree of control that radically
constrained Spain’s sovereignty. The body of the book goes on to review
the development of the relationship between the 1830s and 1940s, to
demonstrate in detail how Britain’s exercise of its dominant economic
power amounted to informal imperialism.
Britain’s empire, like those of other European trading nations, the
Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch, had emerged gradually from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as a hybrid of directly administered
outposts and territories. By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain’s
own rapidly growing, market-driven economy was having a profound
influence on its imperial possessions. A traditional form of commercial and
territorial empire was gradually transformed into a new market-oriented
capitalist system as the settler colonies became economically self-

supporting, earning their way by sending food and raw materials to supply
Britain’s rapidly developing industries and urban-based economy in
exchange for its industrial exports. Meanwhile, Britain’s naval power was
extending its imperial reach to a wider range of politically independent
territories in South America, Africa and the Orient.12 Dominated politi-
cally, militarily and economically, these ‘informal’ colonies also offered
their consumer markets and raw materials to benefit Britain’s growing
economy. However, in their case, the political institutions remained
in local hands, as long as they were prepared to shape their economies and
foreign policies around Britain’s economic and strategic interests. In prac-
tice, although Britain could, and did, mobilise its formal, military power
to enforce its interests in these territories on occasion, the imperatives of
market-based economic competition made such enforcement largely
unnecessary. Britain’s increasingly unchallenged control of international
sea routes and later, of global trade and investment financing, meant a
threat to use force was usually sufficient to compel compliance. By separat-
ing economic and political systems of control, Britain was able to use its
powerful diplomatic and military resources to guarantee the necessary sta-
bility and security of the financial and trading system as a whole, rather
than needing to police individual territories. For these societies, trade with
Britain brought a broad range of low-cost products which strongly
appealed to their expanding middle-class markets. Even more powerful
than the attraction of the physical goods, was the new form of competitive
capitalism based on free trade, whose promise was the creation of a wealthy,
modern society in a peaceful world. In nineteenth-century Spain, this
combination of material benefit and ideological promise was profoundly
attractive to its growing bourgeoisie.
Gallagher and Robinson focussed their attention on this new form of
capitalist empire, in which the guiding principle for both metropolitan
centre and colony was economic interest rather than territorial enlarge-
ment. They argued that the main objective of Britain’s imperial project
was the expansion of its economic wealth and power through the integra-
tion of new regions of the world into its free trade, market-driven econ-
omy. In place of the direct political management of imperial territories,
control was exercised by the anonymous economic imperatives of market
competition. This was a pragmatic political response to the relentless drive
12
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 3.
10 N. SHARMAN
of British manufacturers and traders to extend the range of their activities

far beyond any conceivable capacity of Britain to manage territories
directly. For Gallagher and Robinson, this global ambition was the out-
come of the expansionary forces unleashed by the industrial revolution.
This transformation was driven by a plethora of small and medium-sized
capitalist enterprises operating under unrelenting competitive pressure to
expand through investment in new production methods in order to sur-
vive. Market forces compelled them to adopt the new steam-driven tech-
nologies organised in the factory system, and these investments in turn
enabled them to produce an astonishing range of inexpensive consumer
products. By the 1820s, however, Britain’s domestic markets had become
relatively saturated and there was an urgent need to find new, foreign mar-
kets for their products. Organised in powerful, city-based lobby groups,
these firms pressed the government to ensure foreign countries removed
domestic and international barriers to trade and inward investment to give
them access to new consumer markets. In its support for these commercial
interests, successive British governments used naval supremacy and the
commercial attractions of the country’s industrial products to persuade
foreign governments to sign trade treaties. These agreements gave tariff-
free access to their markets in exchange for opportunities to enter Britain’s
consumer markets. The objective was to link ‘undeveloped areas with
British foreign trade and in so doing, move[d] the political arm to force an
entry into markets closed by the power of foreign monopolies’.13 As the
world’s most advanced and efficient industrial producer, Britain gained
disproportionately from this ‘free trade’ bargain, since its products could
outcompete native goods in price, quality and range.
The international reach of this form of informal imperialism depended
on Britain’s ability to provide the ‘public goods’ necessary to support the
global trading system, including secure international trade routes and
property rights, an open trade regime and an international money system.
The combination of industrial productive power and command of the
global economic system sustained Britain’s hegemonic influence for nearly
a century.14 This form of imperial domination required a change in the
13
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 7–8.
14
Akita defines five categories of ‘public goods’ supplied by Britain that were essential for
the operation of an international trading system as peace, safe access to international water-
ways, international property rights protection, open trade regime, international money sys-
tem. Akita, S Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History, Palgrave Macmillan,
2002, 2.
priorities of Britain’s diplomatic and military power: its role was now to
‘enforce’ the general conditions necessary to sustain free trade with these
informal territories, rather than, as in traditional empires, to police trade
and investment monopolies and enforce order within directly ruled colo-
nies.15 Gallagher and Robinson showed how this approach, consistently
applied for over a century, amounted to an ‘imperialism of free trade’.16
They pointed to examples, notably in Africa and South America, where
political and commercial pressures had been successfully applied to secure
Britain’s access to markets and investment opportunities. British direct
rule had only followed when it was clear, as it was in the case of Egypt, that
local political collaboration was either unsuccessful or unachievable.
An important aspect of Gallagher and Robinson’s approach was the
emphasis they gave to the politics of the ‘periphery’ in this process. Rather
than a single form of imperialism driven by the imperatives of the metro-
politan centre, they suggested there was a strong element of contingency
in Britain’s imperial project:
The type of political line between the expanding economy and its formal
and informal dependencies […] tended to vary with the economic value of
the territory, the strength of its political structure, the readiness of its rulers
to collaborate with British commercial and strategic purposes, the ability of
the native society to undergo economic change without external control,
the extent to which domestic and foreign political situations permitted
British intervention and finally how far European rivals allowed British pol-
icy a free hand.17
The character of imperial power was therefore ‘largely decided by the vari-
ous and changing relationships between the political and economic ele-
ments of expansion in any particular region and time’.18 The process of
15
Davis and Huttenback summarised this process: ‘the second British Empire was founded
on ambitions for increased foreign trade, as a chain of trading posts protected by strategically
placed naval bases with the aim of ensuring profits were not diminished by expense of colo-
nisation and the costs of warfare’. Davis, L and Huttenback, R Mammon and the pursuit of
Empire: the economics of British imperialism, Cambridge, 1988.
16
Grady and Grocott rename this ‘imperialism for free trade’, as its aim was ‘to create and
maintain unequal economic relationships with developing economies’. Grocott, C and
Grady, J ‘Naked Abroad: The continuing imperialism of free trade’, Capital & Class, 2014,
v38(3) 541–562, 544.
17
Gallagher and Robinson (1953) 6–7.
18
Ibid. 5–6.
12 N. SHARMAN
imperialism was not one of simple territorial conquest and control but the
outcome of negotiation between Britain as the dominant power and the
local elites, with the aim of reaching a politically acceptable and commer-
cially sustainable compromise. More broadly, Gallagher and Robinson
rejected the idea of informal empire as either a purely economic or a politi-
cal phenomenon, pointing out that it involved an inter-relation of the two,
both at metropolitan and local levels, which might well change over time.
They described ‘how political action aided the growth of commercial
supremacy and how this supremacy in turn strengthened political influ-
ence […] the power of the British state and the political influence of the
indigenous commercial classes combined in the imperialism of free trade’.19
In short, Britain had found a new route to the exercise of imperial power,
using the competitive pressures of the market as a means to achieve its
objectives, rather than relying on a combination of military occupation
and political dominance, typical of traditional territorial empires. Its objec-
tive was not to extend the land area and population under its rule but to
broaden its command over scarce resources, especially food and raw mate-
rials, to support further industrial expansion. Territorial dominance was a
means to this end, not a goal in itself. Consequently, the expense of direct
rule was only incurred as a last resort.
From the beginning, Gallagher and Robinson’s ideas about informal
imperialism faced scepticism and even outright hostility from historians.
Several critics questioned the concept on empirical grounds. Platt, in par-
ticular, mounted a ‘full frontal assault’ on the whole concept in his study
of the experience of British business in nineteenth-century Latin America.20
He highlighted the apparent indifference of British governments to call
for support from British-owned local businesses in South America and
concluded they were unable to exert effective political leverage at moments
of crisis.21 Trentmann pointed to another important issue, the absence of
clear definitions, which meant that ‘measuring ‘informal’ imperial power
has proved difficult’ and made the concept difficult to evaluate with any
rigour.22 For example, a central proposition of the model is that the
19
Ibid.
20
Attard, B ‘Informal Empire: The Origin and Trajectory of an Idea’, unpublished paper,
University of Leicester, 2019.
21
Platt, D (editor), Business Imperialism 1840–1930: An Inquiry based on British experience
in Latin America, Oxford, 1977.
22
Trentmann, F Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern
Britain, Oxford, 2008, 142.
informal colony’s sovereignty is subordinated to the economically domi-

nant power. However, Gallagher and Robinson provided no conclusive
definition. Was military coercion a necessary component? What form and
degree of lost sovereignty was involved? Could subordination be defined
in terms of exploitation and if so, how much was needed to establish it in
practice? More problematic still was the possibility that the definition of
informal imperialism was so elastic that it could be applied to any asym-
metric relationship of power between nations. This lack of clarity has
allowed historians to make their own definitions and draw up their own
criteria to test the theory. There were also wider doubts over the model’s
core propositions. For Cain and Hopkins, for example, many of the pre-
cepts were sound: the British Empire had indeed expanded by integrating
new regions in its economy. Moreover, in these regions, whether formally
and informally under British rule, local elites had certainly exercised con-
siderable influence. However, they claimed, Gallagher and Robinson had
made a fundamental mistake in identifying the leaders of Britain’s imperial
project as the industrial manufacturers of the North and Midlands. In fact,
they argued, it was the finance and service sectors, based in London and
the South East, the ‘gentleman capitalists’ of Whitehall, Westminster and
the City of London, who were the main originating and generating force
in the expansion of British interests overseas. Another source of criticism
was the process of decision-making suggested by Gallagher and Robinson’s
model. They had painted a picture of rational and deliberate decision-
making by the ‘official mind’ as it contemplated the opportunities created
by the new global network of trade and development. For some critics this
was a serious oversimplification which neglected the political dynamics of
nineteenth-century Britain and the wider world. Darwin even suggested
there might in fact be no consistent explanation for Britain’s imperial
expansion: it could be seen simply as a set of opportunistic responses to
the changing pressures and circumstances facing Britain, ‘an epiphenom-
enon of wider forces in the world after 1830, surfing the global wave’.23
This array of arguments led to an eclipse in the use of informal imperial-
ism as an analytic tool. However, in recent decades there has been a revival
of interest in Gallagher and Robinson’s approach to informal imperialism,
driven in particular by its fit with the development of US international
policy and practice since the Second World War. As the new global
23
Darwin, J ‘Globalisation and Imperialism: The Global Context of British Power,
1830–1960’ in Akita (2002).
14 N. SHARMAN
hegemon, the US has largely exercised its global power through its eco-
nomic domination of international trade, investment and finance, backed
by its worldwide network of military bases, rather than by direct territorial
acquisition.24 As in the case of the nineteenth-century British Empire, the
pressure to open less developed economies to foreign trade and invest-
ment has led to struggles over sovereignty, often involving elites in the
‘peripheral’ nations either resisting or supporting the exercise of US
power. Reassessments of resistance by local elites and political movements
to the exercise of imperial domination have provided a further spur to use
of the framework of informal imperialism.25 This reappraisal has also been
supported by researchers who have challenged the conclusions of the early
empirical studies and suggested that Gallagher and Robinson’s key propo-
sitions had been misconstrued. For example, Hopkins countered
Thompson’s claim that Argentina had freely accepted trade arrangements
with Britain by pointing to his ‘restrictive and unrealistic definition of
informal empire […] one that assumes that all causation was located in the
metropolis’. Crucially, Thompson had failed ‘to distinguish between levels
of power and degrees of power’, so that although ‘Argentina played the
best hand she could […] Britain dealt the cards’.26 Winn and Graham, in
supporting Gallagher and Robinson’s argument for the existence of
Britain’s informal empire in Latin America, pointed to the important role
played by collaborators, arguing that imperial power is measured not by
overt acts of political control but ‘by the degree to which the values, atti-
tudes and institutions of the expansionist nation infiltrate and overcome
those of the recipient one’.27 The general conclusion of these studies is
that local elites are able to act in their own interests within a framework set
by external forces. In many cases there has been a close overlap of the
interests and ideologies of some sections of the elite with those of the
dominant power. In Spain’s case, for example, we will see there was a very
24
Kiely, R Rethinking Imperialism, Macmillan, 2010; Panitch, L and Gindin, S The Making
of Global Capitalism, London, 2013; Grady, J and Grocott, C (editors) The Continuing
Imperialism of Free Trade, London, 2018.
25
Research in this area has focussed particularly on the independence struggles and post-
colonial experience in India and East Africa: Thapoor, S Inglorious Empire, London, 2016
and Gopal, P Insurgent Empire, London, 2019, respectively.
26
Hopkins, A ‘Informal Empire in Argentina: An Alternative View’, Journal of Latin
American Studies, Vol. 26, (2) 1994, 469–484, 473.
27
Winn, P and Graham, R in Roger Louis, W (editor) Imperialism – The Robinson and
Gallagher Controversy, New York, 1976, 22.
close identification of its commercial elites with British economic interests

and its free trade ideology.
More broadly, the credibility of informal imperialism as an analytical
tool has been strengthened by the integration of Gallagher and Robinson’s
approach within wider theories of imperialism. This has helped overcome
the absence in their model of a theoretical explanation for the explosive
emergence of capitalist free trade imperialism in Britain at the end of the
eighteenth century, a phenomenon so powerful that Britain was able to
successfully dominate global politics and economics for a century after the
Napoleonic Wars. Gallagher and Robinson had ascribed the extraordinary
upsurge of activity involved in Britain’s industrialisation, ‘the exports of
capital and manufactures, the migration of citizens, the dissemination of
the English language, ideas and constitutional forms’, simply to ‘the radia-
tions of the social energies of the British peoples’.28 The absence of an
explanation for the nature and origin of Britain’s rapid industrialisation
meant their theory could not by itself respond adequately to critics like
Cain and Hopkins, who gave precedence to the parallel growth of trade
and finance and suggested a more gradualist model for the development
of British imperialism. Only by showing that English industrialisation
emerged from longer-term changes in the country’s underlying economic
and social conditions, is it possible to explain why England alone, among
the successful trading empires, was able to initiate a spontaneous process
of industrial expansion. Many other countries subsequently imitated
Britain’s industrial development model, but none were able to achieve it
without active and deliberate state intervention, even when, as in France,
well-developed trading, financing and technological resources were read-
ily available.
In tackling this conundrum, Robert Brenner argued that the origin of
England’s dramatic industrial growth lay, not in spontaneous ‘radiations
of social energies’, but in a much longer process of social revolution,
beginning in the early sixteenth century.29 His innovative work highlighted
the exceptionally high proportion of land in England worked by tenants
whose conditions of tenure took the form of economic leases, quite unlike
the peasant societies in the rest of Europe where rents continued to be
fixed by law or custom. Economic competition between tenants led to a
28
29
Aston, T and Philpin, C (editors) The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and
Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
16 N. SHARMAN
market in leases and to the emergence of a new form of agriculture, cen-

tred on a class of larger capitalist farmers, on the one hand, and property-
less, waged labourers, on the other. Impersonal market-driven competition
progressively replaced the political and community relationships typical of
the feudal management of land. Peasants became wage earners, while
farmers became owners of capital, driven by competitive imperatives.
Tenants were under strong pressure to improve the productivity of their
farms, usually leading in turn to a reduction in their waged workforce. The
expanding industrial sector found it had available a swelling labour force
without ties to the land, which could be devoted fulltime to organised
production in factories. This in turn enabled them to meet the needs of
the rapidly developing mass consumer markets in the towns and cities.30 In
an important development of Brenner’s thesis, Wood argued that markets
in tenancies were not in themselves a sufficient condition for the develop-
ment of self-sustaining capitalism. Wider market imperatives—the com-
petitive pressures to systematically improve the production process—were
also essential. Together, this chain of development meant that the ‘trans-
formation of English trade and industry was the result, rather than the
cause, of England’s transition to capitalism’. The impetus to Britain’s free
trade imperialism therefore sprang from deep, long-term changes in social
and economic relations in England and the consequent expansion of
industry. These were the dominant factors behind Britain’s nineteenth-
century imperial growth rather than that the expansion of finance and
merchant-led trade, as Cain and Hopkins had suggested. Gallagher and
Robinson had identified the importance of industrial expansion as the
immediate driver of Britain’s new imperialism, but its deeper significance
lay in its role as a vehicle for exporting dynamic capitalist relationships to
other societies, transmitted by the attractions of inexpensive manufac-
tured goods.
A second major weakness of the Gallagher and Robinson model was its
lack of precision in defining key concepts, so that critics were able to inter-
pret them in their own way. Most importantly, the key concept of ‘subor-
dination’ was left vague and difficult to test with any rigour. Here, Hopkins
30
Wood (2017) 129. Wood pointed to the key contribution of creative agency of social
actors in the process of transition. In this legally founded process, economic actors are sys-
tematically pressured to compete in order to ensure their most basic social reproduction.
These conditions emerged in Catalonia in the nineteenth century and provided a social basis
for its industrialisation. Moreno Zacarés, J ‘Beyond market dependence: The origins of capi-
talism in Catalonia’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2018, 4.
helpfully proposed a definition of subordination in terms of a more

nuanced version of the exercise of power, based on a distinction between
structural and relational power made by Susan Strange.31 Structural power
allows the possessor to set the general rules of the game through its con-
trol over key elements of sovereignty—credit, production, security and
knowledge, beliefs and ideas—which builds up the framework for relations
between the parties. Relational power, on the other hand, is concerned
with relations between interests within an authority structure (especially
within the nation-state).32 The exercise of imperial control clearly involves
the use of structural power, and Gallagher and Robinson illustrated ‘how
degrees of local independence could be exercised within a broader frame-
work of dependence’.33 Britain, for example, exercised structural authority
over smaller countries which were dependent on her military and naval
power or reliant on British trade and credit. As a result, these countries
had to accommodate themselves to British political and economic liberal-
ism by agreeing to free trade and orthodox monetary and fiscal policies.
However, this subordinate relationship was compatible with a great deal of
local political and economic autonomy as Spain’s long resistance to sign-
ing a formal trade agreement shows.
Gallagher and Robinson argued that Britain’s economic expansion
shaped a process of informal imperialism: Britain had ‘let loose on the
continent, forces that implied nothing less than the destruction of the old
social and political order’ and had thereby defined a new industrialised
‘centre’ and an undeveloped, agriculture-based ‘periphery’.34 They
described this form of informal imperialism as a process (‘the sufficient
political function of this process of integrating new regions into the
expanding economy’35) rather than a settled or an end state. As we have
seen, they saw informal imperialism as a contingent concept in which the
nature and extent of the expansionary process depends on the political and
economic circumstances. This implies that ‘although imperialism is a func-
tion of economic expansion, it is not a necessary function’ but depends on
‘the political and social organisation of the regions brought into the orbit
31
Strange, S States and Markets, London, 1988.
32
Hopkins (1994) 477.
33
Cain and Hopkins, in Dumett, R Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism,
London, 1999, 205.
34
Berend, I and Rankí, G The European Periphery and Industrialisation, Cambridge
University Press, 1982, 8.
35
18 N. SHARMAN
of the expansive society and also by the world situation in general’.36 It

also suggests there is a degree of compulsion involved in the relationship.
This may range from direct control by the dominant power, backed by
military force, to various forms of negotiated settlement with local elites.
Furthermore, the form of control is likely to change over time as ‘not all
regions will reach the same level of economic integration at any one time;
neither will all regions need the same type of political control at any one
time’.37 These propositions are now broadly accepted by many writers on
imperialism. Even sceptics now acknowledge informal imperialism is at the
very least ‘a valuable means of categorising conditions of domination and
subordination whereby a major state acts as an integrative force interna-
tionally, exercising power in ways that infringe the sovereignty of smaller
countries’.38 In the pages that follow, this model of informal imperialism is
used to explore the history of the Anglo-Spanish relationship, with all the
qualifications noted above and with the addition of Hopkins’ useful dis-
tinction between structural and relational subordination.
Spain and Informal Imperialism

If Gallagher and Robinson’s general approach is accepted, the question
then arises whether their model of informal imperialism is a relevant frame-
work to explore Spain’s specific experience of British economic power.
This book argues that in three critical dimensions of the relationship
between the countries, geostrategy, trade and finance, Britain exercised its
dominant power in a way that seriously constrained Spain’s sovereignty.
Moreover, it used, or threatened to use, military force on several occasions
to support its objectives and policy aims. Britain’s systematic use of mili-
tary power to secure its economic interests marks out this type of control
from the kind of influence exerted over Spain by other European great
powers and justifies the proposition that the Anglo-Spanish relationship
was defined by an exercise of imperial, rather than merely asymmetric
informal power.
36
Ibid. 6.
37
Ibid.
38
Hopkins pithily summed up the sceptics’ view: ‘The central problem lies with the notion
of informal empire [itself], which historians have wrestled with for over half a century. We
cannot now do without it, yet there are limits to what we can do with it’. Quoted in
Attard (2019).
The most fundamental of the three dimensions was the geostrategic,

arising from Spain and Portugal’s location at the hinge of Britain’s North
Atlantic and Mediterranean trade routes. These sea routes were the
Empire’s trading lifelines, especially after the Suez Canal opened in 1869.39
Any serious threat to British dominance of the seas around the Iberian
Peninsula, and particularly to Gibraltar, one of Britain’s five strategic bases
that ‘locked up the globe’,40 went to the heart of its imperial strength.41 A
core objective of British imperial diplomacy was therefore to ensure that
no other European power could threaten British dominance of these sea
routes by making an alliance with Spain. This threat arose on three occa-
sions. During the First Carlist War in the 1830s, the rebels aligned them-
selves with the Central and Eastern European imperial powers of Russia,
Austro-Hungary and Prussia, as Chap. 2 relates.42 Britain reacted by
blockading Spain’s northern coast and financing and supplying a private
army to ensure that the liberal monarchists retained power in Madrid. In
the First World War, Britain again imposed a naval blockade to control
Spain’s trade and to prevent German use of Spanish ports as a base for the
North Atlantic submarine war. In the Second World War, Britain re-
imposed a strict naval blockade, again to control trade and to undermine
the Franco regime’s support for the Axis Powers. Chapters 5 and 6 show
that although both military interventions were a reaction to the immedi-
ate threat posed by Germany, they were also designed to secure Britain’s
wider trade and investment interests in Spain. There were a number of
39
As Brewer points out, ‘much of the history of the British Empire pivots on the need to
safeguard the route to India; British policy in, say the Mediterranean, should not be explained
in terms of the economic gains made in that area alone but in terms of the maintenance of
the empire as a whole’. Brewer, A Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey, London,
1990, 2.
40
Admiral Fisher expressed the central importance of Gibraltar to Britain’s global domi-
nance in referring to the five Royal Navy bases of Dover, Gibraltar, the Cape, Alexandria and
Singapore: ‘Five strategic keys lock up the globe’. Cited in Kennedy, P The Rise and Fall of
British Naval Mastery, London, 2017 (1976), 206.
41
Kennedy quotes the Victorian military expert, Viscount Esher’s summary of the crucial
importance of the Mediterranean: ‘Britain either is or is not one the Great Powers of the
World. Her position in this respect depends solely upon sea-command and sea-command in
the Mediterranean’. Ibid. 222.
42
The immediate cause of the three Carlist Wars of the nineteenth century was the claim
to the throne by Fernando VII’s brother, Don Carlos, on Fernando’s death in 1833.
Underlying the wars were ideological differences over the role of religion and the monarchy
and traditional territorial rights of Navarre and the Basque Country.
20 N. SHARMAN
other less aggressive threats to Britain’s command of the Gibraltar Strait.

Chapter 3 describes a previous occasion when Britain threatened to use
military force to support its diplomatic strategy. In 1859, Britain brought
Spain’s invasion of Morocco to a premature halt, concerned that Spain or
its potential allies would be able to control the Strait from the southern
coast. Forty years later, France’s colonial expansion into Morocco in the
late nineteenth century again threatened British control of the Strait. At
the 1906 Algeciras Conference Britain championed a proposal that a
reluctant Spain rather than France occupies the Moroccan coast. As
Chap. 4 relates, these incidents showed that whether Britain exercised its
power by military-supported diplomacy or by direct armed force, the out-
come was the same: Spain’s sovereignty over its defence and foreign policy
was seriously constrained.43
The second critical dimension of the economic relationship between
the countries was the deep, long-standing trade and investment connec-
tion. Chapter 2 describes how, from the 1820s, Spain’s substantial domes-
tic and colonial markets became a particularly attractive prospect for
Britain’s rapidly industrialising economy. The recurrent economic crises
of the decade had shown that British manufacturers, facing intense
domestic competitive pressures, needed to break into wider markets.
They saw Spain’s less competitive market of some fourteen million people
(roughly the population of England and Wales at the time) and its simi-
larly sized colonial population, as particularly attractive. In 1824, the
Foreign Secretary George Canning had set out ambitious plans for gain-
ing market access to the newly independent Spanish nations of South
America and there were parallel pressures to open market access to Spain
itself.44 Lobbying by business associations, especially those representing
the engineering and cotton goods manufacturers of Liverpool, Manchester
and Glasgow, had already made their mark on government.45 However,
the absolutist regime of Fernando VII, supported by the French, had
43
Lawrence also points to the continuity of the effective employment of foreign military
power in Spain. He links the British-led intervention in the first Carlist Civil War to German
and Italian support for the military uprising in the Civil War of 1936–1939. Lawrence, M
The Spanish Civil Wars A Comparative History of the First Carlist War and the Conflict of the
1930s, London, 2017.
44
45
The parliamentary influence of these powerful lobbies grew significantly after the 1832
Reform Act. Rodríguez Alonso, M Gran Bretaña y España: Diplomacia, guerra, revolución y
comercio, 1833–1839, Madrid, 1991, 200.
fiercely resisted any substantial change to Spain’s restrictive tariff barriers

and granted British merchants only limited commercial concessions.
Following the death of Fernando in 1833, the British government and
manufacturers saw the opportunity to create a more open market in
Spain, now in the hands of a new, politically liberal, regime. For the next
thirty years, they campaigned to open the Spanish economy to allow tar-
iff-free trade. Spain’s agricultural exports were another important eco-
nomic attraction in helping meet Britain’s trade (and food supply) deficit.
Later in the century, as Britain’s own mineral resources ran down, Spanish
iron ore and pyrites imports became even more critical to Britain’s indus-
trial expansion. During both the world wars of the twentieth century,
British dependence on Spanish food and mineral imports was to have
serious political ramifications: Chaps. 5 and 6 explore how Britain main-
tained these supplies, again by relying largely on the imposition of a com-
prehensive naval blockade.
As well as trade, Spain was an important target for Britain’s extraordi-
nary late Victorian outflow of foreign investment, aimed initially at the
minerals sector and later, across a wide range of infrastructure-related
businesses. As late as the 1930s, some 40% of foreign investment in Spain
was British owned.46 This dominance was to become a potent source of
Spanish resentment, seen at its clearest in the Franco dictatorship’s policy
of economic autarky. In both these fields of trade and investment, Britain’s
exercise of informal control generally relied on the exercise of political
influence, rather than straightforward military force. Safeguarding these
economic interests therefore involved the more complex process of per-
suasion and negotiation with local elites. In some cases, these elites suc-
cessfully resisted British demands over specific ‘relational’ issues. However,
these usually turned out to be largely pyrrhic victories: in the longer term,
Britain’s wider ‘structural’ power was mobilised, and Spain was eventually
compelled to adopt policies that supported British economic interests. An
important example, dealt with at length in Chap. 2, was the repeated
refusal by the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, to concede a comprehensive
free trade agreement with Britain, despite its sponsorship by successive
Spanish governments in the 1830s and 1840s. This was a source of enor-
mous frustration to British governments and over three decades they car-
ried out an unremitting diplomatic campaign to secure the approval of the
Cortes to a trade deal. Although no formal agreement was reached, a
46
Edwards, J The British Government and the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939, Macmillan,
London, 1979, 65.
22 N. SHARMAN
series of tariff reforms was agreed which significantly lowered barriers to

foreign trade. Indeed, by the late 1860s, Spain was on course to become
one of Europe’s most open economies, proof that Britain controlled the
wider environment where ‘the rules of the game’ were defined. British and
French ‘structural’ power was also evident in the opening of the country
to direct foreign investment, where financial interests in London and Paris
were able to use Spain’s need for debt finance as a bargaining lever. From
the 1850s, Britain and France, respectively, were able to take charge of the
mining and railway booms, siphoning off much of the monopoly-based
‘super profits’ they created, despite intense local political opposition.
There is no clearer example of the profound asymmetry of the Anglo-
Spanish relationship: while foreigners owned half of all Spain’s capital
invested by 1900, there was negligible Spanish investment in Britain.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of Spain’s exports to Britain were minerals
and agricultural produce, leaving Spain highly vulnerable to the often-wild
fluctuations of world commodity prices.
There was, moreover, a strong ideological dimension of the British
campaign for free trade. The aim of British imperial policy was to ‘natu-
ralise the ideas of free trade at home and abroad’ by coupling the notion
of the free market to individual freedom and avoiding the promotion of
collective solutions. As a result, ‘an economic choice is presented as com-
mon sense and morally superior’.47 The new classical economic ideas were
then used to justify the resulting inequalities by pointing to inherent, ‘nat-
ural’ differences in circumstances, culture and history. As British govern-
ments well understood, an industrial trading nation cannot simply flood
underdeveloped, peripheral nations with its products unless it also enables
them to trade in other, non-competitive goods. Ricardo’s theory of inter-
national exchange had proposed that free trade leads to a convergence
around a country’s ‘natural’ economic specialisms. In British eyes there-
fore, Spain’s role in international commerce was to take advantage of its
climate and resources to trade its food, wine and minerals for Britain’s
industrial products.48 This implied a withering away of its emerging textile
and engineering industries in face of the superior range, quality and price
47
Grocott, C and Grady (2014), 547.
48
This was a typical British vision for the future of less developed economies. As Gallagher
and Robinson put it: ‘the general strategy of this development was to convert these areas into
complementary satellite economies which would provide raw materials and food for Great
Britain and also provide widening markets for its manufactures’. Gallagher and Robinson
(1953) 9.
of British products.49 Any attempt to protect its industries in defiance of

this ‘natural’ distribution of resources would lead to inefficiency and eco-
nomic weakness. In the fields of both trade and investment, the outcome
of Britain’s policies was to seriously limit Spain’s sovereignty over its bud-
getary and economic policy throughout the period.
The third dimension of the Anglo-Spanish economic engagement was
finance. Behind the broad span of investment and trading relationships
between the countries lay the operations of the City of London’s financial
markets, supplying Government loans, business finance, insurance and
currency exchange. Given the undeveloped state of Spain’s financial sec-
tor, the country relied heavily on the London and Paris-based financial
markets and services. The dependency of Spanish governments on foreign
finance was a chronic problem throughout the nineteenth century and
made them particularly vulnerable to direct intervention by lenders.
Although usually administered directly by banks and financial investment
houses, imperial governments were always actively involved. Barbe has
termed this form of power the ‘imperialism of debt’ to distinguish it from
the closely related ‘imperialism of free trade’.50 During the Carlist War of
the 1830s, the British government’s offers of loan guarantees were used to
press successive Madrid governments to lower trade barriers. British gov-
ernments also gave unstinting support to Spanish governments’ unpaid
creditors in the City of London. At one point, Lord Palmerston, as Foreign
Secretary, threatened to use troops to take over Spain’s main sources of
colonial income until debts were repaid and was only persuaded at the last
minute that such an aggressive measure would be counterproductive. The
overwhelming imbalance of power gave banks and financial investors
immense political influence. The Rothschild’s Bank, for example, com-
pelled Spanish governments to sell the country’s valuable mineral assets to
them, to fund debt loan repayments. In this way the Bank acquired
49
There was of course nothing ‘natural’ about Britain’s manufacturers processing cotton
that had been grown in wholly different climates. Trentmann summarises the British per-
spective, common to much twentieth-century economic history writing in both Britain and
Spain: ‘Free Trade is framed as a natural expression of rational interests, its rivals dismissed as
products of prejudice, ideology, passion and culture’. Trentmann (2008) 14.
50
Debt imperialism can lead to political domination, whatever the original motivation for
imperialism, strategic, economic or ideological. ‘Economic tools could be considered as a
way to conquer colonial empires’, as can free trade. Barbe, A Public Debt and European
Expansionism in Morocco from 1860 to 1956, Master’s Thesis, Paris School of Economics,
2016, 18.
24 N. SHARMAN
control of Spain’s major mercury and lead mines, the largest and most
productive in Europe.51 The country’s continued dependency on foreign
loan finance and its acute vulnerability to currency speculation meant this
fundamental inequality persisted into the twentieth century. In the 1930s,
for example, the Bank of England insisted Spain honour the debts of the
Primo de Rivera dictatorship despite the deflationary impact of the world-
wide trade slump on its economy. As a result, the Second Republic’s eco-
nomic policy freedom was tightly constrained. Indeed, it can be argued
that the Republic’s rigid adherence to financial orthodoxy led to its failure
to meet the economic expectations of its supporters and to their acute
political disillusion. The combination of Spanish financial vulnerability and
the readiness of British imperial authorities and their French counterparts,
together with their commercial outriders, to use their financial power,
gave British financial institutions enormous influence over Spain’s eco-
nomic policies. Throughout the period, the exercise of this power severely
constrained Spain’s economic policy sovereignty and caused enormous
long-term political resentment.52
In each of these three main economic fields, geopolitical security, trade
and investment and financial operations, the balance of power was so lop-
sided that Britain’s exercise of power amounted to informal imperialism.
Through a mixture of political action and ideological influence, Britain
ensured that its interests were met in ways that radically inhibited Spain’s
sovereignty. Although its great power rivals, notably France, had great
influence in Spain, Britain remained pre-eminent throughout the period,
a reflection of both its international hegemonic power and its deep eco-
nomic interests in Spain. British threats—and, on occasion, its use—of
coercive military and naval power demonstrate that behind the relation-
ship lay a fundamental inequality of structural power. Spain might ‘win’
some ‘relational power’ points but only in a game in which Britain had set
and enforced the rules.
51
López-Morell, M The House of Rothschild in Spain, 1812–1941, Ashgate, Burlington
VT, 2013.
52
‘Europe may well have been the world’s banker but Britain was the majority stockholder
in that enterprise’, responsible for 75% of all international capital movements in 1900 and
some 40% as late as 1913. Davis and Huttenback (1988) 35.
The Spanish Reaction to Britain’s

Informal Imperialism
By any of the measures of informal imperialism set out in the previous sec-
tion, Spain’s independence was tightly constrained throughout the cen-
tury of Britain’s imperial dominance. The second part of the book looks at
the Spanish side of the relationship during three key historical stages: the
free trade debate in the mid-nineteenth century; the turn to state-led eco-
nomic intervention at the turn of the century and the increasingly radical
economic nationalism in the wake of the First World War. During this
period, Spain’s response, a combination of political nationalism and eco-
nomic protectionism, evolved as a bulwark against the forces of global,
and specifically British, capitalism. The trajectory of this changing reaction
to the exercise of British economic power illustrates the impact a domi-
nant power has on the politics of subordinate nations. It was to have
strong parallels in the subsequent experience of countries resisting impe-
rial domination or experiencing decolonisation in the twentieth century,
especially after the Second World War.
For much of the nineteenth century, Spain’s deepest conflicts over eco-
nomic policy arose from the protectionist movement’s resistance to
Britain’s free trade campaign. Most of the Madrid elite supported a liberal
economic policy based on free trade. Opposing them were the Catalan
manufacturers, many of them committed economic modernisers. They
wanted to see temporary protection of their ‘infant’ textile industry and
for state intervention to support national industrial development. Chapter
7 examines the theoretical underpinning of these political positions in the
writings of two early nineteenth-century Spanish economists, Eudald
Jaumeandreu and Álvaro Flórez Estrada. Both men based their analysis on
British classical economic thinking but drew profoundly different conclu-
sions about the role of the state and the effects of competition on a devel-
oping country like Spain. For the Catalan protectionist, Jaumeandreu, free
trade put countries with emerging industries at a fundamental disadvan-
tage to advanced industrial countries. This handicap could only be over-
come by the state taking collective action to protect and develop its
emerging industries behind tariff barriers.53 More fundamentally,
53
The protectionists were building on the tentative state-led economic reform programmes
in eighteenth-century Spain. A strong link between Enlightenment thinking and support for
modernising initiatives to develop industry and commerce appear in the overlapping careers
26 N. SHARMAN
Jaumeandreu and his followers rejected one of the universalist assump-

tions of classical economics: the proposition that unregulated choices of
individual consumers and firms in competitive markets automatically
secure the best possible outcomes for the nation and its communities.
Instead, they believed that society had an essential role in safeguarding
community welfare, an approach that both looked back to the strong
bonds of mediaeval society and looked forwards to the need for the social
control of unbridled liberal capitalism. In their ideas we can see the differ-
ent, and sometimes opposing, interpretations of liberalism on the two
sides of the free trade debate. Freeden has usefully defined a typology to
distinguish between the main strands of liberal thinking by looking at the
different emphasis placed on the meaning of the core values of liberal-
ism.54 Freedom is liberalism’s most distinguishing concept, but its various
‘families’ have radically different—and contested—views of the threats to
freedom. For the British classical economists, the priority was to protect
the market activities of individuals and their property rights from interfer-
ence by the state.55 The combination of individualism and free trade
would, as John Bright wrote, ‘promote the comfort, happiness and con-
tentment of a nation’. This idealistic coupling of free economic exchange
and liberalism was the basis of liberal imperialism, a movement embodied
in Richard Cobden’s view of free trade as the agent of a civilising mission
to spread these values across the world.56 The Catalan industrialists shared
many of these liberal values, especially the emphasis on individual eco-
nomic freedom as the foundation for a nation’s development. However,
of economist reformers and politicians such as Bernardo Ward, Pablo de Olavide, Pedro
Rodríguez de Campomanes and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Elements of their enlighten-
ment thinking, notably opposition to mercantilism, the church control of land and monop-
oly power of the guilds, can be seen in the writing of Jaumeandreu and the later
protectionists.
54
Freeden M Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach, Oxford, 1996 and
Freeden, M Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2015.
55
Freeden Liberalism (2015) 66.
56
Ibid. 42. Cobden was expressing widely shared aspirations. As Trentmann writes: Free
trade was ‘the closest modern Britain ever came to a national ideology, as important as par-
liamentary liberty […] globally, Free Trade was Britain’s civilising mission of peace and prog-
ress, domestically […] for the first time in history consumers were expressly recognised as
representing the national interest’. Trentmann (2008) 2. Cobden himself, however, was a
strong critic of imperialism, arguing that the adoption of free trade would on its own enable
nations to develop their economies and achieve an equality of status. His ideas were extremely
attractive to elites in less developed nations like Spain.
there were profound differences, reflecting their view that individual

enterprises operate within a social context and require active support from
the community. The emphasis they gave to this more communitarian ver-
sion of liberty (which prefigures later developments of liberal thinking
within Britain itself) suggests the state should have a central role in social
and economic development, where necessary constraining economic free-
dom in order to support individuals and enterprises.
Free trade supporters claimed that protectionism gave monopoly power
to small, privileged groups of producers at the expense of the interests of
consumers. For most Spanish politicians of the time and subsequently for
many liberal historians, steeped in the assumptions of classical economics,
the protectionists were a reactionary, self-interested lobby group which
undermined Spain’s adoption of the latest foreign products and technolo-
gies.57 The subsequent capture of the protectionist agenda by special
interest groups in the early twentieth century as protectionism became
absorbed into conservative economic policymaking only appeared to con-
firm these views. As a result, the modernising ambitions of the nineteenth-
century Spanish protectionist movement are often overlooked. In fact, the
movement had strong national reformist and liberal roots, most clearly
expressed by one of its early champions, the Catalan industrialist Juan
Güell. For him, the modernisation of Spain required a national programme
of industrial development to support private initiative. Only with such a
broadly based and state-supported policy could Spain confront the over-
whelming economic power of the industrialised countries, Britain’s in par-
ticular. Güell, however, was not an economic nationalist: like his mentor,
Jaumeandreu, and fellow Catalan industrialists, he believed competitive
capitalism could generate the benefits described by classical economists.
However, his tour of English manufacturing districts had made him
acutely aware of the vulnerability of Spanish industry in the face of supe-
rior British technology and organisation. Protection was therefore essen-
tial for a period to enable it to become internationally competitive in the
longer term. He viewed the idealistic hopes of his free trade adversary, the
Manchester industrialist leader, Richard Cobden, for harmony and even
world peace, if a free trade system was universally adopted, as wholly unre-
alistic and little more than a cover for British commercial interests. The
57
Carr, for example, recognises the Catalan manufacturers’ aspiration for a national policy
of support for industry but dismisses their case as a path to ‘inevitable inferiority’ given their
inability to produce at competitive cost. Carr (1966) 279.
28 N. SHARMAN
debate between the two men demonstrates that, while they shared impor-
tant ideological assumptions, their policy differences reflected the radically
different economic interests of their countries.
Güell’s modernising vision of liberal protectionism came under pres-
sure in the generation that followed him, as Spain adopted protectionist
policies in line with most other European countries. Chapter 8 follows the
careers of two economic protectionist reformers, the Basque industrialist
and politician, Pablo de Alzola and the Castilian liberal conservative politi-
cian, Santiago Alba as they struggled to reconcile the defensive economic
nationalism of the new tariff laws with the liberal policy origins of protec-
tionism. Alzola, for example, pressed the Conservative government of
Antonio Maura to introduce selective support for strategically important
developing industries, but his advice was ignored in favour of generalised
protection measures which favoured established interests. Despite the
strong interest in state-led ‘regenerationism’ following Spain’s defeat in
the Spanish-American War, and pressure for economic intervention from
the rising urban working and middle classes, the liberal modernisers within
the Restoration regimes failed to overcome the resistance of traditional
economic interests. A decade later, in 1916, this failure was brutally con-
firmed when Alba, by then Finance Minister, introduced his ‘extraordi-
nary’ interventionist budget in response to the deep economic crisis
created by the First World War. Alba, like Alzola before him, wanted an
active state to support the modernising sectors of the economy. After a
bitter political battle in the Cortes, this approach was once again over-
turned, this time by an alliance of conservatives opposed to tax increases
and deficit funding and traditional liberals, opposed to greater state
intervention.
The intensity of this parliamentary conflict showed that the role of the
state, rather than free trade, was now at the heart of economic debate.
This trend had been gathering pace over the previous three decades, as it
became clear that a wide range of social and economic demands could
only be satisfied by collective action by the state. The ideological debate,
linked to a growing assertion of national sovereignty, had important impli-
cations for Spain’s relationship with Britain. By the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, Spain had become a vital source of minerals for the ‘second’
industrial revolution based on the new steel, electricity and chemical
industries. Britain’s overriding strategic concern for the security of its min-
eral supplies had been largely met by taking ownership of the major min-
eral sources, enabled by Spain’s open investment policies. However, there
had been bitter opposition in Spain to these policies, dating from the first
initiatives to open the economy to direct foreign investment in the 1840s.
The protectionists argued that foreign extraction of these irreplaceable
national assets frustrated Spain’s industrialisation process by depriving the
country of the feedstock essential for the development of its own metal
and chemicals industries. As Chap. 7 points out, this issue came to a head
in the 1850s over the contracts for railway building when foreign contrac-
tors were allowed to use their own domestic suppliers for rail and locomo-
tive building. By the end of the century when the scale of foreign mineral
extraction had become starkly evident, with over 90% of the ores going
abroad unprocessed, this resentment had grown and was an important
factor in the Conservatives’ turn to protectionism.58
Spain’s growing demands for trade protection and greater control over
national resources represented a rejection of the economically liberal poli-
cies of small state individualism. This policy had been the price exacted by
the Northern European industrial powers for financing the chronic bud-
get deficits over the previous half century. However, a more forceful
Spanish nationalism emerged in the last two decades of the nineteenth
century, demanding greater state intervention in the domestic economy
and more control over foreign investment. For many on the right, this
revived hopes that Spain could again take on its historic role as imperial
coloniser, despite defeat in the Spanish-American War. Their campaign for
the acquisition of African colonies in Morocco and Guinea received
encouragement from the 1906 Algeciras Treaty which granted Spain over-
sight of northern Morocco and its potentially rich mineral deposits.
However, for other conservatives like Maura, the priority was to build a
stronger political foundation for the Spanish state itself, centred on strong
authoritarian leadership and the creation of a new mass party. Liberal con-
servatives like Santiago Alba, shared Maura’s distrust of colonial adven-
tures but argued that national strength depended on a reformed and
modernised economy supported by an active state. Moreover, he argued,
this had to be founded on a new social consensus involving the emerging
58
This turn was led by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the leader of the Conservative Party
and six times President of the Council of Ministers. He was the dominant political figure of
the last half of the nineteenth century and linked protectionism to the national interest, say-
ing ‘the credo of the conservative party is the protection of the nation’s production’. He
pointed out that the ‘superabundant export of minerals from Triano, Cartagena and Riotinto’
was ‘relegating us to the modest office of simple extractors of minerals’. Pugés, M Cómo
triunfó el proteccionismo en España, Barcelona, 1931, 266.
30 N. SHARMAN
social movements of working and middle-class groups, previously excluded

from politics. The growing republican and socialist movements also sup-
ported an expanded role for the state, which they saw as necessary to
achieve democratic national sovereignty and social reform. For all these
groups, building a more powerful and actively interventionist nation-state
was essential. In practice, the task of reconciling their conflicting aspira-
tions over the role and form of the state proved too much for the
Restoration regime. Under the social and political pressures of the First
World War and its aftermath, it eventually split into irreconcilable factions.
Chapter 9 explores the reaction over the next two decades to the break-
up of the Restoration regime. There were two authoritarian attempts to
preserve the power of traditional economic interests while managing the
conflicting pressures of economic nationalism and industrial modernisa-
tion: Primo de Rivera’s eight-year dictatorship following his coup d’état in
September 1923 and Franco’s imposition of a totalitarian regime after his
Civil War victory in 1939. The chapter charts the development of these
radical nationalist economic policies through the careers of José Calvo
Sotelo, Finance Minister under Primo, and of Juan Antonio Suanzes,
Industry Minister under Franco. Both authoritarian conservative regimes
attempted to solve the conundrum of industrialising a backward, agricul-
turally based economy in an increasingly competitive world economy.
There was, however, a fundamental difference between the two regimes:
Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship was founded on an authoritarian version of
economic liberalism. Franco’s dictatorship, on the other hand, rejected
economic and political liberalism in favour of a policy of economic autarky
and political totalitarianism. The repudiation of international engagement
by Franco’s ultranationalist regime was particularly significant: it repre-
sented an assertion of independence from the pressures of informal impe-
rialism by Spain’s political elite. By contrast, Primo de Rivera’s regime had
retained Spain’s long-standing aspiration to regain the great power status
it had lost in the Napoleonic Wars. Calvo Sotelo saw the authoritarianism
of Primo’s dictatorship as a necessary but temporary measure to re-impose
order on a fracturing society. At this stage in his career, he was still com-
mitted to the liberal tradition of individual democratic property rights and
to an eventual return to parliamentary democracy. He applied the same
authoritarian reformism to the economic field. Convinced of the benefits
of international capitalism in the tradition of the protectionist liberals, he
saw state intervention in support of industrial development as a short-
term measure to create an internationally competitive economy in Spain.
Suanzes’ career, on the other hand, reflects his intense political drive to
detach the country from the tentacles of informal imperialism, a policy
that Franco enthusiastically supported. By the end of his career in the
1960s, however, the boundaries set by wider political and economic envi-
ronment on the autarky project had become starkly evident. These limits,
illustrated by growing domestic expectations for individual and consumer
freedoms in the post-war period, were to show that autarky as a response
to informal imperial dominance was a disastrous policy cul-de-sac.
The political trajectory from liberalism to authoritarianism is not an
inevitable political development in post-colonial or peripheral states, but it
is sufficiently common to suggest that free trade imperialism creates politi-
cal and economic contradictions that make it more likely. Spain’s experi-
ence, as a notionally independent state operating in the shadow of the
‘informal’ empires of Britain and France, provides one of the first examples
of such a colony in a world economy driven by the industrialised great
powers and the operations of international finance capital. There are paral-
lels with the experience of authoritarian regimes in ex-colonies and other
peripheral nations, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Spain was
to have many post-war successors, informal colonies forced to operate
within the US-dominated free trade regime. Indeed, as Grady and Grocott
have shown, Gallagher and Robinson’s hypothesis has proved just as appli-
cable to the new US imperium, as it sought to bring new states within its
expansionist economy, as it had to the British Empire and its relationship
with less developed countries, such as Spain, in the previous century.59
The overall aim of the book is to propose a coherent framework for the
evolution of the Anglo-Spanish relationship in the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries. Its main proposition is that the long-term economic inter-
ests of the two countries underpinned—and shaped—the contours of their
political relationship. There has been considerable work on aspects of
these economic interests, notably in Spain, in reviews of the visible trade
between Britain and Spain,60 and in research covering financial and
59
Grady, J and Grocott, C (editors) The Continuing Imperialism of Free Trade,
London, 2018.
60
Vicens Vives and Nadal both provide detailed reviews of Anglo-Spanish trade during the
period, especially the wide range of mineral trades. Vicens Vives, J An Economic History of
Spain, Princeton, 1969; Nadal, J El fracaso de la Revolución Industrial en España, 1814–1913,
Ariel, Barcelona, 1975.
32 N. SHARMAN
investment flows.61 However, the relatively restricted scope and time

period covered by these studies has meant the extent of the two countries’
economic interdependence has generally been given less emphasis.62 It is
only by taking into account the full range of these underlying economic
interests and their interaction over the long term that we can adequately
explain British decisions to intervene in Spain at different times during
the period.
A second key proposition of the book is that interactions between
countries determine the nature of informal imperialist relationships and
have a very significant impact on the political and economic development
of the subordinate nation. Analysis of the negotiations over the competing
and overlapping interests of the dominant economy and those of the local
political elites is therefore crucial to explanations of their development.
However, historians in both countries have predominantly worked from
national perspectives, inevitably leading to the downplaying of the impact
of the relationships between countries in the framing of national issues.
The aim is to restore the balance by exploring these aspects, such as trade,
investment and financial flows and diplomatic interchanges, which make
up the content of relationships between countries. One particularly impor-
tant and often overlooked factor was the flow of economic ideas between
Britain and Spain. As Chaps. 7 and 8 show, the ‘export’ of British classical
economic theories played a critical role in the evolution of Spanish eco-
nomic thinking and these ideas, in turn, set the terms of the mainstream
political debate for much of the nineteenth century. The dominance of
classical economic theories, at the time and subsequently, has also had an
impact on the economic history narratives in both countries. Many of
these histories start with the assumption that national economies are
driven by exogenous, universalist forces based on competition and access
to resources, rather than by the relative power of countries. Yet, in Spain
as elsewhere, the deeply unequal flows of trade, investment and finance
were the means by which ‘informal’ economic control was exerted. In
61
Moradiellos and Edwards both note the extent of British direct investment in Spain in
the period while Campillo offers a more detailed sector-based review. Moradiellos, E La
Pefidia de Albión. El gobierno británico y la guerra civil espanola, Madrid, 1996; Edwards
(1979); Campillo, M Las Inversiones Extranjeras 1850–1950, Madrid, 1963.
62
Paul Kennedy’s work has highlighted the strategic importance of these trading routes
and details the role played by the Royal Navy in ensuring their security (Kennedy 2017).
However, in general, relatively little attention has been given to the geopolitical importance
of the Iberian Peninsula for Britain’s Mediterranean and Atlantic trade, especially with India.
turn, these shaped the terrain on which national political dramas unfolded,
as Gallagher and Robinson pointed out.63
The perspective suggested by these key propositions emphasises the
significance of Spain’s century-long debate over free trade and protection-
ism, an issue often seen as marginal by British historians. This was essen-
tially a contest between individualist and collective ideologies of modernity.
For the British and for many among the liberal elites in Spain, the free
market propositions of classical economists like Smith, Ricardo and Say
were self-evident: protectionist trade barriers and state intervention mea-
sures were harmful and had undermined progressive attempts to open up
and thereby modernise the Spanish economy. This has meant that alterna-
tive economic modernisation strategies, such as liberal protectionism in
the mid-nineteenth century and progressive economic nationalism in the
twentieth century, have rarely had a sympathetic hearing.64 The reviews of
the careers and ideas of the six economic theorists and political activists
aim to fill this important gap in historiography. They conclude that an
important driver in Spain’s turn to economic nationalism was ideological
and political resistance to Britain’s exercise of informal imperial control
through its free trade policy and ideology of radical individualism. The
dialectical relationship between the exercise of imperial power and colonial
resistance has received increasing attention, especially in post-colonial
studies of local independence movements in directly administered colo-
nies. This book suggests that in the informal colonies, there was a parallel
story of resistance to Britain’s free trade imperialism. Political and ideo-
logical resistance by the Spanish bourgeois faction most threatened by free
trade took the form of protectionism. We can see in their reaction evi-
dence of the ‘Caliban’ effect in which economic language is learned from,
and then deployed against, the coloniser.65 Jaumeandreu and Güell, for
example, ‘learnt’ the language of the classical economists and then re-
interpreted it to construct an alternative model for national economic
development. Although aspects of all these fields have been covered by
academic research, studies have largely concentrated on specific periods
63
64
Chang has provided a compelling account of the successful resistance to Britain’s free
trade policies by the industrialising countries of Northern Europe and the US which adopted
protectionist measures to support their developing economies. As he points out, Britain too
was strongly protectionist up to the 1840s. Chang, H-J, Kicking Away the Ladder: The
“Real” History of Free Trade, FPIF Special Report, December 2003.
65
Gopa (2019) 5.
34 N. SHARMAN
and individual biographies.66 By addressing the specific influence of British

ideology and policy on Spanish economic thinking at key moments of
change during the period, this book helps redress the balance while simul-
taneously analysing, through Spain’s experience, the ideological assump-
tions that lay behind the British Empire during its growth, apogee and
decline.
66
The literature of economic policymaking in Spain is mainly Spanish and there are only
limited references to the subject in British historiography. The extensive work of Juan Velarde
Fuertes has brought very detailed scholarship to the changing Spanish economic ideologies
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, his treatment of the progressive protec-
tionists’ economic analysis is limited and unsympathetic. Velarde Fuertes, J Flores de Lemus
ante la economía española, Instituto de Estudios Políticos, Madrid, 1961; Velarde Fuertes, J
Tres sucesivos dirigentes políticos conservadores y la economía, Análisis de Cánovas del Castillo,
Silvela y Maura, Madrid, 2007; Velarde Fuertes, J ‘1875–1986: Historia de un proceso de
apertura económica al exterior’, Política Exterior, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring, 1987, 91–113;
Velarde Fuertes, J ‘Stackelberg and his role in the change in Spanish economic policy’,
Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 231,996, pp.128–140; Velarde Fuertes, J ‘El inicio de la
economía castiza española: la economía de la Regencia’, Arbor CLX, 630, June 1998,
183–213.
CHAPTER 2
Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal

Monarchy, 1833–1856
When Spain’s absolute monarch, Fernando VII, died in 1833, Britain’s

maturing industrial revolution and worldwide naval dominance were
already shaping a new form of imperial power founded on an integrated
system of industrial production and international free trade. Spain, with its
substantial and accessible markets and established institutional structures,
was an early and highly attractive prospect for this new form of informal
imperialism. This chapter describes how successive British governments
mounted a formidable combination of diplomatic and commercial initia-
tives, backed by military force, to press Spain to open its consumer mar-
kets to Britain’s manufacturers and traders. In parallel, they actively
worked to destroy Spain’s rival textile industry, centred in Catalonia. Spain
in the 1830s was acutely vulnerable to such foreign pressure. It was a cru-
cial turning point in Spain’s political and economic development, a period
of turbulent change which saw the faltering birth of a liberal constitutional
monarchy and the gradual emergence of a modern, consumer-driven
economy in its expanding cities.1 On the domestic front, the new regime
was immediately forced to defend itself against an uprising by Fernando’s
brother, Don Carlos, and only managed to survive the ensuing five-year-
long civil war with very substantial British financial and military support.
1
The combined population of Madrid and Barcelona, for example, doubled between 1800
and 1860.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 35

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Sharman, Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain, 1830–1950,
Britain and the World,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77950-4_2
36 N. SHARMAN
Externally, Spain, with Portugal, was the focus of rivalry between the
European great powers. Their geographical position at the hinge of the
fast-developing North Atlantic and Mediterranean trade routes exposed
both countries to the growing power of the rapidly industrialising,
Atlantic-facing powers, Britain, France and the US.2 Britain, as the domi-
nant world sea power, was especially concerned that Spain did not fall
under the influence of the absolutist regimes of the Holy Alliance of
Eastern empires, which might then have had naval access to the North
Atlantic. This possibility gave Britain a particularly strong incentive to
ensure there was a friendly and politically stable regime in Madrid.
Britain’s active imperial intervention in Spain can be dated to 29
September 1833, the day the forty-eight-year-old Fernando VII died,
ending an absolutist regime that had undergone two chaotic episodes of
revolution, monarchic flight and restoration. In accordance with a Royal
Decree allowing female succession and signed by Fernando only the previ-
ous year, his widow, María Cristina became Queen Regent for her three-
year-old daughter, Isabel. Her legitimacy was promptly challenged by her
brother-in-law, Don Carlos, whose armed rebellion was designed to win
the throne for his side of the family, the supporters of a traditional abso-
lute monarchy. In response, María Cristina appealed for the support of the
liberal monarchist party, the moderados, to organise a military campaign
against the Carlist forces. The moderados agreed to provide the necessary
funding in exchange for the creation of a narrowly based elected (though
consultative) parliament in the Royal Statute of 1834. However, the other
main liberal faction, the progresistas, committed to the individual and con-
stitutional freedoms established in the 1812 Cadiz Constitution, wanted a
constitution that would make the government accountable to parliament
rather than to the monarch. They used their voice in the new parliament
to mount a strong and effective campaign, which gained widespread pop-
ular support.
Britain viewed this febrile political situation with considerable alarm. It
was wholly opposed to Don Carlos’ absolutist challenge to the Spanish
throne, as it was to a parallel bid, by the absolutist pretender, Dom Miguel
in neighbouring Portugal. Both Don Carlos and Dom Miguel were seen
as allies of the Holy Alliance of Prussia, Austria and Russia. For Britain, a
strong liberal monarchy in Spain, founded on the settlement of the 1834
Royal Statute, was therefore an essential anchor of its European foreign
2
Kennedy (2017) 71.
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„Naar het rotshol,” gebood de lange.
„Ophangen zullen we ze! O, ik heb zoo’n mooi touwtje voor jullie!”
Niettegenstaande Ambro zich heftig verweerde door in het rond te slaan en te

trappen werd het zestal het rotshol binnengesleurd en daar flink bewaakt.
Om hulp schreeuwen gaf ze niet, want er was niemand in den omtrek te

bespeuren. Zelfs Alebes, die een verdieping hooger troonde, scheen niets te
hooren. Hij was zeker weer onder bedwelming van het geliefkoosde vocht.
„Ik ga de strop ophangen,” riep de lange Loese.
De Koe, een van z’n makkers, een stevige, dikke knul, was hem daarbij
behulpzaam. Paul vroeg angstig aan Karel: „Ze zullen ons toch niet
ophangen?”
„Dat zou best kunnen,” plaagde Karel. „In dit hol hebben er meer den dood
gevonden.”
Het huilen stond Paul nader dan ’t lachen.
Lange Loese, was, zooals ik reeds zeide, een [65]groote plaaggeest, maar, tot
waarlijk slechte dingen was hij niet in staat.
„De strop is klaar,” zei hij met vervaarlijk stemgeluid. „Twee aan twee moeten
ze bengelen. Eerst vijf minuten onder de armen en dan om den nek. En,”…
voegde hij er grijnzend aan toe. „Dàt zal wel geen vijf minuten duren!!!”
De Koe, die meelij had met het angstige gezicht van Paul, stelde zijn heer en
meester voor, het zestal eerst als slaaf te laten dienen, maar de lange Loese
meende, dat die apen toch tot niets in staat waren en het maar beter was, ze
ineens op te hangen. Terwijl hij nog druk bezig was met een vrij dik touw aan
de rotspunten te bevestigen, werd hij plotseling omver gegooid door de Koe,
die een hevigen zet van Ambro kreeg.
Ambro had zich lang stil gehouden en kalm overwogen hoe hij het beste de
gevangenis kon ontvluchten.
Hij had zich daarom aanvankelijk rustig gehouden en zijn bewakers hadden
dan ook weinig acht op hem geslagen.
Van die achteloosheid maakte Ambro nu gebruik om met een bliksemsnellen

vaart tegen de Koe aan te loopen, die op zijn beurt den langen Loese weer
omver wierp.
Nu rende hij, zooals hij nog nooit gerend had. En vóór de andere jongens hem
konden nazetten, was hij hen reeds zóó ’n eind voor, dat van inhalen geen
sprake meer was.
De lange Loese schold op de bewakers, die nu [66]met verdubbelden ijver het

resteerend aantal gevangenen in de gaten hielden.
Chris fluisterde Karel in: „Je zult zien, Ambro gaat hulp halen, hij laat ons nooit
in den steek.”
„Nu Ambro weggeloopen is, is de lange Loese natuurlijk nog veel woester,”
huiverde Paul.
„Nou,” gebood de lange. „’t Moet nou maar gebeuren, jullie gaan dan nu maar
een voor een. Jullie zult het voor je weggeloopen vriend moeten ontgelden.”
„Kom jij hier,” schreeuwde hij tot Chris, die moedig naar voren kwam. „Steek je
armen in de twee lussen. Bind vast, de Koe, en dan hijschen.”
Chris werd onder de armen vastgebonden en daarna omhoog geheschen aan

een overhangend rotsblok.
Bang was Chris in ’t minst niet, want al spartelend [67]maakte hij allerlei
grimassen, trok malle gezichten, zoodat zelfs Paul moest lachen.
„Als je niet stil hangt, krijg je er nog stokslagen bij,” beloofde hem de lange
Loese.
Chris wist wat dat zeggen wilde. Als het slaan gold, kende de lange Loese
geen genade.
„M’n armen gaan pijn doen,” klaagde Chris,
„Het touw striemt zoo.”

„Dàt moet ook,” stelde de Koe hem gerust. Maar nu gebeurde er iets, dat hen
allen verschrikt deed opzien.
Plotseling stormden vier groote jongens, met Ambro voorop het hol binnen en
grepen onder luid geschreeuw den verbaasden langen Loese en z’n helpers
beet.
„De wraak is zoet,” juichte Ambro. „Nou zien jullie eens wat het is, kleinere
jongens aan te vallen.”
Ambro had namenlijk de hulp ingeroepen van een paar groote H.B.S.’ers die
hij goed kende en die schik in hem hadden om z’n vermaarde guitenstreken.
Het waren stevige, pootige boys en dat voelde de lange Loese aan den lijve.
O, wat kreeg hij er van langs.
Chris was intusschen door Ambro uit z’n benarde positie bevrijd en de helpers
van den langen Loese konden na een flink pak slaag de beenen nemen.
Maar met hun hoofdman was nog niet afgerekend.
Een eindje van de rots af, stond een handkar.
De lange Loese werd nu met z’n eigen touw gebonden en voor ’t eerst zagen
de kleinere jongens [68]een angstigen trek op het anders zoo grijnzende
gezicht van hun langen vijand.
Een der H.B.S.’ers nu had een goede straf voor hem bedacht.
„Hij moet voor de kar gespannen,” beval hij. „Jullie zessen gaan er in en hij
moet jullie trekken.”
„Ja, ja,” juichten de jongens. „Dat is goed!” En zoo werd lange Loese voor de
handkar gespannen en stond hij met een beteuterd gezicht te wachten wat er
met hem gebeuren ging.
„Instappen heeren,” riep Ambro. „De diligence vertrekt.”
En met een rietje tikte hij op het hoofd van den langen Loese, die, of hij wilde
of niet, op een drafje loopen moest, want van achteren duwden acht krachtige
armen de kar voort
Zoo zouden zij zeker een rit door den geheelen dierentuin gemaakt hebben,
als Manus van de [69]eenden niet verschenen was, die z’n kar opeischte.
Lange Loese werd dus weer bevrijd en kon het hazenpad kiezen.
Vooreerst zouden de jongens zeker geen last meer van hem hebben.
„Toch ben ik lekker niet opgehangen,” schreeuwde Paul, nu moedig, hem na.
„Ja nou maak je praats,” zei Ambro. „Maar straks geloofde je al voor de
haaien te zijn.”
Het was laat geworden. De jongens verlieten al pratend den tuin om zich naar
huis te begeven.
Het was weer een fijne middag geweest Voor hen was het goed afgeloopen
en lange Loese kreeg een flinke les.
[Inhoud]
EEN „DIKKE” VRIEND.
Het is Zaterdagmorgen.—De jongens zitten op school.
Ze zijn dezen morgen, allen zonder uitzondering heel ongedurig en mijnheer

heeft al eenige keeren verboden.
Als ze eindelijk vijf minuten pauze hebben, staat Karel op en vraagt of

mijnheer hem permissie wil geven de klasse te tracteeren.
„Wel, wat is er aan de hand, jongen? Ben je jarig?” vraagt mijnheer.
„Ja mijnheer,” zegt Karel verheugd.
„Zoo, dan begrijp ik, dat jullie vanmorgen zoo bizonder onrustig en
onoplettend bent. Zeker een pretje in ’t vooruitzicht,” lacht mijnheer. [70]
Karel knipte geheimzinnig tegen z’n makkers.
„En òf, mijnheer,” zegt hij. „Maar, ’t is nog een verrassing voor m’n vrienden, ik
mag niets vertellen.”
Nu haalt Karel een zak vol heerlijke bruidsuikers uit zijn schooltasch en begint
te presenteeren.
Mijnheer treft een ulevel, waaromheen een papiertje zit met een rijmpje er op.
„Toe mijnheer, leest u voor,” roepen de jongens.
Mijnheer leest het fraaie twee-regelige gedicht en begint dan hard te lachen.
„Toe, mijnheer, toe,” dringen de jongens, „leest u nu voor.”
Onder ademlooze stilte leest mijnheer op tragischen toon de volgende fraaie

dichtregels voor:
Juffrouw, al kijkt u nog zoo raar,

De huwelijksschuit ligt voor u klaar!
Een uitbundig gelach breekt los, dàt is ook al te mooi!
„Dat slaat als een tang op een varken,” gilt Ambro. „Mijnheer is geen juffrouw
en mijnheer is al lang getrouwd. O, wat is ie fijn!”
Mijnheer laat ze eens even uitlachen en dan gaan allen weer aan ’t werk.
Maar den jongens duurt deze morgen zoo eindeloos lang en telkens moet
Karel z’n horloge raadplegen om zich te overtuigen dat ’t nu heusch nòg geen
twaalf uur is.
Eindelijk is de morgen dan toch om en hollen de jongens uitgelaten de straat

op. [71]
Ze verdringen zich om Karel en trachten hem nog het geheim van dien dag te
ontfutselen. Maar Karel blijft standvastig en verklapt het niet.
„Half twee aantreden voor ons huis en dan zullen jullie wel zien,” en weg holt
hij, terwijl de andere jongens zich in gissingen verdiepen welk pretje ze wel
zou wachten.
Klokslag half twee zijn ze allen present bij Karel. Ieder heeft een cadeautje
voor hem meêgebracht en Karel heeft geen handen genoeg om alles aan- en
uit te pakken. Dan komt Karel’s moeder binnen met een aardig nichtje van
ongeveer achttien jaar, allebei met hoed en mantel aan.
Mevrouw kijkt eens naar de klok en lacht geheimzinnig.
„Zijn de zussen nog niet klaar?” vraagt het nichtje.
„Die zijn met hun vriendinnetjes in den tuin,” zegt mevrouw. „We zullen ze nu
maar roepen.”
De twee zusjes van Karel mochten ieder een vriendinnetje vragen.
Als dit viertal binnen is gekomen, voegen ze zich bij de jongens en ’t is een
vroolijk, luidruchtig elftal, dat daar om de tafel met cadeautjes staat, in
afwachting van de dingen die komen zullen.
Daar hooren ze door de stille straat een rijtuig rijden, dat stilhoudt voor het
huis.
„Daar is ie,” gilt Karel, die zich niet langer bedwingen kan, en hij snelt naar het
raam, gevolgd door het heele troepje.
En daar zien ze hem staan, een reuzen-brik met twee stevige knollen er voor.
[72]
De geheele brik is versierd met vlaggetjes en guirlanden van groen en

bloemen.
’t Is een recht feestelijk gezicht.
De jubilaris en z’n gasten gieren het uit van de pret en dansen uitgelaten in
het rond.
Mevrouw fluistert wat met het nichtje, dat daarop de kamer verlaat en
terugkomt met een grooten kartonnen doos.
Mevrouw neemt de doos van haar over en zegt: „Kinderen, kom nu om

beurten bij me, dan krijg je ieder een muziekinstrument.”
En ze ontpakt mirlitons, ratels, mondharmonika’s en ieder krijgt een

instrument waaraan ze direct liefelijke tonen trachten te ontlokken wat een
heidensch kabaal in de kamer gaf.
Mevrouw houdt lachend de handen voor de ooren en zegt: „Wachten jullie

liever met die prachtige symphonie tot we buiten zijn. En nu vlug de jassen
over den arm en ingestapt.”
Ze hollen juichend naar het rijtuig, waar ruimte voor hen allen is.
Ambro zit met Chris in den kattenbak en Paul mag op zijn verzoek naast den
koetsier zitten waarmee hij direct een levendig gesprek begint.
Dan dragen de dienstmeisjes nog twee groote kisten aan, die onder de
banken geschoven worden en die, volgens Karel, allerlei zoete heerlijkheden
bevatten.
„Klaar koetsier,” roept mevrouw en voort gaat ’t in gestrekten draf.
Het is een heerlijke voorjaarsdag. Papa Boekers [73]had, toen ’t plan van den
rijtoer ontworpen werd, nog eenige bedenkingen gemaakt met het oog op het
voorjaar, waarin je leelijke gure dagen kunt hebben. Doch het weêr
logenstrafte deze bewering en zette z’n beste beentje voor.
Mijnheer had dan ook ’s morgens met een gerust hart de brik besteld.
Zelf had hij geen tijd om mee te gaan, maar hij beloofde aan den maaltijd, die
op dezen dag wat vroeger gehouden werd, present te zijn.
De rit ging langs de Schie en de jongens merkten vol vreugde op, dat het
jonge groen aan den kant al begon uit te loopen.
Nu reden ze langs Stor’s houthandel.
„Kijk eens, wat een balken!” riep Puckie, die niet wist welk een gevoeligen
snaar hij aanraakte, want destijds was hij juist erg ziek geweest en men had
hem zoo weinig mogelijk verteld van het droevig ongeluk.
Een plotselinge stilte volgde op die woorden. De vroolijke gezichten

betrokken.
„Arme Bob,” zei mevrouw zacht en de jongens keken elkaar aan en

herdachten in stilte den gestorven makker.
Nicht Marie, die de droeve gedachten op de vlucht wilde jagen, pakte Ambro’s
mondharmonika af en deed alsof ze wilde gaan spelen.
Maar Ambro griste hem haar direct weer af en begint een lustig deuntje te
spelen.
De andere instrumenten vallen direct in en ’t is een getoeter en geblaas van

belang. [74]
De wandelaars die den vroolijken stoet voorbij zien komen, blijven staan en
wuiven ze toe.
„Waar gaan we heen, Moes?” vraagt Karel, waarvoor de rest van het
programma ook een geheim blijkt te zijn.
„Dat zul je wel zien,” lacht mevrouw.
Intusschen zijn ze „Vrouw Romijn” genaderd, de eerste groote speeltuin op

hun weg.
„O, nu weet ik ’t al,” roept Karel. „We gaan naar vrouw Romijn.”
„Mis poes,” plaagt het nichtje.
Weer rijden ze een eind door.
„Maar nu weet ik ’t,” zegt Karel. „We gaan naar Freeriks! Hè, fijn! dàt is zoo’n
echte tuin! Toe moes, zeg ’t nu eens, gaan we daarheen?”
„Nu heb je ’t geraden,” zegt mevrouw.
„Hoera, hoera!” gillen de kinderen door elkaar.
En dan volgt weer een oorverdoovend „lang zal ie leven” en „Karel Boekers
gaat nooit verloren.”
’t Is een lawaai van je welste en mevrouw is blij dat het einde van den tocht
nadert. En zoo komt de vroolijke troep dan bij Freeriks aan. De jongens tillen
de kisten uit het rijtuig en mevrouw zegt den koetsier om half vijf voor te
komen om ze terug naar huis te brengen.
Dan kiest mevrouw een groote, ronde tafel uit die onder een boom staat en
neemt daar plaats met het nichtje.
Ze noodigt de kinderen uit bij hen te komen zitten, een invitatie waar ze geen
van allen gehoor aan geven, want ze rennen in wilde vaart weg [75]en nemen
de verschillende werktuigen in beslag.
Ambro zit reeds boven in een paal en zwaait met zijn pet naar het gezelschap
beneden hem.
„Denk om je beste broek,” roept Paul de voorzichtige.

„Hij kan er tegen,” roept Ambro overmoedig. De dikke Puckie houdt op een
wip evenwicht met twee tengere meisjes, die hij telkens met een bons naar
beneden laat vliegen, waarop ze ernstige gilletjes uitstooten.
„Niet zoo wild,” laat mevrouw telkens waarschuwend hooren.
„Ik ga op de fietsenmolen,” roept Chris en Ambro, die ’t hoort, laat zich vlug
als een aap naar beneden zakken en gevolgd door Karel en Paul gaan ze op
den draaimolen af.
Ze nemen elk op een fiets plaats.
„Hij draait op rails,” roept Ambro. „Trappen jongens!”
Met groote inspanning weten zij beweging te krijgen in den fietsmolen. [76]
Het is een zwaar werk, want de fietsmolen is bestemd voor twintig passagiers
en is dus niet zoo gemakkelijk in beweging te krijgen. Dit spelletje kost ze dan
ook veel inspanning. Gelukkig komen er meer liefhebbers, waaronder een
tamelijk corpulenten heer, die zijn hart nog eens wil ophalen aan een
liefhebberij uit zijn jeugd en duchtig meetrapt, waarop ’t met een flink vaartje
in ’t rond gaat.
Daar komt ’t zusje van Karel aankondigen dat de limonade op tafel staat.
En nu laten de jongens alle werktuigen in den steek en hollen naar de tafel,

waar mevrouw zit en de volle limonadeglazen hun liefelijk toelonken.
En dan komt ook de groote doos met taartjes te voorschijn en is ’t een lang
gezoek in de doos vol heerlijkheden eer ieder z’n uitverkorene te pakken
heeft.
„Moeder, mogen we roeien,” vraagt Karel als drank en taartjes naar binnen
gewerkt zijn.
„Volstrekt niet, je weet wel, dat ik ’t nooit wil hebben als Vader er niet bij is.”
„Maar als die dikke heer nou met ons meegaat?”
„Dikke heer?” vraagt mevrouw verwonderd.
„Ja, die daar gindsch zit, hij heeft ons ook zoo fijn met fiets-trappen geholpen.”
„Met die dikkert ga ik niet in een bootje,” zegt Paul. „Dan zinken we vast.”
„Daar hê-je de bangerd weer,” zegt Chris, die nooit nalaten kan Paul even te
plagen.
„Maar jongens,” zegt mevrouw weifelend. „Ik weet heelemaal niet, of die
mijnheer er lust in [77]heeft met jullie te gaan roeien. Heeft hij jullie dan
uitgenoodigd?”
„Neen mevrouw,” zegt Ambro, die als steeds z’n antwoordje klaar heeft. „Maar
dan noodigen we hem uit.”
„Toe maar, moes,” dringt Karel aan. „Zeg nou maar ja,” en hij strijkt zijn
moeder vleiend over de wang.
En moeder vindt het goed, onder voorwaarde, dat ze zich rustig zullen houden
en een groote, vertrouwde boot zullen opzoeken.
De heele bende rent naar den dikken heer, die niets kwaads vermoedend zijn
courantje zit te lezen.
„Mijnheer, ’t mag,” roept Karel juichend. „Gaat u mee?”
„Wàt mag?” vraagt mijnheer verwonderd. „En waar moet ik mee naar toe?”
„We mogen roeien, als u met ons meegaat,” vertelt Karel hem.
„Zeer gevleid,” lachte mijnheer. „Maar je vraagt niet eens of ik wel zin heb.”
„O, dat heeft u vast,” zegt Ambro. „U zat zoo echt op die fietsmolen ook.”
Mijnheer krijgt schik in ’t geval en ofschoon z’n corpulentie hem wel wat in den
weg zit, waardoor hij zich niet zoo gemakkelijk beweegt, staat hij toch direct
op en begeeft zich, omringd door een kring juichende jongens naar de
aanlegplaats van de bootjes.
„En moeten je zusjes nou niet mee,” vraagt de goeiige dikkert, die blijkbaar de
vrouwelijke sekse niet gaarne ten achter stelt. [78]
„We kunnen niet allemaal tegelijk in een boot,” herneemt hij. „Ga nou je zusjes
halen en dan zullen we in twee partijen gaan. Als de eene helft gevaren heeft,
gaat de andere.”
Dan gaat hij de rollen verdeelen.
„Ik ben de kapitein, jij stuurman en jullie om beurten de roeiers, ieder een
spaan.”
Nadat de meisjes gehaald zijn en ze nog een duchtige vermaning van moeder
kregen, om toch vooral voorzichtig te zijn, worden zij verzocht om na een
kwartier weer bij de aanlegplaats te zijn, dan zal het eerste gedeelte terug
zijn.
De boot is uitgezocht. Het is een spits toeloopend, rank vaartuigje.
De dikke heer is in de boot gestapt, die bij dit entrée hevige schommelingen
maakt. De jongens volgen hem.
De dikkert neemt de leiding en het moet gezegd worden, dat de jongens zijn
commando voorbeeldig opvolgen.
Als een geroutineerd trainer galmt mijnheer: „één twee, één twee,” tot ie
geheel buiten adem raakt en zijn bemanning het verdere van den roeitocht
zonder dit bemoedigend commando doorroeit.
„Jij bent aan ’t baggeren,” zegt Ambro tegen Paul, die zijn roeispaan bijna
loodrecht in het water priemt en een hoop modder naar boven haalt.
„Je moet even onder de oppervlakte van het water scheren,” onderwijst
mijnheer.
Paul doet angstige pogingen dit voorschrift te volgen, maar slaat ditmaal met
z’n spaan door de [79]lucht, zoodat de waterdruppels links en rechts op de
inzittenden neerkomen.
„Nou is ie vliegenier geworden,” lacht Chris.
„Laat mij daar zitten, Paul, dan kan jij sturen,”
„Voorzichtig omwisselen, jongens,” waarschuwt mijnheer, „anders slaan we

om. En ik kan jullie niet alle zes naar den kant brengen.”
„O, we kunnen best zwemmen,” roept Ambro.
„Ik nìet,” roept Paul, die bang is, dat Ambro een proef wil gaan nemen.
Nu Chris Paultje’s plaats ingenomen heeft, gaat het roeien veel gelijkmatiger
en houden ze gelijken slag met Puckie en Karel.
Het is heerlijk op het water en de jongens genieten van hun roeitocht.
Ze varen tusschen het riet en verschrikken de waterhoentjes die er tusschen

verscholen zitten.
„Weten jullie wel, dat een goed jager aan het riet kan zien, waar het nest van
het waterhoen is?” zegt mijnheer.
„Weet u ’t ook,” vraagt Ambro.
„Neen,” lacht mijnheer. „Ik ben geen goed jager. Ik laat de diertjes liever hun
vrijheid, ze hooren immers bij het wuivende riet en de mooie, wijde plassen.”
„Laten we het eilandje omvaren,” roept Karel.
„Neen, dat is te ver, dan komen de anderen niet aan den beurt,” zegt
mijnheer. „We moeten draaien, jongens,” zegt hij tot Ambro en Karel. „Houdt
de spanen in.” En tot de andere jongens: „En jullie, doorroeien.” [80]
En met snelle vaart, draait het bootje om en aanvaardt de terugreis.
Even ordelijk als ze weggegaan zijn, komen ze weer terug en maken plaats
voor de anderen, die al met ongeduld staan te wachten.
Intusschen is moeder met het nichtje eens even komen kijken, terwijl juist het
tweede troepje met mijnheer aanlandt.
Mijnheer is vol lof over de meisjes, die in ’t roeien niets onder doen voor de
jongens.
„Mijnheer,” roept Karel. „Daar staat moeder.” En juichend roept hij: „Moeder,
daar is die aardige mijnheer.”
„Je zoudt me verlegen maken, jongen,” lacht mijnheer, terwijl hij naar
mevrouw toe gaat.
„Mag ik me dan maar even voorstellen, mevrouw. Mijn naam is Reens, dokter
Reens.”
Mevrouw reikt hem vriendelijk de hand, terwijl ze zegt: „Mevrouw Boekers.”
En dan laat ze er op volgen: „Mag ik u verzoeken aan ons tafeltje te komen

zitten en met ons op Karel’s gezondheid te drinken, wij vieren n.l. zijn
verjaardag.”
„Heel graag, mevrouw,” zegt Dr. Reens en onder gejuich van de jongens
wordt hij door de meisjes onder den arm gepakt en gaan ze naar mevrouw’s
tafel waar ze gezellig plaats nemen.
„’t Is net of we mijnheer al jaren lang kennen,” zegt Ambro.
„Nu,” zegt mevrouw, „dat ben ik met je eens, jongen, ik vind zelfs, dat
mijnheer een zeer bekend [81]gezicht heeft en toen ik klein was, ging ik op de
bewaarschool met een zekeren Jan Reens, die drie huizen van ons af
woonde en waar mijnheer heusch nog op lijkt.”
„Juist mevrouw, datzelfde jongetje ben ik,” lachte mijnheer. „En wacht eens—
dan is u Lize Gardens. ’t Is wel héél toevallig, dat we elkaar na al die jaren
hier ontmoeten. Wat hebben we veel kattekwaad samen uitgehaald!”
De kinderen spitsen de ooren, daar zouden ze wel eens wat meer van willen
hooren, maar mevrouw schijnt ’t niet noodig te vinden dat haar kroost alle
ondeugende streken te hooren krijgt die ze in haar jeugd uitgehaald heeft en
ze zegt:
„Dat is alweer ruim dertig jaar geleden. Waar blijft de tijd.”
„Ja, ja, mevrouwtje,” lacht de dikkert. „We worden oud.”
„Wat zult u er koddig uitgezien hebben in een kort broekje,” zegt Ambro.
„Jullie kunt je mij toch ook niet voorstellen in een kort matrozenjurkje,” zegt
mevrouw, die bang is voor plagerijen van de jongens.
„Mijnheer, heeft u wel eens in een lantaarnpaal gezeten,” vraagt Puckie, terwijl
z’n blikken langs mijnheer’s dikke buikje glijden.
„Ja, jongen,” lacht mijnheer goedmoedig. „Maar toen leek ik zelf veel op een
telefoonpaal en dus ging ’t me makkelijk af.”
De jongens lachen hartelijk en vinden mijnheer een echte fideele vent. [82]
Niet lang hebben ze echter geduld om naar het gesprek der oudere
menschen te luisteren en ze gaan de werktuigen weer opzoeken.
Karel en Puckie staan samen op den schommel, ze gaan verbazend hoog en

Chris roept ze van beneden toe: „Jongens, niet meer opzetten, jullie hebt
slappe touwen.”
De jongens blijven nu rustig staan en suizen heerlijk in volle vaart door de

lucht. Dan opeens wil Paul, de anders zoo voorzichtige, het moment
waarnemen dat ze hoog in de lucht zijn om onder door te kruipen en zoo bij
de jongens aan den anderen kant te komen.
Plotseling struikelt hij, en krijgt net den schommel, die in volle vaart is, tegen
de heup aan.
Zonder een kreet te geven, valt hij neer en blijft met gesloten oogen liggen.
Twee jongens houden de schommel tegen, Ambro vliegt naar Dr. Reens, de
anderen staan met angstige gezichten om Paul heen, die bewusteloos terneer
ligt.
In minder dan geen tijd zijn Dr. Reens en de dames bij Paul.
Dr. Reens neemt het bewustelooze ventje voorzichtig in de armen en draagt

hem in een bij den tuin gelegen zaal.
Mevrouw gaat met hem mee. Ze is geheel van streek door het ongeluk.
De anderen blijven in angstig afwachten buiten staan.
Na een kwartier komt Dr. Reens weer buiten, [83]en de jongens zien direct aan
zijn opgewekt gezicht dat het niet erg met Paul is. Ze stormen op hem los en
allen willen ze weten hoe ’t nu met Paul is.
„Nu jongens, dat liep nog goed af. Paul heeft een lichte wond aan de heup,
doch ’t heeft niets te beteekenen.
„We hebben ’t jongske verbonden en nu gaat hij straks rustigjes wat buiten
zitten en dan met het rijtuig mee naar huis.”
Het was een ware vreugde voor de jongens te hooren dat het niet ernstig was
en ze wilden nu allen naar Paul toe, maar daar gaf Dr. Reens geen permissie
toe.
„Straks komt hij,” zei hij en ging weer naar Paul toe.
„Zou hij nu niet bij ons mogen eten?” vroeg Karel bedrukt.
„Ik denk ’t niet,” zei Ambro. „Hij moet misschien meteen naar z’n bed als hij
thuis komt.”
Dat vonden ze allen bar sneu voor Paul en de feeststemming begon erg te
dalen. Maar daar kwamen de dames en dokter weer naar buiten en tusschen
hen in, Paul.
Hij zag nog wat bleek, maar lachte de kameraden al weer vroolijk toe.
„Zoo patiënt,” zei dokter. „Nu ga je rustig bij ons aan het tafeltje zitten en als je
je dan heel kalm gehouden hebt, dan geef ik je permissie om den maaltijd bij
je jarigen vriend te gebruiken.”
„Hoera!” schreeuwden de jongens en ze maakten zóó’n spektakel, dat dokter

ze allen wegjoeg. [84]
De meisjes mochten echter blijven, die konden Paul dan rustig en aangenaam
bezighouden.
„Wat ben ik u toch dankbaar, dokter,” zei mevrouw hartelijk. „U nam me een
pak van ’t hart toen u zei dat onze Pauleman zich niet ernstig bezeerd had.”
„Tot uw dienst, Mevrouw,” zei dokter eenvoudig.
„Nu heb ik een aardig plannetje bedacht,” zei mevrouw, terwijl ze omkeek of
de jongens haar niet hooren konden.
„U zei me straks, dokter, dat u vandaag nog in uw hotel bleef en pas morgen
naar uw woonplaats terugkeerde. Nu zou ik ’t zoo heel aardig vinden, als u
vanmiddag ons eenvoudig maal deelde en vanavond … ja, ik kan ’t u nu niet
zeggen omdat de meisjes en Paul het nog niet mogen weten … maar of u dan
den avond in ons gezelschap wilt doorbrengen.”
Dit vond dokter een heel aardig plan en volgaarne nam hij mevrouw’s
vriendelijke invitatie aan.
„Moeder, daar hoor ik de brik,” riep Tine Boekers.
„Gaan jullie dan de jongens roepen, meisjes,” zei mevrouw. „En Paul, voel jij
je nu goed genoeg om de terugreis te aanvaarden?”
„Ik voel me zoo gezond als een visch, mevrouw,” zei Paul.

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Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain,

1830-1950. Free Trade, Protectionism

The Geography of Trade Liberalization: Peru’s Free

Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and

France, Mexico and Informal Empire in Latin America,

A Political Economy of Power: Ordoliberalism in

Pax Economica : Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs

Capitalist Peace: A History of American Free-Trade

Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects

Britain’s Informal Empire

More information about this series at

Britain and the World

Cover illustration: © Old Books Images / Alamy Stock Photo

politics. The third was the Spanish protectionist movement’s resistance to

support and encouragement, notably Lisa Newby, Teresa Itabor, Karenjit

Nottingham, UK Nick Sharman

Translations from Spanish sources are by the author.

Part I British Informal Imperialism and Spain 1

1 Informal Imperialism and the British Empire 3

2 Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal Monarchy,

3 Britain, Spain and the War of Africa, 1859–1860 65

4 The ‘Disaster’ of the Spanish-American War of 1898

5 Informal Imperialism and Total War: Britain and Spain

6 The Second World War: Revival and Demise of Britain’s

Part II Spain’s Response to Britain’s Informal Imperialism 147

7 The Spanish Challenge to Britain’s Free Trade

8 The Rise of Economic Nationalism173

9 Economic Nationalism to Autarky193

Britain’s Informal Imperialism

Informal Imperialism and the British Empire

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

‘informal’ Empire, exploited economically and dominated politically,

inadequate financial sector, oriented to funding public debt, an undevel-

undermining the fledgling industrial class and supporting the landowners’

The Informal Imperialism Controversy

capitalist system as the settler colonies became economically self-­

of British manufacturers and traders to extend the range of their activities

informal colony’s sovereignty is subordinated to the economically domi-

close identification of its commercial elites with British economic interests

market in leases and to the emergence of a new form of agriculture, cen-

helpfully proposed a definition of subordination in terms of a more

of the expansive society and also by the world situation in general’.36 It

Spain and Informal Imperialism

The most fundamental of the three dimensions was the geostrategic,

other less aggressive threats to Britain’s command of the Gibraltar Strait.

fiercely resisted any substantial change to Spain’s restrictive tariff barriers

series of tariff reforms was agreed which significantly lowered barriers to

of British products.49 Any attempt to protect its industries in defiance of

The Spanish Reaction to Britain’s

Jaumeandreu and his followers rejected one of the universalist assump-

there were profound differences, reflecting their view that individual

social movements of working and middle-class groups, previously excluded

investment flows.61 However, the relatively restricted scope and time

and individual biographies.66 By addressing the specific influence of British

Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal

When Spain’s absolute monarch, Fernando VII, died in 1833, Britain’s

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 35

„Ophangen zullen we ze! O, ik heb zoo’n mooi touwtje voor jullie!”

Niettegenstaande Ambro zich heftig verweerde door in het rond te slaan en te

Om hulp schreeuwen gaf ze niet, want er was niemand in den omtrek te

„Ik ga de strop ophangen,” riep de lange Loese.

Het huilen stond Paul nader dan ’t lachen.

Nottingham, UK Nick Sharman

Part I British Informal Imperialism and Spain 1

1 Informal Imperialism and the British Empire 3

2 Britain, Free Trade and the Spanish Liberal Monarchy,

3 Britain, Spain and the War of Africa, 1859–1860 65

4 The ‘Disaster’ of the Spanish-American War of 1898

5 Informal Imperialism and Total War: Britain and Spain

6 The Second World War: Revival and Demise of Britain’s

Part II Spain’s Response to Britain’s Informal Imperialism 147

7 The Spanish Challenge to Britain’s Free Trade

8 The Rise of Economic Nationalism173

9 Economic Nationalism to Autarky193

capitalist system as the settler colonies became economically self-