Hear the proclamation of the alderman and offices of the Council of this City of Goa, that every citizen and any other head of a household of any quality nation who is Portuguese, should come next Monday morning very early to the council chamber, since this is needful for the good of the common weal of the city: under penalty that anyone who does not turn up in the said council chamber must accept whatever is decided there on the said day by a majority vote of the people and leading men of the municipality, and he cannot plead that he was not informed that the meeting was held. (April 21, 1535)1
Those of us who study the English colonies on the Atlantic are apt to overlook the importance of the frontier city in the early modern world. We tend to emphasize towns in New England, plantations in the American South and the West Indies, and view the urban life of New Amsterdam as a Dutch anomaly. But in the larger context of European overseas expansion, the city was critical, providing the foundation of empire.
The European frontier cities in Asia preceded and coincided with the building of frontier towns and cities in the Americas. These cities were the entrepôts for world trade, the way stations for ships traversing the oceans, and the nodes through which Europeans conducted diplomacy and undertook military affairs. This essay focuses on three of the most significant European cities in Asia: Portuguese Goa in India and Macau in China, and Spanish Manila in the Philippines. Examining why the Iberians established and defined cities in Asia, and how these cities functioned, gives us a better context for understanding the form and function of frontier cities around the globe. As the proclamation above makes clear, the early modern frontier city practiced self-government; householders possessed a say in shaping the city’s life. With the mother country so far away, the people who inhabited these frontier cities shaped the contours of empire.
First, a bit of important context on European expansion in the east. The European empires in the Pacific and Indian Oceans involved less territorial occupation than in the west. The focus was maritime and mercantile, securing trade by dominating sea-lanes and connecting urban bases in Asia and East Africa. The crux, and the most profitable aspect of their eastern empires, was trade that revolved around spices from a variety of islands, horses from Persia and Arabia, gold from East Africa and Sumatra, amber and precious stones from India and the Indian Ocean area, cotton textiles and rice from several places, musk, rhubarb, China-root, porcelains, silk, lacquers, paper, and furniture from China, and silk and copper from Japan. The most desired items were silks and spices, as well as gold.2 The key European problem: the lack of commodities to exchange for Asian goods. Portugal, the first European power to construct an Asian empire, solved the problem by carrying goods between China and Japan, becoming middlemen in Asia trade. The key item in making the whole Asian trade work, and which by extension incorporated Europe and the Americas into the Asian economic system, was silver.3
China had converted to a silver standard by the second half of the sixteenth century; and when we include the kingdoms that paid tribute to China, one-third of the world was on the silver system. China’s creation of the Single Whip Tax in the 1570s, which consolidated numerous taxes into one empirewide tax, was payable only in silver. Even peasants paid taxes in silver. To earn silver, Chinese manufactured silk in household production. China became a vacuum sucking silver from other parts of the world. From the 1570s to the 1640s, silver had twice the value in China that it had in Europe. After the price evened out in the 1640s, silver continued to flow to China to meet demand. In the eighteenth century, the value of silver in China again rose until about 1750.4
In return for silver, the Chinese produced 2,500 tons of silk per year in the early seventeenth century. One-third went to Japan, India, and the Americas through the Philippines. From the Japanese, the Chinese obtained silver. Hence, Portugal conducted a silver-for-silk trade between Japan and China. The Portuguese earned about 275 percent profit for silks carried from China to Japan, and around 180 percent on raw silk. The Portuguese also carried silver from the Spanish Philippines, which came across the Atlantic from Acapulco. From 1500 to 1800, Latin America produced 80 percent of the world’s silver. The greatest source was the silver mines at Potosí in Peru (modern-day Bolivia).5 Potosí silver was carried overland to Lima in a two-and-a-half month journey, then transported to Acapulco, and from there across the Pacific to Manila. Manila became one of the great marts of Asia as Portuguese from Macau, Chinese junks, and other Asian vessels arrived to pick up the silver, and additional items, such as sweet potatoes and maize, which largely made their way to China where they became a staple among the peasants, helping China meet the demands of intensive population growth in the seventeenth century. After Potosí’s decline, other areas picked up production, especially Mexico. The Acapulco-Manila connection became the prime link in the silver-for-silk trade, allowing Macau to survive as a major entrepôt after it lost the Japanese trade in 1639. Chinese imports saturated the Latin American market: Chinese porcelains could be found in small shops throughout South America and Mexico.6 Even Japanese exports made their way across the Pacific, and a recent five hundred-plus-page dissertation documents the influence of Japanese silk screens upon Mexican art in the seventeenth century.7 For the Portuguese, the intra-Asian trade was far more profitable than the trans-Oceania trade that extended around the Cape Route between Europe and Asia, but the crown made its money from that route, approximately 65 to 70 percent of its income in the seventeenth century.8 Similarly, Mexican and Manila merchants were the greatest beneficiaries of the Manila trade, though the Spanish crown made money off the portion of the Manila trade that was carried across Mexico to Vera Cruz then shipped to Spain.9 The result of this global trade network that connected Asia to Europe and the Americas was the development of frontier cities in Asia.
Goa was a small city on the western coast of India on the dividing line between Hindu and Muslim India. (India already had several large cities, three with populations of over five hundred thousand people and several others over two hundred thousand.) The small port of Goa changed hands three times from 1356 to 1471 before the Portuguese took it in 1510. Goa initially was desirable for its access to one item: horses—it was the port at which horses were imported from Hormuz. It was not Portugal’s only city on the Indian subcontinent, and not especially significant for European trade with India, but it was the most important Portuguese city in India. The Portuguese captured Goa for its fertile hinterlands, the city serving as the place to victual their Asian fleet before the long journey home around Africa, and it became the administrative capital for the “State of India,” the Portuguese designation for their Asian empire. It became the religious capital as well, earning the nickname “the Rome of the Orient.” Nevertheless, Goa’s reach into Asia was limited.10 To the east, the Portuguese merchants and local officials in China, Japan, and numerous other locales in the Spice Islands conducted trade and diplomacy, governing their cities with little interference from Goa. The Portuguese simply did not have the military power to assert themselves over their far-flung settlements, let alone against East Asians. The Indian Ocean was another matter. There, Portuguese officials used a deep ocean fleet to try to force Indians, East Africans, and others to trade only with them, and Goa had much administrative reach. Two other deep ocean fleets patrolled key locales in the Spice Islands, but these were more for protection of sea-lanes and trading communities than for use as offensive weapons.11
Both the Portuguese and the Spanish, unlike the French and English, perceived cities as essential to empire, providing the institutional and cultural framework for political and ecclesiastic administration.12 By point of comparison, New England Puritans promoted the town structure, which came to define in many ways their course of settlement, but where Puritans did not predominate, as in the Chesapeake colonies, cities and towns had little importance. English urban building was largely a religio-cultural decision made by colonists, not a directive from the imperial government. In Pennsylvania, William Penn, of course, saw Philadelphia—a planned urban environment—as central to colony building, and later, Savannah, Georgia, was a planned urban environment; but outside of these two, cities were an inconsiderable part of English imperial designs, and in both of the aforementioned cases the choice to create a city was made by the colonies’ private proprietors and not the crown.13
In the Portuguese empire, even where private interests predominated, the Portuguese established themselves by building cities. Outside of Brazil and West Africa, these cities were not intended to command large areas of territory. The Portuguese imperial concern in Asia was to secure or create cities, and then connect one urban area to the next by sea. They usually began with fortified outposts (and not all of these evolved into cities). In Portuguese terms, a city must include an array of buildings: churches, convents, seminaries, a town council, but also the creation of a câmara, a municipal senate or council.14
Figure 1.1. Goa, India, in 1509. From Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates orbis terrarum (Cologne, 1572–1617), I:57.
Relatively few Portuguese inhabited these outposts and cities; only through mixed marriages could subsequent generations maintain a “Portuguese” population. Afonso de Albuquerque, who had conquered Goa, encouraged mixed marriage from the start.15 In Goa, the new people became known as the Goans, though they called themselves “the descendants.”16 In essence, there were few “pure” Portuguese in their Asian empire—maybe 10,000 permanent residents, supplemented yearly by soldiers and sailors—some of whom were transient, some of whom remained. The Portuguese provided that a man could opt out of military service after two three-year terms if he married and became a local trader—he had to become a casado, a married householder.
Where fortifications evolved into cities, they became very much Portuguese cities. They modeled themselves on cities in Portugal in a variety of ways. They applied to Portugal for municipal status—forming a câmara and asking for the same privileges as those possessed by one of three cities in Portugal. For instance, Goa, which established a city government within months of conquest, asked for the rights of Lisbon, which they received.17 The câmara of Goa wrote the Lisbon câmara for details on how to carry out their civic duties: Goa thus became the city most like Lisbon within the Portuguese empire. The câmara ran the Portuguese frontier city, but the crown appointed a Captain-General to command the city’s military. He could attend council meetings and possessed two votes, but he was required to respect the rights and privileges of the citizens and could not interfere with the daily administration of the city. In practice, the câmara greatly influenced the military by offering advice and supplies. The câmara brooked little outside interference in local matters. Goa had a viceroy to oversee the State of India’s affairs, but even he could interfere little with the city. In disputes taken to the crown, the câmara was likely to prevail, as when the viceroy tried to debase the currency. The câmara even challenged the Society of Jesuits and won.18
Within the city, all those who were casados were allowed to vote. Elections were scrupulously observed to prevent rigging, and the crown even reviewed results. After 1688, city officials were appointed by the crown, but the city sent forth a list to Lisbon of whom they would like appointed and the crown complied. Unlike in Lisbon, lawyers did not play a significant role in Goa’s câmara, where merchants predominated.
What did the câmara do? It kept the speculators in line who controlled food supplies to the city, preserved public spaces, and oversaw the construction of shipyards and hospitals, as well as the collection of customs and the operation of the mint. Portuguese frontier cities, like Spanish ones, were highly regulated in terms of their architectural design. In Goa, the câmara, along with the ecclesiastics, saw to the transformation of buildings—both pre-conquest and post-conquest buildings—to make them conform architecturally. The câmara prescribed what building materials could be used. City houses were typically two stories, built of mortar and a tiled roof and painted red and white. The lower front had windows of polished oyster protected by railings. Each house had a yard. The beautiful city had a spectacular cathedral, built from 1562 to 1631, and many other impressive religious institutions. Within a decade the city was completely full of buildings, and people had to move outside the city walls. But the city also had two grave problems: water and refuse. City ponds and wells had bad water. There was no rubbish collection. Lagos (lakes), public squares, roads, and the riverbank became filled with filth. In the city’s lagoon, an elephant was killed and left to rot, leading to the first, and one of the most severe, epidemics that struck the city nearly constantly. The population, which reached two hundred thousand in the seventeenth century, fell to twenty-two thousand by the end of that century—almost a 90 percent decline.19 Part of this reduction was due to the economic decline of the Portuguese empire, particularly from the loss of the southern spice trade to the Dutch and later to the British. But many residents left the city to move to healthier sites. By 1834 only one thousand people were left in Goa, mostly the religious. Nevertheless, Goa and two other Indian cities, Daman and Diu, were kept by the Portuguese until annexed by India in 1961.
The origins of Macau in Southeast China are obscure. largely because the Portuguese who established the city were not acting in any official capacity, but were private traders. The Portuguese first entered China by 1519 but were pushed out in 1521. Traders continued to arrive for another thirty-plus years before reaching the sleepy fishing village that became Macau in 1553. Portuguese tradition posits that the Ming emperor allowed the Portuguese to stay because they had effectively defeated Chinese pirates, but it is unclear when the Chinese leadership actually learned that the Portuguese had established themselves at Macau.20
A câmara was not established until the early 1580s, which was approved by Goa, as Macau was part of the State of India. Yet Macau was not subservient to Goa, let alone Lisbon. The municipal authorities at Macau held more powers than any other city in the State of India, or even in Portugal, as the city effectively conducted its own foreign relations with the Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, and several Asian kings. Chinese officials refused to negotiate with the Portuguese Captain-General assigned to Macau; they would only treat with the câmara.
Was Macau even part of the Portuguese empire, or of China? Macau operated as a sovereign Portuguese city until the end of the twentieth century, but the realities of its location forced it to accede to Chinese demands in ways that undermined sovereignty. The Chinese believed they owned Macau, and the Portuguese lived there only by permission. The Chinese collected anchorage duties on all ships at Macau, and duties on all Chinese ships going in or out, and on Portuguese exports. Portuguese ships, however, did not pay duties on what they brought in; Macau charged those duties, which supported the city.
Just as the Chinese had allowed Persian and Arab trading communities a large degree of self-rule in the Middle Ages, the Portuguese largely governed themselves. Portuguese officials in Lisbon and Goa criticized Macau’s subservience to China, but Macau knew what it had to do to survive. They paid land fees to the Chinese, and deftly handled the Chinese as they did their Portuguese masters. For instance, in 1621, the Chinese demanded the closure of a Jesuit college. The Portuguese at home and at Goa were militantly opposed. The Macaoans handled the situation as they usually did to reach a successful conclusion—they “simulated obedience,” employed bribes, and negotiated compromise. The college stayed and life went on.21
The Portuguese crown provided almost no interference with Macau. Macau maintained the military, civil, and ecclesiastical presence with its own funds. It was largely politically independent because it did not rely economically on Portugal or the State of India. When Macau needed money, the câmara called on the householders for funds and borrowed from Chinese entrepreneurs. Even the King of Siam lent money to Macau in 1660. Alternatively, Macau helped the Portuguese crown, as when it outfitted an expedition to relieve Malacca from Dutch attacks in 1640.
Why did the Chinese tolerate Portuguese Macau? For one, the Portuguese were no threat to the Chinese. As António Bocarro observed in 1635: “The peace that we have with the King of China is as he likes it, for since the place is so far from India, and since he has such vastly greater numbers of men than the most that the Portuguese could possibly assemble there, never did we think of breaking with him whatever serious grievances we may have had; because the Chinese have only to stop our food-supplies to ruin our city, since there is no other place nor means of obtaining any.”22 Macau utterly relied on commerce—its strength and its weakness. As a resident Jesuit noted in 1664, “The wealth of Macau consists of the sea . . . there being nothing of value other than what is brought by the wind and tides. If these fail, then everything else fails, nor is it possible for this Province with its missions to maintain itself in any other way.”23 The Chinese permitted Macau’s existence as a Portuguese city because of trade.
Most important was the refusal of China and Japan to trade with one another in 1530. The Portuguese filled the void for almost a century, from the 1540s until 1639. Private Portuguese traders reached Japan in 1543. They introduced guns, which were rapidly reproduced. The Jesuits arrived in 1548 from Goa. Three years later the first Portuguese text was written about the Japanese. Jesuits became advisors to the Shogun, and the Japanese sent an embassy to the Pope. The Portuguese settled at the port of Nagasaki in 1571. Missionaries followed but were expelled in 1639. The unification of Japan into one nation and the change from the Ming to the Manchu dynasty in China led to the reopening of direct trade between China and Japan. The Japanese no longer needed the Portuguese. But with the drying up of the Japanese silver mines, the Portuguese no longer needed the Japanese, especially with silver from America arriving in Spanish Manila.24
Although the Spanish made a few inroads into Asia, such as at Formosa and Mindanao, they largely confined colony building to the Philippines, where they built the city of Manila.25 Even more than the Portuguese, the Spanish perceived cities as both the starting point and the bastion of empire. Manila was the third attempt by the Spanish to build a city in the Philippines: the first lacked sufficient food supplies and was harassed by the Portuguese, the second was in a fertile area but difficult to supply. Manila was chosen in 1571 and proved an immense success with its ready supply of food and its superb harbor—one of the world’s best, with secure anchorage for both domestic and international trade.26
At Manila the Spanish tapped into the traditional trade between China and the Philippines, but also between Japan and the Philippines. From a small town of two thousand Muslim Malaysians and a few Chinese, Manila grew to forty thousand by 1630. The largest growth was in the Chinese population, which reached twenty thousand in 1600, but fluctuated wildly in the seventeenth century between five thousand and thirty thousand residents because of periodic massacres by the Spanish and expulsions of non-Christian Chinese.27
The Japanese population in Manila was about three thousand in the 1620s, facilitating trade with Japan.28 Few Filipinos lived in Manila, though they were periodically brought in as draft labor and, much later, as wage labor. The Spanish worked to organize Filipinos into Spanish-designed communities. Philip II issued ordinances in 1573 that provided the outline, as well as some detail, for establishing these communities. It took the Spanish three hundred years, but ultimately they succeeded by the late nineteenth century in forming over one thousand communities based on the original 1573 model.
Manila itself was organized on the standard Spanish grid pattern, boasting a great cathedral, many impressive pubic buildings, hundreds of two-story houses, and several monastic estates. A segregated city, the Spanish section of Manila was walled and heavily fortified and protected by a deep moat. In a single generation, Manila had become an impressive city. The Chinese lived in two quarters outside the walled Spanish section; the Spanish artillery kept their guns trained upon the main streets of the primary Chinese quarter of the city.29 City ordinances provided that Chinese had to leave the walled enclave at night, though many did not do so, if for no other reason than their job needs. Chinese provided the bulk of the city’s labor. They were the butchers and bakers, the domestics and farmers. They also were essential as translators and merchants for the Chinese junks that arrived to trade. The city could not function without its Chinese population, and thus, despite the periodic expulsions, violence, and massacres, the Chinese never left the Philippines. Non-Christian Chinese paid a tax to Manila officials that helped keep the city government afloat. It was no wonder that city officials opposed the home government’s periodic expulsion of non-Christian Chinese. Moreover, the Christian Chinese and the Chinese mestizos were highly valued by the city, and even won a land dispute against the Jesuits in 1667.30
Manila emerged as arguably the most important point in Asia, linking Europe and the Americas to the Far East. It quickly became the largest port in the world for Chinese goods and remained so for almost two hundred years until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The end of the Spanish galleon trade from Mexico in 1815 effectively ended Manila’s importance to China. Two to three million pesos of silver had arrived yearly from the Americas, with a peak of twelve million in 1597.31 Yet from the viewpoint of Spanish imperial officials and merchants, the trade seemed almost disastrous, as the riches of the Americas were funneled to Asia, not to Spain, though some assured themselves that at least the silver was not going to European competitors. Twice, in 1593 and 1631, the king banned the China trade; the order was disregarded and ultimately rescinded. The Manila-Acapulco trade was the most highly regulated trade in the Spanish empire, but the regulations were poorly enforced. To prevent the drain of silver to China, the king banned the shipment of Peruvian silver to Mexico six times from 1640 to 1706.32 The repetition of restrictions and regulations points to basic facts—the continued smuggling of silver from Peru to Mexico and the disregard of regulations for shipping silver from Mexico to the Philippines.33
The Spanish government and private interests opposed the silver drain to Manila because they did not benefit from it. The Philippines were administered by the Vice-Royalty of Mexico, which was responsible for the annual situado, the government funds that supported the Philippines, which were largely drawn from the import taxes collected at Acapulco on Manila’s trade and thus were a remittance of Manila’s money to Manila. Mexico both administered the Philippines and benefited from the Manila trade. Mexican merchants capitalized the silver-for-silk trade. Spain was too preoccupied and too distant from Manila to exert effective control.34
Spain occasionally considered giving up Manila. One proposal was to trade it to Portugal for Brazil, but elements of the church insisted on maintaining the Philippines as the base to effect the conversion of Asians. Ironically, in the early years, missionary efforts were not focused on Filipinos, but more on the Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians; thus Manila was seen as merely a jumping-off point for sending missionaries elsewhere in Asia. So many of the early missionaries sought martyrdom by going into improbable places to convert that church officials repeatedly had to instruct those going to Asia to not seek martyrdom and to pursue long-term success through a “long” life commitment to conversion.35 Eventually, the missionaries had to be directed to forego their forays into China, Japan, and elsewhere and focus on the Philippines.
As noted above, smuggling was rampant, conducted by the yearly galleons that traveled between the Philippines and Mexico. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest its extent. In 1635 and 1637 the Spanish crown decided to enforce its limitations on trade by actually inspecting the cargoes that arrived in Acapulco to see if they fell within the prescribed limits. Two ships per year were supposed to carry 250,000 pesos of value to Manila, with a return of 500,000 pesos for a 100 percent profit expected from Asia. But the 1637 inspection showed that the cargo was nearly four times the government-imposed limit. The Acapulco and Manila merchants complained to Spain over the inspections—that is, official interference with their trade—and Philip IV disallowed further inspections: he ordered that the regulations not be enforced.36 Perhaps the Spanish had learned from the case of the Marques de Gelves, Mexico’s new viceroy in 1624, who had tried to enforce Spanish trade regulations and was overthrown in Mexico. Later in the eighteenth century, when the Spanish barred the importation of Chinese silks into Manila, riots occurred in Manila and the ban was lifted.
As for the residents of Manila, they made money from the Mexico-Manila trade through the boleta system, which allowed each citizen to ship 125 pesos’ worth of goods to Mexico, though the actual amount, it has been estimated, was about eight times greater. The large merchants purchased the boleta rights from other citizens, and eventually predominated as shippers, though even Chinese in Manila held boletas and continued to use them.
Manila was truly a frontier city for the Spanish: thousands of miles distant from New Spain, and halfway around the world from Spain. And it was a drain on Spanish resources. Not until the end of the nineteenth century, when Manila turned to tobacco production, did the islands begin to provide funds for the mother country. Curiously, Manila did not become the jumping-off point for Spanish territorial expansion in Asia. Unlike the Portuguese who went to the sources of valuable commodities, the Spanish preferred that traders come to them. They eschewed taking their goods to other Asian ports. Chinese junks arrived yearly, as did traders from Macau, the Moluccas, Malacca, and India. Some years the Macaoans nearly monopolized the trade: in the 1630s Manila’s imports from Macau averaged £300,000 per year.37 Even when Portugal and Spain were at war from 1640 to 1685, trade continued, though it was reduced between the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia.
Forms were followed in all the frontier cities—paperwork filled out, reports sent home, and customs collected, but that is only a partial story of the whole in each case. Appearances were maintained. And the “appearance” of the city seemed an acquiescence to imperial directives. The city looked like it represented imperial authority, even as the locals often did as they pleased. As early as 1573 King Philip II sent detailed directives for the creation of Spanish cities, known as the “Royal Ordinances Concerning the Laying out of New Towns.” These ordinances provided a blueprint for on-the-spot officials for constructing cities, creating a large degree of conformity in the Spanish empire—officials maintained appearances—because the frontier city, and hence the empire, should look Spanish, and it did.38
Philip II consulted an array of experts to formulate city plans, as they took consideration of meteorology, hygiene, military needs, religious requirements, engineering, and artistry. This, indeed, was urban planning which considered the context of building cities from scratch among foreign indigenous populations. For instance, chosen sites must be on vacant land and thus not harm “Indians or natives.” Although the city was built for the benefit of the Spanish, one of its purposes was to civilize the natives of the area or region. During construction, natives must be kept away; in effect, the building would be somewhat secretive. The natives should not witness the process of construction inside city walls, “so that when the Indians see them [the buildings] they will be filled with wonder and realize that the Spaniards are settling there permanently and not temporarily.”39
The Royal Ordinances set out precise measurements for plazas, and for symmetry in roads, which were to be placed according to the “four points of the compass,” to protect them from the four principle winds. Arcades and sidewalks were included, as well as an even distribution of churches, with placement of the main church so that it could be used for the defense of the city. Two hospitals were prescribed, as well as their placement—one for the contagious and one for the non-contagious. To facilitate health, the slaughterhouses, tanneries, fisheries, and other operations that produced unhealthy by-products were to be situated for the easy disposal of their refuse. The plans directed creation of healthy places, including commons for recreation, and “courtyards and stockyards . . . as large as possible to insure health and cleanliness.” Also, building lots and structures were located so that residents “can enjoy the air from the south and north, which are the best.” Appearance was coupled with health and function. As in the Portuguese cities, Spanish buildings, particularly houses, were to conform to one another: “Settlers are to endeavor as far as possible to make all structures uniform, for the sake of the beauty of the town.”40
As far as the process of construction, the inhabitants were to live in tents until the city was complete. After performing the proper measurements and laying out the location of roads, plazas, and buildings, first a ditch or palisade would be constructed to protect the city from Indians. The first buildings constructed were merchant houses and shops, to facilitate the conduct of business, by which a “moderate tax” on merchandise would provide funds for erection of the public buildings.41
Two other items of the ordinances should be noted: first, garbage would go into the sea or on a riverbank, and the tides or current would carry away refuse. Second, town lots would be distributed by lottery as a mark of fairness to householders.42 What is remarkable about these Royal Ordinances is that they were followed in literally thousands of places in Latin America and the Philippines—not in every detail, but in the overall layout of urban spaces, whether in town or city.43 If New Englanders wished to make their countryside look like England with fences, pastures, old world plants, and the like, the Spanish did the same with urban environments, planting a very Spanish concept of land use in the New World and the Philippines.
As far as the actual operation of Spanish frontier towns and cities, the Spanish cabildo was analogous to the Portuguese câmara. The biggest difference between the Spanish and the Portuguese was that the Spanish created closed municipal corporations, in some ways analogous to New England towns. But Spanish municipal posts could be bought and filled for a lifetime, and even be hereditary, whereas in Portuguese and English city and town governments, posts were elected. Also, Spanish cities were subjected to frequent inspection by visiting commissioners, or by an audencia, a royal official who oversaw compliance with the law. There was a similar position among the Portuguese, the relaçao, but rather infrequently employed.
Similarly for both the câmaras and cabildos, the municipal positions were valued by individuals for their status and the opportunity to confer patronage, rather than the salaries and stipends, which were low, but individuals also benefited from the various perks of office. The câmaras and the cabildos, along with the church, provided the sinews of urban life in the Iberian frontier cities.
When we compare frontier cities from one empire to another, we note that the city was central to the Portuguese and Spanish, but not to the English and French. The French understood the importance of urban environments, and, for instance, sent instructions to its colonies to conduct ritualistic celebrations and festivals, which were reminders to the colonists that they were part of the French empire; and these public occasions were to take place in the urbanized environments—Quebec and New Orleans, for example. But outside of Quebec, urbanization itself was not an imperative receiving imperial direction, but a natural outcome of economic and political needs.44 The English crown, too, gave little direction to colonists regarding urbanization. The crowns did step into urban affairs if severe factionalism hindered internal peace and local administration. This occurred fairly commonly in the French empire, but also periodically in the English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Administrators or groups made appeals to the mother country to settle local disputes and the mother country complied. The mother country provided the stamp of legitimacy to the local populace, and thus could end severe and disruptive factionalism among city elites. But the status of the empire, its legitimacy, had limits. Cities overthrew administrators appointed by the mother country, as occurred in Boston, New York, Charles Town, Mexico City, Acapulco, and elsewhere. And imperial authorities usually acquiesced to these fait accompli.
Commerce was the lifeblood of the frontier city. Trade was highly regulated within all the empires, yet imperial restrictions were largely disregarded when colonists could get away with it, which was frequently. Too much coast, too few cruisers to enforce regulations, and too many officials compliant with smugglers led the frontier cities to carry on commerce at their will. Without significant commerce, frontier outposts could not develop into cities. If an outpost’s purpose was merely administrative and military and failed to attract population through economic activity, it remained but an outpost. On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, St. Augustine, Pensacola, and Mobile are examples of fortified outposts that had administrative duties but never became cities in the early modern period because commerce did not sufficiently develop. If a city did develop and commerce severely fell off, as occurred in Goa and several other Portuguese cities in Asia, as well as Spanish Vera Cruz in Mexico, then the cities declined into insignificance. The frontier city had to maintain external commerce or become surrounded by a flourishing hinterland for which it could provide urban services.
The frontier cities largely controlled their own political affairs and internal regulations. Local officials and colonists understood what they had to do for the empire, and what they could get away with. I suggest that as long as a city contributed to the military demands of empire, especially when real need occurred in other parts of the empire, the mother countries were not apt to have sustained interference with self-government and disregard of trade laws. Macau, Goa, and Manila all substantially contributed to military expeditions for their empires. The same can be said of Boston, Charles Town, and even Quaker Philadelphia.45 Colonists excelled at keeping appearances: they knew when to obey, and how to simulate obedience, so they could practice self-rule. Some trade regulations had to be followed, others could be stretched or disregarded. Imperial governments and their frontier cities generally accommodated each other’s interests.