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Commercial Foot Soldiers of the Empire: Foreign Merchant Politics in Tampico, Mexico, 1861-1866
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
During the period from Mexican independence in 1821 to the end of the French intervention in 1867, Mexico's primary tie to the outside world was based on trade. The foreign merchants, who monopolized this activity, played a crucial role in the economic, diplomatic, and political life of Mexico. The current literature on these nineteenth century merchants includes studies of foreign groups, such as the French, detailed case studies of individual entrepreneurs, firms and merchant families, and one work that provides a unique state-centered perspective on the Mexican/merchant nexus. None, however, have tried to conceptualize the role of foreign merchants as a whole, across national lines and individual rivalries, in the port cities that were the central arena of contact and conflict with the outside world.
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References
1 Enrique Florescano noted in 1977 the need for serious scholarly study of foreign merchants in Mexico in the pre-Porfirian period, especially their “social and economic position in the society of their time.” Florescano, Enrique, “Mexico,” in Latin America: A Guide to Economic History, 1830–1930, ed. Conde, Roberto Cortés and Stein, Stanley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 450.Google Scholar For the most recent work on merchants in this little understood period, see the works cited later in this essay by Penot, Barker, Tenenbaum, Mayo, Cerutti, and the 1978 collection edited by Ciro Cardoso.
2 Walker, David W., Kinship, Business, and Politics: The Martínez del Rio Family in Mexico, 1824–18 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar
3 Operating in “anarchic marketplace sometimes without law and often without justice,” foreign merchants were subject, according to Walker, “to illegal confiscations or outright robberies… by powerful local interests or a predatory military” as well as facing unfair “tax assessments… [and] blatant violations of the law” ( Walker, , Kinship, p. 14).Google Scholar Walker was especially critical of a properly influential article by Tenenbaum, Barbara A., “Merchants, Money and Mischief, The British in Mexico, 1821–1862,” The Americas 35, no. 3 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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12 On the foreigners’ commercial monopoly in Tampico, see Humphreys, R. A., ed., British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America, 1824–1826 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1940), pp. 302–3Google Scholar; Latrobe, Charles J., The Rambler in Mexico (London: R. B. Seeley, 1836), p. 24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Norman, Benjamin, Rambles by Land and Water (New York: Pain & Burgess, 1845), p. 100.Google Scholar Foreigner’s control of Mexico’s international commerce placed severe restrictions on participation by Mexican merchants. ( Canales, Inés Herrera, “La Circulación: Transporte y Comercio,” In: Cardoso, Ciro, ed., México en el Siglo XIX (1821–1910) [México: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1980], 220).Google Scholar
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14 Nationalist sensitivities among the port’s various non-Mexican groups could, on occasion, reach a flash point. In the second half of 1862, there was a public controversy between the Spanish Vice-Consul Ramón de Obregón and four German merchants who, having gotten drunk while celebrating a friend’s return to Europe, knocked down the Spanish coat of arms. Seeking a public apology for this assault on Spanish dignity, Obregón took court action and the two sides exchanged printed accusations. For details, see the 27 page pamphlet “Manifestación Documentada del Vice Consul Español en Tampico Ramón de Obregón,” (Tampico: n.p., 1862). These problems did not, however, bar simultaneous joint German and Spanish action to defend foreign interests.
15 Unpaid or poorly salaried, consular posts were invariably held by merchants in the nineteenth century. Merchants, for example, composed 78.5% of all U.S. consular appointees in Mexico and Central America prior to 1861 for whom data could be found. ( Burns, Gerald E., “A Collective Biography of Consular Officers, 1828–1861,” [Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1973], pp. 180–81, 207.)Google Scholar On similar conditions in the British consular service, see Platt, D. C. M., The Cinderella Service, British Consuls since 1825 (London: Longman, 1971), p. 42.Google Scholar
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17 Like the United States, European powers had long used “unsettled claims, alleged violated rights, and similar complaints to apply diplomatic pressure for imperialistic goals such as territorial cessions or grants of economic or transit privileges.” ( Schoonover, Thomas D., Dollars Over Dominion, The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican-United States Relations, 1861–67 [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978], p. 14.)Google Scholar
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21 DHS, Ann Chase papers, MSB-9, pp. 26–27.
22 Ibid.
23 Grajales, Gloria, ed., México y la Gran Bretaña Durante la Intervención, 1861–1862 (México: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores; 1974), p. 128 Google Scholar; Estrada, Genaro, ed., Don Juan Prim y su Labor Diplomática en México (México: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1928), p. 65.Google Scholar
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25 “Foreign life and property,” David Pletcher writes, “were never entirely secure in a country where revolution might break out at a moment’s notice, bringing crowds into the streets with the cry of… Death to the Foreigners! According to the French minister, this meant that people wanted to loot.” ( Pletcher, David M., The Diplomacy of Annexation, Texas, Oregon and the Mexican War [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973], pp. 53, 55.)Google Scholar For further examples of the scholarly influence of the xenophobic thesis, see Penot, Jacques, “L’Expansion Comerciale Français au Mexique et les Causes du Conflit Franco-Mexicain de 1838–1839,” Bulletin Hispanique 75 (1973), pp. 191, 193, 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barker, Nancy, The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861. A History of Constant Misunderstanding (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); p. 201 Google Scholar; Bauer, , “Foreign Trade Policy,” pp. 251–52.Google Scholar
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27 “Against the French and English,” Prim also pointed out, “there is not, in this country, the hatreds and rancors that there are against the Spaniards.” ( Estrada, , Prim, p. 137.)Google Scholar
28 DHS, Ann Chase papers, MSB-9, p. 28.
29 Franklin Chase, 4 March 1862; Martínez, Vidal Covian, “Efemérides de la Intervención Francesa y del Llamado Segundo Imperio en Tampico,” Cuadernos de Historia 1: 8 (1967), 12 Google Scholar; Ann Chase papers. MSB-9, p. 24; de la Garza Treviño, Ciro, História de Tamaulipas (Anales y Efemérides) 2nd ed., (n.c: n.p., 1956), p. 133.Google Scholar
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37 de la Peña, Antonio y Reyes, , ed., La Insubsistencia de Una Convención de Reclamaciones (México: 1928), p. xv.Google Scholar Given to lively expressions of fear about the Mexican rabble, U.S. Consul Franklin Chase, nevertheless, failed to report a single incident of anti-foreign violence in Tampico between 1836 and 1866.
38 Mario Cerutti provides a remarkable discussion of the clash between the national government and the northern regional caudillo, Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León and Coahuila, who appropriated the customs house revenues destined by law for the national state. (Economía de Guerra y Poder Regional en el Siglo XIX: Gastos Militares, Aduanas y Comerciantes en Años de Vidaurri (1855–1864) [Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo Leõn, 1983]). At the same time, Cerutti does not explain how Vidaurri achieved his remarkable triumph over localistic factions within the region who sought control of customs house revenues for their own purposes.
39 The ultimate sanction in this ongoing conflict is suggested by an apocryphal exchange between a Mexican military man and a Tampico merchant. “When you fail to furnish us with the money for payment of our men, we will give them the privilege of paying themselves.” (Franklin Chase, 22 September 1866.) Yet this negative power was of limited practical utility, since its use would undermine the foreign commerce that financed all the Mexican factions.
40 The municipal archives contain many expedientes dealing with legal merchant resistance to local taxes. AHMT, 1861 Expedientes 25, 113, 127.
41 Franklin Chase, 27 January 1862.
42 Franklin Chase, 27 January 1862, 4 February 1862; Díaz, Informes Económicos, p. 252.
43 Franklin Chase, 27 January 1862, 12 May 1862; Dunn, F. S., The Diplomatic Protection of Americans in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), p. 118.Google Scholar As U.S. Minister to Mexico Thomas Corwin pointed out, the United States was at that very moment taxing its own and foreign residents to finance the Union side of the U.S. Civil War. The logic of the merchants’ position in this case led naturally to a demand for the establishment of full extra-territoriality, a common imperialist demand in Asia at this time.
44 Boletín de Noticias, 1 February 1862 in AHMT, 1862 Expediente 126; Franklin Chase, 27 January 1862, 4 February 1862; British Consular Dispatches, 27 January 1862, 23 August 1862. The British consul was trying to curry favor with the Mexicans in an unsuccessful effort to avoid his pending expulsion for his attacks on the Captain of the Port (Franklin Chase, 27 May 1863.)
45 Boletín de Noticias, 26 April 1862 in AHMT, 1862 Expediente 126.
46 See Voss, Stuart, On the Periphery of Nineteenth Century Mexico, Sonora and Sinaloa 1810–1877 (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1982), p. 125.Google Scholar Foreign merchant “interference in political questions was notorious.” Carmen Domínguez has noted, since whatever the risks, “political agitation increased the power of the strongest commercial houses.” ( Domínguez, , Veracruz Liberal, p. 201.)Google Scholar
47 La Concordia, 15 June 1839; Franklin Chase, 9 March 1860; On the Federalist revolt in Matamoros, see Potash, Robert, El Banco del Avío de Mexico (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959), p. 198.Google Scholar
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51 Díaz, , Informes Económicos, p. 184 Google Scholar; British Consular Dispatches, 31 March 1861. There is a perverse logic to the dilemma facing Mexican authorities in this situation of incomplete sovereignty. When the need for resources is the greatest, a sovereign state can increase its share of the proceeds of economic activity through taxation and other measures. In the Mexican case, however, it is precisely at the moment of greatest need that authorities have the least leverage over those who control liquid wealth such as merchants. As Cerutti documents, Vidaurri's response to political and military crisis was to decrease rather than increase customs duties. As this and other incidents suggests, even a relatively successful regional caudillo held at best modest power in his relations with local merchants. Later Vidaurri increased tariffs for cotton during the U.S. Civil War but only because the southerners, facing an increasingly successful Union blockade, had no alternative outlet for their cotton. ( Cerutti, , Economía, pp. 96, 76, 80, 160–2, 198, 107.)Google Scholar
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