ALEJANDRO O'REILLY'S 1765 VISITA AND PUERTO RICAN HISTORY by Sean Thomas Mallen A ...

115 Pages·2016·0.83 MB·English

by  Sean Mallen

REASSESSING CONSENSUS:
ALEJANDRO O’REILLY’S 1765 VISITA AND PUERTO RICAN HISTORY
by
Sean Thomas Mallen

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL
December 2016
Copyright by Sean Thomas Mallen 2016

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like first to extend my immense gratitude to my thesis advisor Dr.
Graciella Cruz-Taura. This manuscript would never have come to fruition without her
impeccable attention to detail, her consistent professionalism, her guidance and
dedication on all fronts, and for never giving up on me. I also thank my committee
members, Dr. Evan P. Bennett and Dr. Barbara Ganson, for their many insights. I am
privileged and grateful also to have studied under and worked for the faculty members
and staff of the Department of History, particularly while serving as teaching assistant.
Their doors were always open to offer practical advice while I tackled this challenging
project. The camaraderie and mutual support of my fellow graduate students and friends
also made my graduate experience far more enriching and humorous than expected. They
are all salt of the earth.
Finally, I would like to express my immeasurable gratitude to my grandparents,
my brothers, and especially my parents, who in the midst of many hardships, still
managed to impart their strength to me. And to my wife, Carolina, I cannot articulate the
innumerable ways her love sustained me in difficult times. She is my drive, my
motivation, and my hope of a future with boundless opportunities.
Ave Maria.
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ABSTRACT
Author: Sean Thomas Mallen

Title: Reassessing Consensus: Alejandro O’Reilly’s 1765 Visita and
Puerto Rican History

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Graciella Cruz-Taura

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2016

King Charles III of Spain implemented a series of Enlightenment reforms
throughout his domain following the 1763 defeat of the Seven Years War. Among the
royal officials sent to enact these reforms in the Caribbean, the Crown dispatched Field
Marshal Alejandro O’Reilly to the colony of Puerto Rico. Historians have attributed to
his 1765 inspection, or visita, and subsequent report, or memoria, the foundations for a
turning point in the island’s history. Despite the historical consensus that has lauded
O’Reilly’s recommendations, this inspector-general does not merit the credit that
historians consistently have given him. Agrarian and economic patterns such as
population growth, smuggling, and the hato economy persisted decades after his visita
into the nineteenth century. Other events helped drive immigration and investment into
Puerto Rico more than O’Reilly’s memoria. Ultimately, O’Reilly did not trigger enduring
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change in the colony’s history, and Puerto Rican historiography awaits the corresponding
revision.
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REASSESSING CONSENSUS:
ALEJANDRO O’REILLY’S 1765 VISITA AND PUERTO RICAN HISTORY

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
Influences on Alejandro O’Reilly ....................................................................................... 9
The Enlightened Despot .................................................................................................. 9
O’Reilly as Agent of Enlightenment to Cuba ............................................................... 11
O’Reilly’s Achievements in Puerto Rico ...................................................................... 16
Memoria: Its Themes and Historical Context ................................................................... 19
Demographic Deficit ..................................................................................................... 21
Contraband Trade .......................................................................................................... 28
Hato Economy ............................................................................................................... 32
Solutions and Recommendations .................................................................................. 40
Memoria: Past Attempts and a Vision for the Future ....................................................... 44
The Examples of Fajardo and Aguada .......................................................................... 46
St. Croix as a Case Study .............................................................................................. 50
The Unchallenged Consensus: Alejandro O’Reilly in Puerto Rican Historiography ....... 57
Pedro Irizarri’s 1809 Instrucciones to Ramón Power Giralt ............................................ 88
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 98
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 104

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INTRODUCTION
Spanish Bourbon King Charles III commissioned Field Marshal Alejandro
O’Reilly to investigate ways of improving the island colony of Puerto Rico’s military and
economy, following the devastating defeat of the Seven Years War. His investigation only
lasted for two months, but, according to historians, it left a lasting impression. It marked
a drastic transformation in the island’s economy.1 The population exploded from 45,000
total inhabitants in 1765, the year of his arrival, to 221,000 fifty years later. Puerto Rico
changed from a low-immigration, scattered population to a high-density, high-
immigration colony, surpassing all other larger Caribbean islands per population density
at the time and spurring production changes.2 The preeminence of illicit trade
accompanied by the pastoral land economy gave way to a sugar-based, plantation regime
more heavily reliant on slave labor by the mid-nineteenth century. This clearly marked a

1 Bibiano Torres Ramírez, La Isla de Puerto Rico (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-Americanos, 1969), 88-94; Arturo Morales Carrión, Puerto Rico and the Non
Hispanic Caribbean: A Study in the Decline of Spanish Exclusivism (Río Piedras, Puerto
Rico: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1952), vii; Fernando Picó, History of Puerto Rico:
A Panorama of Its People (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publications, 2006), 117;
Francisco A. Scarano and Katherine J. Curtis White, “Puerto Rico’s Population Padrones,
1779-1802” Latin American Research Review 46, no. 2 (2011): 6-7; José Cruz de
Arrigoitia, “Organización político-administrativa y estructuras de poder militar, siglos
XVI-XVIII,” in Consuelo Naranjo Orovio, comp., Historia de Puerto Rico (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2012), 345-7.

2 Scarano and Curtis, “Population Growth and Agrarian Change in the Spanish
Caribbean: Evidence from Puerto Rico’s Padrones, 1765-1815,” (paper presented at
Population Association of America, Philadelphia, PA, 2005),” 40-41.

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fundamental shift in economic and agricultural structures. Historians, however, have
overstated O’Reilly’s impact on those developments.3
The inspector’s 1765 visita and subsequent report, or memoria, were not the
catalysts for agrarian change that historians have portrayed.4 To support this argument,
this thesis will examine, firstly, the professional experience the inspector carried with him
to Puerto Rico. His official report, or memoria, emanated from Enlightenment ideas and a
previous inspection in Cuba. Secondly, it will scrutinize his observations and suggestions,
place the memoria in its historical context, and assess its impact. Thirdly, it will outline
the historiographical consensus that exalts O’Reilly’s visita, or inspection, as the turning
point in Puerto Rico’s economic and agricultural history. Finally, it will compare a
nineteenth-century document with O’Reilly’s memoria to demonstrate agricultural
continuity spanning four decades. The San Juan mayor, or alcalde, Pedro Irizarri drafted
Instrucciones al Diputado don Ramón Power Giralt in 1809. This document echoed
O’Reilly’s complaints and suggestions about the colony’s underdevelopment. By

3 Jorge L. Chinea, “Fissures in El Primer Piso: Racial Politics in Spanish Colonial
Puerto Rico during Its Pre-Plantation Era, c. 1700-1800,” Caribbean Studies vol. 30, 1
(January-June, 2002), 187.

4 As an administrative mechanism, visitas resulted in memorias or relaciones,
official reports by government, or church, officials to their superiors. The practice dated
to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel and later recommended by the statesman José de
Campillo y Cossío in 1743. As a mechanism for royal oversight, visitas consistently
sought to reveal the efficiency of local or regional governments, to punish any officials
for misconduct, and to reform existing administrative practices that hindered royal
control or general efficiency. Although visitadores served as personal representatives of
the monarch, a visita could be ordered only by the Council of the Indies; and unlike the
residencias, these official visitations were more formal and random investigations.
Moreover, visitadores were often given other missions in order to enhance their authority
in the region or to minimize expenses of dispatching another visitador in the future.
Herbert Ingram Priestley, José de Gálvez: Visitor-General of New Spain, 1765-1771
(Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co., 1974), 84-99.
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reflecting similar concerns about Puerto Rico’s economy, Irizarri’s Instrucciones
exemplified O’Reilly’s inconsequential influence on the island’s agriculture. Despite the
consensus of scholars, his 1765 visita was not the decisive moment that transformed
Puerto Rico into a plantation economy.
After the humiliating Spanish defeat in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), King
Charles III dispatched several officials to his American dominions in order to reorganize
administration, increase revenue generated by the colonies, and prepare for future wars.
As a monarch applying Enlightenment ideas to government practice, Charles moved to
revamp his empire’s mercantilist policies, when beneficial to the Crown. To implement
this phase of the Bourbon reforms, Field Marshal O’Reilly counted among those sent to
the New World. Although born in Ireland in 1725, O’Reilly rose through the ranks of the
Spanish army while fighting for Spain in Europe.5 He accompanied Ambrosio de Funes
Villalpando, the Count of Ricla, when Charles appointed the latter as Captain-General of
Cuba in 1763.
Chapter one discusses the elements that influenced O’Reilly’s political
perspectives that accompanied him, namely Enlightenment reform ideas and his 1763
inspection of Cuba. After reorganizing the Cuban militia units and bolstering defenses,
O’Reilly conducted a visita addressing Cuba’s fundamental problems of contraband trade
and financial deficit. The inspector, representing Charles, proposed several reform
measures embodying Enlightenment philosophy, which he soon thereafter applied to
neighboring Puerto Rico. He arrived in Puerto Rico in April 1765 and quickly began his

5 The first mention of this date can be found in P. M. Manuel Gil, Oración fúnebre
del Excelentísimo Señor Don Alejandro O’Reilly, (Cádiz: n.p., 1794).

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