American Baroque by Warsh Molly A.;

Author:Warsh, Molly A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture
Published: 2018-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

Custom versus Technology in the Pacific: The Case of the Cardona Company

The most well documented of the California pearl-fishing ventures was led by Tomás de Cardona and his associates, all residents of Seville, although Tomás and his nephew Nicolás de Cardona were born in Venice. The Cardona company illuminates the combination of individual enterprise and crown sponsorship that went into these expansionist forays into natural resource exploitation. The company’s proposal, like similar Caribbean-focused initiatives that preceded it, built on knowledge of existing pearl-fishing practices and also introduced new ideas. The Cardonas built on the crown’s willingness to turn to technology as a potential mediating factor at the tense intersection of imperial exploitation of natural and human wealth. Their initiative also incorporated a century’s worth of wisdom regarding the skill of the empire’s diverse—and often enslaved—subject base as well as the Spanish crown’s enduring willingness to involve non-Spaniards in the imperial project.

Although the arbitrista’s reforming impulse animated the Cardonas’ California venture in the partners’ attention to precision and accounting, disorder and independence prevailed in the execution of their endeavor. The critical players in crown-sponsored voyages to the Pacific coast were a motley crew, a testament to the role of heterogeneous influences in shaping an evolving Iberian imperial mission officially associated with orthodoxy and homogeneity. In the fortunes of the Cardonas’ pearl-fishing voyages, enslaved Africans, workers drawn from around the Mediterranean, Italian entrepreneurs, European rivals, and the pearl-harvesting peoples of the Pacific coast all had a role to play. Various stipulations contained within the Cardonas contract attempted to limit the nature of these peoples’ participation, but their independence won out. The divers, aware of their importance to the success of the voyage, mutinied; Dutch pirates attacked the convoy; Pacific coast denizens harvested pearls according to their custom. It was not that the Pacific’s resources themselves were inferior—California oysters and pearls could rival the Caribbean’s in the opinion of many visitors. It was that the laborers who cultivated them and dived for them acted as they saw fit and could not be corralled to suit the purposes of the monarchy.7

The Cardonas’ remarkable voyages in search of pearl wealth unfolded over many decades, beginning in 1610 with a royal patent permitting Tomás de Cardona and his partner Sancho de Meras to carry their “new inventions” to fish for pearls to the New World. The contract to explore California’s pearl beds was not Tomás de Cardona’s first foray into either collaboration with the crown or exploration and administration of the New World. In fact, he had a great deal of experience in royal bureaucracy and was a figure at Philip III’s court. Among other duties, Tomás had served as master of the Mint and bursar to the Royal Armada of the Indies. He was known to be a “practical person and experienced in journeys at sea and on land, especially in the Indies.” Nicolás, who played an active role in the company’s endeavors from its earliest years through the 1620s, was a seasoned navigator as well.

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