Beyond lands and oceans borders: Basque seafarer's journeys across the Atlantic Ocean, 15th-18th centuries (original) (raw)
Related papers
Basque Ship Captains as Mariners and Traders in the Eighteenth Century (2008)
International Journal of Maritime History, vol. 20, no. 2 (2008), pp. 81-109, 2008
The crucial role of the ship captain in eighteenth-century trade has scarcely been analyzed by historians. In the absence of work that focuses specifically on captains, we are left with overviews that appear within studies of shipping and shipowning. By using Basque ship captains as a case study, this article provides a measure of redress by analyzing ship captains from an economic, social and cultural perspective. In so doing, it sheds light on the complex web of social and economic interactions that underpinned early modern trade. It explores three interconnected themes beginning with the role of Basque ship captains in the intricate system of collection, distribution, transportation and communication that linked the different commercial areas in which the merchants of Bilbao and San Sebastián exercised influence. It considers their role in sustaining trade networks. In the eighteenth century, relationships between merchants and their overseas agents were primarily based on trust and reputations and were greatly affected by what economists call “the principal-agent problem,” which is to say that agents possessed information to which merchants were not directly privy. Distance and the slow pace of communications also meant that agents were occasionally tempted to cheat on their principals, something that, from the merchants’ perspective, was aggravated by the difficulty of monitoring agents’ honesty and performance. Since the existing historiography unfairly omits ship captains from the principal-agent equation, the article will explore in some detail the contribution they made to the creation and maintenance of trading networks. Basque captains were in a privileged position to provide the merchants and shipowners of Bilbao and San Sebastián with information on the reliability of potential and existing agents overseas and thus to mitigate some of the uncertainty arising from the principal-agent problem. Finally, the Basque example offers a case study in the function of family and ethnicity in eighteenth-century maritime trade with an emphasis on trust and its social and cultural ramifications.
Basques in the Atlantic World, 1450-1824 (2017)
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, Oxford University Press, 2017
Basques formed a minority ethnic group whose diaspora had a significant impact on the history of colonial Latin America. Basques from the four Spanish or peninsular Basque territories—the Lordship of Vizcaya, the provinces of Álava and Guipúzcoa, and the Kingdom of Navarra—migrated to the New World in significant numbers; the French Basques were also prominent in the Atlantic, particularly in the Newfoundland fisheries. The population density of the Basque Atlantic valleys, which was the highest of any region in Spain, was an important factor that encouraged emigration. And, in response to demographic pressure, in the second half of the 15th century most villages and towns adopted an impartible inheritance system that compelled non-inheriting offspring to seek their fortunes outside the country. Castile was the immediate choice for the Basque émigré, but after 1492 America gradually became an attractive destination. Outside their home country, their unique language and sense of collective nobility (hidalguía universal) were to become two outstanding features of Basque cultural identity. The Basques’ share of total Spanish migration to the New World increased significantly in the second half of the 17th century. By the 18th century they were one of the largest and most influential peninsular regional groups in America. The typical Basque émigré was a young, single man aged between fifteen and thirty. In the New World they left their mark in economic activities that their countrymen had developed in their homeland for centuries: trade, navigation, shipbuilding, and mining. Furthermore, Basques’ collective nobility and limpieza de sangre (blood purity) facilitated their access to important official positions. KEYWORDS: Basque diaspora, Atlantic diasporas, Atlantic history, transatlantic migration, Spanish America, colonial merchants, silver miners, religious congregations
It is well known among historians that the Basque people of northern Spain were the first to hunt whales commercially. What is often not considered however, is why they chose to hunt whales first and why their methods prevailed for over six hundred years. Accounting for the countless coastal areas where whales presented themselves in western Europe in the tenth century onward, why did the Basque seize this opportunity, and not other people? The purpose of this article is to describe the factors that led to the preeminence of Basque whaling, and the geographical and social factors that kept it a vibrant industry until the mid seventeenth century. The factors are numerous and complex, including many geographical considerations, such as whale and cod fish patterns and migrations, and social issues pertaining to the Catholic church in western Europe. Climate change also had a fundamental effect on the extent and range of Basque fishing, as well as the introduction in later centuries of large world powers into the fisheries. In essence, many factors converged at the right time in order to make the Basque people the most prolific whale and cod fishers of their time.
Basque Whale Hunting and Cod Fishery in the North Atlantic in the 16th-18th Centuries
Jon Gudmundsson Laerdi's True Account and the Massacre of Basque Whalers in Iceland in 1615, 2018
The Basque whale hunting and cod fishery in the North Atlantic is a topic covered by a certain mysterious and epic halo, which has been object of legendary and misleading interpretations, both referring to its beginning and end. Researches used to applied modern state boundaries to the Basque Country, however, during the Early Modern period the Pyrenees more than a wall meant a bridge, connecting people, business and economics.
Elcano, the Basques and the First Voyage Around the World
Fundación Elkano 500, 2022
Juan Sebastián Elcano, the Basque mariner who completed the first voyage around the world after Magellan’s death in the Philippines, is not nearly as well known as Magellan. The other thirty Basques who began that voyage in 1519 are rarely even mentioned in standard histories. This book brings together information about all of them from extensive archival records and secondary works. It discusses who they were, their parentage and other family relationships, their roles during the expedition, and their ultimate fates. It also discusses the Basques who held important posts in Spain’s House of Trade in Seville and the numerous other Basques who helped to prepare the expedition. Their prominence in Spain’s maritime history evolved from centuries of developments in the Basque Country related to iron mining and industrial production, shipbuilding, seafaring, and seaborne trade. All of these elements came together in the first voyage around the world, in which Basques at all levels played crucial roles.
2015.- The Mediterranean Connections of Basque Ports (1700-1841): Trade, Trust and Networks
This research analyses the commercial relationships between Ba-sque and the Mediterranean ports from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the first third of the nineteenth century, when the customs were moved to the coast. Although part of a wider international network, these connections must be considered a strategic relationship to both parties. The research delves into the lives, the evolution and the strategies put into practice by Mediter-ranean merchants who settled in Basque ports and Basque merchants who, without moving to other ports, strengthened their commercial ties, thanks to a combination of kinship, ethnicity and marriage between traders' families. Epistolary correspondence of some traders not only brings to light daily details and methods implemented by merchants in order to succeed, but also allows us to measure or at least get an approximate idea of the uncertainty, insecurity and dangers they faced during their commercial activity.
The Mediterranean Connections of Basque Ports (1700-1841): Trade, Trust and Networks
This research analyses the commercial relationships between Basque and the Mediterranean ports from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the first third of the nineteenth century, when the customs were moved to the coast. Although part of a wider international network, these connections must be considered a strategic relationship to both parties. The research delves into the lives, the evolution and the strategies put into practice by Mediterranean merchants who settled in Basque ports and Basque merchants who, without moving to other ports, strengthened their commercial ties, thanks to a combination of kinship, ethnicity and marriage between traders’ families. Epistolary correspondence of some traders not only brings to light daily details and methods implemented by merchants in order to succeed, but also allows us to measure or at least get an approximate idea of the uncertainty, insecurity and dangers they faced during their commercial activity.
Loewen, Brad. 2023. Sea Change: Indigenous Navigation and Relations with Basques around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, c.1500-1700. In Before Canada: Northern North America in a Connected World, edited by Allan Greer, p. 109-153. Queens-McGill University Press, Kingston, Montréal.
Well before Europeans colonised their shores, Mi’kmaq, Inuit and Iroquoian peoples around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence had enthusiastically adopted as their own a European device, the small, wooden sailing vessel known to Basques as the txalupa and to the French as the chaloupe, to trade, gain power and expand their respective ranges significantly. Txalupak (the plural form in Basque) were all-purpose boats that could be rowed or sailed, and they greatly enhanced the seaborne mobility of First Nations around the gulf. These craft enabled Inuit to expand their habitat from Labrador to shores around the northeast arm of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, known as Grand Bay. They also allowed Mi’kmaq in Acadia to cross Cabot Strait to Newfoundland and to mount raids against rivals across the Gulf of Maine. Not least, txalupak played a role in the maritime adaptation of eastern Saint Lawrence Iroquoians after the dispersal of their villages. Indigenous people throughout the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and adjacent Atlantic coasts acquired these boats from Basque mariners who came to these regions from northern Spain and southwest France, in pursuit of cod, whales, seals and furs every summer from the early sixteenth century on. This chapter explores the changes to Indigenous societies enabled by the txalupa’s adoption and the Basque-Indigenous relationships built around this craft.
The Spanish Basque Country in Global Trade Networks in the Eighteenth Century
International Journal of Maritime History, XXV, 1, June 2013, 149-172, 2013
Little has been written about the role of the Spanish Basque coast in international trade networks during the eighteenth century. While there are several studies on Basque trade and merchants, these are usually focused on the protagonists, products and the commercial links, ignoring the specific weight of Basque trade on the development of this first globalization or to its role as an essential component in the machinery of the trading networks