Few events underscore early California’s connection to the Pacific and Latin America’s wars of independence (1810-24) like Hippolyte de Bouchard’s pirate raids along the California coast in 1818. These raids, coupled with the already mentioned supply ships from Peru that helped sustain the province, attest to the fact that California was not nearly as cut off and isolated from the wider world as many historians have suggested.
Reacting against centuries of Spanish imperialism and inspired by the American Revolution, in 1810 Latin Americans launched their own fight for independence. The timing for this struggle was dictated by French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s toppling of Spanish King Ferdinand VII in 1807. The ripple effects of that dethronement reached all the way to California’s shores in that nearly all of Spain’s New World colonies, beginning with Mexico, took advantage of the ensuing turmoil in the mother country by waging wars of independence.
Into these politically stormy seas sailed Bouchard’s pirate ships. Born in France, where he joined the navy at age 9, Bouchard eventually relocated to Argentina, from where his two ships - the Argentina and the Chacabuco - embarked on their voyages of piracy in the Pacific. His well-armed international crew of 200 men included Hawaiians, Yankees, Spaniards, Portuguese, Creoles, blacks, Filipinos, Malays, and Englishmen. After pillaging vessels in the Philippines and Hawai’i, Bouchard’s vessels sailed to California in late 1818, supposedly to further the cause of independence - which the province did not support.
His first anchorage was in Monterey Bay. After encountering initial resistance from the forces of Governor Pablo Vicente de Sola, the presidial troops retreated to present-day Salinas. Bouchard’s men then took over the presidio, raised the Argentinian flag, and proceeded to burn virtually all public buildings. According to Peter Corney, who captained the Chacabuco, “all the sailors were employed in searching the houses for money, and breaking and ruining every thing.” Gardens, orchards, and livestock were destroyed and the settlement lay in smoking ruins when Bouchard’s ships departed and headed south for more plundering in and around Santa Barbara.
The pirate’s last California raid took place on December 14, while his ships anchored off San Juan Capistrano. After easily occupying the mission, followed by a leisurely breakfast, the crewmen sacked the town and other buildings. According to Corney: “We found the town well stocked with everything but money and destroyed much wine and spirits and
Figure 2.4 A painting of the San Juan Capistrano Mission at time of Bouchard's pirate raid. Artist unknown. Courtesy of the Maritime Museum of San Diego, Mains' Haul - A Journal of Pacific Maritime History, 36/4 (Fall 2000), p. 30.
All the public property; [and] set fire to the king’s stores, [and] barracks. . .” On the way back to their waiting ships, many of the buccaneers were so inebriated that “we had to lash them on the field-pieces and drag them to the beach. . .” Before setting sail, 20 of the men were flogged for drunkenness.
So ended California’s stormy encounter with the revolution that had swept across most of Latin America. Three years later, in 1821, a Mexican vessel arrived in Monterey carrying news of independence. The Spanish flag that had flown over the Pacific province’s capital was lowered and replaced by Mexico’s eagle-and-snake banner.
SUMMARY
Spanish officials and mapmakers envisioned a California extending from the southern tip of Baja northward to a mythical Strait of Anian near Alaska, that is, a much greater California than that depicted on today’s maps. A legendary warrior queen, Calafia, supposedly reigned over her namesake land, a seaside Eldorado brimming with pearls and gold. Beginning in 1542, the maritime explorations of Cabrillo and his successors resulted in the establishment of a safe haven, eventually at Monterey, for the famed Manila treasure galleons that for centuries visited that port en route from Asia to Acapulco, Mexico. Through the Manila trade, in the late 1500s the province became tangentially connected to the beginnings of globalization. By the late 1700s Spanish California emerged as a Pacific Eldorado for the hunting of sea otters and fur seals, whose pelts attracted high prices in Canton, China. Alejandro Malaspina’s 1791 voyage of scientific reconnaissance demonstrated Spain’s concern about Russian and other foreign sea otter hunters in California waters.
Missions, presidios, and civil pueblos located on or near the coastline anchored the province to Spain, which became increasingly wary of British and Russian intrusions. From the Spanish standpoint, Indians basically fell into two groups: those brought into the missions, and those outside that system. Patriarchy, Catholicism, and social status shaped gender roles and sexual behavior in California long after Spain’s rule ended. Hippolyte de Bouchard’s pirate raids along California’s coast in 1818 show that the Spanish province was not isolated during the Latin American wars of independence.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
What was the geographical reach of the Spanish claim to California from the mid-1500s to the late 1700s?
How was California connected to Spain’s Manila galleon trade?
What roles did missions, presidios, and pueblos play in Spain’s conquest of California?
What were the rights and roles of females in Spanish California?
How was California connected to the transpacific fur trade?
FURTHER READINGS
Robert Archibald, The Economic Aspects of the California Missions (Washington, D. C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1978). Much of the information found in this volume is hard to find in any other single work.
John Francis Bannon, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution: Sixty Years of Interest and Research,” Western Historical Quarterly, 10 (July 1979), 302-22. This article offers a state-of-the-field assessment of scholarship on the mission system.
William J. Barger, “Furs, Hides, and a Little Larceny: Smuggling and Its Role in Early California’s Economy,” Southern California Quarterly, 85/4 (Winter 2003), 381-412. More than “a little larceny” occurred in early California, as this article shows.
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, eds., Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846 (Berkeley: Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, 2001). Filled with maps and other useful visuals, this volume offers numerous primary source documents addressing life in California before the American takeover.
Donald C. Cutter, Malaspina in California (San Francisco: J. Howell, 1960). This volume is the only book-length treatment of the subject.
William Deverell and David Igler, eds., A Companion to California History (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). This anthology offers the most recent interpretations of the major developments in California history.
Iris H. W. Engstrand, “Seekers of the ‘Northern Mystery:’ European Exploration of California and the Pacific,” in Ramon A. Gutierrez and Richard J. Orsi, eds., Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 78-110. The author’s research into the early European voyages along California’s coast is grounded in primary sources.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). Spain’s exploration of the Pacific is examined within a global context.
Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, “Globalization began in 1571,” in Barry K. Gills and William R. Thompson, eds., Globalization and Global History (New York: Routledge, 2006). The authors’ case for globalization beginning with the Manila galleon trade is formidable.
Steven W. Hackel, ed., Alta California: Peoples in Motion, Identities in Formation, 1769-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). Drawing on the Huntington Library’s Early California Population Project online database, contributors to this anthology provide insights into the changing identities of missionaries, Indians, soldiers, and settlers in California before the American conquest.
Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Chapel Hill, N. C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). The unintended consequences of Spain’s mission policy, which severely depleted California’s Indian population, are treated in this major foray into social/religious history.
Steven W. Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production: The Colonial Economy of Spanish and Mexican California,” in Ramon A. Gutierrez and Richard Orsi, eds., Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 111-46. This piece focuses largely on the economic functioning of the missions.
Kent G. Lightfoot, Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Currently, this is the only study comparing the Russian and Spanish impacts on California’s Indians.
Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History, 35/4 (Fall 1999). This entire issue is focused on the theme “Baja California and the Sea.” See also 41/4 and 42/1 (Fall 2005/Winter 2006 ). The issue’s theme is “Spain’s Legacy in the Pacific.” For Hippolyte Bouchard’s pirate raids, see 36/4 (Fall 2000), 22-33. Cabrillo’s expedition is the theme of 45/1 and 45/2 (Winter/ Spring 2009).
W. Michael Mathes, Vizcaino and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean, 1580-1630 (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968). This highly detailed study, replete with drawings and other visuals, shows how Vizcaino’s exploration of the California coast contributed to Spain’s expansion in the Pacific.
James D. Nauman, ed., An Account of the Voyage of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (San Diego, CA: Cabrillo National Monument Foundation, 1999). Containing translated excerpts from primary source documents, this booklet offers a good introduction to Cabrillo’s expedition.
James A. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). This volume is particularly strong in its extensive coverage of disease in the California missions.
Freeman M. ToveU, Robin Inglis, and Iris H. W. Engstrand, eds., Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America, 1792: Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and the Nootka Sound Controversy (Norman, OK: The Arthur H. Clark
Company, 2012). Three historians specializing in the history of the Pacific Coast present a late eighteenth-century account of a major Spanish voyage that sheds light on the natural resources of California and the interactions between Spaniards and Indians in and around Monterey.
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). This study is arguably the most reliable and comprehensive to date on Spain’s North American frontier.
World History
