The China Trade That Never Was: Lost Profit Opportunity for Spain, Loss of Freedom for California Indians

Marie Duggan-Julca 

This paper integrates California history into the larger picture of Spain's economic (under)development of the Latin American Pacific, and in the process suggests a new explanation for the delay until 1769 for the incorporation of California into Spanish America. The sale of California otter skins to China would seem, at first glance, to be just the sort of market-driven development project that King Carlos III of Spain was attempting to foment in the late eighteenth century. Yet that for-profit development path was not taken in California. Instead, Franciscan priests were granted California as an economic concession. Market revenues were incidental to the economy they established, which involved relocating tens of thousands of Kumeyaay, Agjachemem, Tongva, Chumash, Salinan, and Ohlone peoples onto mission estates, where sedentary agriculture replaced nomadic hunting and gathering as the source of subsistence. This sedentary lifestyle facilitated thought control, which was the essence of conversion. I conclude that Spain may have lost profits by forgoing furs, but the native people probably lost more – fur hunting for entrepreneurs may have netted them little money, but it would have enabled native Californians to keep some of the culture that the Franciscans aimed specifically to crush. On the other hand, Spain may have gained something more valuable than profits from the Franciscan economy. It was not so much the 400 soldiers as the 20,000 native people allied with the priests who kept California for Spain through a turbulent period of international imperial rivalry.

[WP # 99010]