The promotion of commerce, rather than of production, was the main preoccupation of nineteenth-century Spanish fiscal officials in Puerto Rico. In a detailed examination of Spanish colonial fiscal policies in the first half of the nineteenth century, Birgit Sonesson finds that metropolitan interests were paramount in the formulation of tariffs and taxes, but that after a tour of duty in San Juan, some officials paid more attention to the pleadings and protests of local businessmen. Merchants had a readier access than hacendados to the officials who drafted fiscal regulations. And for the better part of the period examined, Danish officials lobbied in Madrid to preserve the advantage enjoyed by the island of St. Thomas in reselling European goods to Puerto Rico.
Sonesson finds that the oscillation between conservative and liberal regimes in Madrid partly determined tariff policies in Puerto Rico, and that officials and former officials with different ideological positions carried on a running debate. It is interesting to note that committees that pondered tariff proposals usually included representatives of the competing ideological positions. Former intendentes were usually invited to offer their points of view.
Unfortunately for Puerto Rico, the policies adopted were often influenced by the expediency of favoring Catalan manufacturers and Castilian flour exporters and by the need to forestall the creation of precedents that would result in a liberalization of policies affecting Cuba. The tariff stakes were much higher in the Cuban case, and Madrid officials did not want to ease policies that would diminish public rents or affect metropolitan business interests.
A brief prosopographical survey here of the principal fiscal officials in Puerto Rico does not succeed in providing an explanation for their divergent ideological stances. More appealing is the brief overview of the San Juan business community, with its links to the internationally banned slave trade and its drive to gain a foothold in other European trade relations. An extensive documentary index provides five intendentes’ reports on fiscal matters to the Madrid government.