Trade Regulation History Note

TRADE REGULATION The essential objective of the administrative organisation chart that we have analysed above was to apply the health regulations drawn up by the Tenerife Cabildo. Such regulations only acquire their full meaning when they are inserted into the economic evolution of the island over the period chosen and take into account the interests that are present in its administrative bodies.43 The vicissitudes of the island's economic trajectory throughout the Modern Age highlight the importance acquired by the mercantile activity linked, on the one hand, to the commercialization of a series of crops in strong demand in the European and Atlantic markets (sugar and cereals in the first half of the sixteenth century and wine from the second half of the second century) and, on the other hand, to the benefits obtained by the services provided in the various ports of the island to the vessels that participated in the great oceanic routes that were structured from the end of the Middle Ages.44 In that context. The island's elites, strongly installed in the Tenerife Cabildo, could not allow the Plague to cause a prolonged paralysis of commercial treatment, limiting the most forceful actions (closure of trade) to certain particularly critical junctures and in very restricted areas. From this perspective, the health action deployed by the Cabildo served to guarantee the continuity of commercial traffic, even with those regions that were recognized as plagued. The struggle between these economic and health interests found its best expression in the sessions of the Cabildo. In February 1586, a ship arrived in Santa Cruz from Viana, reporting the plague that was ravaging the city. Although it was initially decided to expel him, the alderman Bernardino Justiniano, supported by Licenciado Reinaldos and Don Domingo Cabrera, proposed that the ship be disbanded in Puerto Caballos, "... Bear in mind that the sustenance of these islands is the trade of the ships that comes to it from outside part...". Juan de Arévalo, who was also present at the session, is not of the same opinion, recalling that "... It is less inconvenient to cease the treatment of the Nabians than to have harm to the health of the island by them..." Finally, the Justice and Regiment decided to maintain the initial order of expulsion from the ship45. In 1570 a Portuguese ship was found in Garachico that had been expelled from the island of Gran Canaria, suspected of being plagued. The Cabildo ordered the Mayor to go to Garachico and embark passengers and goods arriving on the ship and expel them from the island, even though the councillor Álvaro Vázquez de Nava contradicted this agreement. However, such rigor for the vessels that come in the future does not cross the minds of the aldermen. To this end, it orders that, "... If they come from healthy parts and places, they will be asked to enter without being expelled from the port, and they will be made to come to Santa Cruz, of course, because many of the said ships come to load the fruits of the earth and other things that are convenient to the trade of the island..." The easy navigation between the islands and the almost endemic character that the disease acquired at certain times, were, in the eyes of the municipal councilors, the worst possible combination they could face, and therefore it was on this trade that the most drastic measures were dictated. Of the 23 prohibitions on treatment that followed one another throughout the century, 60.9% oversaw trade with the rest of the archipelago. However, a long-term analysis of the Cabildo's health policy in relation to inter-island traffic reveals that these actions were entirely temporary, ensuring that the duration of these restrictions was kept to a minimum.47 The conjunctural nature of those provisions is perfectly reflected in what happened in the years 1523-1525 with Gran Canaria.48 In February 1523 it was known that the Plague that had been haunting the Archipelago since the previous month had touched Gran Canaria, for which it was ordered that "... no person from the said islands and Çiudad [Gran Canaria, La Gomera, Lanzarote and Gibraltar] would jump on this island...".49 Even though the prohibitions on trade with the island were reiterated over the next two years,50 the Cabildo sought to ascertain the state of health of the island with a view to reopening traffic,51 it allowed direct trade as long as "... the nabians who go to the island of Canaria of this island are to keep a guard so that those who go on the nabians do not communicate with those on land...",52 while authorizing the use of secondary ports in Gran Canaria to keep communication open.53 In short, purely circumstantial actions, driven by the fear of disease, although always attentive to reopening commerce when health conditions so advised.54 Compared to the actions taken by the Cabildo to control inter-island traffic, trade with the rest of the Eastern Atlantic received a clearly more permissive treatment. 86.1% of the ordinances that regulate this traffic guaranteed free access for ships to our island, provided that they had met minimum health requirements. It may seem surprising how few degreeds55 are ordered to be applied to ships coming from suspicious regions. We must pay attention to at least two clearly related reasons for this. On the one hand, none of the ports had a permanent sanitary structure in the style of the great Mediterranean ports of the Modern Age,56 since on many occasions they did not even offer security to the ships that entered the port in search of refuge in time of health.57 As a consequence, quarantines had to be carried out outside the shelter of the port, on the beaches and coves that were more or less close to the winds and waves that continually hit the island, not to mention the danger posed by the continuous presence of pirates and corsairs in the waters of our islands.58 On the other hand, the systematic application of quarantines to ships and persons, as well as the expurgations and ventilations of goods that it entails, implied an excessive burden on ships arriving at island ports, not only because of the significant economic cost involved in carrying out these practices, normally paid by the suspect ships,59 but above all, because of the delay in the aeration and disinfection operations during the quarantine.60 In 55.2%61 of the cases, deputies and mayors received similar instructions from the Cabildo throughout the century; "... Before people jump into information is taken from where they are healthy, and they are kept from where they are kept and from what else is convenient, and once such information is taken that the information is collected in the said ships, and that they do not jump or deal with the land until the information is seen in this city and they provide and that the information is provided with all the information...".62 The information received from the ships is perfectly regulated from the very beginning. In 1513 it was ordered that "... any vessel or caravela that comes to the port of Santa Cruz is obliged to put the boat ashore and make an account of where they come from and what they are coming from and whether they come healthy or from a sick part or place, and that for information an oath be received from the master and two other persons of the principal ones who come in the said vessel; so that they do not leap ashore without their doing the said diligence..."63 That system, based solely on the oral statements of skippers and passengers, did not provide sufficient guarantees as to the healthiness of the ship. For this reason, from the beginning, the use of Cartas or Fes de Salud was generalized, documents signed by the scribes of the Cabildos that guaranteed the healthiness of the port of departure.64 Already at the end of the century, the failure to bring such a document was reason enough to consider the dismemberment of the vessel.65 Once the information was obtained, the ship had to wait until its contents were notified to the Cabildo and decided on the measures to be applied. Although very few councillors were doctors (we have already indicated the scant participation of doctors in the health decisions of the Cabildo), the mediocre medical knowledge of the time made it feasible for a person with an average culture to correctly interpret the data contained therein. It is clear that measures of this nature, designed to prevent the arrival of the evil of which "... God our Lord keep us...", were far from constituting a real prohibition of trade. On a practical level, health legislation served a dual function; On the one hand, it acted as an institutional mechanism that guaranteed the safeguarding of the island's health. On the other hand, it ensured free access for ships and vessels as long as they had met minimum health requirements. It couldn't be any other way. The health legislation was the result of the difficult balance that the island elites had to maintain between defending their own economic interests and protecting the public health of an island that could receive its worst damage at sea.