Captaincy General of Puerto Rico

To supplement the inadequate number of regular soldiers, local militias (milicias urbanas) were organized in each of the islands five districts (partidos) outside of the capital: San Germán, Arecibo, Aguada, Coamo, Loíza and Ponce. The militia men were not regularly paid nor were they armed by the government. Their weapons consisted of farm implements: machetes, improvised wooden lances and regular knives, but the governors-captains general usually attested to their courage. Each partido was overseen by a teniente a guerra, a deputy of the captain general.

18th century and the Bourbon Reforms

Shaken by the losses of the

To reverse this, O'Reilly recommended developing the legal economy, in particular agriculture, which he found vastly untapped. He wanted to return uncultivated land to the crown and then grant it to persons willing to farm it. In 1784 an intendancy was created in Puerto Rico but, unlike the one created in Cuba, the office was not separated from the governorship. O'Reilly's reforms were most successful in the military sphere. He was able to achieve little economic change, unlike that which took place in neighboring Cuba. The island's economy remained tied to the situado subsidy and foreign trade, something which proved harmful during the interruption in trade caused by the Napoleonic Wars.

Early 19th century: revolutions and setbacks

The early 19th century presented the dual challenge of Spain suffering invasion by French forces and revolt among its colonies in the Americas. The Peninsular War and the Spanish American wars of independence spurred great innovation in Puerto Rico's government. Puerto Rico's sea ties to Venezuela, due to sailing patterns which made the island the closest port of call from Venezuela, played significantly in this period. The juntas which were established in Venezuela in 1810 corresponded with the cabildos of Puerto Rico. The San Juan cabildo turned down the invitation from the Caracas junta to establish a junta on the island, but the San Germán cabildo always maintained the right to self-rule, should Spain be permanently lost to the French. Some individual Puerto Ricans, such as Antonio Valero de Bernabé, later chose to join the struggle for independence going on in the South American mainland.

In response to the junta movement gathering strength on the mainland, the peninsular government gave Governor Salvador Meléndez extraordinary powers to deal with any revolt on the island. At the same time, many royalist refugees from Venezuela began arriving in Puerto Rico. The island also served as a point of departure for troops on their way to Venezuela, such as those under Domingo de Monteverde and Pablo Morillo.

As the government in opposition to the French began to take shape in the form of a

Power had a very active term in the Cortes. He quickly had the Cortes suspend the governor of Puerto Rico's extraordinary powers, and he also secured separation of the office of the intendant from that of the governor-captain general. The highlight of his legislative activity was the Ley Power (the Power Act), which introduced many administrative and economic reforms in Puerto Rico, many of which survived

After the King of Spain restored traditional government, he sought to maintain and reward the loyalty of Puerto Ricans by granting the island a limited form of the long-sought free trade. The Royal Decree of Graces of 1815 granted many of the economic requests that Power and the island cabildos had requested since 1810. In the long term, the Decree had very beneficial economic effects. It encouraged the immigration of Europeans who were not of Spanish origin to the island, started the growth of the sugar industry (although this resulted in increasing importation of slaves), and a series of competent intendants set the island's government finances on good standing for decades to come.

During the second constitutional period after the Riego Revolt, new deputies to the Cortes were elected by the island's population, the Diputación Provincial met again. An important change from the first period was that the captaincy general and the governorship were separated. Francisco González de Linares, a long-time Venezuelan resident who had fled after collapse of its royalist government, was appointed governor. Pablo Morillo's successor as head of the royalist forces in Venezuela, Miguel de la Torre, was appointed captain general.

After Ferdinand VII's second abolition of the Constitution, La Torre was made joint governor and captain general, with extraordinary powers to suppress any potential revolt. He would hold the office of captain general for more than fifteen years. Despite La Torre's wariness of the island's liberal tendencies, his long administration was key to the development of large-scale sugar production on the island. This scale of commodity-crop agriculture had been developed decades earlier in Cuba. Figures from the period show the growth in this period. In 1820, 17,000 tons of sugar were produced and 5.8 percent of the land was under any type of cultivation. By 1897, Puerto Rico produced 62,000 tons of sugar and had 14.3 percent of its land devoted to agriculture. The small landholdings, which had been traditional since the 16th century, were purchased to develop large plantations.

After sugar, coffee was the second most important crop. In 1818 70 million pounds of coffee were produced, a figure which grew to 130 million pounds by 1830. The increased agricultural activity was done partly by new slave labor, workers imported from other Caribbean islands. In 1817 Spain had signed a treaty with Britain pledging to outlaw Spanish involvement in the