ABSTRACT
Marauding on Spanish possessions and even more extensive smuggling were carried on by British merchants, desperate to penetrate the lucrative markets of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. The seizure of British ships by the Spanish authorities regularly led to tensions between the two countries and in the 1720s there was, to all intents, an undeclared war between Britain and Spain, with Gibraltar under lengthy siege. War was presented as being about British freedom of the seas against Spanish oppression. William Pitt held out the prospect of Britain becoming a world power. He offered a vision of an expanding commercial empire in the western hemisphere. Attitudes to empire were shaped by what the political economist Adam Smith called the 'mercantile system or mercantilism. This assumed that national power came from increased wealth in the shape of gold and silver bullion and by maintaining a favourable balance of trade.
