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Fajardo expedition to the Caribbean
Part of Eighty Years' War
Map of the 17th-century Araya Peninsula.
Date November 1605 – February 1606 Location coast of Venezuela Province and Spanish West Indies, Caribbean Sea Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
Spain	United Provinces
Commanders and leaders
Luis Fajardo	Daniel de Mugerol (or Moucheron)
Strength
14 or 19 ships	11 or 19 ships
Casualties and losses
None or very light	11 or 19 ships captured and destroyed, or 2 ships that manage to escape 400 killed and several prisoners

The Fajardo expedition to the Caribbean was a Spanish punitive expedition that took place between November 1605 and February 1606 during Eighty Years' War. The Dutch, after the closure of the salt trade with the Iberian ports in 1599, had been extracting salt illegally on the Caribbean coast of Araya, in the Spanish province of Venezuela, since it was an essential product for the Dutch industry. The Spanish Crown decided to put an end to this extraction by sending a fleet under Admiral Luis Fajardo, who secretly sailed from Spain to the Caribbean Sea to destroy the fleet of Dutch smugglers and privateers who were engaged in this work. The Spanish fleet attacked the Dutch by surprise in that place, destroying their forces and the facilities that allowed the extraction of salt, besides applying severe reprisals against them. After the attack on Araya, Fajardo's fleet spent a short time in the Caribbean chasing privateers and smugglers before returning to Spain.

This expedition is the beginning of what historiography has called "battle of the salt" between the Spanish and the Dutch, which lasted more than sixty years. The engagement in Araya had negative consequences for Dutch industry, as no one dared to venture into the area again for several years.

Background

War and salt

During the second half of the 16th century, the Eighty Years' War had been of a limited nature, in which the Spanish and Dutch only had engagements in the territory of the Netherlands. But over time, the war began to evolve rapidly and to escalate territorially, coinciding with the death of Philip II of Spain in 1598. Despite the war, commercial traffic between the Netherlands and Spain continued to be very intense. But in 1599, Philip III of Spain prohibited all trade to damage the economy of the United Provinces. With this, the war also acquired an economic character, since the Dutch had an economy that included an important industry that works with salt, which was bought in the Iberian ports and was affected by this prohibition.

Salt was a product that had started to experience a growing demand in the Netherlands since the 16th century. The Netherlands was a major fishing nation that used this product to cure their catches, which increased over time. The number of Dutch herring boats increased from 150 in 1550 to more than 4,000 a century later. For the Dutch, salt was also necessary to cure meats or food for long trips, as well as to produce butter and cheese. It also had industrial applications, such as in the manufacture of glass. Zeeland, one of the Dutch territories, had perfected a process for bleaching salt that was in demand throughout Europe. That is why salt became an important element of fiscal income for the United Provinces, and a fundamental product in commercial exchanges, which were controlled by the Dutch merchants in a quasi-monopoly regime.

For several decades, the Dutch merchants had obtained salt in Sanlúcar (Spain) and in Setúbal (Portugal), reaching around 200 transport vessels per month. In the early years of the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch continued to buy salt in the Iberian ports, but in 1599 King Philip III of Spain interrupted the sale of salt to economically damage the United Provinces. The sale had also been suspended with Portugal, as it was part of the Spanish Crown since 1580. Given this, the Dutch began to bring salt from the islands of Cape Verde, while making attempts to obtain the reopening of trade with the Iberian Peninsula, since it was more profitable. But these attempts failed and the Spanish also closed off the islands to the Dutch.

The Dutch in the Caribbean

The Spanish measures did not take the Dutch by surprise, but forced them to urgently search for a new place to obtain salt. They finally found it in the West Indies, along the Venezuelan coast and especially in a place called Punta de Araya or Punta del Rey. Dutch merchants were already active in the West Indies long before the late 16th century, sometimes in concert with French and English adventurers to smuggle. In addition, since the United Provinces began their fight against the Spanish Empire, they rejected the commercial exclusivity they had in the New World and, due to the economic pressure exerted by the Spanish, Dutch incursions into the Caribbean increased.

The first Dutch incursions to the Araya salt flats date back to 1593 or after 1594, but it is from March 1599, after the Spanish prohibitions, that the salt ships begin to arrive in the area in a highly organized way. For that date, the resolutions of the General States are full of demands and privateer commissions destined to Araya.

Dutch saltmen in Araya

Salt located in Punta de Araya, where Dutch smugglers extracted that product to supply their industry.

Illustration of a Dutch fluyt. It was a type of ship that had a large load capacity and was adaptable as a warship. The Dutch used these ships on their voyages to the Salinas de Araya.

Fajardo expedition

Araya

Manzanillo

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Location map of the main engagements of the Fajardo expedition to the Caribbean.

Aftermath

Plan of the fortress of Arroyo de Araya c.1636.

Sources

• Fernández Duro, Cesáreo (1896). Armada Española desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón (in Spanish). Vol. III. Madrid, España: Instituto de Historia y Cultura Naval.
• Marley, David (2008). Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present (2 ed.). Santa Barbara, USA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-100-8.
• Goslinga, Cornelis (2017). The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast 1580-1680. Gainesville, USA: Library Press at UF. ISBN 978-1-947372-72-6.
• Dávila, Rafael (2015). Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador; Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas (ed.). "La Sal: Objetivo codiciado por Holanda en las provincias de Nueva Andalucía y Venezuela durante el siglo XVII". Tiempo y Espacio (in Spanish). 33 (64). Caracas, Venezuela: 45–71.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Lane, Kris (1999). Blood and Silver: A History of Piracy in the Caribbean and Central America. Oxford, United Kingdom: Signal Books. ISBN 1-902669-01-0.
• Quezada de González, Roselys Teresa (2011). "Las Salinas de Araya en el contexto colonial y republicano (siglos XVI al XIX)" (PDF). Dirección General de Estudios de Postgrado, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (in Spanish). Caracas, Venezuela.
• Rey González, Juan Carlos (2010). "Piratas en las costas venezolanas". Los corsarios de sal. La penetración holandesa en el Caribe. Revista El Desafío de la Historia (in Spanish) (13). Caracas, Venezuela: 54–61.