La nueva organización del área económico-administrativa de la Real Armada. Implantación y validación en el Departamento de Cartagena. (1772-1788)

Résumé

The military and economic disaster that gave Spain its participation in the war of the Seven Years' (1761-1763) forced Carlos III to promote a reforming process of the State if he wanted to maintain his possessions. In the administration of the Navy changes came hand in hand with new ordinances (Supplies, Engineers and Arsenals) that implemented new processes, new managers and an innovative way of financing this onerous institution based on budgetary control. This economic-administrative management system was criticized at the time, accusing him of not being worthy of this name and being responsible for the evils that afflicted the Real Armada of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The aim of this thesis is to corroborate the existence of a system of economic-administrative management in the Real Armada in the period 1772-1788, both from a theoretical point of view, as its practical application in the Peninsular Departments. The compilation of the applicable regulations -of major and minor range -, the delimitation of areas of responsibility, the description of the real, economic flows and information, the knowledge of the format and content of the reports, and the identification of the registration methods of the economic information, shape the theoretical part of the study of the Navy's management system. This first step allows to verify its application in the areas of income and expenses in the Department selected as an example, in Cartagena. The document presupuesto general de caudales has been put in value, a summary statement of the planned annual activity of the Departments, reflecting its organizational structure, there were indexed the rest of economics reports, and on that there was calculated the consignment that these had to receive. The controls on this document and on the debt of previous periods, demostrated that the traditional single-entry accounting, cargo y data, did not provide enough information, so it was necessary to resort to methods and principles of the double-entry to collect a faithful image of the accounts of the Departments. It is concluded that there was a complete, coherent, continuous, reliable and homogenous economic-administrative management system in the Real Armada implemented by the Ordinances of 1772 and 1776. This one pursued, both organizational and economic objectives: the reduction of costs through a flow of information, true and standard, towards decision centres, where the staff in charge of managing the Navy, the sword, would be responsible for controlling the money invested by the State in it. This management system was applied continuously and consistently in the Department of Cartagena in the period 1772-1788.