The transatlantic experience as a key to upward social mobility: Joaquín Marcos Satrustegui (1817–1885), businessman and diplomat

Abstract

ABSTRACT How to achieve financial success, security and standing in bourgeois society? The answer in fictional accounts and real life alike was a combination of education, fortitude, hands-on business experience and political influence. Satrustegui‘s biography is the argument: a childhood spent in large part in exile, enlistment in the liberal forces following the outbreak of the First Carlist War and distinguished service as a military attaché as interpreter at the headquarters of the Commander of the British Legion in Spain and participant in negotiations leading to the Convention of Bergara, an agreement signed in 1839 that marked the end of hostilities in the Basque Country. His unfulfilled ambitions would later take him to San Francisco, California where he became a partner in the firm E. Mickle and Company in 1850. Appointed Spanish consul in that city on 2 June 1851, Satrustegui became a founding partner of the López and Company shipping company in 1857. He secured a paid diplomatic position in 1864, the first step in a long career during which he served as Spanish consul in Newcastle, Algiers, Montreal, New York and London. In 1876 he received the title of Baron de Satrustegui.