page_title: Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas / History / Later years
caption_attribution_description: Español: Soraluze (Gipúzkoa)
context_page_description: The Royal Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas was a Spanish Basque trading company in the 18th century, operating from 1728 to 1785, which had a monopoly on Venezuelan trade. It was renamed in 1785 the Royal Philippine Company.
context_section_description: While Basque involvement increased after 1749, the Spanish Crown dealt a critical blow to the Basques when it diffused the Basque grip over the Company by transferring its headquarters to Madrid, a move contested by Gipuzkoa, and imposing the requirement to include a Spaniard in a board of directors of three (1751). Facing increasing hostility from English war vessels and weakened by the liberalization of commerce with Venezuela (1776), the Company's monopoly came to an end. The crown no longer saw the need for a monopolizing company to control and grow the economy, since by that time the Venezuelan economy had matured and been tightly linked with the markets of Spain and New Spain, which consumed most of its cocoa. The Spanish crown terminated the company's charter in 1784.  A key effect of the Caracas Company, despite its eventual commercial failure, was that it guaranteed the place of Caracas in the Captaincy-General. When the crown established a high court (Real Audiencia) in the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1786, it was sited in Caracas.
  The owners of the Guipuzcoana Company transformed it into the Royal Philippine Company (1785). Instead a consulado de mercaderes (a merchants' guild) was established in Caracas in 1793. One of the most active proponents of the move was François Cabarrus, a prominent company stockholder hailing from a merchant family in Bayonne (Labourd), increasingly involved in Spanish finances and politics.
caption: Soraluze (Placencia de las Armas), a key arms manufacturer for the Company in Gipuzkoa
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