page_title: Asiento de Negros
section_title: French: 1701–1713
hierarchical_section_title: Asiento de Negros / Holders of the Asiento / French: 1701–1713
context_page_description: The asiento was a short-term loan or debt contract, of about one to four years, signed between the Spanish crown and a banker or a small group of bankers against future crown revenues, and included after peace treaties were signed. Between the early 16th and the mid-18th century, asientos were used by the Spanish treasurer to adjust short-term imbalances between revenues and expenditures. The sovereign promised to repay the principal of the loan plus high interest. The participant bankers in Seville, Lisbon, Genoa and Amsterdam, in turn, drew on the profits and direct investments obtained from a large number of Atlantic merchants. In exchange for a set of scheduled payments, merchants and financiers were given the right to collect relevant taxes or oversee the trade in those commodities that fell under the monarch's prerogative. In this way a set of merchants received the right to ship tobacco, salt, sugar and cacao on a trade route from the Spanish West Indies, some times accompanied by licences to export bullion from Spanish Main or Cadiz.
context_section_description: 1701–1713: Jean-Baptiste du Casse in name of the Compagnie de Guinée et de l'Assiente des Royaume de la France. In 1701, the French King granted the Guinea Company the Spanish Asiento and the company reorganised. Unlike any other chartered company before it, it included both the Spanish King and the French King as shareholders, for one quarter of the total capital each, which amounted to 100,000 livres. Because of commercial competition paying the French and Spanish for the Asiento was a prominent issue during the Spanish War of Succession. The Portuguese who apparently had trouble letting go of their Asiento rights ... were understood as a French privilege and indeed a marker of superior status of the French abroad. The Asiento did not concern French Caribbean but Spanish America.
  December 2, 1711, Jacques Cassard obtained from the French king the command of a squadron of eight vessels and embarked on an expedition during which he plundered the Portuguese colony Cape Verde. He seized in particular fort Praia on Santiago, Cape Verde, the storehouse of the commerce. Then he set of to Montserrat and Antigua in the Caribbean before heading to the possessions of the Dutch. On 10 October 1712, Cassard attacked Suriname and Berbice, where demanded an amount of 300,000 guilders, which was paid in bills of exchange, slaves and goods. The negotiations with Suriname started, and on 27 October Cassard left with ƒ 747,350 (€ 8.1 million in 2018). Cassard returned to Martinique and set sail towards Sint Eustatius. Curaçao was occupied by Cassard from February 18 to 27, 1713, more substantial and richer than the previous ones, but it's also much better defended.
  The King abolished the Asiento Company's monopoly in 1713 and opened the trade south of the Sierra Leone River to French private traders from five specific port towns: Nantes, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Le Havre and Saint Malo. They paid a tax to the king for each enslaved African transported to the French West Indies upon their return to France.
caption: Jean-Baptiste du Casse, 1700
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