Asiento de Negros
The () was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide African slaves to colonies in the Spanish Americas. The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade directly from Africa itself, choosing instead to contract out the importation to foreign merchants from nations more prominent in that part of the world; typically Portuguese and Genovese, but later the Dutch, French and British. The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean but Spanish America. The 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas divided the Atlantic Ocean and other parts of the  globe into two zones of influence, Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish acquired the west side washing South America and the West Indies, whilst the Portuguese obtained the east side washing the west coast of Africa - and also the Indian Ocean beyond. The Spanish relied on African slave labour to make their American colonial project possible, but now lacked any trading or territorial foothold in West Africa, the principal source of slave labour. Thus the Spanish were reliant on Portuguese slave traders for all their requirements. The contract was usually obtained by foreign merchant banks who cooperated with local or foreign  traders, specialized in shipping. Different organisations and individuals would bid for the right to hold the . The original impetus to import enslaved Africans was to relieve the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies from the labour demands of the Spanish colonists. The enslavement of Amerindians had been halted by the influence of Dominicans such as Bartolomé de las Casas. Spain gave individual to Portuguese merchants to bring slaves to South America. After the Treaty of Münster, in 1648, Dutch merchants became involved in the Asiento de Negros. In 1713, the British were awarded the right to the asiento in the Treaty  of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. The British government passed its rights to the South Sea Company. The British ended with the 1750 Treaty of Madrid between Great Britain and Spain. An , in the Spanish language, is 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, often included after peace treaties were signed. An covered one or a combination of three specific transactions: an unsecured short-term loan, a transfer of payment, and a  currency exchange contract. Between the early 16th and the mid-18th century, 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 (12%). The participant bankers in Seville, Lisbon, Republic of 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. In particular, the would result in great impact for the economy of Spanish American colonies, because the treaty secured or would secure fixed revenues for the crown and the supply of the region with certain commodities, whereas the contracting party bore the risk of the trade. A new asiento was the safest means to get their money back and cash  their arrears. History of the. Background in the Spanish Americas. The general meaning of (from the Spanish verb , to sit, which was derived from the Latin ) in Spanish is "consent" or "settlement, establishment". In a commercial context, it means "contract, trading agreement". In the words of Georges Scelle, it was "a term in Spanish public law which designates every contract made for the purpose of public utility...between the Spanish government and private individuals." The Asiento system was established following Spanish settlement in the Caribbean when the indigenous population was undergoing demographic collapse and the Spanish needed another source of  labour. Initially, a few Christian Africans born in Iberia were transported to the Caribbean. But as the indigenous demographic collapse was ongoing and opponents of the Spanish exploitation of indigenous labour grew, including that of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the young Habsburg king Charles I of Spain allowed for the direct importation of slaves from Africa ("bozales") to the Caribbean. The first asiento for selling slaves was drawn up in August 1518, granting a Flemish favourite of Charles, , a monopoly on importing enslaved Africans for eight years with a maximum of 4,000. Gouvenot promptly sold his licence to the treasurer  of the and three subcontractors, Genoese merchants in Andalusia, for 25,000 ducats. The Casa de Contratación in Seville controlled both trade and immigration to the New World, excluding Jews, "conversos", Muslims, and foreigners. African slaves were considered merchandise, and their imports were regulated by the crown. The Spanish crown collected a duty on each "pieza", and not on each individual slave delivered. Spain had neither direct access to the African sources of slaves nor the ability to transport them, so the asiento system was a way to ensure a legal supply of Africans to the New World, which brought revenue  to the Spanish crown. Portuguese monopoly. For the Spanish crown, the asiento was a source of profit. Haring says, "The asiento remained the settled policy of the Spanish government for controlling and profiting from the slave trade." In Habsburg Spain, asientos were a basic method of financing state expenditures: "Borrowing took two forms – long-term debt in the form of perpetual bonds ("juros"), and short-term loan contracts provided by bankers ("asientos"). Many asientos were eventually converted or refinanced through "juros"." Initially, since Portugal had unimpeded rights in West Africa via its 1494 treaty, it dominated the European slave trade  of Africans. Before the onset of the official asiento in 1595, when the Spanish monarch also ruled Portugal in the Iberian Union (1580–1640), the Spanish fiscal authorities gave individual asientos to merchants, primarily from Portugal, to bring slaves to the Americas. For the 1560s most of these slaves were obtained in the Upper Guinea area, especially in the Sierra Leone region where there were many wars associated with the Mandé invasions. Following the establishment of the Portuguese colony of Angola in 1575, and the gradual replacement of São Tomé by Brazil as the primary producer of sugar, Angolan interests came  to dominate the trade, and it was Portuguese financiers and merchants who obtained the larger-scale, comprehensive asiento that was established in 1595 during the period of the Iberian Union. The asiento was extended to the importation of African slaves to Brazil, with those holding asientos for the Brazilian slave trade often also trading slaves in Spanish America. Spanish America was a major market for African slaves, including many of whom exceeded the quota of the asiento license and were illegally sold. From the period between 1595 and 1622, approximately half of all imported slaves were destined for Mexico. Most  smuggled slaves were not brought by freelance traders. Angolan dominance of the trade was pronounced after 1615 when the governors of Angola, starting with Bento Banha Cardoso, allied with Imbangala mercenaries to wreak havoc on the local African powers. Many of these governors also held the contract of Angola as well as the asiento, thus insuring their interests. Shipping registers from Vera Cruz and Cartagena show that as many as 85% of the slaves arriving in Spanish ports were from Angola, brought by Portuguese ships. In 1637 the Dutch West India Company employed Portuguese merchants in the trade. The earlier  asiento period came to an end in 1640 when Portugal revolted against Spain, though even then the Portuguese continued to supply Spanish colonies. Dutch, French and British competition. In the 1650s after Portugal achieved its independence from Spain, Spain denied the asiento to the Portuguese, whom it considered rebels. Spain sought to enter the slave trade directly, sending ships to Angola to purchase slaves. It also toyed with the idea of a military alliance with Kongo, the powerful African kingdom north of Angola. But these ideas were abandoned and the Spanish returned to Portuguese and then Dutch interests to supply  slaves. (Captain Holmes's expedition captured or destroyed all the Dutch settlements on Ghana's coast.) The Spanish awarded large contracts for the asiento to the Genovese banker Grillo in the 1660s and the Dutch West India Company in 1675 rather than Portuguese merchants in the 1670s and 1680s. However, this same period saw a resurgence of piracy. In 1700, with the death of the last Habsburg monarch, Charles II of Spain, his will named the House of Bourbon in the form of Philip V of Spain as the successor to the Spanish throne. The Bourbon family were also Kings  of France and so the asiento was granted in 1702 to the , for the importation of 48,000 African slaves over a decade. The Africans were transported to the French Caribbean colonies of Martinique and Saint Domingue. As part of their strategy of maintaining a balance of power in Europe, Great Britain and her allies, including the Dutch and the Portuguese, disputed the Bourbon inheritance of the Spanish throne and fought in the War of the Spanish Succession against Bourbon hegemony. Although Britain did not prevail, it did receive the "asiento" as part of the Peace of Utrecht. This granted Britain  a thirty-year "asiento" to send one merchant ship to the Spanish port of Portobelo, furnishing 4800 slaves to the Spanish colonies. The "asiento" became a conduit for British contraband and smugglers of all kinds, which undermined Spain's attempts to keep a protectionist trading system with its American colonies. Disputes connected with it led to the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739). Britain gave up its rights to the asiento after the war, in the Treaty of Madrid of 1750, as Spain was implementing several administrative and economic reforms. The Spanish Crown bought out the South Sea Company's right  to the "asiento" that year. The Spanish Crown sought another way to supply African slaves, attempting to liberalize its traffic, trying to shift to a system of the free trade in slaves by Spaniards and foreigners in particular colonial locations. These were Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Caracas, all of which used African slaves in large numbers. Holders of the "Asiento". Portuguese: 1595–1640. Six Asientos were granted to: In 1640 the Iberian Union fell apart; the Portuguese Restoration War began. Between 1640 and 1651 there was no asiento. ) Slave arrivals to the Spanish Americas declined precipitously. On 12 July  1641 Portugal and the Dutch Republic signed a 'Treaty of Offensive and Defensive Alliance', otherwise known as the Treaty of The Hague. Dutch ships were allowed in any Portuguese port for ten years. Dutch merchant Jan Valckenburgh saw an opportunity but was expelled from Loango-Angola in 1648. Dutch private entrepreneurs were responsible for almost half of the total investment in slave trade against a smaller share held by the WIC. The Invasion of Jamaica was the "casus belli" that resulted in the actual Anglo-Spanish War (1654-1660). In March 1659 the Danish Africa Company was started by the  Finnish Hendrik Carloff and two Dutchmen. Their mandate included trade with the Danish Gold Coast. Their goal was to compete with the Dutch, the Swedish Africa Company and the Portuguese. The Dutch competed with the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa founded in 1660. Both of these slaving powers had a strong presence on the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin; many slaves came from Cross River (Nigeria), Calabar in the Bight of Biafra and West Central Africa. The Dutch and Portuguese signed a new Treaty of The Hague (1661). , who had left Dutch Brazil in 1654, was  appointed by the WIC as governor of Curaçao, that, from 1662 to 1728 and intermittently thereafter, functioned as an entrepôt through which captives on Dutch transatlantic ships reached Spanish colonies. A second branch of the intra-American slave traffic originated in Barbados and the Colony of Jamaica. Genoese: 1662–1671. In 1658 Ambrogio Lomellini and Domingo Grillo were appointed as "Treasurers of the Holy Crusade", waging war against "infidels". This fact allowed them to have access to a part of the treasures that came from America. (From the late 1640s Grillo and his business partner Lomellini lived in Madrid.) In 1662  and 1666 Spain (or the royal finances) were bankrupt. Slave-contracts of the WIC with Grillo and Lomellini of Madrid, 1662 and 1667, who were permitted to sub-contract to any nation friendly to Spain. Dutch & Portuguese: 1671–1701. In 1661 the Dutch and the Portuguese signed a peace, ratified the year after. In 1667 the Dutch and the English signed the Treaty of Breda and New York became British. The Treaty of Lisbon (1668) ended twenty-eight years of war between Spain and Portugal. In the same year, France ended its war with Spain after the War of Devolution. British : 1713–1750. After the introduction of the Trade with Africa Act 1697 the Royal African Company lost its monopoly and in 1708 it was insolvent. The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 granted Britain an "Asiento de negros" lasting 30 years to supply the Spanish colonies with 144,000 at 4,800 slaves per year. Britain was permitted to open offices in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cartagena, Havana, Panama, Portobello and Vera Cruz. An extra-legal clause was added; one ship of no more than 500 tons could be sent to one of these places each year (the "Navío de Permiso") with general trade goods . (Two ships were in addition to the annual ships, but were not part of the asiento contract.) One-quarter of the profits were to be reserved for the King of Spain. The Asiento was granted in the name of Queen Anne and then contracted to the company. It was provided that the same reporting procedure might take place at subsequent five-year intervals. At the end of the contract the Assentistas were permitted three years to remove their effects from the Indies, adjust their accounts and ‘‘make up a balance of the whole”. By July the South Sea Company had  arranged contracts with the Royal African Company to supply the necessary African slaves to Jamaica. Ten pounds was paid for a slave aged over 16, £8 for one under 16 but over 10. Two-thirds were to be male, and 90% adult. The company trans-shipped 1,230 slaves from Jamaica to America in the first year, plus any that might have been added (against standing instructions) by the ship's captains on their own behalf. On arrival of the first cargoes, the local authorities refused to accept the Asiento, which had still not been officially confirmed there by the  Spanish authorities. The slaves were eventually sold at a loss in the West Indies. In 1714 the government announced that a quarter of profits would be reserved for Queen Anne and a further 7.5% for a financial advisor, Manuel Manasses Gilligan, an English colonist, who operated from the (neutral) Danish West Indies. Some Company board members refused to accept the contract on these terms, and the government was obliged to reverse its decision. Despite these setbacks, the company continued, having raised 200,000 pesos (maybe ducats or Spanish escudos? to finance the operations. Anne had secretly negotiated with France to get  its approval regarding the "asiento." She boasted to Parliament of her success in taking the "asiento" away from France and London celebrated her economic coup. In 1714 2,680 slaves were carried, and for 1716–17, 13,000 more, but the trade continued to be unprofitable. As the French previously discovered, high costs meant the real profits from the slave trade asiento were in smuggling contraband goods, which evaded import duties and deprived the authorities of much-needed revenue. An import duty of 33 pieces of eight was charged on each slave (although for this purpose two children were counted as one adult  slave). In 1718 a declaration of war between England and Spain halted operations under the Asiento until 1721. The company's assets in South America were seized, at a cost claimed by the company to be £300,000. Any prospect of profit from trade, for which the company had purchased ships and had been planning its next ventures, disappeared. Similar conflicts interrupted the contract from 1727 to 1729 and 1739 to 1748. Increasing knowledge of illicit trading by the SSC resulted in the Spanish tightening on-site monitoring in the Americas during the 1730s. The Spanish then proceeded to seek  recompense for clandestine trade carried on by the SSC and others under the veil of the supply of Negroes and the annual ship. Thus a key feature of the depredations crisis was the ongoing failure by the SSC to account and report transparently. Spain having raised objections to the Asiento clauses, the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) was supplemented by the Treaty of Madrid (5 October 1750). The matter of the "asiento" was not even mentioned in the treaty, as it had lessened in importance to both nations, although both parties had agreed to resolve outstanding concerns at a  proper time and place. The issue was finally settled in 1750 when Britain agreed to renounce its claim to the asiento in exchange for a payment of £100,000 and British trade with Spanish America under favourable conditions. In 1752 the African Company of Merchants was founded. It has been estimated that the company transported over 34,000 slaves with deaths comparable to its competitors, which was taken as competence in this area of work at the time. Meanwhile, it became a business for privately owned enterprises; the Dutch West India Company began to outsource the slave trade since 1730s? In  1740 a Havana company paid Spain for the Asiento to import slaves to Cuba. Spanish: 1765–1779. The asiento was given to a group of Basques from 1765 to 1779. Spain's connection to the slave trade with Africa was minor, smaller than that of the Portuguese, the English, the French and Dutch, estimated at only 185 voyages and 276,885 slaves who embarked from 1500 to 1800. This compares to almost 25,000 voyages and over 7,331,831 slaves who disembarked in total by those nations from 1500 to 1800. Of the total number of slaves, nearly half went to the Caribbean islands  and the Guianas, almost 40 per cent to Brazil, and some 6 per cent to mainland Spanish America. Most of them arrived between 1601 and 1625, but the number dropped to its lowest between 1676 and 1700. Surprisingly enough, under 5 per cent of the slaves went to North America. These figures may change as authors of "Atlantic History and the Slave Trade to Spanish America" suggest half of them went to Brazil and a quarter to the Caribbean.