Abstract
The cession of the asiento of slaves and participation in Spanish American commerce became a priority for France and Britain during the War of the Spanish Succession. This chapter analyses the different treaties on the asiento, signed during the conflict, particularly the 1713 Hispano-British Treaty of Asiento, within the framework of the Utrecht negotiations and traces its history through a study of the contexts in which it functioned; in addition this chapter draws attention to a number of elements that help explain why it was maintained until 1750. The argument thus brings out the development of various phases in the actions of the Spanish court regarding the asiento based on the development of Spanish political economic thought in the eighteenth century.
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- 1.
‘Asiento ajustado entre las dos Majestades Católica y Británica sobre encargarse la Compañía de Inglaterra de la introducción de Esclavos Negros en la América española’, AGI, Indiferente, General, leg. 2799. This publication was prepared within the framework of the project MINECO HAR2015-65987-P: Redefinition of the European and Mediterranean Spaces in the Eighteenth Century. Politics, Diplomacy and Conflict.
- 2.
J. Albareda, La Guerra de Sucesión de España (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010); V. Léon Sanz, El Archiduque Carlos y los austracistas. Guerra de Sucesión y exilio (Sant Cugat: Arpegio, 2014).
- 3.
D. W. Jones, War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988).
- 4.
BN. 76224, ‘Assiento ajustado entre las dos Majestades Cathólica y Cristianísima con la Compañía Real de Guinea establecida en el Reyno de Francia’; R. Fernández Durán, La Corona española y el tráfico de Negros (Madrid: Ecobook, 2011), 39–59; C. Malamud Rikles, Cádiz y Saint Malò en el comercio colonial peruano (1698–1725) (Cádiz: Diputación Provincial, 1986).
- 5.
NA SP 108/471, ‘Treaty between her Majesty and the King of Spain’, Barcelona 1707, analysed by Fernández Durán, La Corona española, 93–95.
- 6.
P. Vilar, Le ‘Manual de la Companya Nova de Gibraltar’ (Paris: SEVPEN, 1962). After the war, the Company continued its activities, using Gibraltar as a base, until 1723.
- 7.
J. M. Delgado, ‘El impacto de Utrecht en la organización del comercio colonial español (1713–1739)’, in: El declive de la Monarquía y del Imperio español, ed. J. Albareda (Barcelona: Crítica, 2015), 123–172.
- 8.
Fernández Durán, La Corona española, 45–91; E. W. Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales et maritimes entre la France et les côtes de l’Océan Pacifique (Paris: Champion, 1909); C. Yuste, Emporios transpacíficos. Comerciantes mexicanos en Manila, 1710–1815 (México: UNAM, 2007).
- 9.
R. Donoso Anes, El asiento de esclavos con Inglaterra: su contexto histórico y sus aspectos económicos y contables (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2010); J. O. McLachlan, Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).
- 10.
‘Tratado de paz y amistad entre sus Majestades el rey de España y la reina de Inglaterra…concluido en Utrecht el 13 de julio de 1713’ and ‘Tratado preliminar de comercio entre las coronas de España e Inglaterra, concluido en Madrid el 13 de julio de 1713’, in: Tratados, convenios y declaraciones de paz y comercio, ed. A. del Cantillo (Madrid: Imprenteria de Alegria y Charlain, 1843), 75–87 and 115–127. See C. Storrs (Lord Lexington’s mission to Madrid), L. Bély (Mesnager’s diplomatic arbitration) and J. Albareda (French Spanish relations), in: 1713. La Monarquía de España y los Tratados de Utrecht, ed. V. Léon Sanz, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna. Anejos XII (2013).
- 11.
BN 1/6853, ‘Tratado de amistad y comercio ajustado entre las Coronas de España y de Inglaterra, concluido en Utrecht, el 9 de diciembre de 1713’.
- 12.
NA SP 105/258. R. Fernández Durán, ‘Asiento de Negros con Inglaterra. Marzo 1713. Una sociedad buscadora de rentas’, in: Los tratados de Utrecht. Claroscuros de la paz. La resistencia de los catalanes, ed. C. Mollfulleda and N. Sallés (Barcelona: Museu d´Història de Catalunya, 2015), 177–178.
- 13.
BN VC/852/27, ‘Tratado de Declaración y Explicación sobre algunos artículos del antecedente ajustado en Utrecht, entre esta Corona y la de Inglaterra, sobre la Paz y el Comercio, concluido en Madrid en 14 de Diciembre de 1715’; ‘Tratado declaratorio de algunos artículos del asiento de negros que se pactó el 26 de marzo de 1713, concluido en Madrid el 26 de mayo de 1716’; ‘Tratado particular de paz y amistad entre las Coronas de España y de Inglaterra, firmado en Madrid el 13 de junio de 1721’, in: Tratados, ed. Cantillo, 174–191 and 198–201.
- 14.
Delgado, ‘El impacto de Utrecht’, 147–156; G. J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700–1789 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 149–205.
- 15.
A. García-Baquero González, Cádiz y el Atlántico (1717–1778), 2 vols. (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1976); A. Crespo, La Casa de la Contratación y la Intendencia General de la Marina de Cádiz (1717–1730) (Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 1996). The 1720 Project which meant a return to the fleets and galleons, was a disaster: after that only three escorted fleets were sent to New Spain (in 1721, 1723 and 1730): see J. M. Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales (1650–1796). España, América y Europa en el cambio institucional del sistema colonial español (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2007), 97–140.
- 16.
‘Tratado de paz y amistad entre el rey Católico don Felipe V y el emperador de Alemania Carlos VI; concluido en Viena el 30 de abril de 1725’; ‘Tratado de comercio entre su Majestad imperial Carlos VI y Su Majestad Católica Felipe V, concluido en Viena el 1 de mayo de 1725’, in: Tratados, ed. Cantillo, 202–216 and 218–228, especially Articles 26 and 47. See A. Mur Raurell, Diplomacia secreta y paz. La correspondencia de los embajadores españoles en Viena Juan Guillermo Ripperda y Luis Ripperda (1724–1727), 2 vols. (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 2011); V. Léon Sanz, ‘La diplomacia de la Corte Borbónica: Hacia la Paz con Austria de 1725’, in: La Corte de los Borbones. Crisis del modelo cortesano, ed. J. Martínez Millán, C. Camarero and M. Luzzi (Madrid: Polifemo, 2013), 529–558.
- 17.
I. Pulido Bueno, José Patiño. El inicio del Gobierno político-económico ilustrado en España (Huelva: Artes Gráficas Andaluzas, 1998); A. F. Kuethe and K. J. Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century. War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713–1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 31–157; A. J. Pierce, The Origins of Bourbon Reform in Spanish South America, 1700–1763 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
- 18.
‘Tratado de paz, unión, amistad y alianza defensiva con las Coronas de España, Francia e Inglaterra, ajustado y concluido en Sevilla el 9 de noviembre de 1729’, IX, in: Tratados, ed. Cantillo, 247. See L. Bély, Les relations internationales en Europe (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: PUF, 1992), 441; and V. Léon Sanz, Carlos VI. El emperador que no pudo ser rey de España (Madrid: Aguilar, 2003), 301–320.
- 19.
Walker, Spanish Politics, 159–173; Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 124–140. On the Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations between1728 and 1739, see A. de Béthencourt, Relaciones de España bajo Felipe V (Alicante: AEHM, 1998).
- 20.
L. de Luxan Hernández and S. de Luxan Menéndez, ‘Las dificultades de funcionamiento del Asiento de Negros británico en el imperio español, 1713–1739: la misión de Tomás de Geraldino en Londres’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1/3 (2013), 273–307. About Varas Valdés, see R. Antúnez Acevedo, Memorias Históricas sobre legislación y gobierno (Madrid: Sancha, 1797).
- 21.
Fernández Durán, La Corona española, 267–289; S. J. Stein and B. Stein, Silver, Trade and War. Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
- 22.
Something similar had occurred with the French asiento. In 1713, Grimaldo asked the Duke of Alba, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, to request the accounts of the South Sea Company and of the asiento through reserved channels. In 1734, France had not yet settled the accounts, but had repeatedly demanded compensation from Spain, which in this case had the support of Britain; see Fernández Durán, La Corona española, 87. This is one of the conclusions reached by S. Carmona, R. Donoso and S. P. Walker in work focusing on clarifying the accounts of the asiento, although, in spite of their efforts to apply a methodology based on international accountancy and the impact of globalization, they find that the way the Company accounts were registered did not differ much from those of a private individual and admit their difficulty in coming to conclusive results, in ‘Accounting, International Relations and Treaty Verification: Britain, Spain and the Asiento’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 35 (2010), 252–273.
- 23.
B. L. Brown, ‘The South Sea Company and Contraband Trade’, American Historical Review 4 (1926, XXXI), 662–678; G. H. Nelson, ‘Contraband Trade under the Asiento, 1730–1739’, American Historical Review 51 (1945–1946), 55–67; Fernández Durán, La Corona española, 289–294; C. A. Palmer, Human Cargoes. The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700–1739 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).
- 24.
G. Zeller, ‘Los tiempos modernos’, in: Historia de las relaciones internacionales, ed. P. Renouvin (Madrid: Akal 1984); h. w. v. Temperley, ‘The Causes of the War of Jenkins Ear, 1739’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 3 (1909), 197–236; J. Cerdá Crespo, Conflictos Coloniales. La Guerra de los Nueve Años 1739–1748 (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2010).
- 25.
Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 141–171; J. M. Delgado Barrado, Aquiles y Teseos. Bosquejos del reformismo borbónico (1701–1759) (Granada: Universidad de Granada/Universidad de Jaén, 2007), 90–110. From the coincidence of the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, with the bankruptcy of the Spanish Treasury, the government clearly saw that reforming the Atlantic trade would be profitable for the finances of the crown; see P. Fernádez Albadalejo, ‘El decreto de suspensión de pagos de 1739: análisis e implicaciones’, Moneda y Crédito 142 (1977), 51–73.
- 26.
J. L. Gómez Urdáñez, El proyecto reformista de Ensenada (Lleida: Milenio, 1996); J. Molina Cortón, Reformismo y neutralidad. José de Carvajal y la diplomacia de la España preilustrada (Mérida: Junta de Extremadura, 2003) 218–278.
- 27.
‘Tratado de indemnizaciones y comercio entre las coronas de España y de la Gran Bretaña, concluido y firmado en Madrid el 5 de octubre de 1750 para la ejecución del artículo 16 del Tratado de Aquisgrán’, in: Tratados, ed. Cantillo, 409–412.
- 28.
For the sake of brevity, we will limit our analysis to economic treaties, in print or manuscript form, circulated between the 1720s and 1750s, which are the most relevant on the debate on the legacy of Utrecht. This type of literature has been named proyectismo: cf. J. Muñoz Pérez, ‘Los proyectos sobre España e Indias en el siglo XVIII: el proyectismo como género’, Revista de Estudios Políticos 81 (1955), 169–195; P. Álvarez de Miranda, ‘Proyecto y proyectistas en el siglo XVIII español’, Boletín de la Real Academia Española 65 (1985), 409–429; A. Domínguez Ortiz, ‘Estudio Preliminar’, in: F. M. Moya Torres y Velasco, Manifiesto universal de los males envejecidos que España padece […], ed. A. Domínguez Ortiz (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1992), vii–lviii, especially xiii–xvii.
- 29.
L. García Fuentes, El comercio español con América, 1650–1700 (Sevilla: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, CSIC, 1980).
- 30.
Cantillo, ed., Tratados, 170–174; on the adjustment to British advantage of the Utrecht treaty in subsequent years, see McLachlan, Trade and Peace, 20–73.
- 31.
On the long eighteenth-century debate on America and the Spanish colonial empire see the classic works by R. Ezquerra, ‘La crítica española de la situación de America en el siglo XVIII’, Revista de Indias 87–88 (1962), 159–287; M. Bitar Letayf, Economistas españoles del siglo XVIII. Sus ideas sobre la libertad del comercio con Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1968); M. Artola, ‘América en el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII’, Revista de Indias 115–118 (1969), 51–77; J. A. García Baquero González, El comercio colonial en la época del absolutismo ilustrado. Problemas y debates (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2003).
- 32.
McLachlan, Trade and Peace, 81–83; Walker, Spanish Politics, 111–113.
- 33.
G. de Uztáriz, Theórica y Práctica de comercio y de marina […] (Madrid: n.p., 1724; 17422; 17573) (the second edition was reproduced anastatically by Gabriel Franco (Madrid: Aguilar, 1968); B. de Ulloa, Restablecimiento de las fábricas y comercio español […] (Madrid: A. Marín, 1740). I use the edition by Gonzalo Anes (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1992) which also includes the third unpublished part of the treatise. On the life of Uztáriz cf. R. Fernández Durán, Gerónimo de Uztáriz (1670–1732). Una política económica para Felipe V (Madrid: Minerva Ediciones, 1999).
- 34.
Despite the anti-English attitude of the Theórica and the Restablecimiento, the two Bourbon officials admired the effectiveness of the Navigation Act, the text of which they knew through the translation-summary provided by J.-B. Dubos in Les intêrets de l’Angleterre mal entendus dans la guerre présente (Amsterdam: Gallet, 1704), 308–317. Dubos’ treatise, which was also extremely important to transmitting the methodology of the English political arithmetic in France and Spain, was undoubtedly a point of reference for all the Iberian proyectistas and reformers of the early eighteenth century.
- 35.
Eminente had justified the drastic decrease in customs tariffs in Cadiz, which he himself administrated, with the need to stamp out contraband, given that it was the elevated duties charged in Seville (30 per cent ad valorem) that incentivized it: cf. García Fuentes, El comercio español, 60–62 and 74.
- 36.
Ulloa nevertheless argued for the need to facilitate the freedom of non-Andalusian and non-Castilian merchants to add their capital to the Carrera. Furthermore, compared to Uztariz, Ulloa was more disposed to recognize the usefulness of trading companies, in particular in organizing traffic towards those parts of the monarchy that remained isolated or to conquer new colonial territories, like in Asia. Cf. Ulloa, Restablecimiento, 165–176, 196–198, 337–355.
- 37.
Ulloa, Restablecimiento, 130, 151–152, 159, 177, 183–184, 191–192, 215, 274, 338, 386–387.
- 38.
Pulido Bueno, José Patiño, 33–34, 44–53, 57–58, 210–214; Fernández Durán, Gerónimo de Uztáriz, 116–117, 199–224, 285, 288–290; Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 99–140. The clash between the two, apart from being based on specific issues like the transfer of the Casa de Contratación from Seville to Cadiz, the profitability of royal manufactures and the level of effectiveness of the 1720 Proyecto (which had maintained, in compliance with the trade treaties, a system of taxation based on the cubic size and not the value of goods), originated essentially from their different and opposed vision of the economic future of the Spanish monarchy: while for Uztáriz Spain needed to return to being a nation that produced textiles to export mostly towards the American market, Patiño, more realistically, believed that it was more important simply to reactivate exports of any type, even those of agricultural products (primary materials and foodstuffs), without considering too much the Colbertist principle according to which final, manufactured products, being more valuable, represented a guarantee of obtaining an active balance of trade. Not by coincidence, the 1720 Proyecto contained a general decrease in customs duties on export goods, without however establishing a clear ‘qualitative’ difference between manufactured goods and raw materials. Walker justly underlined that at the heart of this attempt to stimulate the volume of exports there was nevertheless a desire to increase tax revenues: Spanish Politics, 110–111.
- 39.
Lynch, Bourbon Spain 1700–1808 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 19932), 148–149; J. M. Delgado Barrado, ‘Reformismo borbónico y compañías privilegiadas para el comercio americano (1700–1756)’, in: El reformismo borbónico. Una visión interdisciplinar, ed. A. Guimerá (Madrid: Alianza, 1996), 123–143. On the changing definition, between the second half of the sixteenth century and the start of the nineteenth, of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ within the Spanish Imperial area, cf. L. L. Johnson and S. Migden Socolow, ‘Colonial Centers, Colonial Peripheries, and the Economic Agency of the Spanish State’, in: Negotiated Empires. Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820, ed. C. Daniels and M. V. Kennedy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 59–77.
- 40.
R. D. Hussey, The Caracas Company, 1728–1784 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934); R. Rico Linage, Las Reales Compañías de comercio con América. Los órganos de gobierno (Sevilla: CSIC, 1983); M. García Ruiperez, ‘El pensamiento económico ilustrado y las compañías de comercio’, Revista de Historia Económica 4/3 (1986), 521–548; M. Gárate Ojanguren, La Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas (San Sebastian: Grupo Camino Doctor de Historia Donostiarra/Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y Publicaciones, 1990); M. Gárate Ojanguren, Comercio ultramarino e Ilustración. La Real Compañía de la Habana (San Sebastian: Departamento de Cultura del País Basco, 1993); J. M. Delgado Barrado, Fomento portuario y compañías privilegiadas. Los ‘Dialogos familiares’ de Marcelo Dantini (1740–1748) (Madrid: CSIC, 1998); M. E. Rodríguez García, Compañías privilegiadas de comercio con América y cambio político (1706–1765) (Madrid: Banco de España, 2005); Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 150–156.
- 41.
J. de Legarra, Representación […] sobre el estado actual de los comercios de España e Indias (manuscript no. 4666 in Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid); M. Zavala y Auñón, Representación al Rey N. Señor D. Phelipe V dirigida al más seguro aumento del Real Erario y conseguir la felicidad, mayor alivio, riqueza y abundancia de su Monarquía (n.p.: n.p., 1732) (later in Pamplona: A. Espinosa, Miscelánea económico-política (1749), 7–180, from which I cite); Á. Navia Osorio y Vigil de Quiñones, marqués de Santa Cruz de Marcenado, Rapsodia económico-política monárquica […] (Madrid: A. Marín, 1732) (anastatic edition Oviedo: Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 1984), especially 211–228; J. Amor de Soria, ‘Enfermedad crónica, y peligrosa de los reinos de España y de Indias (1741)’, in: J. Amor de Soria, Aragonesismo austracista (1734–1742), ed. E. Lluch (Madrid: CSIC, 2000), 73–375, especially 304–316; T. V. Argumosa y Gándara, Erudición política […] (Madrid: n.p., 1743), 143 ff.; M. Dantini, ‘Diálogos familiares de la agricoltura indiana […]’, in: Fomento portuario y compañías privilegiadas, ed. Delgado Barrado; J. M. Delgado Barrado, José de Carvajal y Lancáster. Testamento politico o idea de un gobierno catolico (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 1999), 111–130; J. Gutiérrez de Rubalcava, Tratado histórico, político y legal del comercio de las Indias Occidentales […] (Cadiz: Imprenta Real de Marina, 1750); Anon., ‘Representación hecha al Ex.mo Sr. Marqués de la Ensenada […]’ in: Semanario Erudito, vol. XIV (1788), 257–284. On the numerous manuscripts of the late 1740s by authors (and functionaries of the Bourbon administration) who proposed the creation of trading companies see Delgado Barrado, Aquiles y Teseos, 165–187.
- 42.
Many Spanish functionaries, diplomats and ministers, starting from Carvajal, display a certain understanding of the functioning of the English political system, in particular regarding the link between the press campaigns promoted by the British merchant classes (first of all those of the powerful pressure group of the South Sea Company) and the positions taken by Parliament, to whose authority the British government often and willingly had to bend. Furthermore, they were also perfectly aware of the different foreign policy positions taken by the Whigs and Tories: cf. Molina Cortón, Reformismo y neutralidad, 239, 258, 261–262, 267, 269, 274.
- 43.
Zavala y Auñón, Representación, 132–173; Delgado Barrado, Carvajal y Lancáster, 111–130.
- 44.
G. M. de Macanaz, Discurso sobre la America española (manuscript no. 9-26-7/4998 in Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid); G. M. de Macanaz, ‘Auxilios para bien gobernar una monarquía católica […],’ Semanario Erudito, vol. V (1787), 215–303. Cf. Stein and Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, 221–226. Even the three main works of José del Campillo y Cosío (secretario de Hacienda from 1739, and then of Guerra, Marina e Indias from November 1741 to April 1743), written in the early 1740s, circulated in manuscript form: Lo que hay de más y de menos en España, para que sea lo que debe ser y no lo que es (1741); España despierta […] (1742); Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América […] (1743) (Madrid: B. Cano, 1789; I use the edition edited by M. Ballesteros Gaibrois, Oviedo: GEA, 1993). The first works were published in J. del Campillo y Cosío, Dos escritos politicos, ed. D. Mateos Dorado (Oviedo: Junta General del Pricipado de Asturias, 1993). On the life and work of Campillo cf. V. García Caso, El ministro Campillo (Llanes: El Oriente de Asturias, 1988).
- 45.
Many of the criticisms directed towards the Bourbon administration by Campillo about the American territories (starting from the corruption of the functionaries in charge, at different levels, of customs and the fight against contraband) and about the miserable socio-economic conditions of the indios, were similar to those set out in the same years by J. Juan and A. de Ulloa in their Noticias secretas de América (Madrid: Dastin, 2002, first edn. 1826).
- 46.
Campillo, who at the start of the 1720s had lived in America, insisted on several occasions on underlining that the territories of the New World were fully part of the ‘mystical body’ of the Spanish monarchy (and therefore the Creole and indigenous subjects had to be granted the same treatment as those of the peninsula). He therefore avoided using the term ‘colonias’, preferring ‘provincias’: Campillo, Nuevo sistema de gobierno, 68, 78, 219–224, 239. Furthermore he often defined the Spanish monarchy using the term ‘impero’: Campillo, Nuevo sistema de gobierno, 65, 108, 184.
- 47.
Thus the proyectistas of the period made a clear distinction between the gradual process of liberalization of the traffic towards the Iberian motherland and the colonies (reaffirming the monopoly of Spain) from the concept of ‘free trade’. They in fact argued that foreign politicians and treatise writers (especially British ones) used the rhetoric of ‘free trade’ to argue for the legitimacy of their illegal trading practices: cf. for example, D. de Alcedo y Herrera, Aviso histórico, político, geográphico, con las noticias más particulares del Perú, Tierra-Firme, Chile, y Nuevo Reyno de Granada […] (Madrid: D. Miguel de Peralta, 1740), 348–368; Delgado Barrado, José de Carvajal y Lancáster, 21, 99, 115. They were aware that foreign politicians and treatise writers (especially the British and Dutch) used the literature of natural law (Grotius, Selden, Pufendorf, etc.) to give legal and rhetorical force to their desire to continue trading in contraband goods in Spanish America: cf. Delgado Barrado, José de Carvajal y Lancáster, 98; D. Ozanam, La diplomacia de Fernando VI, 154 and 163; Anon., Representación hecha al Ex.mo Sr. Marqués de la Ensenada, 247–249.
- 48.
Campillo, Nuevo sistema de gobierno, 76–78, 204, 207–216, 223, 228–229, 300–302, 311. In the second half of the seventeenth century the mercantile and political authorities of Bilbao, Malaga and the Canaries, as well as those of a number of colonial centres (Guatemala, Buenos Aires, Cartagena), had asked the Council of the Indies for permission to set up direct trade links through occasional registros between the two sides of the Atlantic: all these petitions were rejected by the consulado of Seville since it was clear that such measures would have destroyed the monopoly of Seville and Cadiz from within. Cf. García Fuentes, El comercio español, 70–72, 85–103, 171–172.
- 49.
A clear supporter of the navíos de registro was Domingo de Marcoleta (the future translator of the Intérêts des Nations de l’Europe by J. Accarias de Serionne): as a representative of the mercantile class of Buenos Aires in Madrid, in 1750 he wrote two representaciones to Ferdinand VI in which he argued that this system was preferable to the trading companies (which he criticized using the same arguments as Uztáriz) and to the fleet system managed by the consulado of Cadiz. His argument was based, in any case, on the practical desire to make Buenos Aires into the American focal point for Atlantic traffic instead of Veracruz, Jalapa, Cartagena or Portobello: whichever system the government intended to adopt, the Río de la Plata would be used as the central point of redistribution of goods from the mother country to the whole of South America. Cf. Representación que hace al Rey Nuestro Señor […] Don Domingo de Marcoleta […]. Apoderado de la ciudad de Buenos-Aires […] (Madrid: Imprenta Mercurio, 1750); Nueva representación que hace a S. M. Don Domingo de Marcoleta, apoderado de la ciudad de Buenos-Aires [.…] (Madrid: Imprenta Mercurio, 1750.
- 50.
Up to then, Great Britain (like France) had preferred to benefit ‘indirectly’ from American trade, in other words leaving formal sovereignty over South America, and with it the burdens of the administration of these territories, to Spain, managing their respective traffic sometimes using the open breach of the 1713 treaties, sometimes through contraband, and sometimes through the Andalusian merchants who re-exported English products using the flotas, galeones and registros sueltos.
- 51.
García Baquero, Cádiz y el Atlántico, 164–174; Walker, Spanish Politics, 210–214; Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 152–153. During the years 1739–1743 some 120 register ships sailed from Cadiz, despite the fact that much of the merchandise transported in them was foreign, particularly French. The development of the registros sueltos, even during the early years of the conflict, was also witnessed by Ulloa, Restablecimiento, 320–321.
- 52.
Stein and Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, 191–199; Molina Cortón, Reformismo y neutralidad, 223–278; Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 157–171. It was noteworthy that the Seville consulado, from the moment that it started formally managing the trade monopoly with America, had not been at all insensitive to the interests of Andalusian landowners (which included nobles belonging to the Castilian Grandeza), to the extent that the management of the flotas and galeones called for at least one-third of cargo space to be reserved for Andalusian agricultural exports: cf. García Fuentes, El comercio español, 26, 72, 239.
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Walker, Spanish Politics, 220–224; Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 154; Gómez Urdáñez, El proyecto reformista, 119; Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 186. Between 1757 and 1776 seven more flotas set sail from Cadiz, but by then the fleet system had lost the importance it had held before, and remained a residual practice promoted irregularly by the merchants of Cadiz.
- 54.
Cantillo, ed., Tratados, 409–410.
- 55.
It nevertheless remained true that the nine ports allowed, by the 1765 decree, to trade directly with America were chosen from the twelve that Carvajal had named in his Testamento as the headquarters of new companies: Cadiz, Seville, Malaga, Cartagena, Alicante, La Coruña, Santander, Barcelona and Gijón.
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B. Ward, Proyecto económico […] (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1779). See the version edited by J. L. Castellano (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1982), 279–352.
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M. Artola, ‘Campillo y las reformas de Carlos III’, Revista de Indias 50 (1952), 685–714; C. Martínez Shaw, Cataluña en la Carrera de Indias (Barcelona: Crítica, 1981); V. Lombart, Campomanes, economista y político de Carlos III (Madrid: Alianza, 1992), 129–147; V. Lombart, ‘Estudio preliminar’, in: P. Rodríguez de Campomanes, Reflexiones sobre el comercio español a Indias (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1988), xi–xlv; L. Navarro García, ‘El falso Campillo y el reformismo borbónico’, Temas Americanistas 12 (1995), 5–14. On the real decreto of 16 October 1765 (which revoked Cadiz’s trade monopoly in favour of the main Spanish ports), on the decree of 2 February 1778 and on the Reglamento y Aranceles Reales para el comercio libre de España a Indias of 12 October 1778 cf. J. Muñoz Pérez, ‘La publicación del reglamento del comercio libre de Indias’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 4 (1947), 615–664; A. M. Bernal (coord.), El ‘Comercio libre’ entre España y América (1765–1824) (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1987); G. Anes and A. de Castrillón, ‘La economía española en el siglo XVIII’, in: Economía y economistas españoles, ed. E. Fuentes Quintana (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores, 2000), vol. 3 (La Ilustración), 91–173, especially 167–170; C. Martínez Shaw and J. M. Oliva Melgar, eds., El sistema atlántico español (siglos XVII–XIX) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005); S. J. Stein and B. H. Stein, Apogee of Empire. Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759–1789 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); G. B. Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire 1759–1808 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 317–324 and 329–366; Fernández Durán, La corona española, 312–315; Delgado Ribas, Dinámicas imperiales, 228–456; Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World, 157–301.
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Léon Sanz, V., Guasti, N. (2017). The Treaty of Asiento between Spain and Great Britain. In: Alimento, A., Stapelbroek, K. (eds) The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53574-6_5
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