Two decades after Colombusâ pioneering the transatlantic voyage to the Caribbean, permission to take slaves into Spanish America directly from West Africa was first granted by emperor Charles V to a selected few. These first shipments were followed by nearly eight decades of licences and ad hoc permits to market enslaved labour in the Spanish West Indies before the Hispanic Monarchy adopted a more systematised and tightly regulated framework of supply.1 As the sixteenth century progressed, and the transatlantic trade became an economically strategic and lucrative activity, the Monarchy sought new ways to regulate and derive income from it. This lead to the creation, right at the turn of the century, of an exclusive mercantile supply contract for the provisioning of enslaved Africans to the entirety of its American domains, the asiento de negros.2
Starting in 1595, Portuguese merchant-bankers took advantage of being subjects of the Spanish Habsburg monarchs to secure all of the first six asientos, which allowed them to licence all transatlantic slave voyages to Spanish America. Their grip on the transatlantic trafficking circuits grew tighter because they were also tax-farmers on Portuguese areas in the West Coast of Africa, and therefore able to regulate the access to the supply markets and to tax the purchase of slaves. At the same time, while government contracts for supply and distribution were ratified in Lisbon and Madrid respectively, merchants and shipmasters who also hailed from Portugal acquired many of the asientoâs export licences. Bearing these legal permits, they dispatched from the West African coast a great number of human beings to Spanish America.
This provision system, whereby Portuguese merchant elites controlled the licensing and taxation of the trade, and the middle tier of colonial traders managed the transport and exchanges necessary to acquire and distribute African enslaved labour, collapsed forty-five years after its inception. In December 1640 the Kingdom of Portugal seceded from the Hispanic Monarchy, turning the Spanish empireâs leading slave traders into rebels overnight. As a result, Portuguese financiers lost their grip on the asiento contracts, and legal access to Spanish American ports was denied to Portuguese slaving ships. Concomitantly, Spanish traders who wished to barter for slaves had to look elsewhere than the Portuguese offshoots on the coasts of Upper Guinea and West Central Africa. The implosion of the Union of the Crowns lead to the severing of all official ties between West African slave provenance zones controlled by the Portuguese and the consumption markets in Spanish America.3
Transatlantic slave trade during the era of the so-called Portuguese asientos has long attracted the interest of historians of different backgrounds and specialisations.4 More than a century ago, Georges Scelle pioneered the juridical analysis of the legally binding contracts between the Spanish monarchs and a range of private traders, subjects and non-subjects of the king. In his work, Scelle saw these asiento contracts as forerunners of international law and economic diplomacy.5 On the other hand, scholars of the Spanish Atlantic viewed the asiento de negros as an eloquent example of the inbuilt flaws of the Hispanic colonial system. According to them, the asiento gave foreign interlopers legal footing to trade manufactured goods and other non-Spanish exports to Spainâs colonies, using foreign ships to do so, in an exchange that resulted in the siphoning of bullion away from Spain.6
Until recently, Spanish America was the great blind spot in the estimations of the numbers of Africans trafficked to the Americas. The launching of the Transatlantic Trade Database, or TSTD, now ongoing in one of his many iterations, along with the work of Spanish-speaking scholars who had previously attempted to quantify the number of enslaved individuals brought to Spanish America, was aided by the database as a means to see many of their claims corroborated. The availability of this so-called âSpanish dataâ has also enabled American or British-trained scholars to overcame their linguistic shortcomings and engage with more up-to-date knowledge regarding the slave exports to Spainâs New World colonies.7
Social and cultural historians, for their part, have noted that the asiento de Negros was the legal framework that enabled Spanish officials and merchant capitalists from the metropole to capitalise on the âAfricanisationâ of Spanish American societies.8 More recently, the movement of slave traders, skippers and crews operating under the auspices of the asientos (or openly circumventing them) have become a staple of the connected histories of Iberian societies, as they embodied the more intense exchanges between Portuguese and Spanish territories, including their respective overseas offshoots, in the lead-up to and during the Union of the Crowns.9
While these different surveys have covered a lot of ground, several key aspects of the first asientos remain misunderstood, with particular gaps regarding the bureaucratic procedures that took place in West Africa, the funding of Atlantic slaving operations, and its profitability remaining unresolved. Also unclear is the way in which the âmetropolitan stateâ, understood here as the Hispanic Monarchy, benefitted from the slave trade of its American domains. Miguel Rodrigues offers the most comprehensive examination of the âPortugueseâ asientos to date, finally clarifying some of these matters and, for the first time, firmly linking the demand side in Spanish America to the political and economic developments in Western Central Africa.10 Drawing on some of Rodriguesâ proposals, as well as reference studies on the slave trade to colonial Spanish America, this chapter re-examines the contours, and re-contextualises the purpose and outcomes of the asiento de negros during its first iteration (1595â1640), with particular attention to the transnational character of the actors involved and the diversity of business organisations that stood at the core of these contracts.
1 The Lead up to the âPortugueseâ Asientos
In the aftermath of the dynastic crisis that followed the death of Cardinal-King Henrique of Avis, who left the Portuguese throne without an heir, Phillip II, King of Spain, claimed the vacant Portuguese throne in 1580, through a combination of legitimate inheritance claims, support of the kingdomâs elite groups, and armed force. Although Spanish troops were dispatched across the border to subdue a rival claimant, the union between Portugal, its overseas domains, and Philip IIâs Monarchy did not occur under the normative framework of the right of conquest. As such, Portuguese political institutions and governing bodies continued to uphold the kingdomâs pre-existing laws and customs and were not absorbed by, or subordinated to, their Spanish counterparts. De jure, and for the most part de facto too, Portugal and its empire remained under the jurisdiction of its native governing bodies and administrative apparatus.11
By the same token, however, the subjects of the Portuguese Crown continued to be treated as foreigners in the other kingdoms and territories under Philip IIâs sovereignty. Portuguese naturais were legally barred from pursuing economic opportunities (such as trade) and political careers (by taking posts in the royal or municipal administration) in other Habsburg polities, including in its colonies. In this sense, the Habsburg Atlantic empire, the so-called Indies of Castile (Indias de Castela), was under the aegis of the Castilian Crown and was to be economically exploited by its naturales only, through the consulado of Seville, whereas Brazil and the West Coast of Africa fell under the authority of the Crown of Portugal. Portugalâs territories and overseas interests answered directly to the Council of Portugal, set up at the court of Madrid (but comprised of Portuguese aristocrats and jurists), and other councils of government and administration that convened in Lisbon, rather than to Castileâs Consejo de Hacienda and Consejo de Indias.12
While the Union of the Iberian Crowns was a watershed moment in the history of the Iberian empires, historians believe it is more accurate to view those sixty years as the culmination of a process long in the making. The break with what came before was less pronounced than previously thought, as the Portuguese and Spanish empires were already becoming more tightly entangled well before 1580, thanks to Portuguese commercial inroads and immigration into Spain and Spanish America, and due to Spainâs diplomatic and cultural influence over Portuguese court circles.13 If formal political aggregation was preceded by the interpenetration of individuals, goods, artistic forms, and ideas, the Dual Monarchy did not bring political, institutional or cultural uniformity to the peoples of Iberia.14 This opposition between the principle of institutional separation between the different constituent polities of the same Monarchy and the economic and demographic interdependence played a major part in the politics and practice of the first asientos. One of the areas where the tension between these push-and-pull factors was clearest was precisely the Portuguese involvement in the slave trade to the Spanish empire.15
Before the creation of the asiento, the holders of licencias de negros â permits required by the state for the shipment of enslaved Africans to Spanish America â were often granted them as rewards for loyalty and service to the Crown, including for renegotiating the Monarchyâs short-term debt with German and Genoese merchant bankers. In most cases, the recipients had little exposure to, or practical knowledge of, the Atlantic slave trade and opted to sell the licences to individuals who had extensive experience in the heinous trade of enslaved Africans and,16 moreover, had access to the trading outposts of their King.17 Unsurprisingly, a large number of the licences issued prior to 1580 ended up in the hands of Portuguese merchants, their skippers, and their ships.
Since the early 1520s, Portuguese slave traders, operating out of their country of origin or already based in Andalusia, purchased licences from their original recipients (on a secondary market of sorts),18 or were commissioned by the Casa de ContratacÃon (at the request of the Crown) to supply a specific number of slaves to certain regions of Spanish America.19 This extensive reliance on these slavers was opposed from early on by the consulado de cargadores, the merchantsâ guild and commercial court of Seville,20 whose members saw direct trade between Africa and the Americas as a threat to their commercial privileges. They strongly objected to non-members trading with the Spanish West Indies in general, and specifically to slave-carrying vessels sailing directly from the West Coast of Africa to Spanish America and not joining the fleets of the Carrera de Indias (sailing under the status of navios sueltos). The consuladoâs pleas for the Monarchy to demand that all slave voyages return to Andalusia and join the armed convoy naturally fell on deaf hears because of the longer duration of the voyages (which had the potential to sharply increase mortality rates on board), higher shipping costs, fewer opportunities to import exclusive American commodities and bullion, and slower turnover of capital for investors.21 Despite the staunch opposition of Sevilleâs consulado de cargadores, and fears that Portuguese merchants would defraud the royal treasury by engaging in widespread smuggling, Philip II turned to his new subjects when it came to reform the system of ad hoc licencias.
By 1580 it had become clear that the system in place was ill-suited to meet Madridâs goals for the transatlantic slave trade. Incidental licences failed to satisfy the labour force demands of the mining sector (which relied not on the native American powered extraction of silver and gold), urban manufacturing, public works, and the elite household economies of Spanish America.22 Furthermore, this haphazard system of labour export permits did not generate the steady revenue streams that the royal exchequer needed to forecast its military and redistributive expenses, and which could equally be earmarked to public debt servicing.23 These dysfunctions partially stemmed from the preference of many holders of licencias to delay selling them, waiting for the market value of slaves to rise in America before making more licences available, leading to a continuous valuation of the enslaved as commodities in the buying markets in the Spanish Caribbean and elsewhere in Spanish America. The result of these speculative practices was a disturbance in the supply chains and a shortage of labour in the Spanish West Indies, which negatively impacted the colonial economy.
The royal purse was also directly affected by speculative trade in the licences. Once speculators decided to place the licences on the market, the value of the new licencias issued by the Crown decreased, affecting the exchequerâs ability to extract income from their sale. Simultaneously, the economic downturn caused by fewer slaves being imported into Spanish America meant diminishing returns in tax collection on mining (the net income of the royal fifth was smaller), production in the Americas, as well in tariffs levied on colonial trade and shipping.24 But the main problem besetting the provision of colonial slave labour before 1580 was Spainâs dependency on supply markets and traders outside its empire.
The Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), ratified by the Portuguese monarch and the Catholic kings of Castile and Aragon, saw the soon-to-be united Spanish Crowns relinquish all claims to trade and settlement on the West African coast in favour of Portugal.25 As a result, Spain became reliant on subjects of the Portuguese Crown who bartered for slaves on West Africa to supply its American colonies with enslaved labour. In practice, however, Alcáçovas was unable to create a ânationalâ barrier that would effectively prevent or hinder the bilateral trade between West Africa and Spanish America. Extensive Portuguese-Spanish investments and logistics led to operational cooperation, established early on by Portuguese and Spanish (as well as Italian and Flemish) financiers, insurers, traders and ship-owners.26 Portuguese subjects undersigned the official paperwork that enabled a group of silent transnational investors to barter for slaves in West Africa, while a Castilian associate could serve as the legal front for that same partnership to sell those captives in Spanish America. As far as the Iberian-Atlantic slaving was concerned, the Union of the Crowns may have had political and diplomatic implications for the central government of the Monarchy, but it did not fundamentally change the organisational practices or investment structures. Although Spanish merchants and skippers continued to be denied access to the trading stations and offshore bartering areas controlled by the Portuguese Crown, after 1580 the Monarchy no longer had to rely on diplomatic agreements with foreign jurisdictions regarding subjects of foreign rulers, but could rather trust in its new vassals to provision Spanish America with enslaved Africans.
To ensure a steady outflow of African slaves into the Spanish Indies and an influx of related revenues into the Monarchyâs treasury, while respecting the principle of institutional and economic separation between the two empires, Phillip II turned to the contratadores. These individuals were the tax-farmers of slaving duties and leaseholders of trade monopolies in the Western African outposts of the Portuguese Crown.27 Since the fifteenth century, the Portuguese Crown had claimed comprehensive monopolies on the trade with West Africa, reserving the right to tax transactions conducted by its subjects in its official settlements.28 Rather than entrusting the local bartering activities with African and Luso-African middlemen to royal factors, or assigning treasury officials to levy tariffs on all commercial exchanges, the Crown opted to farm out the monopolies and tax collection to private merchants, usually organised in partnerships, who bid on public auctions organised by the royal exchequer in Lisbon. Every three or six years, temporary partnerships of affluent metropolitan merchants leased from the Portuguese Crown three separate revenue farms for West Africa â the Cape Verde-Guinea, São Tomé, and Angola contracts â each named after a district of the Portuguese empire where slaves were procured.29
Upon securing the Portuguese throne, Phillip II decreed that licences for the export of enslaved Africans to Spanish America would be added to the clauses of the contratos (the royal farms for the licensing of the trade and the collection of slaving duties on the West African outposts).30 The new clauses of the contratos granted the leaseholders the right to sub-contract the supply of 300 to 500 slaves to Spanish America every year for the duration of their leases, which normally lasted six years. In return, the contratadores paid the Spanish royal exchequer one-quarter of their reported profits from the slave sales derived from their licencias. Alternatively, it was stipulated that between one quarter to one third of all captives shipped from their respective districts would be earmarked to the Spanish American markets, with the remaining being exported to Brazil.31
While including the licencias in the tax farm contracts of the Portuguese Crown proved highly lucrative for the contratadores, this arrangement failed to live up to Madridâs financial expectations and was staunchly opposed by Sevilleâs consulado and other government agencies. For example, the Casa de la ContratacÃon was displeased with losing control over the sale of licences and being relegated to the role of a mere certification and monitoring institution. Meanwhile, the Castilian Consejo de Hacienda warned that the income generated by the licences had been diverted to the treasury of the Portuguese Crown, to whom the contratadores paid a percentage on each enslaved African sold upon disembarkation in the Spanish Indies. If the Monarchy truly hoped to place the Spanish American slave trade at the service of government borrowing, diverting the income generated from the sale of licencias to one of the Monarchyâs peripheral treasuries, which was not involved in the annual state loans negotiated at the court, did not serve the interests of the Monarchy.
It was against this backdrop that the idea of an exclusive contract, entrusting the entire distribution of slave licences for the whole of Spanish America â and not only to a specific port, as had previously been the case â to a single concessionaire, began to gain traction at court. While the concept of an asiento de negros was not unheard off, it was only during the 1590s that Phillip II and his closest advisers seemed truly committed to the idea.32
The creation of the asiento de negros reflects Madridâs new priorities for the slave trade to Spanish America. As this trade increased in volume and value, the monarch no longer viewed it as an instrument for redistributive policies and reduced the number of grants.33 The export of enslaved colonial labour became a strategic sector requiring close regulation â meaning the Monarchy set and enforced the terms under which private actors could participate â in order to generate income for the Spanish exchequer. Hard-pressed to raise new funds to service its short-term debt to international bankers and consolidated treasury bondholders, the Monarchy opted to entrust the wholesale distribution of the licences to royal financiers in exchange for a flat sum, rather than handle the sale of the licences to slave traders directly.34
At the same time, the asiento was intended to provide the Portuguese and Spanish subjects of the Hispanic Monarchy with an opportunity to earn a living, and potentially make a fortune, as the asentistas were required to sell licences to anyone who requested them. Madrid also aimed to supply the colonial governments and their subjects in the Indies with enslaved labour, while ensuring they were not overly-supplied. It was in the Crownâs interest â even if to the detriment of slave buyers in the Americas â to ensure that colonial markets were never at risk of being glutted, as this would cut into the profits of the slave traders and royal contractors in Iberia. To prevent this, the Monarchy decided early on to establish annual export limits. These limits could not be too low as to jeopardise colonial production and trade, and the taxation thereof, nor so high that slave prices would deflate and merchants would no longer be willing to purchase licencias. A reduction in the real value of the licencias would drive merchant-bankers away from taking on the asiento, thus leaving the flat sums that the Monarchy earmarked for debt service and other royal expenditures unpaid.
The entanglement between the asiento de negros and the central treasury of the Spanish Monarchy followed. The royal hacienda welcomed the additional revenues generated by the lump sums and taxes paid by the asentistas, in exchange for the prerogative to licence an expanding slave trade, the so-called renta de esclavos negros. These revenue streams could be allocated for the payment of interests on loans owed to court bankers, or used as disposable income when renegotiating the complex mechanisms of public debt.35
2 Asientos de Negros: The Standard Contractual Provisions
In 1594, after several years of uncertainty, the king instructed the Consejo de Indias to advertise and negotiate the first-ever asiento de negros. Several bidders expressed interest in the new slave export contract, but the choice came down to two prominent Portuguese merchant bankers, António Nunes Caldeira and Pedro Gomes Reinel, with the latter emerging as the winner.36
Starting with Gomes Reinel and all the way to Melchior Gomes and Cristovão Mendes de Sousa (see Table 1.1), the recipients of all six asientos and the lease prices were determined by a competitive system of ascending bids. This process combined public auctions with direct, but often confidential, negotiations with the Consejo de Indias, the Junta de Negros, and members of the kingâs entourage. Each of these entities discussed the details and practicalities of the royal contracts and provided counsel to the king, who had the final say over who would become asentista. The negotiations between the Crown and the various contenders for the asiento de negros, particularly the final round of talks with the successful applicant, culminated in a written contract specifying the reciprocal rights and obligations of the two parties that ratified the asiento.
In exchange for the right to exploit the asiento de negros, the contractors owed the royal treasury a lump sum to be paid in Spain in different instalments, the value of which was determined by an auction and subsequent negotiations with the Monarchy. The annual price of the Portuguese asientos varied between 95,000 and 170,000 ducats, but if the asiento of João Rodrigues Coutinho is excluded due to its unique features,37 their average value was close to 115,000 ducats (see Table 1.1). This placed the asiento de negros as a middle-tier government contract, as far as its revenue-generating potential for the Crown. In addition to the monetary deposit for the contract, the asentistas had to pledge chattels (collateral) and appoint warrantors (guarantors), whose assets, like the contractorâs, would be seized if the latter failed to meet the financial obligations of the asiento. As with other revenue farms, the value of the collateral generally varied between one-fourth to one-third of the annual value of the asiento.
While the value of the tenders and the financial resources available to the candidates were the main factors considered, their reputation as capable and trustworthy businessmen, as well as their previous dealings with the Monarchy, were also taken into account. On some occasions, the asiento negotiations were used by the Monarchy to settle a debt with a creditor, who was offered the opportunity to operate the asiento de negros as payment for an outstanding debt from a previous supply contract. Finally, public-private partnerships like the asiento de negros were also ratified with individuals with whom the monarch and his closest circle hoped to continue doing business in the future. In such cases, the asiento de negros represented another step in what the Crown and the contractor hoped would be a long and mutually beneficial relationship. The strategic partnership between the two was based on the asentista performing a task of public utility (in this case, advancing funds through concession fees and administering the provision of enslaved labour to the American colonies), for which he would receive a return that was unattainable in non-state-related investments. Moreover, if both parties were satisfied with the management of the asiento, more demanding but more profitable government contracts would follow, along with highly coveted honours and privileges for the asentista.38
Holders of the first six asiento de negros (1595â1640)
| Years | Asentista | Yearly concession fee (ducados) | Number of licenses allotted |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1595â1600 | Pedro Gomes Reinel | 100,000 | 4,250 |
| 1600â1603 | João Rodrigues Coutinho | 170,000 | 4,250 |
| 1604â1609 | Gonçalo Vaz Coutinho | 140,000 | 4,250 |
| 1615â1623 | António Fernandes dâElvas | 115,000 | 3,500 |
| 1624â1631 | Manuel Rodrigues Lamego | 120,000 | 3,500 |
| 1632â1640 | Melchior Gomes, Cristovão Mendes de Sousa | 95,000 | 3,500 |
The most important aspect of the asiento de negros was the exclusive right to issue permits (licencias) authorising traders to export and distribute enslaved Africans in ports across Spanish America for the duration of the contract, which typically lasted eight or nine years. Without these licences, slave ships were not legally cleared to call at Spanish American ports and sell their human cargos, previously acquired in West Africa. The licencias were, therefore, subcontracts between the holder of the government contract, the asentista, and the third parties who actually conducted the transatlantic slave trade to Spanish America.
Each contract set a cap on the maximum number of licences to be sold each year, or alternatively, the total number of licenses for the entire duration of the contract. During the period of the âPortuguese asientosâ, the number of licences sold annually ranged between 3,500 and 5,000.39 These export quotas reflected the Crownâs understanding of what it deemed the appropriate number of enslaved workers for the Indies. As previously mentioned, from the Crownâs perspective, appropriate meant meeting the needs of the colonial economy without oversupplying the market, which would cause the price of enslaved people to drop, but at the same time maintaining a stable income for the exchequer.
In addition to selling the licencias to third parties, the asentista was allowed to retain some for his own ventures and launch his own voyages. Trading in enslaved Africans could be an enticing prospect for asentistas, as they enjoyed certain competitive advantages over other traders, such as tax exemptions (for instance, the fee paid to the physicians who inspected the enslaved), not to mention the fact they did not have to pay for licences to operate within legal boundaries.
Besides limiting the number of licencias allotted to each asentista, the Crown fixed the price at which they should be marketed to third-parties, and determined how much should be paid to the royal treasury in taxes. The asentistas were permitted to sell licenses on credit, meaning they accepted deferred payments rather than requiring payment upfront. Different sale prices and duties depended on whether the licences were paid upfront in comptoirs in Iberia or later in Spanish America, after the slaves were disembarked and sold. A slave licence purchased on credit was more expensive than one paid upfront, but most merchants preferred the latter option, as the proceeds from the sale in Spanish America were expected to cover the licencing fee, other administrative costs, and yield a profit. The asientos stipulated that in Iberia, an individual licencia cost 30 ducats plus an additional 20 ducats of aduanilla,40 while in Spanish America, slave traders were required to pay 40 ducats for the licence and 30 ducats for the aduanilla.
After requesting licencias and receiving a favourable reply from the asentista, those seeking permits were required to register each licence with the Casa de ContratacÃon, which produced an official registry certifying the licencias, known as the registro. Marc Eagle has defined the registro as âthe general list of goods, shippers and consignees, approved destinations, and royal imposts, issued after physical inspection of the ship by the Casa de Contratación in Sevilleâ.41 It was against this registro that Spanish magistrates and treasury officials in the West Indies reviewed the human cargoes and proceeded to levy taxes and tariffs accordingly. It should be noted that, since the registro was created before the departure of the slaving vessels for West Africa, it often did not reflect the actual number of enslaved individuals ultimately sold in the Spanish Caribbean or mainland America.
Although the asentista was the only entity allowed to market licencias for profit on the primary market, the asiento de negros cannot be regarded as a complete monopoly, because the king did not relinquish his customary prerogative to award licences to his vassals at his discretion. These direct permits significant for the total volume of slave exports, as they enabled their recipients to export hundreds of enslaved Africans to the Indies of Castile. Awarded in large lots, these grants were, for all intents and purposes, mini-asientos. In the asiento negotiations, the Monarchy and the prospective contract holder agreed on the maximum number of export permits the king could grant each year, which tended to be around one thousand. According to a recent estimation, the licences issued outside the asiento accounted for one-quarter to one-third of the annual export quotas managed by the asentistas. In addition to serving as a tool of royal patronage, granting licencias also provided the Monarchy with a way to check the extensive economic powers it had granted to the asentistas, and to compensate rival bidders who had been left out during the bidding process.42
Aware of the risks involved in the slave trade, including the high mortality rates among captives as they awaited embarkation and during the Middle Passage, the Crown included mortality discount rates in the contracts. Based on these rates, asentistas were allowed to issue additional permits to account for the number of casualties that occurred before the captives were sold in the American markets. The calculation of death rates was particularly significant to the balance sheet of all asientos, as it created a grey area that asentistas, licence holders and shipmasters could exploit to increase the number of captives per licence without being formally accused of defrauding the Crown. The issue of mortality compensation further complicates the already ambiguous equivalence between licencias and pieza de Indias, which was not synonymous with one individual slave. A pieza de Indias referred to an adult male in his prime years, typically aged between 15 and 40, excluding female captives and those from other age groups. For this reason, a conversion rate was established, whereby a certain number of women, elderly males, children, and infants were considered to have the same worth as one pieza de Indias. These classifications allowed asentistas and licence holders to push beyond the export limits imposed by each individual licence.43
The ports where enslaved Africans could be disembarked in the Americas were specified in the written clauses of the asiento, which identified Veracruz, the main Atlantic port of New Spain and Central America, and Cartagena de las Indias, the gateway for enslaved Africans bound for South America, including major colonial markets in the viceroyalties of New Granada and especially Peru.44 Other major slaving ports of Spanish America were conspicuous for their absence from the asiento provisions, none more so than Buenos Aires. Although shipments to Buenos Aires were consistently excluded from the contracts and deemed off-limits by the Crown, they were highly coveted by the asentistas and licence holders, as the slave transactions taking place there and at the neighbouring ports in the Rio de la Plata were paid for in untaxed silver syphoned from the Peruvian mines.45
To insure that the asentistas fulfilled the contract to the best of their ability, the Monarchy pledged to support them in various ways. This included granting permission for the asentistas to receive the proceeds of the sale of their licencias in Spanish American bullion, transported to Europe via the Carrera de Indias. Equally beneficial was the appointment of a royal judge to adjudicate disputes related to the implementation of the contract, particularly if these disputes directly involved the Crown or the royal institutions responsible for granting residence permits to those acting as factors of the asiento in Spanish American ports.
A range of additional benefits was extended to the asentista, including symbolic rewards designed to enhance the contractorâs social standing, which made these business ventures appealing beyond purely economic considerations. Financial incentives were also significant, as the asentistas were entitled to two-thirds of the value of all contraband cargoes their agents managed to apprehend, with the remaining one-third split between the prosecutor assigned to the case and the individual who reported the illegal transaction.46 This clause demonstrates how the asiento was designed to involve the asentistas in combating fraud and smuggling in cooperation with the royal authorities, making the asentista a direct enforcer of the empireâs political economy.
Every two years, the asentista was contractually obliged to inform the Consejo de Indias of the number of licences he had sold or used for his own benefit, and to report the operational results of the asiento to the Casa de la Contratación. The contractors had to submit copies of their ledgers to the Consejo de Indias, which would compare them with the records of the registros made by the Casa de la ContratacÃon. The written clauses also made it clear that if the asentistas deviated too much from the number of licencias they were supposed to market, whether by over- or underselling, or if they failed to pay the contractâs lump sums to the Crown, their contracts could be terminated. In such cases, the asentista could be immediately stripped of the right to issue additional licences, and the proceeds from sales made up to that point would be seized. Additionally, the asentistaâs collateralised assets would be confiscated, and he would face judicial proceedings, with the risk of arrest of assets and/or potential imprisonment.
The asentistas were more than wholesale slave traffickers trading in large numbers of enslaved Africans for profit based on price differentials on both sides of the Atlantic. Even if they occasionally engaged in this nefarious trade themselves, they were primarily fiscal intermediaries for the Crown, ensuring that the export quotas set by the Crown were met by subcontracting the licencias. At the same time, they facilitated the movement and sale of enslaved Africans by others, as most of the export permits were paid only after the human cargoes had been sold in the Americas, rather than when the licencia was requested and the registro was certified in Seville. The scheme of deferred-payments, i.e., sale of licencias on credit, was crucial for the stability of the transatlantic trade, and explains why the trade suffered whenever government agencies took over the marketing of licences (i.e. administracÃon rather than asiento).47 The role of enabler was better performed by a merchant-banker that was solvent, well-connected to creditors who could lend money to bridge temporary cash flow gaps, and well-versed in transatlantic trade, than by an official from the royal treasury.
3 The Organisation and Implementation of the Asientos
Even though the asiento established detailed provisions regulating nearly all aspects of the shipment and trade of enslaved Africans to Spanish America, there was nonetheless a glaring omission. No mention was made of how to access the West African slave markets where the holders of the licencias could acquire their human cargoes. This omission arose from the fact that the West African coast fell outside the jurisdictional scope of the Crown of Castile. As previously mentioned, it was the contratadores, the tax-farmers of the Portuguese Crown, who regulated the access of slave ships to the two main slave markets at the time: the greater Senegambia and Upper Guinea coast,48 and the vast stretch of the West Central Africa from Loango to Angola. Like the asentistas, the contratadores held government contracts granting them exclusive rights to issue licences permitting others to trade in slaves, but unlike the asiento, their contratos did not grant access to the import markets in Spanish America, but rather to the export markets in West Africa.
Although the possibility of merging the Spanish asiento de negros with a Portuguese contrato into a large, all-encompassing public-private partnership was never seriously considered by the Monarchy, as it infringed on the jurisdictions of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns, some means of coordination between the two contracts were necessary to insure the smooth provisioning of enslaved people and the collection of the revenues under both contracts. This coordination was essential for the effective functioning of the asiento and the contratos and a guarantee of their success in fulfilling obligations towards the Monarchy. Madrid facilitated and encouraged this coordination in two ways. On the one hand, the Crown sought to entice the asentista de negros and the contratador of one of the Portuguese contratos to cooperate in maximising their respective earnings by facilitating the entanglement of their shipping, trading and financial networks. Alternatively, the King allowed the same partnership, firm or family to act as both asentista and contratador simultaneously, an option that increased efficiency and even enabled market coordination and integration in West Africa and in Spanish America.
There were two occasions when the Monarchy allowed, and even fostered, the concentration of the asiento and one of the contratos in the hands of a business family. The first case pertained to João Rodrigues and Gonçalo Vaz Coutinho, brothers who combined the asiento with the Angola contrato. The second case was that of António Fernandes dâElvas and his family members, who secured the asiento and the extensive contratos for Angola and Cape Verde-Guinea. Despite the successful deployment of these coordinated efforts, the Monarchy was wary of having the administration of the asiento and the contratos in the hands of the same familial and commercial groups, as the King feared losing control over private parties, even when they were willing to pay and generate substantial and predictable revenues for the royal treasury.49
When asiento and contratos were held by different networks of traders, the system required Portuguese and Spanish merchants to secure a licencia from the asentista giving them permission to sell slaves at Spanish American ports. They also had to acquire a similar permit sold by the contratadores, the so-called avença, which authorised traders to procure slaves in West Africa, in the region covered by the contrato that had issued the avença.50 Upon arrival in the Upper Guinea coast or in Loango/Angola, skippers or supercargoes of the slave ships were tasked with overseeing the loading of the number of captives stated in the licencia that had been purchased beforehand.51 Once loaded and before departure, slaving ships had to pay the tariffs specified in the avença to the agents of the contratador in Africa, and undergo inspection to confirm the legality of the number of enslaved people on board.52 On the African coast, skippers and supercargoes sent by the holders of the licencias and avenças relied on Luso-African networks that ensured that men, women and children in bondage were acquired in the hinterland slave markets and brought to the coast. These local networks were also instrumental for supplying water and food to both crews and the enslaved while waiting permission to depart for the Caribbean or Spanish America, as well as for restocking the ships with provisions for the Middle Passage.53
To monitor the operations of slave traders and ensure they paid what was due to the administration of the asiento in Spanish America, asentistas, who very rarely travelled to America themselves, appointed a number of correspondents to represent them at the various ports of arrival in the Caribbean, as well as in Iberia. There were two types of correspondents. On the one hand, correspondents could be factors of the asentista in Spanish America and earned a fixed salary for their services. On the other hand, correspondents could be individuals holding powers of attorney issued by the asentista, who were paid a commission for every transaction they oversaw on behalf of the asentista.54 Among the tasks of factors and representatives was the issuing of licences to all those requesting them in the Iberian comptoirs of the asiento in Lisbon, Seville, and Madrid. They were also responsible for recording in account books the payments made by the majority of slave traders who, having requested licencias on credit in one of the Iberian comptoirs, only repaid the asentista in America. Factors and representatives at the Spanish American ports were also expected to confirm that the number of captives disembarked matched the registro of the Casa de la ContratacÃon. They were present during inspections to newly arrived slaving vessels by the Crownâs revenue and custom officials, ensuring that the interests of the asentista were not compromised by overzealous royal administrators or shipmasters.55
According to the provisions of the asiento, the proceeds of the sale of the licencias paid in Spanish America were not remitted to Spain by Crown officials, as part of the Monarchyâs attempt to monitor and tax the treasuryâs remittances from the West Indies. The money earned from the licencias was handed over by the factors or representatives of the asentista to officials of the exchequer in Spanish America, who deposited it in the royal coffers where the colonial remittances bound for Iberia were secured. The coffers were dispatched to Spain via the Carrera de Ãndias, and the funds were handed over to the asentista in Seville by the agents of Casa de la ContratacÃon, after deducting the royal fifth that generally applied to the cargoes in the Carrera.56
It was fairly common for asentistas to dispatch members of their family, their networks, or a highly recommended and reputable acquaintance to the various slave-trading ports and comptoirs of the asiento to serve as factors or representatives. For the West Coast of Africa, asentistas and contratadores preferred to appoint long-time residents at slaving entrepôts like Cacheu or Luanda, usually of Luso-African descent, to look after their interests. These individuals were valued for their knowledge of the trade, local embeddedness in both African and European societies, and their extensive familial networks in the hinterland. This preference for local long-term residents as factors and representatives later extended to the Circum-Caribbean ports. In both cases, long-term residents had the advantage of being locally attuned to social and commercial practices, and their permanent presence in the ports facilitated the transition of the asiento or contrato from one administration to the next, providing institutional memory and continuity.57 As many of these men represented different asentistas and contratadores at various points in their careers and occasionally even simultaneously, they became pivotal for the structuring of the transatlantic slave trade. Ultimately, the competent, effective and trustworthy performance of factors and representatives was crucial for the success of asientos and contratos and the outcome thereof.
4 Costs and Benefits of the Asientos
In 1595, Pedro Gomes Reinel emerged as the winner of the contract negotiations for the first formal asiento de negros thanks to a last-minute bid that surpassed the financial offer of his main competitor, António Nunes Caldeira. Although Caldeira was highly regarded as a solvent and trustworthy businessman with first-hand experience in the slave trade as a merchant and tax-farmer for the Portuguese Crown (contratador), it was Reinel who became the first asentista. His winning bid of 100,000 Spanish ducats annually far exceeded Caldeiraâs final tender of 72,000 Spanish ducats.58
The first auction and asiento negotiations set the trend for the years to come. Although the decision-making bodies at court tended to select the highest bidder at the expense of more knowledgeable candidates with solid financial credentials, this did not mean that the asiento was a ruinous investment for its recipients, as is often believed. For a long time, historians have argued that all asentistas between 1595 and 1623 became insolvent or went bankrupt because of, or as a result of, the asiento. Furthermore, historiography claims that only the last two asentistas were able to meet their quotas of licencias and pay the instalments of the contracts before their expiration date. However, Rodrigues has recently demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of the Portuguese asentistas were able to honour their financial commitments to the Monarchy. Only in one case did the King rescind the contract with an asentista de negros consequently initiating judicial proceedings against him for failing to meet the financial clauses of the contract.59
The confusion in the debate arises from the fact that several asientos prior to the 1620s were terminated before their expiration, although this did not occur because the asentistas were unable or failed to make the payments to the royal exchequer. The reason why asientos were rescinded and advertised anew was that recipients were found to be involved in malfeasance, fraud or tax evasion. Common arguments made by the Monarchy included that asentistas sold more licences than their contracts allowed, that they marketed each licence at higher prices than those fixed by the Crown, or that they claimed as their proceeds the licences sold under the tenure of their predecessors.60
António Fernandes dâElvas was the only asentista who became insolvent and was consequently declared bankrupt, as he was unable to meet the financial obligations of the asiento de negros and the contratos of Cape Verde and Angola. The fact that he held simultaneously all the Portuguese slaving contracts and the Spanish asiento provided him with the opportunity to derive administrative and fiscal gains from slave voyages and slave imports that no other contractor, before or after, could have imagined. However, Elvas was unable to accumulate the necessary revenues to cover the costly concession fees of the asiento and of the two contratos, essentially because of the late capitalisation of these contracts and their tight payment schedules, which were due simultaneously in Lisbon and Madrid. Ironically, the end of Elvasâs asiento and his downfall as asentista coincided with a period when the volume of the slave trade had vastly exceeded the contractâs initial export limit, largely because of a steep increase in unregistered, contraband voyages from Angola and West Central Africa. While there are indications that António Fernandes dâElvas consented to and actively participated in some of this illicit trade, he was neither alone nor the primary beneficiary of this illegal trade.61
For a long time, historians have been puzzled by the apparent lack of judgement of merchant-bankers who risked their fortunes and reputations on a business that, while appearing very profitable, invariably seemed to drive many to financial ruin or ultimate insolvency. The assumption that the asentistas grossly miscalculated their chances by neglecting to understand the intricacies of the contracts they signed is, however, inconsistent with the knowledge and behaviour of the same group of men when engaged in other forms of fiscal intermediation, provision of contracts to the military, or wholesale colonial trade.62
There was certainly much that could go wrong with the implementation of the asiento de negros. Problems included, but were not limited to, the lengthy cycle of capitalisation caused by the deferred payments of the export permits, or the fact that the investors in slaving voyages could take years to actually formalise the registro and dispatch their ships.63 Moreover, even when voyages were launched not long after the licencia was procured, the uncertainty and risks of the Atlantic slave trade also loomed over the asentista. If a slave ship ran aground, was caught in a storm, was attacked by hostile naval forces, or if the enslaved perished or were not profitably sold in the American ports, contractors risked not being paid for the corresponding licencias. In turn, while the yields of the asiento could take some time to be realised and remitted to the asentista, the lease payments to the royal exchequer had to be met regularly, requiring contractors to remain solvent while they waited for the proceeds from the sale of the licencias â a process that could take years. Furthermore, the asentistas relied on the goodwill and cooperation of Crown agents in Seville and Spanish America to collect and repatriate the income, revenue, and profits of the asiento. Complaints by contractors that the windfalls of the asiento were withheld by officials and (mis)used for unrelated purposes were frequent.64
Calculating the gross returns or net gains (when administrative and operational costs are taken into consideration) of the asiento is a challenging task, due to the Crownâs difficulties in defining the exact number of licences from which the asentistas received payment, the complex exchange operations involving American and Spanish currencies, and the patchy and conflicting primary sources available. Still, Miguel Rodrigues has recently attempted to calculate such gains. According to his estimation, the first asentista, Pedro Gomes Reinel, reportedly made a 30% turnover in a favourable year. A favourable year was defined as one in which Reinel was able to collect payment on all or almost all of the licenses he had marketed in a given year.65 This turnover was greatly reduced by considerable administrative costs, which, at least in the case of António Fernandes dâElvas, eclipsed a quarter of the asientoâs yearly returns. These costs included a multitude of fees that were levied on the income remitted from the Americas.66
As result, in the years that the asentistas did not receive the entire proceeds of the licencias they sold in Spanish America, and after depositing the annual lump sums and subtracting the administrative expenses, they suffered a net loss, as evidenced by the case of the third asentista, Gonçalo Vaz Coutinho (1609).67 In the cases of losses, the asentistas hoped to recover in subsequent years, relying on alternative incomes, slave-trade related or otherwise, driving many to a state of temporary insolvency. In such cases, trust in the asentista, his family, friends, and networks in the market facilitated the continuation of business and the survival of the merchant-banking houses behind the asientos.
Notwithstanding the heavy price to pay â financially, socially, and personally â for the permission to trade in enslaved Africans to the Spanish West Indies, the slave trade boomed after the 1590s.68 This significant increase provided a positive incentive for many to bid for the asiento each time the Monarchy advertised one of the contracts.69 The supply of Spanish America with enslaved labour proceeded smoothly for the most part during the first thirty years of the asiento, except for a brief period in the 1610s (1609â14) when the Crown decided to change course and experiment with administracÃon (direct administration), a move that had disastrous results. The significant drop in the number of licences during those five years can be explained by the inability of the administrators appointed by the Crown to manage the system of deferred payments favoured by most slave traders, as they required payment for the licencias upfront. The need to pay for the licences upfront, contrary to the practice of sales on credit, became an obstacle for many to engage in the trade. The sudden removal of the possibility for delayed payment pushed many out of the legal trading routes and into the smuggling circuits or towards non-slave-related trade and investments.
The asiento showed the first signs of weakness during the contract between the Crown and Manuel Rodrigues Lamego (1624â1631), which coincided with the start of the Dutch offensive against the Iberian Atlantic. After the Twelve Years Truce (1609â1621), Zealand privateers systematically plundered Portuguese and Spanish merchant ships sailing across the Atlantic, including many navios sueltos licensed by the asentista. At the same time, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) targeted Spainâs silver fleets, Piet Heynâs capture of the Spanish fleet off the bay of Matanzas in 1628 being a landmark in this violence, and attacked colonial possessions in Latin America and West Africa, briefly conquering São Salvador da Bahia in 1624, and then Pernambuco, the centre of Brazilâs sugar plantation complex, in 1630.70
The economic effects of war between European empires were compounded by the collapse of slave supply networks in West Central Africa caused by the military campaigns of Portuguese colonial governors in Luanda. Initially, the Portuguese military intervention in the West Central African kingdom of Ndongo had generated an outpouring of captives that supported much of the Angolan slave trading boom of the early 1600s and the high numbers of slaves from that region that reached Spanish America. However, years of armed conflict and plundering eventually destabilised the traditional procurement systems in the hinterlands of Central Africa. When the wars subsided, the traditional hinterland slave fairs had ceased to convene, and African and Luso-African go-betweens no longer ventured inland to acquire captives to take to the coast.71
This combination of adverse factors led, among other things, to the asentistas of the mid-to-late 1620s and 1630s struggling to market all the licences allowed by their contracts. While their predecessors had regularly disregarded the terms of their asientos by selling too many licences and exceeding the annual export limits, the asentista Manuel Rodrigues Lamego requested a reduction in the number of licencias allotted to his contract. The Monarchy acquiesced, and the export limits were lowered, initially from 4,500 licencias to 3,500, but later in the 1630s to 2,500.72
5 Conclusion
Except for a five-year interlude (1609â14), between 1595 and 1640, the asiento de negros was entrusted to Portuguese merchant-bankers, who ran the licensing of transatlantic slave trade to colonial Spanish America on behalf of the Monarchy, taking on associated risks and benefits. This forty five-year period represents a low-point in the abhorrent history of the transatlantic slave trade, as it marked the first major peak in the four centuries of forced trafficking of Africans to the Americas as whole. While historians continue to reassess the number of voyages and displaced Africans, expanding and refining the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD), there is a consensus that the period of the âPortuguese asientosâ was characterised by an extraordinary volume of slave exports, a level only to be seen again in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, with the development of the sugar plantation complexes of Cuba and Puerto Rico, did the numbers of enslaved Africans headed for Spanish America surpass the volume reached during the Union of the Iberian Crowns.73
The asiento de negros was the instrument through which the Crown and economic elites derived financial and political benefits from the slave trade between West Africa and Spanish America. This alignment of royal and merchant-banking interests led to the imposition of entry barriers on private participation in the trade, and the extraction of rents and additional administrative revenues from this business. The Monarchy viewed the asiento de negros primarily as a means to maximising revenues for the metropolitan Real Hacienda, rather than as a tool to support the colonial economies.
Even though the asentistasâ control over the entirety of the trade was limited by the licensing system, the volume of legal exports they administered is nonetheless a testament to the capacity of the Portuguese merchant class to tap into West African regions of enslavement. This was achieved through the Portuguese contratos, the channelling of large numbers of individuals to the American markets, under the asientos, their ability to collect deferred payments over long distances and extended periods of time, and their proficiency in remaining solvent while awaiting remittances from Spanish America to fulfil the payments contracted with the Monarchy.
The asiento was an attractive business venture, allowing rents to be extracted from a potentially lucrative colonial trade, with the added advantage that these profits came in the form of American silver. Although further research is required to more clearly determine the profit margins of the asiento de negros, this contract appears to have provided high returns on investment, potentially greater than those made from individual slave voyages and other purely private commercial ventures. However, to realise a profit from the asiento, asentistas needed to remain solvent for long periods, due to the late capitalisation of the Bcontract, contrasting with tight payment schedules and numerous administrative expenses. Even the gross returns from the asiento â those resulting from the difference between the number of licencias sold and the lump sums paid to the Crown â were uncertain for many reasons. Speculation by licence holders, the dangers of maritime navigation, high mortality rates among the enslaved at port and during sea voyages, as well as the rampant smuggling, all posed risks to the asentistas, even if they acted more as fiscal intermediaries than as traders.
A final indicator of the importance of the Portuguese asentistas within the system of slave provisioning and rent extraction is the state of the transatlantic slave trade after 1640. With Portugalâs newly regained independence from the Hispanic Monarchy, the volume of African slave exports to the Spanish West Indies plummeted, and the Crownâs ability to derive revenues from this trade branch was temporarily lost. In the following decades, the lack of a permanent presence on the West Coast of Africa meant that Spanish America had to be supplied, both lawfully and illegally, through ports of call in the Caribbean, by slave traders, who, unlike the Portuguese, were neither subjects of the King, nor organised in familial networks or partnerships. Instead, they were foreigners, often aligned with Protestant believes and organised in partnerships, chartered companies, and joint-stock enterprises. The age of the âPortuguese asientosâ gave way to a phase dominated by the intra-Caribbean slave trade.
And also of sporadic of one-off government contracts to deliver a predetermined number of Africans captives Eagle and Wheat, âThe Early Iberian Slave Tradeâ, 53â54.
For more details see the introduction to this book and the secondary literature quoted therein.
Enriqueta Vila Vilar, âLa Sublevacion de Portugal y La Trata de Negrosâ, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 2, no. 3 (1976), 171â92.
Roquinaldo Ferreira and Tatiana Seijas, âThe Slave Trade to Latin America: A Historiographical Assessmentâ, in Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 27â51.
Scelle, La traite négrière. For a more recent survey on the asiento from the perspective of international law, Andrea Weindl, âThe Asiento de Negros and International Lawâ, Journal of the History of International Law/Revue dâhistoire Du Droit International 10, no. 2 (2008), 229â57.
For a representative example of a study that espouses this idea, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
David Wheat, âThe First Great Waves: African Provenance Zones for the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Cartagena de India, 1570â1640â, The Journal of African History 52, no. 1 (2011), 1â22; Borucki, Eltis and Wheat, âAtlantic Historyâ, American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015), 433â61; Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos: los asientos portugueses (Seville: Estudios Hispanoamericanos de Sevilla, 1977).
Emily Berquist Soule, âFrom Africa to the Ocean Sea: Atlantic Slavery in the Origins of the Spanish Empireâ, Atlantic Studies 15, no. 1 (2018), 16â39; Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel Sarah OâToole, and Ben Vinson, eds., Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora (Urbana/Chicago/Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012); Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524â1650 (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1974).
Tamar Herzog, âUna MonarquÃa, Dos Territorios. La Frontera Entre Españoles y Portugueses: España y Portugal Durante (y Después) de La Uniónâ, in Espanã y Portugal En El Mundo (1581â1668), edited Carlos MartÃnez Shaw and J. A. MartÃnez Torres (Madrid: Polifemo, 2014), 139â155; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, âHolding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500â1640â, The American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (2007), 1359â85.
Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America. The Angolan Slave Trade in the Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic Empires (1560â1641) PhD diss. (Florence: European University Institute, 2019).
Pedro Cardim, âPortugalâs Elites and the Status of the Kingdom of Portugal within the Spanish Monarchyâ, Monarchy Transformed: Princes and Their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe, edited by Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 212â43; John H. Elliott, âThe Spanish Monarchy and the Kingdom of Portugal, 1580â1640â, in Conquest and Coalescence. The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, edited by Mark Greengrass (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), 48â67.
Pedro Cardim, Antonio Feros, and Gaetano Sabatini, âThe Political Constitution of the Iberian Monarchiesâ, in The Iberian World. 1450â1820, edited by Fernando Bouza Alvarez, Pedro Cardim, and Antonio Feros (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 34â61; Jean-Frédéric Schaub, Portugal na Monarquia Hispânica (1580â1640) (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 2001).
Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugalâs Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492â1640 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Maria da Graça Mateus Ventura, Os Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da União Ibérica: mobilidade, cumplicidade e vivências, vol. 1 (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2005); Subrahmanyam, âHolding the World in Balanceâ; Fernando Bouza Alvarez, Portugal en la Monarquia Hispanica (1580â1640). Felipe II, las Cortes y la genesis del Portugal catolico, PhD diss. (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1987).
Brian Hamm, âConstructing and Contesting Portuguese Difference in Colonial Spanish America, 1500â1650â, Anais de História de Além-Mar XVII (2016), 303â336.
Kara D. Schultz, âInterwoven: Slaving in the Southern Atlantic under the Union of the Iberian Crowns, 1580â1640â, Journal of Global Slavery 2, no. 3 (2017), 248â272; António de Almeida Mendes, Carlos MartÃnez Shaw, and J. A. MartÃnez Torres, âSueños y invenciones en el Atlántico en la ocasión Africana y Ibérica. Estrategias de unión y desunión de los imperios de España y Portugal en los viejos mundos (Siglos XVâXVII)â, in España y Portugal En El Mundo (1561â1668), edited by edited by Carlos MartÃnez Shaw and José Antonio MartÃnez Torres (Madrid: Polifemo, 2014), 195â218.
GarcÃa Fuentes, âLicencias para la introducción de esclavosâ, 1â46.
Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300â1589 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 248â52; Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, âRotas Comerciais, Agentes Económicos, Meios de Pagamentoâ, in História Geral de Cabo Verde, edited by Maria EmÃlia Madeira Santos, vol. 2 (Lisbon and Praia: Instituto de Investigação CientÃfica Tropical and Instituto Nacional de Cultura de Cabo Verde, 1995), 17â124; Rafael Donoso Anes, âAlgunos aspectos relacionados con el control administrativo y contable de la renta de los esclavos enviados a Hispanoaméricaâ, Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad 30, no. 110 (2001), 1103.
Fernández Chaves and Pérez Garcia, âLa penetración económicaâ, 199â222; Enrique Otte and Conchita Ruiz-Burruecos, âLos portugueses en La trata de esclavos negros de las postmerias del siglo XVIâ, Moneda y Crédito, no. 85 (1963), 3â31.
Mendes, âThe Foundations of the Systemâ, 74; There were also Portuguese financiers who having received licenses as collateral and compensation for their state loans, actually made use of them to launch slave voyages, opting not selling them on the âsecondary marketâ. The Nunes Caldeira in the 1550s and 1560s are a case in point. See: Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 229ss.
And likewise a frequent money lenders to the crown and tax farmer.
For an overview of the community of merchants that received the prerogative to conduct most of Spainâs commercial exchanges with the American colonies, Jeremy Baskes, Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760â1820 (Stanford University Press, 2013) chapter 3; Xabier Lamikiz, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World: Spanish Merchants and Their Overseas Networks (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013).
Labour intensive cultivation of cash crops would only become a mainstay of Spainâs colonial economy well into the eighteenth century, when the Cuban and Puerto Rico sugar cycles began. Therefore, it was not in plantations, but in the activities listed above, that the vast majority of enslaved Africans were put to work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Kris Lane, âAfricans and Natives in the Mines of Spanish Americaâ, in Beyond Black and Red. African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, edited by Matthew Restall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 156â86; Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570â1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); Luz MarÃa MartÃnez-Montiel, âThe Influence of Blacks in the Americasâ, in From Chins to Bonds. The Slave Trade Revisited, edited by Doudou Diène (New York-Oxford: Berghahn, 2001), 376â94.
Drelichman and Voth, Lending to the Borrower from Hell.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 134, 228â229, 234â235.
Bailey W. Diffie and George Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire: 1415â1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); Ivana Elbl, âCross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441â1521â, Journal of World History 3, no. 2 (1992), 165â204.
Eagle and Wheat, âThe Early Iberian Slave Tradeâ, 60; Fernández Chaves and Pérez Garcia, âLa Penetración Económica Portuguesaâ.
Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, âOs Portugueses e o trato de escravos de Cabo Verde Com a América Espanhola no fim do século XVI. Os contratadores do trato de Cabo Verde e a Coroa, uma relação de conveniência numa época de oportunidades (1583â1600)â, in Portugal Na Monarquia Hispânica: Dinâmicas de Integração e Conflito, edited by Pedro Cardim, Leonor Freire Costa, and Mafalda Soares da Cunha (Lisbon: CHAM, 2013), 93â106; José Gonçalves Salvador, Os magnatas do tráfico negreiro (São Paulo: Pioneira-Edusp, 1981).
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa: Empires, Merchants and the Atlantic System, 1580â1674 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 82â96; Ivana Elbl, The Portuguese Trade with West Africa, 1440â1521, PhD diss. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1986); António Carreira, Notas sobre o tráfico português de escravos, 2a ed. rev (Lisbon: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Univ. Nova, 1983).
Revenue farming and other forms of government contracts in Habsburg Portugal are surveyed in Edgar Pereira, A Contractor Empire; Zelinda Cohen, âSubsÃdios para a História Geral de Cabo Verde: os contratos de arrendamento para a cobrança de rendas e direitos reais das ilhas de Cabo Verde (1501â1560)â, Stvdia, no. 53 (1994), 317â364.
An example is the arrangement made with the leaseholder of the contrato of São Tomé, the Milanese Giovanni Battista Rovellasca and the Portuguese Ãlvaro Mendes de Castro, who agreed to supply the Indies of Castile with slaves acquired in the adjacent West Central Africa coast (Loango, Kongo and Angola) in 1582. There were also contacts made with the contratadores of Cape Verde-Upper Guinea and those of Angola (a royal farm that had had been created around this time, in 1587). Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 239.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 241â47; Vilar, Hispanoamérica, 23â27; Scelle, La traite négrière, vol. 1, 324â331.
Eagle and Wheat, âThe Early Iberian Slave Tradeâ, 54ss; Vilar, Hispanoamérica, 28â32; Scelle, La traite négrière, vol. 1, 799â809.
The value of a licencia increased an astonishing 1,400% since they were first issued in the 1510s, and the prices of slaves on the Upper Guinea coast had also greatly increased during the second half of the sixteenth century; Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 227.
The political economy of Spainâs early modern overseas empire is unpacked in Regina Grafe and Alejandra Irigoin, âA Stakeholder Empire: The Political Economy of Spanish Imperial Rule in Americaâ, Economic History Review 65, no. 2 (2012), 609â651; John H. Coatsworth, âPolitical Economy and Economic Organizationâ, in The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, edited by Victor Bulmer-Thomas, John H. Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortés-Conde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 235â274.
In 1617 the Spanish Monarchy renegotiated its floating, short-term debt to the Genoese banker Ottavio Centurione by assigning him with government bonds whose interests would be paid from different revenue streams. Among the new sources of income that service the interests of his newly contracted debt instrument, 3,750,000 maravedis (principal at an interest of 5%) from the renta de los esclavos negros. Centurione proceeded to parcel out smaller portions, which he sold in a âsecondary marketâ. This example shows how revenues that slave trade to the American colonies generated for the crown were embroiled in the management of Spainâs public debt. Carmen Sanz-Ayan, Un Banquero en el Siglo de Oro. Octavio Centurion, el financier de los Austrias (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2015), 132â133.
Francisco Bethencourt argues for the importance and centrality the asientos played in the business life of Portuguese New Christians, with a particular emphasis for the first half of the seventeenth century. Francisco Bethencourt, Stangers Within. The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Trading Elite (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2024), 234â279. However, he insists in the overall importance of the asiento for the group before 1600 and after the 1640s as well.
This high value for concession fee was negotiated at the very first decade of the seventeenth century, at a time when the asiento was purposely granted to the Coutinho Brothers, as a collateral for leading an armed campaigns of territorial conquest in Angola, and were combined with the lease of the Angola contrato, which explains the significantly higher value that the concession fee reached.
For the political economy of government contracting in Ancien Régime Spain; Rafael Torres Sánchez, Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Source: Miguel Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America. The Angolan slave trade in the Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic Empires (1560â1640), PhD diss. (Florence: European University Institute, 2019), 281.
Vilar, Hispanoamérica, 54â58.
Direct contribution to the taxation office.
Marc Eagle, âChasing the Avença: An Investigation of Illicit Slave Trading in Santo Domingo at the End of the Portuguese Asiento Periodâ, Slavery & Abolition 35, no. 1 (2014), 101.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 260â262.
Linda A. Newson and Susie Minchin, From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 63â64.
During the period under study Cartagena de Indias was, overall, the main gateway for enslaved Africans into the Indies of Castille, and not only for Spainâs South American possessions, ahead of Veracruz. Wheat, âThe First Great Wavesâ.
Exports via the River Plate also allowed merchants to reach customers in the southernmost parts of Spanish America faster than by sending goods on the Tierra Firme fleet, given that merchandise would then have to be redistributed via the great fairs held every year at the isthmus of Panama. For the River Plate trade, in slaves and other merchandises, Kara D. Schultz, ââThe Kingdom of Angola Is Not Very Far from Hereâ: The South Atlantic Slave Port of Buenos Aires, 1585â1640â, Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 3 (2015), 424â444; ZacarÃas Moutoukias, Contrabando y control colonial en el siglo XVII: Buenos Aires, el Atlántico y el espacio peruano (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988).
Enriqueta Vila Vilar, âLos asientos portugueses y el contrabando de negrosâ, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, no. 30 (1973), 24.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 307 and 354.
This area of extraction was known in the official sources as the âRivers of Guineaâ, and comprised the mouths of the Gambia, São Domingos, Geba and Casamance rivers.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 265â266, 274, 304 and 322.
Eagle, âChasing the Avençaâ; Silva, Dutch and Portuguese, 91.
Arlindo Manuel Caldeira, âAngola and the Seventeenth-Century South Atlantic Slave Tradeâ, in Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange: Slave Trading in the South Atlantic, 1590â1867, edited by Filipa Ribeiro Da Silva and David Richardson, (Leidenâ¯and Boston: Brill, 2015), 101â42; Linda A. Newson, âAfricans and Luso-Africans in the Portuguese Slave Trade on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Early Seventeenth Centuryâ, The Journal of African History 53, no. 1 (2012), 1â24.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 322â42; Silva, Dutch and Portuguese, 90â92; Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, âDe Santiago para a costa da Guiné: a transferência do centro geográfico dos negócios e a manutenção da elite comerciante. As transacções da companhia de António Fernandes Landim e de Francisco Dias Mendes de Brito (1629â1630)â, Arquipélago 2 (1997), 83â118.
Fernando Jorge Cruz Mouta, â âPor Virtud Del Asientoâ: The Naval Logistics of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Indies (1604â1624)â, International Journal of Maritime History 31, no. 4 (2019), 707â728; Caldeira, âAngola and the Seventeenth-Centuryâ.
For the differences between the remunation of these two types of agents in the South Atlantic, Daniel Strum, The Sugar Trade: Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands (1595â1630) (Stanford, California, Rio de Janeiro: Stanford University Press-Versal Editores, 2013).
Upon arriving at the ports of the Indies of Castile the slave ships were inspected by crown magistrates and treasury officials. These inspections centred around the registro, which was cross-checked with the avença, the Portuguese equivalent to the licensia that was issued by the contratadores to allow ships to call at the slave embarkation points in Western Africa. Eagle, âChasing the Avençaâ; Newson and Minchin, From Capture to Sale, 18â21.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 259.
Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea; Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 308; Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica, 50 and 70.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 255; Vilar, Hispanoamérica 28â32, 65â76.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 280, 307â10.
Such was the case of the first asentista de negros, Pedro Gomes Reinel. Germán Peralta Rivera, Los mecanismos del comercio negrero (Lima: Kuntur Editores, 1990), 282 and 325â27.
Rodrigues and Alencastro have both drawn attention to the existence of other magnates of the slave trade to Latin America, beyond the government contractors. Their respective research has emphasized the colonial governors of Angola, who made use of their political and military authority not only to ship slaves in large numbers without paying royal licenses, but to become involved in the actual âproductionâ of slaves, by wars against mainland societies that produced captives. Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 307â309, 358â362; Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, The Trade in the Living: The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018).
Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524â1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974, 31â33.
Vilar, Hispanoamérica, 80â81.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 267, 279â280.
Peralta Rivera, Los mecanismos del comercio, 379â399.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 257, 280, 283â286.
From 133,696 ducats remitted from Spanish America, this asentista netted a loss of 24,708 ducats after paying a 140,000 ducats in yearly lump sum plus 18,405 ducats in administrative expenses to the Casa de la ContratacÃon.
According to the latest estimates, between 1501 and 1641, 1,843 recorded voyages brought nearly 530,000 enslaved men, women and children to the shores of Spanish America directly from their continent of origin, but. out of these, 83% (444,900 individuals) allegedly made it through the Middle Passage (in the 1,544 slave voyages completed) during the Union of the Iberian Crowns. Alex Borucki, David Eltis, and David Wheat, âThe Size and Direction of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americasâ, in From the Galleons to the Highlands: Slave Trade Routes in the Spanish Americas, edited by Alex Borucki, David Eltis, and David Wheat (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020), 15â46.
The same assumption on the profitability of the asiento de negros was made by GarcÃa-Monton for a latter period. Alejandro GarcÃa-Monton, Génova y el Atlántico (c. 1650â1680). Emprendedores mediterráneos frente al auge del capitalismo del Norte, PhD diss. (Florence: European University Institute, 2014).
Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca,
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America; Silva, Dutch and Portuguese.
Rodrigues, Between West Africa and America, 292â293.
Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat, âThe Size and Directionâ; Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat, âAtlantic Historyâ.