charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly

The sovereign promised to repay the principal of the loan plus high interest (12%). Between the early 16th and the mid-18th century, asientos were used by the Spanish treasurer to adjust short-term imbalances between revenues and expenditures. An asiento covered one or a combination of three specific transactions: an unsecured short-term loan, a transfer of payment, and a currency exchange contract.

2.3 Dutch, French and British competitionĪn asiento is a Spanish language-term used to describe short-term loan or debt contract, of about one to four years, signed between the Spanish crown and a banker or a small group of bankers ( asentistas) against future crown revenues, often included after peace treaties were signed.

The British asiento ended with the 1750 Treaty of Madrid between Great Britain and Spain. The British government passed its rights to the South Sea Company. In 1713, the British were awarded the right to the asiento in the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Īfter the Treaty of Münster, Dutch merchants became involved in the Asiento de Negros. Spain gave individual asientos to Portuguese merchants to bring slaves to South America.

The enslavement of Amerindians had been halted by the influence of Dominicans such as Bartolomé de las Casas. The original impetus to import enslaved Africans was to relieve the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies from the labour demands of the Spanish colonists. Different organisations and individuals would bid for the right to hold the asiento. The contract was usually obtained by foreign merchant banks who cooperated with local or foreign traders, specialized in shipping. Thus the Spanish were reliant on Portuguese slave traders for all their requirements.

The Spanish relied on African slave labour to make their American colonial project possible, but now lacked any trading or territorial foothold in West Africa, the principal source of slave labour. The Spanish acquired the west side washing South America and the West Indies, whilst the Portuguese obtained the east side washing the west coast of Africa - and also the Indian Ocean beyond. The 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas divided the Atlantic Ocean and other parts of the globe into two zones of influence, Spanish and Portuguese. The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean but Spanish America. The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade directly from Africa itself, choosing instead to contract out the importation to foreign merchants from nations more prominent in that part of the world typically Portuguese and Genovese, but later the Dutch, French and British. 'agreement of blacks') was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide African slaves to colonies in the Spanish Americas.

Charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly