Asiento Slave Contract

Timeline

1. 1518–1527Court at Valladolid · CastileCharles I issued a license to Laurent de Gourville, governor of Bresse, permitting him to transport up to 4,000 African slaves requiring baptism to the Indies, discovered and to be discovered, over eight years, loading directly from Guinea and elsewhere without prior inspection at the Casa de Contratación. Gourville immediately resold the rights to Genoese merchants in Seville, turning the transatlantic slave supply into a transferable fiscal privilege.
2. 1590–1713Atlantic slave trade network · AtlanticBecause Spain could not establish factories directly in Africa, the crown instead signed fixed-quota slave supply contracts with Portuguese, German, Genoese, Dutch, and French merchants, taxing by the piece. Portugal was especially dominant in supply during the Iberian Union under the Habsburg dynasty, and the Dutch intervened in the mid-17th century. The contracts institutionalized labor supply to Spanish American plantations and mines and became a fiscal tool contested among European powers.
3. 1713–1750Utrecht / Madrid · NetherlandsThe Treaty of Utrecht granted Britain a thirty-year slave asiento of about 4,800 people per year, later transferred to the South Sea Company, along with an annual licensed merchant ship. Smuggling and accounting disputes helped fuel the War of Jenkins' Ear. The 1750 Treaty of Madrid ended the Anglo-Dutch arrangement with an indemnity, closing the era of the classical asiento monopoly.