The Asiento System and the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans (circa 1580–1750) / edited by Manuel Herrero Sánchez, Jonatán Orozco Cruz, and Pedro Cardim.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cardim, Pedro, editor.

Orozco Cruz, Jonatán, editor.

Herrero Sánchez, Manuel, editor.

Series:

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books Online, Collection 2025.

The Atlantic World ; 41.

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books Online, Collection 2025

The Atlantic World ; 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American Studies.

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (384 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2026.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is the first edited volume to focus explicitly on the asiento , the contractual framework that regulated the transatlantic slave trade to Spanish America between the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. As the mechanism that structured a vast system of human trafficking – one of the foundational tragedies of the modern world – the asiento functioned as a legal, political, and commercial instrument of empire. Drawing on new archival research in multiple languages and from repositories across the Atlantic, the chapters trace the negotiated nature of these contracts, the transimperial flows they enabled, and the roles played by formal and informal agents of diverse social, ethnic, and institutional backgrounds. Contributors are: Pedro Cardim, Christopher Ebert, Manuel F. Fernández Chaves, Alejandro García Montón, Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues, Manuel Herrero Sánchez, Wim Klooster, Thiago Krause, Maximiliano Mac Menz, Joseph Mainberger, Ramona Negrón, Linda Newson, Jonatán Orozco Cruz, Edgar Pereira, William Pettigrew, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Klaus Weber, and David Wheat.

Contents:

Front Cover

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Informations

Contents

Figures, Diagrams, and Tables

Figures

Diagrams

Tables

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Part 1: The Asiento: Foundations, Structure and Consolidation of a System

1 'Pocas piezas hay para tantos navíos': Business Ventures in Angola and Transimperial Slave Network

1 Introduction

2 The Origins of the Iberian Slave Trade

3 The Iberian Union and the Inception of the asiento de negros

4 Business Ventures and Transatlantic Slave Networks in the Iberian Atlantic

5 Conclusion

2 Slaving, Settlement and Social Ties: Iberians and Africans in the Rio Grande Estuary

2 Beyond "Lançados"

3 Guinala's Fort and Feitoria, c. 1585-1610

4 African Women and Luso-African Children

5 From the Rio Grande to the Caribbean

6 Conclusion

3 The Guinea and Cape Verde Contract of 1589-1594: Financing Networks and Transatlantic Returns

2 The Contract and Debt with the Royal Treasury: Pedro Freire's Activities

3 The Three Contractors' Joint Actions: Paying the Creditors

4 The Contractors' Individual Actions

5 Last Collections and Case against Diogo Nunes Caldeira

6 Conclusions

Global Networks, the Trade in Enslaved Africans, and Peruvian Business Interests, 1580-1640

1 Manuel Bautista Pérez: Background and Sources

2 African Business: Commodities for Exchange and Profit

3 Supplementing the Transatlantic Trade: Beeswax

4 Developing American Business Interests

4.1 Textiles

4.2 The Chinese Connection

4.3 The European Connection

5 Pearls

6 Networks within the Viceroyalty of Peru

7 Conclusion

Bibliography.

Part 2: Commercial and Diplomatic Networks in Control

5 Chains of Gains: toward a Global Approach to Studying the Benefits Derived

2 The Slavery and Capitalism Debate: an Old Debate in New Clothing

3 Identifying Chains of Gains in Slave Trading and Commerce in Slave-Produced Commodities

3.1 The Micro-Study of Belmonte and Associates

3.2 The Micro-Study of Francisco Ferroni

4 Towards a Global Approach: Beyond States, Empires, and Numbers

6 Reciprocity, Self-Organization and Flexibility in Transnational Slave Trade Networks

2 A Shared Social Capital: Cohesion and Connectivity in the Social Networks of the Asientos of Juan Barroso, Nicolás Porcio and Baltasar Coymans

3 Group Augmentation Strategies in Asiento Networks during the Late Seventeenth Century

4 The Organization of Asiento Networks: the Position of Superintendente and the Replacement of Notarial Powers of Attorney

7 Managing Transimperial Trade: Legal Representatives and Factors in the Coymans Asiento of 1685

2 Coymans and Van Belle

3 The Coymans Asiento of 1685

4 Legal Representatives

5 Factors

5.1 Factor-General

5.2 Curaçao

5.3 Cartagena de Indias

5.4 Portobelo (Isthmus of Panama)

5.5 Jamaica

8 The Royal Company of Guinea: an Introductory Study

9 Manuel de Belmonte, the Asiento and the Deregulation of American Trade

2 Independent Middlemen and Non-State Agents in the Consolidation of Spanish-Dutch Relations in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century

3 Sephardic Networks in the Integration of Spanish-Dutch Markets in the Atlantic

4 The Career of Manuel de Belmonte in the Service of the Catholic King.

5 Manuel de Belmonte's Role as Mediator for Military Spanish- Dutch Cooperation in America and in the Reform of Overseas Trade

6 Manuel de Belmonte and the Management of the Slave Asiento: between Mediation and Private Interests

7 Final Considerations

10 The Compagnie de l'Assiente (1702-1712) and the Formation

1 Controlling the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Saint-Domingue's Economic Development after 1648

2 Shareholders and Origins of Capital for the Compagnie de Saint-Domingue and the Compagnie de l'Assiente

3 Strategic Goals of the Compagnie de Saint-Domingue and the Compagnie de l'Assiente

4 The Effects of the War of the Spanish Succession on Saint Domingue's Economy

5 The Transformation of Saint Domingue and the Redistribution of Power after the War

11 Exiting the Asiento: Diplomacy and the Dutch Slave Trade during the War of the Spanish Succession

2 A Minor Asiento Role

3 Diplomacy

4 Aftermath

Part 3: Alternative Models

12 Revisiting the Atlantic African Contratos

2 The Genesis and Contexts of the Royal Monopoly on Trade with Atlantic Africa (Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries)

3 Setting the Template: the Clauses, Terms, and Implications of the Slaving Contracts

4 The Interplay between the Contratos and the Asiento de Negros (1595-1640)

13 The Asiento's Role in the Changing Relationship

14 A South Atlantic Counterpoint: Facing the Asiento from Bahia (c. 1585-1740)

1 The Making of an Integrated Iberian Atlantic

2 Struggling to Reconnect

3 Undercutting and Imitating

Acknowledgments

Afterword

Index of Names, Places and Subjects

Back Cover.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

90-04-54929-3

9789004549296

OCLC:

1561171232

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004549296 DOI