Asiento de Negros

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The Asiento de Negros (lit. 'agreement of blacks') was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide enslaved Africans to colonies in the Spanish Americas.^[1] The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the transatlantic 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 Genoese, but later the Dutch, French, and British. The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean but Spanish America.

The 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas divided the Atlantic Ocean and other parts of the globe into two zones of influence, Spanish and Portuguese. 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 Spanish relied on enslaved African labourers to support their American colonial project, but now lacked any trading or territorial foothold in West Africa, the principal source of slave labour.^[2] The Spanish relied on Portuguese slave traders to fill their requirements. The contract was usually obtained by foreign merchant banks that cooperated with local or foreign traders, that specialized in shipping. Different organisations and individuals would bid for the right to hold the asiento.

The original impetus to import enslaved Africans was to relieve the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies from the labour demands of Spanish colonists.^[3] The enslavement of Amerindians had been halted by the influence of Dominicans such as Bartolomé de las Casas. Spain gave individual asientos to Portuguese merchants to bring African slaves to South America.^[4]

After the Peace of Münster, in 1648, Dutch merchants became involved in the Asiento de Negros. In 1713, the British were awarded the right to the asiento in the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.^[1] The British government passed its rights to the South Sea Company.^[5] The British asiento ended with the 1750 Treaty of Madrid between Great Britain and Spain after the War of Jenkins' Ear, known appropriately by the Spanish as the Guerra del Asiento ("War of the Asiento").