living in the area “became acquainted with the Spaniards of those Parts, and continu’d to keep a Correspondence and small trade with them, and they with us for Provisions mostly, and some few dry Goods and Negroes by stealth.” Far from mainland Europe, this clandestine trade could flourish, and with it, the repeated interaction of Spanish and English subjects. Even those safeguards that had been put in place by Spanish officials on the European continent and in the colonies did little to discourage this interaction and trade; Allen conceded that Spanish penalties for contraband trade were “very severe,” but reported that nonetheless a number of Spanish guards had themselves come to British ships to conduct a private trade.47
The asiento contract allowed for open, though limited, trade, and would meet Spain’s needs. The links between the Spanish and English empires in the early eighteenth century centered on a mutual interest: the slave trade. The Spanish empire in the Americas relied on slave labor. While Spanish Americans made wide use of native coerced and tribute labor in the early years of settlement, the empire still required an outside source of forced labor to meet all its needs on the Caribbean plantations, in urban household service, and in the silver mines in areas such as Potosí. The Spanish turned to the large-scale importation of enslaved Africans in the early sixteenth century.48 Spanish merchants lacked a strong foothold on the African coast, and relied on other nations to supply them with slaves; the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch, and the English, in particular, had obliged their need for a steady supply of laborers from 1518, when the Spanish first permitted a monopoly on importing slaves into the Indies, to the turn of the eighteenth century.49 The asiento was coveted among the nations of Europe. It guaranteed the holders a significant market and source of revenue in Spanish America, the possibility of trade in other goods, and access to the specie that flowed from the Spanish mines, as well as an opportunity for the ships of that nation to access Spanish ports, where they might engage in the significant contraband trade to the area.
Throughout the Caribbean and the North American mainland colonies, the English had long had access to enslaved African laborers, and even before they secured the official trade to the Spanish empire, they were important suppliers for Spanish slave agents. As their American settlements expanded, the English became increasingly enthusiastic about securing a steady source of enslaved labor. In 1672 the English government granted the Royal African Company a monopoly on the trade to the African coast, where they established a source for the slaves that would go to the English colonies, and many of those who would eventually end up being sold to the Spanish.50 With the support of James II, the Royal African Company created trading posts known as factories in West Africa, where they had access to slaves as well ivory, hides, dyewood, and other commodities. There they formed diplomatic relationships with African leaders who could provide them with slaves, securing an English foothold amid the other European nations trading to the area.51 The Royal African Company, James hoped, would supply the growing colonies in the Americas with slaves sufficient to meet their labor needs, expand plantations, and secure the land for England. Here, as with the later development of the South Sea Company, the attempt to involve government in a profitable trade meant that private traders who operated under previous systems were sometimes displaced.
Figure 1. Map of Spanish and British territorial claims in 1713. Spain’s early eighteenth-century land holdings and trade monopolies were very attractive to the expanding British Empire. Map by Darin Grauberger, University of Kansas Cartographic Services.
Many in Great Britain enthusiastically embraced the asiento in 1713.52 The contract did not guarantee the full and direct trade that the British would have preferred, but the agreement did allow for some trade to the West Indies and kindled hopes for further expansion.53 The asiento treaty gave the British the opportunity to make use of their extensive trade to the African coast to move directly into the Spanish American empire. The broad outlines of this trade have been well-documented. Queen Anne permitted the South Sea Company to fulfill the contract, giving them a monopoly on Spain’s American slave trade. The contract obligated the company to import 4,800 slaves into the Spanish Americas each year for a term of thirty years. The British won a further concession from the Spanish, with permission to send one ship of five hundred tons to the trade fair at Portobello each year, a key opportunity to bring British goods into the protected markets of the Spanish colonies. The Spanish allowed the Company to place a limited number of British slave traders in Spanish American port cities, including Cartagena, Buenos Aires, Veracruz, Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Portobello, and Panama.54 In these ports the South Sea Company agents, called factors, came into close and sustained contact with subjects of the Spanish empire, and formed trading and personal relationships that extended far beyond the legal limitations established by the contract.55 As a result, new networks of illegal trade developed, causing tension between the British and Spanish on an imperial level while strengthening interpersonal alliances and cooperation in the West Indies.
Drawing on decades of information gathering from settlers and travelers, the British knew that the Spanish could be valuable trading partners. Moving forward would mean increased contact between empires, both on an imperial level and for individual subjects of each empire, contact that would mean both profit and potential danger. As English Protestant men and women founded their own colonies, and traveled through those of Spain, they moved away from the center of English power, and new situations and environments challenged their imperial and confessional identities. On the edges of empire, simultaneously the most important site of expansion and maintenance and the most vulnerable imperial location, merchants and travelers could find that being British was not the most salient of their identities. Being Europeans engaged in the importation of thousands of African slaves, being traders with ties to a particular locale, or being individuals with a desire for personal enrichment could all become much more important than being Britons and supporting their nation through conquest or trade. As the English began the process of building their own imperial Americas, they faced new troubles and greater opportunities than ever.
The South Sea Company trade was a tempting opportunity for many Britons. One of the major benefits of the trade, from the perspective of individual merchants and even some South Sea Company officials, was that it offered a legitimate cover for British ships operating in Spanish American territories, where they might engage in a combination of legal and contraband trade. This could mean great profit for the country and its subjects, some argued, especially if one considered the additional smuggling opportunities available at the yearly trade fair. These hopes, projected onto imperial designs, drove the support for the company’s trade in the Americas, but it would ultimately prove destructive. Imagined profits always exceeded actual profits for the company and the nation in this trade. Conflict over contraband, and the piracy that surrounded it, would ultimately drive the British and Spanish empires to a war that ended the contract. Enthusiasm for the company had always been based on possibilities, on potential that would not ultimately be fulfilled.
The British asiento trade and the resulting interactions between the merchants and the Spanish encompassed both empires and comprised an inter-imperial history that developed over a large geographical area. Anglo-Spanish relations made possible by the asiento treaty extended to the greater West Indies, through the Spanish Main, well into South America and even along parts of the Pacific Coast; some Britons even hoped, as the name of the company suggests, that the trade would give the empire access to the markets of Asia through the South Sea, the contemporary term for the Pacific Ocean.56 The British and Spanish empires shared an interest in the Caribbean and its surroundings, as it was a major avenue for providing the colonies with slaves and trade goods, and a source of enormous wealth because of shipping and sugar. The economic power of the Caribbean, and the mix of people who settled there, made it a center of European concern.57 While this may at first seem a peripheral space, in fact, a study of social relations and economic cooperation in this area illuminates it as an area of considerable concern for these empires. Trade, both legal and illegal, piracy, religious conflict, and the complicating presence of non-Europeans in areas claimed by the empires, all drew the attention of the wider British and Spanish worlds.58
