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The Slave-Trade in the Spanish Colonies of America: The Assiento1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

G. Scelle
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Extract

President Monroe in his famous message to Congress, December 2, 1823, aimed both at the attempts at colonization which Europe might be led to make upon American soil, and the efforts which Spain might make to place its emancipated colonies again under her yoke. Europe saw with displeasure that the watch-word "America for the Americans," by which phrase they briefly and incompletely condensed the purport of the message, had a double significance, political above all for the United States, but one almost exclusively economic for the countries of Latin-America, which adopted it with enthusiasm.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 1910 , pp. 612 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1910

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Footnotes

1

This article was translated from the French of Professor Scelle by Mrs. Edna K. Hoyt, of the Department of State, Washington, D. C.

References

2 Some rather complicated but very fruitful researches have led us to the principal depositories of archives of France, England, Spain, and Portugal. We have recorded the results in a work entitled: La traite nigrire aux Indes de Castille (The slave-trade in the Indies of Castile), three volumes, two of which have been published, by Larose et Tenin, Paris, 1905.

3 Ibid., II, 3, 14.

4 Tribunal of commerce appointed to try and decide cases which concern navigation and trade.

5 A house or place where agreements and contracts are made for the promotion of trade and commerce.

6 See for the details and the bibliography, the preliminary book of the author's work, above cited, Vol. I.

7 It must be remarked that the desire of defending her commercial monopoly was not the only one with the Spaniards. A very apparent financial policy was added to it, for the necessity for the Spanish-American colonists to have an abundant supply of labor made the trade in negroes the most important of all, and the Spanish Government had not failed to load it with high taxes which it was always more difficult to collect from the foreigners than from the subjects of the Catholic King. In addition, the Government of Madrid always feared that in confiding this branch of commerce to foreigners, often to heretics or to Jews, it would permit the contagion of false doctrines upon the lands which the Holy See had charged it to conquer to the faith. This point of view, which we are unable to consider here, is not the least curious one. See the author's work, liv. Ill , chap. VII, L'Assiento et L'Eglise d'Espagne au XVIIe siecle.

8 See for his justification the author's work, Vol. 1, book 1, chap. 1.

9 See the author's work, book 1st, and among the documents the publication of several of these licenses enabling one to reconstruct the principal types (Documents 1 to 22).

10 Coutino did not know how to get rid of smugglers and when he died his affairs were in a rather bad condition. Vaz Coutino, his brother, took upon himself the charge, in a transaction with the Spanish treasury, of finishing the exploitation and of straightening out the situation.

11 This is the curious contract of Salvago and Atayde. See the author's work, book IT, chap. IV.

12 See the documents in the author's work, Vol. I, No. 32, and chapters V and VI of book III.

13 See letter of Pontchartrain to the French Ambassador at Lisbon, M. d'Estr«es, November 15, 1692, French Archives of the Marine, B2 3e 86.

14 Article I. — The text will be found in the collections of Dumont and Cantillo.

15 Nevertheless they made some objections because they were astonished that the Spaniards should have sent them the form of it.

16 Pontchartrain to d'Aubenton, December 21, 1707. Archives of the colonies, B. 28.

17 The author has published this project of Assiento, found in the Foreign Entry books of the Record Office, in No. 7 of the Documents, Vol. II of his work.

18 Consult for the history of the-last Assientos, the work of A. Saco, Historica de la raza Africana en el nuevo Vundo, and Vol. I l l of the author's work.