The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt. To generate income, in 1713 the company was granted a monopoly to supply African slaves to the islands in the "South Seas" and South America. When the company was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain and Portugal controlled most of South America. There was thus no realistic prospect that trade would take place, and as it turned out, the Company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly. However, Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, and peaked in 1720 before suddenly collapsing to little above its original flotation price. The notorious economic bubble thus created, which ruined thousands of investors, became known as the South Sea Bubble.
The Dividend Hall of South Sea House, 1810
Heraldic grouping above main entrance to the surviving South Sea House, Threadneedle Street, rebuilt after the fire of 1826
1723 pro-forma power of attorney signed by a shareholder of the South Sea Company showing the Company's coat of arms and the Latin motto A Gadibus usque Auroram ("From Cadiz to Dawn", Juvenal, Satires, 10)
Hogarthian image of the 1720 "South Sea Bubble" from the mid-19th century, by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery
The Asiento de Negros was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide enslaved Africans to colonies in the Spanish Americas. 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 island of Cádiz by Blaeu in 1662.
San Juan de Ulúa, Spanish fort in Veracruz, Mexico (2008)
San Felipe, Spanish fort in Cartagena (Colombia).
Jan Valckenburgh