\"From Licensing System to Monopoly Trade. Organizational Changes in the Articulation of the Slave Trade to Spanish America (17th century)\", Workshop: América en la primera globalización: introducción y recepción de productos externos, Seville, 6-7 October 2016

The history of the slave trade to Spanish America is a history in the making. Although the Spanish Empire triggered the “africanization” of the Americas in the early sixteenth century and it was the last Atlantic empire that abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, the slave trade in the Spanish Atlantic has received less attention than the English and Dutch cases. Gladly, this situation is changing. Since the last decade there is a renewed and sustained interest in this field. Leaving aside the many fascinating works that have recovered the agency of enslaved peoples in Spanish America, the main progresses focusing on the mechanics of the trade have concentrated on two aspects. First, in relation to the operational capacity of the merchant networks operating the slave trade and their mercantile practices and, second, regarding the identification and quantification of the slave voyages in concrete geographical locations, either regional or local. Still, a question that has surprisingly attracted little attention has to do with the institutional framework governing the slave trade.This paper is a first attempt at observing and analyzing to what extent and in which way regulations fostered by the Spanish Empire affected the flow of enslaved African peoples to Spanish America. The chronological framework of this research concentrates on the 1632-1674 period. Those four decades offer four comparable different frameworks at regulating the slave trade. First, a licensing system outsourced to private actors (1595-1640); a second period in which the slave trade was banned (1640-1651); a third stage in which the slave trade was organized through a licensing system administrated by the Crown (1651-1663); and finally a monopolistic system (1663-1750).The previous questions will be answered focusing on Portobello, the Atlantic gateway of the Isthmus of Panama. Portobello is mostly known for its annual commercial fairs. There, Peruvian silver was transshipped into the Spanish convoys connecting both shores of the Atlantic. Also there, Spanish and Peruvian merchants traded in goods. However, it should be recalled that the Isthmus of Panama also distinguished itself as a highway for slavery, especially before the Cape Horn route started to gain importance during the eighteenth century. Thus, the one hundred isthmian kilometers operated as a nodal point connecting the Atlantic circuits of slavery trade with the regions of Pacific South America and the vigorous Peruvian economies. The fact that the Isthmus of Panama was more a transit point than a final destination for the slaves perhaps can explain the dearth of studies firmly addressing the slave trade in this area. Moreover, Portobello constitutes an excellent case study for the purposes of this paper since it offers the possibility to address a question that has not been yet answered: What factors explain that from 1663 onwards Portobello displaced Cartagena de Indias as the main Spanish Caribbean port receiving African slaves? These pages also seek to contribute to the common endeavor at tracing and quantifying the development of the slave trade. It is well known that Spanish official documentation underrepresents the real volume of the slave trade in Spanish America. Although this situation poses several difficulties for historical research these sources are frequently the best available option to shed light on this subject. The archival and bibliographical research done for this paper has brought to light 11 voyages which were responsible for the introduction of circa 976 African slaves. To the best of my knowledge these voyages have remained unnoticed by researchers until now. Furthermore, some other voyages already known in the literature but still not included in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD) will are highlighted too.