Casa de Contratación
The Casa de Contratación (Spanish completely Casa y Audiencia de Indias ) was founded in 1503 at the instigation of the Archbishop of Burgos and influential advisor to Ferdinand II , Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca , as an executive royal authority to direct all Spanish expeditions of discovery and conquest in the New world founded, which was called Las Indias ("the India") in Spain until the 19th century . At the same time it was created in Seville on January 20, 1503 to monitor the Castilian monopoly of trade with the Spanish colonies . Trade with the American colonies was long reserved for the citizens of Castile, while the inhabitants of the other Spanish monarchy, Aragón , were referred to the Italian and North African colonies.
The Casa de Contratación was subordinate to the Council of India (Consejo Real y Supremo de Indias) . The Council of India was responsible for the strategic management and the planning of the expansion and colonial policy . Independently of the Cortes , the Council of India had legislative powers for the colonies.
The documents of this authority can still be viewed today in the Archivo General de Indias (General Archives for the Colonies of Spain Overseas) , which is housed in the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes , the former Seville stock exchange , the most magnificent building project of the time.
Functions
Tax authority
The Casa de Contratación was supposed to raise the colonial taxes , the royal "fifth". To do this, it registered when which ships with which freight were leaving where or from where, and licensed captains. She issued the freight and loading papers, inspected the ships, provided the escort boats, enforced Spanish commercial law and was responsible for emigration matters.
Emigration authority
In theory, no Spaniard could sail into the colonies without permission from the Casa de Contratación , but corruption and smuggling were common. She also had to take care of asset management for those who died in America. Thanks to the meticulous bookkeeping of the Casa de Contratación , which registered every single emigrant , 150,000 people can be named today who sailed to America, not counting soldiers and seamen.
Precious metal control
According to the prevailing doctrine of the bullionists at the time , the state had to do everything possible to keep the precious metal in the country. Therefore, the Castilian crown fought free trade as smuggling, concentrated all trade with the American colonies on Cádiz and Seville, so that the Casa de Contratación could collect its taxes on every movement of goods in both directions, and refused the colonies to trade among themselves. A free trade policy that would have opened all Spanish trading ports would have resulted in the loss of almost all trade with the Spanish colonies to the numerous and more dynamic French, Dutch and English traders and explorers, and the absence of state monopolies, which would have made the Spanish monarchy poorer .
Care of the colonies
In addition, the Casa de Contratación had the task of supplying the Spanish colonies. But she did little to accomplish this task.
Maritime Authority
As the Spanish counterpart to the Portuguese Casa da Índia , it was also a navigation center where knowledge about new travel routes was gathered. In this role, the Casa de Contratación appointed a piloto mayor , a kind of supreme naval commissioner, whose task was to collect nautical information about the West Indies and America (first piloto mayor was from 1508 to 1512 Amerigo Vespucci , followed by Juan Díaz de Solís and Sebastian Caboto ).
State Bank
The chronically clammy Spanish crown went into short-term debt, called asientos , for its wartime adventures . These were at the height of the first financial crisis in bonds , the so-called juros al quitar , replaced. In order to be able to place bonds on the capital market at all, the crown temporarily reserved all income for the repayment of the national debt . In order to be able to service its obligations (3.8 million ducats annually), the Casa de Contratación was allowed to use the income from precious metal mining, the sale of slaves and the export of goods for repayment. The Casa de Contratación used its income from the middle of the 16th century to pay the holders of government debt (juristas) their interest directly and to buy back a certain volume of redeemable pensions, as far as circumstances allowed. With that, the Casa de Contratación grew into the role of a state bank . However, due to the decline in the amount of precious metals mined and the enormous increase in government spending, the Casa de Contratación soon ran into difficulties in the 1560s.
At the end of the 17th century, the Casa de Contratación practically fell into a bureaucratic deadlock and the Spanish Empire fell apart - initially because of Spain's inability to finance both the continent's wars and the global empire. In most cases, the assets on the way from New Spain , Manila and Acapulco to Spain were transferred to a creditor before the ship even docked in the Spanish port. In the course of the Bourbon administrative reforms, Charles III. the Casa de Contratación finally exits .
literature
- Ernst Schäfer: The Royal. Spanish Supreme Council of India. = Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias. Part 1: History and organization of the Council of India and the Casa de la Contratacion in the sixteenth century (= Ibero-American Studies. 3, ZDB -ID 718280-6 ). Ibero-American Institute, Hamburg 1936.
- Walter A. McDougall : Let the Sea Make a Noise. Four Hundred Years of Cataclysm, Conquest, War and Folly in the North Pacific. Avon Books, New York NY 1994, ISBN 0-380-72467-7 .
- Bernhard Siegert : passengers and papers. Writing files on the threshold between Spain and America. Wilhelm Fink, Munich / Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-7705-4224-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jesus A. Ramirez Suarez: The constitutional development in Colombia. In: Gerhard Leibholz (Ed.): Yearbook of Public Law. New episode Volume 19. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1970, ISBN 3-16-631412-1 , pp. 413–474, here p. 420 ( preview in Google book search, accessed on July 16, 2020).