?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
(ASSIENTO DOCUMENT.) The Assiento or, Contract for Allowing to the Subjects of Great Britain, the Liberty of Importing Negroes into the Spanish America. [iii], [1]-48 pages, printed in Spanish and English on opposing pages. Small folio (8 1/4x6 1/2 inches), modern full crimson morocco with leather label on the upper cover; paper evenly toned; first leaf (the royal permission to print this document), affixed at the inner margin to the modern end-paper. London: Printed by John Baskett, Printer to the Queen's most Excellent Majesty..., 1713
A rare and important document in the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Assiento, literally "contract" or "agreement," came as the need for labor grew in Spain's colonies in the New World. There had been several assientos to provide slaves in the mid to late 17th century, but none of the merchant-traders had been able to provide the number of slaves needed for the mines in Peru or the plantations in the West Indies. The Assiento treaty of 1713 accomplished this. Spain granted England a monopoly to provide slaves for thirty years. England, with her enormous fleet of ships, agreed to supply the Spanish colonies with "at least 144,000 slaves at the rate of 4,800 a year." According to W. E. B. DuBois (Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1896) they greatly exceeded their quota. The Assiento of 1713 with England represents the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade in earnest. In the last half of the 18th century, up to and beyond the official ban in 1807, the trade was practiced by just about anyone who could outfit a ship to the West Coast of Africa. As a result it is difficult to calculate the exact number of Africans taken during this period. Kress no. 5020; Sabin, 2227.
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