Organization
DissolvedThe Casa de Contratación
Seville · 1503 – 1790
Moved to Cádiz in 1717 and abolished in 1790, as the crown's monopoly on the Atlantic could no longer be administered from one house.
In 1503 the Spanish crown set up the Casa de Contratación in Seville and required every ship bound for the Americas to pass through it. The point was silver, and the control of silver. A private merchant could trade. He could not trade unsupervised.
The Casa licensed captains, collected the royal fifth, inspected cargo, and kept the padrón real, the master map corrected after each returning pilot. For three centuries the legal path from Spain to the Indies began in one building on the Guadalquivir.
The office as a labor market
Seville filled with notaries, outfitters, pilots, and the families of men who were gone for years. The Casa employed cosmographers to train pilots in navigation and to decide which new coastline was real. A dishonest register was a crime against the treasury, so the paperwork was the job. The annual fleets, the flota, turned that paperwork into a calendar. Ships waited for the convoy because sailing alone was how you met a privateer and how you met the Casa's fines.
Cádiz, then abolition
Seville's river silted. In 1717 the Casa moved to Cádiz, which could still take an ocean-going hull. The monopoly itself was the part that could not be saved. Creole merchants, smugglers, and other European empires had already punched holes in it. Charles IV abolished the Casa in 1790. The silver fleet as an idea lasted longer in memory than in the accounts.
The work it organized
- Pilot
- Cosmographer
- Notary
- Fleet clerk
On the timeline
Related
- The Casa da ÍndiaDissolved