Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas

The Royal Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas (Spanish: Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas) was a Spanish chartered company which existed from 1728 to 1785. It conducted trade with Spain's overseas colonies and maintained its own fleet of warships and privateers to defend the company's merchantmen. In 1785, after having several of its ships captured by the Royal Navy during the American Revolutionary War, the company was merged with the Barcelona Trading Company to form the Royal Company of the Philippines.

History

Foundation

Since 1503, under the Habsburg kings, all Spanish trade with America had been conducted through the port of Seville (and after 1717, Cádiz) under a monopoly that prevented other cities, including Barcelona or San Sebastián, from trade with the Americas, or the Indies as they were known. Tentatively by the late 17th century Basques goods had reached the Indies via the Spanish coastal trade to Cádiz and this grew slowly until the Guipuzcoan company was founded by a group of wealthy Basques from the province of Gipuzkoa in 1728. The specific aim of the Basque company, acting almost autonomously with tasks of military nature at their own command and expense, was to break the de facto

Operations and effects in Venezuela

The company had a substantial influence over the economy of Venezuela over the period 1730-1784.[4]

The company began operating in 1730—four ships departed from San Sebastián taking on board a crew of 561 and 40–50 cannons. The vessels were hailed with frontal hostility by the Venezuelan Creoles, a refusal to sell cocoa to the company, and an uprising against the newcomers and the local Spanish garrison, until control was re-established.

The Company's ships used to travel overloaded, in order to increase the profits coming from the cocoa monopoly. The very high profitability of the business and the overexploitation of the ship's cargo capacity allowed the crews to smuggle. The Company needed to recover the investment with the greatest possible profit margin, and the Crown required this to be a tool of war. In June 1733, the San Ignatius de Loyola was preparing for his return to Passages from La Guaira. He returned with a cocoa overload 5.5 percent higher than his actual capacity, not counting the space occupied by other effects, such as food, water, ammunition, etc. He made his journey in 76 days, almost 10 days longer than the average of the Company's ships. In the last trip to La Guaira at the sight on the reefs of the island of La Anegada the captain couldn't stop the ship from falling on starboard. About 300 people died in this tragedy. Thus the San Ignatius shipwrecked.

The Basques started to settle down in Venezuelan territory on wealthy haciendas that boosted plantations and agricultural production. However, the move was resented by other established Creoles based on the fact that it brought down prices to be sold to the company.[5] The Basques established settlements, built dock facilities, and fortifications. The term un gran cacao became a nickname for a member of the new powerful class (and to this day the term is used jocularly in Venezuela for a VIP). It did not help smaller farmers who continued to participate in illegal trading.

The company was instrumental in the development of large-scale cocoa production along the valleys of the coast and encouraged the production of such crops as tobacco, indigo, cotton and coffee.[6] In addition, the company promoted the exploration and settlement of frontier areas, most famously under the border expedition of 1750-1761 headed by a company agent, José de Iturriaga y Aguirre, which resulted in new settlements in the Guayana region.

The company's control of the major ports of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello meant that it effectively monopolized the legal trade of the other Venezuelan provinces. In addition, the company's strict control of much needed manufactured imports naturally created a lot of resentment in a region which depended on these. Several rebellions took place against the company and the Basques in which ethnic confrontation came to a head in 1749, which saw local criollos supported by the Dutch and British confront the powerful Basques supported by the Spanish Crown.[7] The rebellion was led by Juan Francisco de León, a Canary Islander just replaced as Corporal of War (1749), but the Spanish Crown could not shrink from protecting its own interests by supporting the company, and quelling the uprising that very year.

Later years

While Basque involvement increased after 1749, the Spanish Crown dealt a critical blow to the Basques when it diffused the Basque grip over the company by transferring its headquarters to Madrid, a move contested by Gipuzkoa, and imposing the requirement to include a Spaniard in a board of directors of three (1751).[8]

On October 1778, Charles III of Spain signed the Free Trade Regulations culminating the free trade process that had begun in 1765. The regulations were composed of 55 articles, expanded freedom of trade and enabled 13 metropolitan ports including Margarita Island and Trinidad Island. The ports of Venezuela mainland (La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Cumaná, Maracaibo, and Angostura) were excluded to protect the interests of the Royal Gipuzkoan Company along with the ports of New Spain, for fear that the prosperity of this territory would lead to a lack of concern for other less active areas, which went against the guiding idea of the project.

During the American Revolutionary War, numerous ships of the company were captured by the Royal Navy, including in the actions of 8 January 1780 and 15 January 1782. On 8 January 1780, 7 warships and 15 merchantmen of the company were captured, and on 15 January 1782 2 of the company's merchant ships were captured. Combined this facts with the liberalization of commerce with Venezuela in 1778, the weakening company's monopoly came to an end. The Spanish Crown no longer saw the need for a monopolizing company to control and grow the economy, since by that time the Venezuelan economy had matured and been tightly linked with the markets of Spain and New Spain, which consumed most of its cocoa. The Spanish crown terminated the company's charter in 1784. A key effect of the Caracas Company, despite its eventual commercial failure, was that it guaranteed the place of Caracas in the captaincy-general.[9] When the Crown established a high court (Real Audiencia) in the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1786, it was sited in Caracas.[10]

The owners of the Guipuzcoana Company merged it with the Barcelona Trading Company to form the Royal Company of the Philippines in 1785. In Caracas a consulado de mercaderes (a merchants' guild) replaced the company in 1793. One of the most active proponents of the move was François Cabarrus, 1st Count of Cabarrús, a prominent company stockholder hailing from a merchant family in Bayonne, Labourd, who was increasingly involved in Spanish finances and politics.

type	Public company
fate	Dissolved
successor	Royal Company of the Philippines
founded	1728
defunct	1785
location city	San Sebastián, Madrid
location country	(Gipuzkoa) Spain
area served	Venezuela Province
industry	Trade

Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas

History

Foundation

Operations and effects in Venezuela

Effects in Gipuzkoa

Later years

See also

Further reading

External links

References