Cádiz

Where is Cádiz and what was it like around 1715?

Cádiz stands at the tip of a long, narrow strip of land that curls around a wide bay on Spain’s Atlantic coast, a short sail west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Its ancient names, Gadir and Gades, show how long sailors have used it.

The whole bay worked as one trading world. Cádiz and El Puerto de Santa María were the harbours, and the town of Jerez, inland, grew the wine. Cádiz had suffered for its wealth: an English and Dutch fleet sacked it in 1596, and another English attack failed in 1702. By the game’s years the city was growing rich again.

Why did Spain move the Indies trade from Seville to Cádiz?

In 1503 the Spanish crown set up the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, in Seville. It licensed every voyage to the Americas, collected the taxes, trained pilots and kept the records. Seville sits up the River Guadalquivir, and as ships grew larger they struggled to cross the sandbar at its mouth, near Sanlúcar.

So Cádiz took over in two steps. Around 1679 to 1680 the fleets began sailing from Cádiz, and the merchants of the bay won a third of the cargo space. Then in 1717 the government of Philip V moved the Casa itself, and the Consulado, the guild of merchants trading to the Indies. The royal decree is dated 8 May 1717 in the archives, though some accounts give 12 May. A royal official, José Patiño, was put in charge of both the Casa and the navy at Cádiz.

Seville did not give up. In 1725 it won an order to bring the Casa back, but the order was suspended within months, and the offices stayed in Cádiz.

How did the treasure fleets work from Cádiz?

Spain sent its trade across the Atlantic in armed convoys. The flota left in spring for Veracruz in Mexico. The galleons of Tierra Firme left in August for Cartagena and Portobelo. Both fleets met at Havana to sail home together, loaded with silver.

The fleets the game’s players know were struggling. In July 1715 the combined fleets left Havana for Spain and were wrecked off Florida, with more than a thousand deaths. There had been no silver fair at Portobelo since 1708. In 1720 Spain published a new plan to revive the fleets and reform their taxes. Meanwhile smugglers, French at first and later British, supplied much of what places such as Peru bought.

Who traded at Cádiz?

Officially the trade belonged to the Spanish merchants of the Consulado, but much of the cloth and other manufactured goods they shipped was made elsewhere in Europe, and foreign merchants settled in Cádiz to sell it. French traders grew strong there during the war of 1701 to 1714. After the peace of 1713, British merchants gained a foothold through the South Sea Company’s contract to sell enslaved Africans in Spanish America and its one permitted trading ship a year.

The bay also sent out its own produce. Its salt pans are older than the Romans; in the 1500s French ships loaded salt there, some of it for the cod fishery at Newfoundland. Jerez made wine. English drinkers had long called it “sherris sack”, and by Shakespeare’s time that had shortened to “sherry”.

Was there slavery in Cádiz?

Yes. The historian Arturo Morgado García calls 1650 to 1750 the great century of slavery in Cádiz. The burial records of just one Cádiz parish, Santa Cruz, list 2,736 enslaved people who died between 1683 and 1749. Many came from Africa, from Angola, Congo, Guinea, Cape Verde and Mina, often through Portuguese traders. Others were North African Muslims or subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Many worked in households, cleaning, washing and caring for their owners’ families.

Some won their freedom through an owner’s will, a letter of release, or by buying themselves. Records name Manuela Josepha, freed in 1710 after 32 years of service. Antonio Machuca, born in Guinea and enslaved in Seville, was baptised in 1733, later freed, and became a financier in Cádiz.

Captivity ran both ways in these waters. Corsairs from Salé and Algiers, licensed raiders, seized Spanish ships and held Christians for ransom, while Spain enslaved captured Muslims. In 1693 about a thousand Muslim captives were exchanged for a hundred Christians.

Was Cádiz also a navy base?

Yes, and it became more of one after 1717. Patiño wanted a strong navy to guard the fleets. In 1717 a naval academy for young officers, the Guardias Marinas, opened at Cádiz, teaching mathematics, navigation and languages. In the same period Spain began a royal shipyard at La Carraca, inside the bay, later called the country’s first modern dockyard.

What happened to Cádiz later?

Cádiz kept its monopoly for about sixty years. Decrees of 1765 and 1778 let other Spanish ports trade with the Americas, and the Casa de Contratación was abolished in 1790. Many buildings in the old town date from this rich eighteenth century, including houses topped with lookout towers.