asiento

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical: a contract granted by the Spanish Crown that gave a person or company a monopoly over a branch of colonial trade, especially the supply of enslaved Africans to Spanish America

   The 1713 asiento granted Britain a limited monopoly in the trade of enslaved people to Spain's American colonies.

2. 2
   noun

   a treaty, agreement, or formal pact in a Spanish historical context

   The merchants negotiated an asiento governing the terms of the concession.

Borrowed from Spanish asiento, 'seat, settlement, agreement,' from asentar, 'to seat or settle.' In early modern imperial administration it came to denote a contract by which the Spanish Crown granted a commercial monopoly, most notoriously the asiento de negros for supplying enslaved Africans to Spanish America.

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