Asiento 15but the development of plantation agriculture in Spanish
America required large-scale importation of African slaves.
Subsequently, beginning in the early 1500s, various Euro-
pean merchants and companies began purchasing monop-
oly privileges to import a certain number of slaves at a fi xed
price and in a specifi ed time to Spanish America.
Th e union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, from
1580 to 1640, stimulated the more regularized slave import
system known as the asiento, whereby an agreement was
made between a private contractor and the Spanish gov-
ernment in which the entrepreneur or company purchased
a monopoly over the importation of a certain number of
slaves, at a set price and in a specifi ed time, to Spanish
America. In 1595, the Crown concluded the fi rst asiento
with a Spaniard, but the Portuguese quickly dominated the
system. Th e standard of importation was a pieza de Indias,
or Indies piece, a young adult male in good physical condi-
tion. Women, children, and older males counted as frac-
tions of a pieza de Indias.
Th e asiento was a prized possession and a major issue
in a number of wars. Not only were profi ts to be made in the
slave trade, but the asiento provided cover for importing
contraband goods to Spanish America with the coopera-
tion of corrupt Crown offi cials. Holders of the asiento oft en
resold their licenses to subcontractors. Th e Dutch domi-
nated the asiento system in the second half of the 17th cen-
tury. Aft er a French Bourbon assumed the Spanish Crown
in 1700, French merchants were awarded the asiento. In
1713, aft er defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession,
Spain awarded the asiento to Britain. Th e English Crown
then designated the South Seas Company to fulfi ll the con-
tract. By the 1750s, reformist Bourbon offi cials had started
attacking the institution along with other anachronistic
government monopoly controls on trade that were oft en
circumvented by colonists. In 1789, the asiento system was
abolished as the Spanish Empire was offi cially opened to all
foreign traders.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Dutch West India Company;
HispaniolaDavid M. CarlettaBibliography
Palmer, Colin. Human Cargoes: Th e British Slave Trade to Spanish
America, 1 700– 1739. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.
Rawley, James A. Th e Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1981.Th e discussion above shows that Africanisms are trace-
able to slave culture and to the various aspects of New
World black cultures such as names, courtship rituals, Voo-
doo religion, and literature. By revisiting the scholarly de-
bates on the pervasiveness or absence of African elements
in the New World, one can gauge the strength of these sur-
vivals. Evidently, the cultural and demographic diversity of
Africa requires a broader defi nition of the African infl uence
and a fuller account of how it is perceptible in 20th-century
African American culture.
See also: Black Folk Culture; Slave Culture; Slave Religion
Babacar M’BayeBibliography
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Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Frazer, E. Franklin. Th e Negro Family in the United States. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Herskovits, Melville J. Th e Myth of the Negro Past. New York and
London: Harper and Brothers, 1941.
Johnson, James Weldon, and J. Rosamond Johnson. Th e Book of
American Negro Spirituals. New York: Viking Press, 1925.
Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: African-
American Folk Th ought from Slavery to Freedom. New York
and London: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. New York: An-
chor, 1970.
Miller, Christopher C. Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in
French. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Piersen, William D. Black Yankees: Th e Development of an Afro-
American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.
Stuckey, Sterling. Going through the Storm: Th e Infl uence of Afri-
can-American Art in History. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.
Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: National Th eory and the Foundation
of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Th ompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-
American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage, 1984.
Th ompson, Robert Farris. Th e Four Moments of Th e Sun: Kongo
Arts in Two Worlds. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of
Arts, 1981.
Turner, Lorenzo D. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1949.
Asiento
Th e asiento was a contract awarded by the Spanish Crown
that bestowed rights to import African slaves to Spain’s colo-
nies in the New World. In 1494 the Spanish Crown offi cially
renounced claims to Africa by the Treaty of Tordesillas,