ABSTRACT
The political economies constructed by both Portugal and Spain had deeply pervasive effects on all aspects of port development on the peninsula and even more so across Ibero-America and in discrete areas of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. Trading monopolies were an ancient device to permit a state to control many aspects of human mobility and trade. Early monopoly policy specified that transoceanic hubs could not trade directly with each other and could only do so via their American metropolitan hubs. Transoceanic hubs such as Havana also acquired significant defensive portfolios as bulwarks facing down the attentions of greedy competitors. Naval supremacy underwrote their dominions; they never attempted to conquer these societies. There were other important elements to the monopoly: slaves, the intensification of colonial mining, shipping company foundation, and there were specific monopoly practices for mercury, salt and tobacco.
