ABSTRACT
In 1713 the city of London, already an important financial centre, celebrated enthusiastically the Treaty of Utrecht. This chapter shows how the famous Treaty of Utrecht, a small city in Holland known for its fine gothic cathedral, stretched its talons into world trade and world power with astonishing depth and range. The planters of Jamaica, for example, thought the Treaty of Utrecht certain to ruin their thriving illegal trade. The Jamaicans imposed a local tax on every slave shipped from Jamaica, to include even those merely transhipped. The South Sea Company would soon set itself up at the corner of Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. The South Sea Company would arrange for sloops or packet boats to carry slaves to Spanish ports such as Cartagena, Panama, Veracruz, Buenos Aires, Havana, Santiago de Cuba, or Caracas. The South Sea Company between 1715 and 1731 sold about 64,000 slaves.
