ABSTRACT
On 14 February 1503, a monopoly was declared as the leading element in a political economy designed to exploit the resources of the New World for the sole benefit of the Spanish crown and certain social classes on the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere. Monopolies were well-tried devices for establishing and maintaining exclusive trading privileges for certain commodities, or for imposing a blanket commercial embargo for the extraction of resources from a specific territory or colony and their assignment to one individual, company or state. To analyse the impact of the trade monopoly of 1503 on the selected port-towns and their hinterlands they will be subdivided into different categories: the Atlantic archipelagos; Cadiz and Seville; and a group of leading Atlantic port-towns, including Santander. The consequences of implementing and enforcing trade monopolies in ports that were to be excluded from participation were never taken into consideration, nor was the secondary impact on their respective hinterlands deemed to be of importance.
