ABSTRACT
The new asiento trade was a collective endeavour that involved directly or indirectly, hundreds, if not thousands of people, who were ready to reap the profits generated by the slave trade in trans-imperial and intra-imperial environments. Chapter 4 examines how, in order to operate the asiento trade in the Caribbean, Grillo mobilised and organised people and resources that were scattered throughout the Spanish Empire and beyond. By offering a transnational and multifaceted cross-section of the “inhabitants” of the Spanish Atlantic, this chapter reveals that Genoese, Milanese, Andalusian, Creole, Flemish, and Basque actors joined Grillo’s enterprise as skippers, commercial factors, and judges. Therefore, Grillo is here portrayed as a network taker; he and his partners co-opted and wired merchants and pre-existing trading geographies. But by enhancing existing links or creating new ones under the aegis of the asiento, Grillo was also a network maker. Genoese entrepreneurs acted as catalysts to intensify these relationships. Therefore, in addition to changing the way the African slave trade to and in Spanish America was organised, the new asiento model created a business relational sphere that self-reproduced and expanded, becoming a crucial factor in the entangled histories of empire, trade, and slavery in the Atlantic world.
