A royal license authorizes an African slave shipment to Cubagua

A royal permission allowed Diego Caballero, or an authorized agent, to keep twelve enslaved people in the pearl fishery and trade at Cubagua. The license shows how colonial authorities connected...

The Spanish Crown approved a capitulation with Welser agents concerning the governance, conquest, and settlement of Venezuela. The agreement framed colonization as an armed commercial enterprise and...

An inventory of Pedro de Herrera's possessions on Cubagua listed an enslaved African woman with two children. The record exposes how colonial property accounts rendered a family as assets; it does not...

A Cubagua inventory associated with Miguel de Gaviria listed a Black child called Andresico. The surviving entry is brief and framed by ownership records; it offers a rare personal name while...

Francisco Portillo's Cubagua inventory noted an unnamed Black man aboard a vessel. The entry reflects the routine conversion of people into listed property in the pearl economy, while the archive...