Seville

Between 1340 and 1342, as a result of a series of victories over the Moors, Castille controlled the Straits of Gibraltar and reopened trading links between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic that had been broken since the Islamic advance on the West in the eighth century. The reason for the "good fortune" of Seville, a trading emporium since 1450, was that for 300 years the city had been a crossroads for trade by merchants who were interested in links between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, between Christian Europe and the Muslim Maghreb, between Spain and the Atlantic islands—the Canaries, the Azores, Cape Verde, and Madeira—and, after 1492, between Europe and America.

In the fifteenth century the population of Seville doubled, and in the sixteenth century it was one of the most populous cities in Europe (100,000 inhabitants). Its Guadalquivir River port was linked to the network of the principal ports in the Mediterranean (Venice, Genoa, Naples, Barcelona, Valencia), in North Africa (Alexandria, Bejaia, Tangiers, Ceuta), and the Atlantic (Lisbon, Bordeaux, Bayonne, London, Nantes, Rouen, Bruges). It had shipyards, cranes in its docks, sailors' guilds (for boatswains, stevedores, and pilots), arms factories, a hinterland which provided agricultural produce for export (wine, cereal crops, oils, wool), burgeoning industry (soap, silk, orchil, alum, sugar, etc.), and a slave trade of Guanches from the Canary Islands and black people from Capo Verde and Guinea.

Before the arrival of revenues from the Americas, Seville was known as the City of Gold, a financial and monetary market, and the single point of entry in Europe for "African gold." Large numbers of European merchants flocked here to take advantage of this, turning it into a cosmopolitan city, socially and culturally. Once America was discovered, Seville was the center of the Spanish colonial monopoly for 200 years; this was administered via the Casa de la Contratación (Spanish Board of Trade) from 1503 and the Consulado o Universidad de Cargadores a Indias from 1543. At the end of the sixteenth century the institutions which would make Seville famous all over the world were established: the Lonja (1582) or Bolsa de Mercaderes, the cambios y seguros, the largest in Europe (3,136 square meters), which replaced the traditional Gradas; the Casa de la Moneda (1585), the largest mint of all time, which housed the best part of the 181,333 kilograms of gold and the 16,886,815 kilograms of silver that arrived from America between 1503 and 1660.

Seville had a market monopoly on the manufacture of tobacco, and its great factory was made famous by Carmen, the cigarette girl, a fictional character symbolizing the importance of tobacco to the region. A center of redistribution for producers from Europe to the Indies, the city switched from trade to finance, specializing in the money market, currency, and credit. It became a flourishing financial market, with international exchange dealers, merchant bankers, public banks, and gold and silver traders, who dealt with deposits, bankers' drafts, maritime exchange, and colonial loans at high interest rates with no restrictions on usury. It was the cradle of an international capitalist elite who became ennobled and landowning.

The American monopoly passed to Cadiz in 1717, which was the start of the decline of Seville as a center of trade and finance. Between 1783 and 1914 industrialization did not make an impact; the port and trade remained connected to regional trade and its renewal as a financial market was unsuccessful (1873). In the twentieth century the city held two international events, the ExposiciónIberoamericana (1929) and EXPO'92. Seville has become a center for administration, leisure, and tourism, and in 1981 became the capital of the Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía.

SEE ALSO Agriculture; Barcelona; CÁdiz; Cargoes, Freight; Cargoes, Passenger; Chambers of Commerce; Containerization; Empire, Spanish; Free Ports; Harbors;Magellan, Ferdinand;New Spain;Peru;Port Cities;PotosÍ;Spain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernal, Antonio-Miguel, ed. Historia de Andalucía, vol. 8: La Andalucía contemporánea (1868–1981). Madrid: Planeta, 1981.

Bernal, Antonio-Miguel, and Collantes, A. El puerto de Sevilla, de puerto fluvial medieval a centro portuario mundial (siglos XIV–XVII). In Actas de la "Settimane di studi" no 19, I porti come impresa economica, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica F. Datini, Prato, 1988.

Bernal, Antonio-Miguel. La financiación de la Carrera de Indias (1492–1824). Dinero, moneda y crédito en el mercado colonial español. Seville, Spain: Tabapress-El Monte, 1993.

Antonio-Miguel Bernal