Slaves, Silver, and Atlantic Empires: The Slave Trade to Spanish South America, 1660-1810

This presentation examines the operations of the Vernons of Newport in the Río de la Plata (The River of Silver, today’s Argentina and Uruguay), as a window into the eighteenth-century slave trade to Spanish South America. In this era, the slave trade became the key to accessing Spanish American consumers and silver for foreign traders. As a result, Spanish American silver entered English, Dutch, and Portuguese commercial circuits beneficial to metropolitan merchants and public revenues.

Alex Borucki (University of California, Irvine), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow