The Final Years

The war between England and Spain, which lasted from 1739–48, is nowadays memorable for three particular events: Vernon’s capture of Portobello in 1739; his failure to take Cartagena in 1741, thanks to the heroic stand of its defenders under Blas de Lezo, in which action Lezo himself lost his life; and the circumnavigation of the globe by Admiral George Anson, a voyage which began in 1740 as a mission to harass the Spaniards in the Pacific.1 Future hostilities extended to involve most of Europe as the Anglo-Spanish conflict merged in the multinational War of the Austrian Succession. Eventually, after a decade of strife, normal relations between Great Britain and Spain were restored following the general peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and a new commercial treaty was signed between the two countries on 5 October 1750.2 Some four years of hard work had gone into the agreement of terms for this treaty, for it touched upon almost all aspects of Anglo-Spanish trade. Not least important of its provisions was the termination of the South Sea Company’s ‘Slave Assiento’ which had of course been a cause of bad relations between the two countries for nearly 40 years. The first two articles of the treaty dealt with this matter. By them the British right to enjoy four more years of the assiento privilege was relinquished in exchange for a cash settlement oft 100,000 payable within three months.