Venezuela

Before the exile there was a Basque presence of another kind in Venezuela: that of a company. For half a century, a company of Basque merchants held the royal privilege of trading with the province, changed its economy, brought Basques to Caracas and ended up provoking a rebellion.

A company of Basque merchants

The Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas was created by a Royal Decree of 25 September 1728. It was a joint-stock company with a royal privilege to trade with the province of Venezuela, above all in cacao and tobacco.² Its first three ships, the frigates San Ignacio de Loyola and San Joaquín and the galley Guipuzcoana, reached Puerto Cabello on 4 September 1730, and its first director was Pedro de Olavarriaga.¹

The historian Montserrat Gárate Ojanguren points to three features that make it unique in eighteenth-century Spain: it was the longest-lived joint-stock company, the one with the largest capital and the one with the largest volume of trade, with some 150,000 tonnes shipped against the 6,000 of the Barcelona company.²

The money came above all from Donostia-San Sebastián. Its shareholders were for the most part merchants of the city and its surroundings, together with traders from Cádiz and Navarrese settled in Madrid; the king himself bought 200 shares, and so did the Province of Gipuzkoa and the Consulado de San Sebastián. In 1752, the Company moved its headquarters to Madrid.²

What changed in Venezuela

Until then, Venezuela had been a province with few inhabitants, and what it brought the Crown was insignificant. The Company modernised its economy: it developed ports and roads and increased production.³ And Basques came with it. Amezaga documents more than 2,500 files of Basques who came with the Company, to a Caracas that at the time had no more than 20,000 or 30,000 inhabitants.¹

The rebellion against the Company (1749)

The monopoly, however, stirred up resentment. In 1749, the cacao growers of Barlovento, led by Juan Francisco de León, rose up against the abuses of the Company. The governor promised to expel the Company’s officials, did not keep his word and left Caracas, and León returned to the city with more than 8,000 men. In December, the new governor, Julián de Arriaga, pacified the province with an amnesty and kept the Company, with the undertaking that its abuses would be corrected.⁴

The Company went on operating until 1785.²