Almojarifazgo

Almojarifazgo, a tax, of Arab origin, on the maritime trade of Andalusia. The almojarifazgo was charged on Seville's trade with America from 1543, constituting thereafter the principal duty on imperial commerce until its abolition in 1778. Initially levied at 2.5 percent on exports and 5 percent on imports, its rates were equalized at 5 percent in 1566 and thereafter varied, as did the practice of granting exemptions for particular products or regions. It was also charged on most intercolonial as well as transatlantic trade. The issue of determining the values of commodities in order to calculate the almojarifazgo was never resolved satisfactorily, and its collection thus provided much scope for fraud.

See alsoFleet System: Colonial Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clarence H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (1947), esp. pp. 261-263.

Ismael Sánchez-Bella, La Organización financiera de las Indias, siglo XVI (1968), esp. pp. 238-247.

Additional Bibliography

Acosta Rodríguez, Antonio, Adolfo Luis González Rodríguez, and Enriqueta Vila Vilar. La Casa de la Contratación y la navegación entre España y las Indias. Sevilla, Spain: Universidad de Sevilla, 2003.

Martínez Shaw, Carlos, and José María Oliva Melgar. Sistema atlántico español: Siglos XVII-XIX. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2005.

Romano, Ruggiero. Mecanismo y elementos del sistema económico colonial americano, siglos XVI-XVIII. México: El Colegio de México, Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas, 2004.

                                            John R. Fisher