Avería
Avería
Avería, a Spanish tax on the Indies trade that covered the costs of providing armed protection for merchant shipping. First collected in 1521, the avería was administered by the Casa De Contratación of Seville, working closely with the consulado. There was no fixed rate, the aim being to spread the costs of necessary defense over all commodities, although in 1644 Philip IV guaranteed that the maximum charge would be 12 percent of the value of cargoes. The ad valorem tax was abolished in 1660 in favor of an agreement that the principal merchant houses of Seville would contribute fixed sums toward the costs of defending the transatlantic fleets.
See alsoFleet System: Colonial Spanish America .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Guillermo Céspedes Del Castillo, La avería en el comercio de Indias (1945).
Clarence H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (1947), esp. pp. 305-306.
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