{ "id": "real-cedula-de-gracias-de-puerto-rico-1815", "type": "entity", "name": "The Real Cedula de Gracias for Puerto Rico (10 August 1815)", "summary": "Thirty-three articles that opened Puerto Rico to Catholic settlers of any nation, gave every colonist free land in perpetuity with a written title, and suspended tithes and the alcabala for fifteen years. The same sheet granted half an allotment for every enslaved person brought, gave free Blacks and pardos half a white colonist's share, made the importation of Africans permanently duty-free, and required every colonist to keep arms to hold down his own slaves. Extended to Cuba in 1817.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "americas", "puerto-rico", "cuba", "spanish-empire", "colonial-law", "slavery", "migration", "nineteenth-century" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "reglamento-de-comercio-libre-1778" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "gracias-al-sacar-arancel-1795" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "milicias-de-pardos-y-morenos-de-cuba" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "coartacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "reglamento-de-esclavos-de-cuba-1842" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "decretos-de-cadiz-para-america-1810-1811" } ], "questions": [ "What was the Real Cedula de Gracias of 1815 for Puerto Rico?", "What did the Cedula de Gracias grant to settlers in Puerto Rico?", "Did the 1815 cedula give land to free Blacks and pardos?", "Why was the Cedula de Gracias extended to Cuba in 1817?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The instrument is a royal cedula dated at the Palace on 10 August 1815, \"concediendo gracias y franquicias a la isla de Puerto-Rico\", running to thirty-three articles, in whose closing words the king dispenses every law and provision contrary to them. Its preamble recites that the privileges his grandfather Carlos III had granted under articles 48, 49 and 50 of the reglamento del comercio libre de Indias of 12 October 1778 had not produced all the advantages promised, and it extends to Puerto Rico the concessions earlier made to Trinidad and New Orleans by royal cedulas of 21 January 1782 and 24 November 1783, with amplifications.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "Admission was by religion, not by nationality. Foreigners of powers and nations friendly to the crown who wished to settle, or were already settled, had to prove to the island's government that they professed the Roman Catholic religion, and without that indispensable circumstance were not to be allowed to reside there; vassals of Spain and of the Indies were exempted from having to prove it. Those admitted swore fidelity and vassalage before the governor and offered to keep the general laws and ordinances of the Indies to which Spaniards were subject, and were then granted land free, in the king's name and in perpetuity.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The land was measured by persons and by property in persons. Article 10 assigned four fanegas and two sevenths of land for each white person of either sex, \"y la mitad por cada esclavo negro o pardo que llevaren consigo los colonos\", the distribution to be made so that all shared in good, middling and poor ground, and every grant entered in a libro becerro de poblacion with the colonist's name, the day of his admission, the number of his household, his quality and where he came from, of which authentic copies served the settlers as title deeds.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Article 11 admitted free Blacks and pardos as colonists in their own right: those who came as heads of families were to obtain half the allotment assigned to whites, increased in proportion if they brought slaves of their own, \"y con igualdad a los amos\", with the same certificate given them as to everyone else. It is a grant of land and of standing to free people of colour, written into the same article that halves it.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Article 12 promised foreign colonists who bound themselves after five years to remain perpetually all the rights and privileges of naturalisation, equally for the children they had brought or who were born on the island, expressly so that these should be admitted to the honorific employments of the republic and of the militia, according to the talents and circumstances of each.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The fiscal grants are large and dated. Colonists, Spanish and foreign alike, were free of tithes on what their lands produced for fifteen years from the date of the decree, and after that term paid only two and a half per cent, a quarter of the tithe; free of the alcabala for the same term and two per cent after it; and perpetually exempt from export duty on whatever they shipped in Spanish vessels to Spain. Article 13 promised that no capitation or personal tribute would ever be imposed on white colonists, who would pay only for their slaves, Black and pardo, at one peso a year each after fifteen years established, the rate never to be raised.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The cost side is in the text and needs no gloss. Article 20 requires that all colonists be armed even in time of peace \"para contener a sus esclavos, y resistir cualquiera invasion o correria de piratas\", declaring that this obligation did not make them regular militia and was discharged by presenting their arms at a muster every two months. Article 22 makes the commerce and introduction of Blacks into the island \"totalmente libre de derechos perpetuamente\" for colonists and for those trading in them, forbidding only their re-export to other dominions of the Indies without royal permission and a payment of six per cent, and article 23 lets colonists sail in Spanish bottoms to friendly or neutral islands in search of Blacks against a duty of three per cent.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "Article 30 invited the colonists themselves, through the governor, to propose the ordinance they judged most convenient for the treatment of their slaves and for preventing their flight, the king reserving to instruct the governor on the rules to be observed and on the reciprocal restitution of fugitives with the foreign islands. The regulation of slavery on the island was thus offered to the slaveholders as a drafting exercise.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "Alongside these, articles 29, 31 and 32 provide four or more secular or regular priests of known learning versed in foreign languages, salaried by the crown so as not to burden their parishioners, to serve the new foreign colonists; order vigilance against the ant plague that had damaged other Antilles, with the colonists themselves naming two men to inspect arriving ships; promise sugar refineries with full privileges once the crop grew abundant; promise in time a consular tribunal for agriculture, navigation and commerce; and charge the governor, the intendant and the other judges with humanity, good treatment and prompt and equitable justice to all inhabitants, Spanish and foreign alike.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "The motive is stated by the people who asked for the measure to be extended. A royal cedula of 21 October 1817 carried the Puerto Rican concessions to Cuba after the ayuntamiento, consulado and sociedad economica of Havana represented that the island lay depopulated and undefended, and asked for \"el aumento de la poblacion blanca con espanoles de la Peninsula o de las islas Canarias, y a falta de estos con europeos catolicos de las potencias amigas\". The compiler who reprinted both texts in 1865 filed them under the running heading \"Colonizacion blanca\".", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "The Cuban articles are the Puerto Rican ones with the terms shortened: the same religious test, the same oath, the same naturalisation after five years with admission to municipal and militia office for the colonists' children, and the same promise of no capitation on white colonists — but at one peso a year for each of their Black and pardo slaves after ten years established rather than fifteen.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c12", "text": "The transmission is stated. Both cedulas are read here not from their own printings but from Joaquin Rodriguez San Pedro's Legislacion ultramarina of 1865, which reproduces the articles that still mattered to overseas administration and marks every omission with a row of dots; articles 1 to 7 and 24 to 28 of the 1815 cedula are among the passages it does not print. No claim here rests on an article that compilation omits.", "sources": [ "rodriguez-san-pedro-legislacion-ultramarina-1865" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "secondary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "The Cedula de Gracias is remembered in one sentence — that it opened Puerto Rico to immigration and trade — and the sentence is usually all there is. This object gives the articles: the Catholic test and the oath, the four fanegas and two sevenths per white settler and half as much per enslaved person brought, the libro becerro that turned a grant into a title, the half share and the certificate for free Blacks and pardos, fifteen years free of tithe and alcabala, the standing requirement to be armed against one's own slaves, and the perpetual duty-free importation of Africans. It then names the motive in the petitioners' own words when Havana asked for the same terms in 1817, and says plainly that the text was read in an abridging compilation of 1865 and is tiered accordingly.", "confidence": 0.8, "last_verified": "2026-08-13", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/real-cedula-de-gracias-de-puerto-rico-1815", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/real-cedula-de-gracias-de-puerto-rico-1815.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The Real Cedula de Gracias for Puerto Rico (10 August 1815)", "description": "Thirty-three articles that opened Puerto Rico to Catholic settlers of any nation, gave every colonist free land in perpetuity with a written title, and suspended tithes and the alcabala for fifteen years. The same sheet granted half an allotment for every enslaved person brought, gave free Blacks and pardos half a white colonist's share, made the importation of Africans permanently duty-free, and required every colonist to keep arms to hold down his own slaves. Extended to Cuba in 1817.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/real-cedula-de-gracias-de-puerto-rico-1815", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-13", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Legislacion ultramarina, concordada y anotada por J. Rodriguez San Pedro", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=9TwOAAAAQAAJ" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Real Cedula de Gracias for Puerto Rico (10 August 1815)" } }