At the beginning of the eighteenth century, New Granada lacked a substantial and influential merchant class of the kind found in Peru and Mexico. In 1695, a group of some twenty merchants in Bogotá had established a consulado de comercio modeled on those of Lima and Mexico City, by contracting with the crown to pay the royal tax known as the avería, due on goods imported by the galleons, in return for the right to a self-governing mercantile jurisdiction. The Consulado of Santa Fe de Bogotá did not survive for long, however. Its members were unable to fulfill their financial obligations, and when the galleon system itself collapsed during the War of the Spanish Succession the Consulado lost its rationale. It was suppressed in 1713, reflecting the inability of New Granadan merchants to sustain an institution of this kind. Many decades then passed before a consulado de comercio was reestablished in New Granada. When the institution was revived in 1795, it was at Cartagena de Indias, the country's leading port and home of its mercantile elite.

Cartagena de Indias and New Granada's commerce

Although Bogotá was the headquarters of New Granada's government, Cartagena was the hub of its commerce and throughout the eighteenth century the development of a mercantile elite in New Granada was primarily associated with this port.