This research focuses on the operations of the Royal Company of the Philippines in the global market, in particular on the slave trade between Africa and Spanish America, as a way to examine the local dimensions of global trade. It identifies the causes and consequences of a failed venture that, despite its failure, opened a new cycle in the Río de la Plata slave trade and its place in the global economy of the late eighteenth century. GECEM Project (ERC-Starting Grant), ref. 679371, under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, www.gecem.eu. GECEM Project (ERC-Starting Grant), ref. 679371, Horizon 2020, project hosted at UPO