left". By the middle of the 18th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue had become the largest slave societies of the region. As of 1778, the French were importing approximately 13,000 Africans for enslavement to the French West Indies each year. In 1762, the British imported more than 10,000 African slaves to Havana. They used it as a base to supply the Caribbean and the lower Thirteen Colonies. In response to the short British occupation of Havana (1762–1763), when the British disembarked 3,500 slaves in ten months, the Spanish crown made determined efforts to revive its own transatlantic slave-trading role. Spain theoretically allowed no foreigners to share directly in the colonial trade, the effect of which was to starve the colonies of necessary imports and to encourage smuggling. Spanish: 1765–1779 The asiento was given to a group of Basques from 1765 to 1779. 1765–1772: Miguel de Uriarte in name of Aguirre, Aristegui, J.M. Enrile y Compañía, or Compañía Gaditana. 1773–1779: Aguirre, Aristegui y Compañía, or Compañía Gaditana. A severe credit crisis in 1772 forced the Cliffords and several other bankers and their firms, going bankrupt. In 1773 many planters in Surinam and the Caribbean came into financial trouble and the Dutch slave trade dropped. A significant moral victory was achieved when the British Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruled in 1772 that slavery was illegal in Britain (Somersett's Case), thereby freeing about 15,000 slaves who had accompanied their masters there—and abruptly terminating the practice of black slaves ostentatiously escorting their masters about the kingdom. During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War the English seized a few Dutch slave ships, such as the Zorg. An attempt to capture the Dutch castle at Elmina on Africa's Gold Coast (modern Ghana) failed in 1782. While many Dutch territories in the West Indies were taken by the British, some, like Curaçao, were not attacked due to their defensive strength. In 1784, the Spanish crown contracted with the large Liverpool firm to bring slaves to Venezuela and Cuba between 1786 and 1789. On the 4th of February 1794 a decree is passed by the National Legislative Assembly, making France the first European country to officially outlaw slavery in all its colonies. However this was only implemented in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and Guiana. In March 1795 the Batavian Republic did not accept all citizens on equal footing (bookkeeping); The Law of 20 May 1802 reinstates slavery in the French Empire.