An empresario () was a person who had been granted the right to settle on land in exchange for recruiting and taking responsibility for settling the eastern areas of Coahuila y Tejas in the early nineteenth century. The word in Spanish for entrepreneur is emprendedor (from empresa, "company"). Since Empresarios attracted immigrants mostly from the Southern United States, they encouraged the spread of slavery into Texas. Although Mexico banned slavery in 1829, the settlers in Texas revolted in 1835 and continued to develop the economy, dominated by slavery, in the eastern part of the territory. Background In the late 18th century, Spain stopped allocating new lands in much of Spanish Texas, stunting the growth of the province. It changed this policy in 1820, and made it more flexible, allowing colonists of any religion to settle in Texas (formerly settlers were required to be Catholic, the established religion of the Spanish Empire). Moses Austin, an American colonist, was the only man granted an empresarial contract in Texas under Spanish law. But Moses Austin died before he could begin his colony, and Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in September 1821. At this time, about 3500 colonists lived in Texas, mostly congregated at San Antonio and La Bahia. The Mexican government continued the generous immigration policies in order to develop east Texas. Even as the government debated a new colonization law, Stephen F. Austin, son of Moses Austin, was given permission to take over his father's colonization contract. Steven F. Austin is probably the best known and most successful empresario in Texas. The first group of colonists, known as the Old Three Hundred, arrived in 1822 and settled along the Brazos River, ranging from the Gulf of Mexico to near present-day Dallas. In 1823, Mexico’s authoritarian ruler Agustín de Iturbide enacted a colonization law authorizing the national government to enter into a contract granting land to an “empresario,” or promoter, who was required to recruit a minimum of two hundred families to settle the grant. Mexico approved immigration on a wider basis in 1824 with passage of the General Colonization Law. This law authorized all heads of household who were citizens of or immigrants to Mexico as eligible to claim land. After the law passed, the state government of Coahuila y Tejas was inundated with requests by foreign speculators to establish colonies within the state. There was no shortage of people willing