cities, the company provided a fast track to job positions for many Basques. The company's activity kept operative the gradually declining Basque forges in the face of growing competition from English industry, and fed indirectly the arms factories of Soraluze (Placencia de las Armas) and Tolosa. Another outcome was the foundation in Bergara of the Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country by a group under the leadership of Xavier María de Munibe e Idiáquez, Count of Peñaflorida, in 1765. Its model expanded to the Spanish heartland prompting the establishment of the "Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del País"—a type of Enlightenment think tank. Later years While Basque involvement increased after 1749, the Spanish Crown dealt a critical blow to the Basques when it diffused the Basque grip over the company by transferring its headquarters to Madrid, a move contested by Gipuzkoa, and imposing the requirement to include a Spaniard in a board of directors of three (1751). Facing increasing hostility from English war vessels and weakened by the liberalization of commerce with Venezuela (1776), the company's monopoly came to an end. The crown no longer saw the need for a monopolizing company to control and grow the economy, since by that time the Venezuelan economy had matured and been tightly linked with the markets of Spain and New Spain, which consumed most of its cocoa. The Spanish crown terminated the company's charter in 1784. A key effect of the Caracas Company, despite its eventual commercial failure, was that it guaranteed the place of Caracas in the captaincy-general. When the crown established a high court (Real Audiencia) in the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1786, it was sited in Caracas. The owners of the Guipuzcoana Company transformed it into the Royal Philippine Company (1785). In Caracas a consulado de mercaderes (a merchants' guild) replaced the company in 1793. One of the most active proponents of the move was François Cabarrus, a prominent company stockholder hailing from a merchant family in Bayonne (Labourd), increasingly involved in Spanish finances and politics. See also Captaincy General of Venezuela References Further reading “Juan Francisco de León” in Diccionario multimedia de Historia de Venezuela. Caracas: Fundación Polar, 1995. Amezaga y Aresti, Vicente. Hombres de la Compañía Guipuzcoana. Caracas, 1963. Arcila Farias, Eduardo. Economia colonial de Venezuela. 1946. Baglio, Assunta. 1996. La Guaira, puerto comercial de la Colonia. Infometro, XVIII, (150), 1996. 17–19. Basterra, Ramón