Welser family

The Welser family was a noble German family of bankers and merchants active between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally patricians based in Augsburg and Nuremberg, its members rose to prominence in international high finance in the sixteenth century as bankers to the Habsburgs and financiers of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Along with the Fugger family, the Welsers controlled large sectors of the European economy and accumulated enormous wealth through trade and the German colonization of the Americas, including the slave trade. Charles V, also King of Spain, granted the family colonial rights over the Province of Venezuela in 1528, making them owners and rulers of the South American colony known as Klein-Venedig, a rule they were deprived of in 1546. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/