After the Peace of Amiens, signed between Great Britain and France in March 1802, Atlantic commerce received a welcome respite from several years of exhausting maritime warfare. The pent-up demand for manufactured goods in all of Spanish America impelled a tremendous wave of activity in transatlantic shipping. European imports were paid for with large, accumulated stocks of silver in Mexico, Peru, and Chile or exchanged for local exports such as tobacco and sugar from Cuba, cacao from Venezuela, hides from the River Plate. Most of this trade continued to be handled by Spanish shippers from Cádiz and a few other metropolitan ports, since the old imperial trade monopoly basically remained in place. The importance of this peaceful interlude should not be underestimated, particularly because of the high volume of silver remittances that began to arrive in Cádiz following the cessation of hostilities. Indeed, 1802–1804 marked the peak of American silver transfers in three centuries of colonial history. More than 100 million pesos of silver and gold were dispatched from Spanish American ports to the metropolis in less than two and a half years.