Une ville entre deux mondes: Trujillo d’Espagne et les Indes au XVIe siècle

Abstract

While over the last two decades many of us have taken a diversity of methodological paths, the French, or at least a good number of them, still faithfully adhere to a research tradition dating back to the massive works of Fernand Braudel on the Mediterranean and Huguette and Pierre Chaunu on the Atlantic. Are such works, in our new methodological climate, still valuable? The answer to that rhetorical question, in regard to Gregorio Salinero’s impressive book, is a resounding yes.Rather than a “town between two worlds,” this superb book presents us with an insightful portrait of how people from Trujillo and its environs moved back and forth between the Old and New Worlds and the implications — social, political, economic, and cultural — of such ebb and flow across the Atlantic. Drawing from the rich and already well-mined Sevillian sources and from hitherto unexplored Trujillo notarial records, Salinero offers us a vivid portrait of what it meant to travel to the New World and return to one’s ancestral town. With a masterful command of archival sources and the vast secondary literature, his book goes beyond the usual local study or microhistorical analysis to use Trujillo as a lens through which to explore a series of complex and overlapping issues. As such, this book lays claim to an important place in our new understanding of Atlantic history and of the manner in which Peru and Trujillo were linked inextricably.Far more than a close study of social dynamics, prosopography, and people’s movements, Une ville entre deux mondes opens wide vistas on the cultural consequences of the extensive flow of population across the Atlantic. Opening with a series of methodological reflections and building upon the works of others such as James Lockhart, Salinero reviews demographic estimates and the impact of migration on family structure in Andalusia, in general, and Trujillo, in particular. Placing Trujillo within its particular geographical setting and trade network, he moves onward to explore what it meant to depart for the Indies, what prompted such departures, and the social, cultural, and economic mechanisms involved in this flow of people out of Trujillo and southern Spain. Although the author’s assertions are profusely supported by useful tables and graphs, he is at his best in the copious case studies and vignettes, drawn mostly from archival notarial sources, that illuminate what it meant to leave one’s country and the impact on marriage and family. Nothing is missing. From the expense of transportation to the pervasive “American dream” to the social filiation of migrants, Salinero examines the local conditions that fostered migration. Migration occurred because of the many attractions of the New World but also because of the deterioration of local economies. Included here, as all of us who have migrated know, are also the emotional penalties incurred in leaving one’s home.Other chapters focus on naming and identity, the exchange and circulation of information, and the movement of Peruvian silver along the Silver Road. This section prompts a wonderful tangential discussion of scribes and notarial culture, a model for the intersection of archival research and social and cultural history. Finally, the third part of the book addresses the meaning of returning, emphasizing what has been a constant throughout the book, the role of the Pizarro family in linking Trujillo to Peru. A detailed study of Hernando Pizarro, Francisco’s brother, and of his material wealth and family in the Old World belies the belief that the Pizarros’ influence waned after the disasters that befell the family in Peru. Both in the Old and New Worlds, the Pizarros carried on. While using them as a coda for the entire book, Salinero concludes with a perceptive look at the family and clientele of the “indiano,” a recurring trope in the history of Spanish migration to the New World.I think this is a superb contribution to our understanding of what migration did to towns in southern Spain and to the cultural meaning of population displacement, of departing and returning. It is about a new culture being born in the Atlantic world, and it teaches salutary lessons as to the social and psychological dynamics of migration. Sometimes the profusion of case studies and data overwhelms the narrative. The abundant references and extensive methodological discussions could have been simplified. Doing so, however, could not have improved what is a truly remarkable achievement, one that, while faithful to the dream of a histoire totale, does so by integrating, in superb fashion, new ways of seeing the past and the overlapping of cultural, economic, and social themes.