Spanish Colonial Research Articles

Design and Construction of the Real Felipe Fortress of Callao: Analysis of the Military Treatise and Layout Using Photogrammetry and GIS

Peru constituted the most important Viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire in South America, with the Port of Callao controlling the South Pacific trade routes. Although it was safe in its infancy, Callao suffered coastal attacks leading to its fortification. However, on 28 October 1746, an earthquake and tidal wave devastated the port, leading to its relocation and the construction of the Real Felipe Fortress of Callao, the South Pacific’s most significant fortification. The fortress was based on 18th century military conceptions adapted to the specific conditions of the coastal lands of the Peruvian Viceroyalty, such as the lack of stone, the use of adobe, and the frequent earthquakes. This research sought to identify the architectural theories influencing its design, the adaptations necessary for its coastal location, and the underlying mathematical and military concepts. Photogrammetry based techniques and a geographic information system (GIS) were used for georeferencing historical planimetry, along with the analysis of historical documents. This allowed us to reconstruct the original design and make evident how European ideas were adjusted to the particularities of the American territory, thus contributing to the improvement of knowledge about Spanish military architecture in America.

Challenges of the Muisca Cultural Revival: Lessons from Māori Architectural Resistance

Colombia’s Indigenous Muisca culture, once flourishing in the Bogotá region, has undergone significant transformation due to Spanish colonisation in the sixteenth century, which led to the displacement of Muisca traditions and their merging with Spanish traditions over centuries. Despite these changes, the Muisca community maintains a distinct cultural presence on Bogotá’s outskirts, particularly in Bosa municipality, now known as El Porvenir. The Muisca community has pursued further recognition and land rights to safeguard their heritage. However, they have faced challenges from urban development and historical injustices, highlighting the need for strategic architectural interventions to preserve their identity.

Concluding essay: imperial humanism and challenge of defining the nature of the state

AbstractThis concluding essay reflects on the relationship between intellectual life and state building as elucidated by the essays in this special issue on Humanism in Greater Venice. Drawing comparisons with Asian empires and the Hispanic Monarchy (often called the ‘Spanish Empire’) in the Americas and elsewhere, it argues that we must be alive to the precise nature of the state championed by humanist writers and to eschew value‐laden terms that are not actor’s categories, e.g. commonwealth. It ends with a call to avoid either whitewashing the actions of states or creating new Black Legends, in the Renaissance or any other period.

Stephanie Joy Mawson's Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines

Stephanie Joy Mawson's Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines

Stephanie Joy MawsonIncomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines

Stephanie Joy MawsonIncomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines

Military Foundations, Ribāts, and Urbanization: The Roman, Early Islamic, and Spanish Empire in Comparison

Military Foundations, Ribāts, and Urbanization: The Roman, Early Islamic, and Spanish Empire in Comparison

ИЗ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ БИОГРАФИИ ХОСЕ АНТОНИО ПАЭСА: ОКОНЧАТЕЛЬНЫЙ РАЗРЫВ ПАЭСА С СИМОНОМ БОЛИВАРОМ

The article examines the events of 1828–1830 in Latin America. In 1828 Geneeral Paez participated in the suppression of the uprising against Bolivar Admiral Padilla and Santander, who were fighting for the separation of New Granada from Venezuela, but separatist tendencies in the ranks of the economic elite of most departments also intensified in Venezuela, forcing Bolivar to assume extraordinary, in fact, dictatorial powers in order to preserve the political unity of the liberated territories of Latin America America. Bolivar’s ideas to create a common confederation of all former Spanish colonies in South America did not receive the support of traditionalists, among whom Paes turned out to be. After the defeat of the Padilla uprising and Santander’s removal from power, Bolivar was attacked by the press and politically accused of establishing a dictatorship in both New Granada and Venezuela. Representatives of the Venezuelan elite asked Paes to lead the movement for the secession of Venezuela and the creation of an independent state In 1830, the National Assembly, taking advantage, among other things, of the liberal legislation of the federation and personal decrees issued by Bolivar, declared the independence of Venezuela with President Paez at the head.

A Tale of Two Granadas. Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568–1668, by Max Deardorff

A Tale of Two Granadas. Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568–1668, by Max Deardorff

Genetic and biological insights into Hydatigera taeniaeformis in invasive black rats from southern Chile.

This study investigates the genetic variability of Hydatigera taeniaeformis in black rats (Rattus rattus), a common tapeworm that infects cats and rodents worldwide. Despite its widespread presence and zoonotic potential, little is known about the genetic diversity of this parasite in the Americas. We conducted DNA barcoding analysis using mitochondrial cox1 gene sequences using samples collected from 171 invasive wild black rats, captured in the temperate rainforest of Southern Chile. We also included two adult parasites isolated from road killed Kodkods (Leopardus guigna), a small felid species native to the Americas. Our findings revealed only two haplotypes, suggesting low genetic variability in a parasite that arrived in the Americas with the Spanish colonization. These haplotypes are more closely related to parasite populations from Peru, Africa, Australia, and Europe, suggesting an origin linked to the Spanish colonization, possibly from North Africa via the Canary Islands. The study also analyzed infection rates, parasite size, and their correlation with host body size, age, and weight, revealing significant patterns. These results provide new insights into the biogeography and genetic diversity of H. taeniaeformis in a new geographical area, enhancing our understanding of its evolutionary history.

La República de Los Indios: Tlaxcala, Survival, and the Struggle for Autonomy within New Spain, 1519-1558.

This thesis examines the strategies Tlaxcalan leaders employed to maintain their autonomy directly with the Spanish colonizers and administrative officials in their province in the 16th century. Previous scholarship has portrayed the Tlaxcalans as insignificant collaborators or willful allies of Spanish colonizers. This thesis, by contrast, shows that they maintained their autonomy through their strategic appeals to various colonial authorities, integration of Catholicism into native culture, and the use of both prestige and alliance to emphasize the importance of the province. This thesis uses contemporary annals, government records, literature, artwork, and letters created by the Tlaxcalans, and Spaniards, to analyze the methods and reasonings behind their adaptations.

Lost in Translation; The Evolution of Spanish Translations and the Black Legend in England from 1578 to 1740

This paper traces the evolution of the Black Legend using Spanish accounts of the colonization of the Americas published in English from 1578 to 1740. The Black Legend, largely spread by English, Dutch, and German Protestants, was an anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish narrative demonizing the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Relying in particular on the English appropriation of Spanish Friar Bartolomé de las Casas’s Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, originally published in Spanish in 1552, the thesis argues that English editions of the text reflect England's political and religious turmoil in the 16th and 18th centuries. Previous work on the Black Legend centered on how the authors of New World accounts intended to have their work received in Europe. By studying printed paratexts, including dedicatory letters to patrons, letters to the readers, and the translations themselves, I show how English publishers and translators, and the statesmen who sponsored these publications sought to use Bartolomé de Las Casas's accounts as political. The conquest of the New World brought enormous wealth and power to Spain. At the same time, throughout this period, England suffered religious and political conflicts that boiled over into civil war in the mid-17th century. Many in England feared being overrun by a Catholic Empire or overthrown by Catholics from within. Facing various religious and political crises at home English leaders and booksellers used translations of Las Casas's work to advance their own hopes of British imperial expansion in the New World and to encourage the English to unite in the face of the Spanish threats, such as the Netherlands Civil War and Spanish Armada.

Entangled Sainthood: Imperial Canonisations and the Invention of Saints in Colonial Latin America

This article examines the impact of canonisation trials on the promotion of new saints across the Spanish Empire. Focusing on New Spain and Peru, it demonstrates that the physical arrival of copies and summaries of a canonisation trial or hagiographies of a saintly candidate supported by the Spanish crown in Colonial America served as a catalyst for revitalising pre-existing devotions and even inspiring the creation of new ones. By examining the start of the canonisations of Fray Sebastián de Aparicio in Puebla (Mexico) and Toribio of Mogrovejo in Lima (Peru), the work provides an introduction to an often neglected phenomenon: the entanglement between religious, political and cultural forces in the formation of Latin American sainthood, mainly in four ways: causality, opposition, dialecticism and affiliation. *

The Guaraní expansion in the Upper Uruguay River. Chronology, colonization strategies, social impacts and environmental changes

The Guaraní archaeological record reflects the material culture and associated behaviors of ancient Amazonian forager-horticulturalists who expanded from southwestern Amazonia to the Río de la Plata River, leading one of the most significant pre-Columbian migrations in the Americas. This study focuses on the Guaraní colonization of the Upper Uruguay River, located within the tropical rainforests of southeastern South America. Utilizing a geographic and chronological database specifically developed for this research, along with statistical tools, pollen, and charcoal records from a sediment core recovered in the region, we present the first comprehensive analysis of the Guaraní colonization process in this valley, including its environmental impact and effects on pre-existing non-Guaraní populations.The first evidence of Guaraní occupation in the Upper Uruguay River is dated between 773 and 880 CE, within a well-developed deciduous forest. This initial phase, extending between ∼ 770 and 1000 CE, indicates the presence of small founder populations that left a weak archaeological signal characterized by a few scattered settlements along the valley. Subsequently, between 1000 and 1400 CE, a gradual expansion of these groups is observed along the valley, leading to the first environmental impacts, such as an emerging deforestation process, an increase in species typical of secondary forests, and the earliest detection of Zea mays. Between ∼1400 and 1600 CE, there was a sudden increase in the number of Guaraní sites, which were distributed almost continuously along the 240 km of the valley, leading to the displacement of non-Guaraní indigenous societies. During this phase, the Guaraní population occupied the entire deciduous forest area up to the headwaters of the Uruguay River, at the confluence of the Canoas and Pelotas rivers, where they reached the limit of their ecological niche. During this period, significant environmental changes occurred, including widespread deforestation due to the intensification of slash-and-burn practices, an increase in maize cultivation and other edible species, and a greater frequency of species typical of open areas growing within disturbed forests. By 1600 CE, the valley experienced significant depopulation, coinciding with Portuguese and Spanish colonization of the region, leading to the full regeneration of the forest as a secondary forest.

Rethinking the Coloniality of Race: Blood Purity and the Politics of Periodization

The coloniality of power stands as a major framework for theorizing race within the context of Latin America, providing an influential account of the origin of race in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Without abandoning the task of theorizing the ways in which race functions in Latin America, this article asks: what is obscured by an insistence on 1492 as the moment when race emerged, and what different understandings of race can be made available by connecting the colonization of the Americas to a different set of temporal and spatial referents? Specifically, I develop a “prismatic” approach to analyze the impact of fifteenth-century Iberian blood purity statutes on the development of race without positing these as the new, singular origin of race. This article thus suggests an alternative genealogy of racialization while providing a critical engagement with the coloniality of power’s account of race.

Sensorial and Sonic Aspects in the Writings of the “English-American” Thomas Gage (c. 1603–1656) on Mexico and Guatemala

Objective/Context: This article examines dimensions of sensoriality within the writings of Thomas Gage (c. 1603–1656) regarding his experiences as a Dominican friar in Mexico and Guatemala between 1625 and 1637. His 1648 travelogue, The English-American His Travail by Sea and Land, is the first detailed eyewitness report of daily life in the Spanish colonies by an English writer. Yet this work and his other writings were published after he converted to Protestantism and formed an explicit part of anti-Catholic discourse in England. Methodology: Written from a historical-musicological perspective, this study is informed by the approaches of sensory history to identify and critique the sonic episodes and metaphors in Gage’s texts. It critically analyzes his travelogue and investigates how his accounts of musical, gastronomic, and religious experiences underpinned and influenced his political and theological views. To draw out his unique perspectives on music, it also considers soundscapes and the material and cultural dimensions in his descriptions. Originality: Recent scholarship has shown how Gage’s transnational and transconfessional identities did not fit traditional frameworks of analysis and limited scholarly attention to him. Lately, however, researchers have highlighted his mention of the senses. This article focuses specifically on hearing to show that his writings contain unique viewpoints and data on music and sound. Conclusions: Assessment of Thomas Gage within the frameworks of musicology and sensory history demonstrates that he invoked the senses in seemingly unique ways, especially by conflating their physical and metaphysical dimensions when critiquing Catholic practices in colonial contexts.

Experiencias sensoriales y prácticas políticas en el Imperio español, siglos XV-XVIII

Objective/context: This introduction, mainly of a historiographical nature, has two objectives: first, to present the most relevant contributions of sensory history as an interpretative approach that conceives the senses as conditioned by social and cultural factors in a given time and space, and second, to relate sensory experiences with political practices in the Spanish Empire of the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries, contextualizing the contributions of this dossier in this line of research. Methodology: The study analyzes contributions that have allowed the definition of sensory history as a heuristic approach valid for a plurality of fields and topics, which enjoys enormous popularity in the research agenda. Originality: This dossier includes a valuable collection of essays specifically dedicated to the sensory experience in the Hispanic Empire between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. It is the first thematic issue on this subject. Conclusions: The article places the studies included in this volume within a broader historiographical context while pointing out possible future avenues of research.

Characterization of SNPs in meat quality-related genes in Argentine Coastal Creole pigs and their potential as a porcine genetic resource.

The Coastal Creole pigs in Argentina are predominantly found in the wild and can trace their lineage directly back to the Iberian breeds introduced by Spanish colonizers. They currently stand as the sole Creole breed in the country recognized by the FAO. However, there exists a dearth of studies assessing their genetic potential within the swine industry. Therefore, this study aimed to genetically characterize the meat quality of Coastal Creole pigs based on seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the Ryr1, PRKAG3, MC4R, H-FABP, and CAST genes. A total of N = 158 samples were collected from specimens distributed along the coastal region. Our findings revealed all loci to exhibit polymorphism, underscoring the population's remarkable genetic diversity. Furthermore, a higher frequency of alleles favorable for the PRKAG3191I>V/200R>Q, MC4R1426A>G, CAST76872G>A, and Ryr11843C>T genes was observed, while alleles unfavorable predominated for H-FABP1811G>C and CAST638Ser>Arg. The results obtained in this research are highly encouraging, reflecting the genetic potential of these pigs to be utilized in swine production programs.

Financing Freedom: Self-Purchase and Reenslavement in Seventeenth-Century Andalucía

Abstract: This article explores cases in which slaveholders, enslaved and freed people, and courts battled over the customary interpretation of the rights of wage-earning slaves in seventeenth-century Andalucía. Throughout the Spanish Empire, enslaved people could purchase their freedom through the processes of cortación (later known as coartación ) and ransom ( rescate ). People paid their purchase price in installments and eventually received freedom papers, which were notarized agreements that reflected the terms of both parties upon receipt of payment. However, freedom papers do not reveal what happened when contracting parties experienced changed circumstances, and many of the particularities of waged enslavement on the Iberian Peninsula and in the Spanish Empire have remained obscure to scholars. Wage-earning slaves inhabited an ambiguous legal space of conditional liberty with rights determined by custom or social practice rather than legislation. Legal cases can shed new light on how the conditions of waged enslavement and conditional liberty were understood and contested in historical moments of economic crisis in seventeenth-century Andalucía. By focusing on stressful moments of property confiscation and currency devaluation, we can see the meanings ascribed to conditional liberty and the attendant legal rights that people who inhabited this conditional status wielded or struggled to enforce in the absence of legislation or codified doctrine.

Las comisiones de la verdad y los legados coloniales: lecciones desde Colombia (2018-2022)

With its signing of the Havana Peace Agreement in 2016, Colombia sought to end an armed conflict that had lasted more than sixty years and had left nearly nine million victims. The agreement led to the establishment of a transitional justice (TJ) framework, including the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition (CEV). This study identifies how the CEV incorporated the legacies of colonialism into its analytical framework. The research is based on in-depth interviews with twenty scholars specializing in colonialism and/or TJ, nineteen peacebuilders, informal conversations with CEV members, and a review of various volumes of the final report. The findings highlight that the commission adopted a long-term historical perspective, revisiting aspects of Spanish colonialism (including structural racism and the hacienda system as an institution of territorial, political, and economic order) as explanatory factors for the various forms of violence experienced during the armed conflict. Additionally, several volumes of the final report emphasize the ongoing impact of colonial legacies, viewing them more as continuities or “ruins,” using Stoler’s concept (2008). While the possibility of dismantling colonial legacies on a material level due to the CEV’s work is debated, its symbolic significance must be highlighted, especially in a context where the State had sought to erase the colonial past. This article contributes to the emerging literature that examines TJ from a decolonial perspective, providing an empirical analysis of the CEV in Colombia, which we believe can become a key reference for this field.

The Socioeconomic Image of China in the Early Modern Age and the Debate on the Decline of Castile

This article analyzes the socioeconomic image of China developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Spanish travelers and historians, differentiating between the idealized “Iberian view” and the more nuanced and critical Jesuit perspective. What were thought to be the main reasons behind China's wealth that impressed Europeans so much is relevant for a better understanding of the seventeenth-century debate on the causes of the decline of Castile, the heart of the Spanish Empire. On the one hand, the contrast between the increasingly battered Hispanic monarchy and the image of prosperity—more or less nuanced—conveyed by both visions of China made clearer the situation of socioeconomic decline of the Spanish Empire. In fact, from both visions could be implicitly derived diverse criticisms of the Spain of the last Habsburgs. On the other hand, it is paradoxical and surprising that the protagonists of the debate on the Castilian decline, the arbitristas, were not aware of the writings on China of their contemporaries, which reduced the potential of their analysis.