Spanish Colonial Research Articles

Beyond Borders and Beasts: Exploring an Ottoman Traveler's Colonial Discourse and his Contribution to the Formation of Race in the Early Modern Period

Abstract: This article explores the extraordinary journey of Ilyas ibn Hanna al-Mawsuli (Reverend Ilyas/Elias), a late seventeenth-century Ottoman traveler, to the Spanish Americas. Spending eight years in the Spanish colonies with special permission from the Spanish court, Ilyas narrated remarkable experiences during his travels through the Caribbean, Venezuela, Peru, and New Spain. The article primarily focuses on this narrative as it relates to extraordinary encounters with fantastic beasts and creatures, and how these encounters contribute to emerging conceptions of race. It thus addresses crucial issues: first, the colonial discourse within the traveler's narrative; second, the intercultural colonial imagination shaped by the Amerindians, Europeans, and Ottomans; and third, the traveler's subaltern identity in the Ottoman Empire, which is reimagined via global Catholicism, leading to his endeavor toward the "Ottomanization" of the Spanish Empire's colonial domain. This research ultimately suggests that the traveler's colonial discourse contributed to the formation and codification of race in the early modern era.

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Association of HLA-C*07:359 with HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 alleles in Taiwanese.

It is thought that Taiwanese indigenous people were the "first people" to populate Taiwan (Formosa) having been there for over 5000 years, preceding the Dutch colonization (from 1624 to 1662) and Spanish colonization (from 1626 to 1642). Taiwan's indigenes, represented by Austronesian language speakers, currently constitute approximately 2% of the total population in Taiwan. It is unknown whether they evolved from Taiwan's Paleolithic or Neolithic cultures, arrived during or after the Neolithic period from China or Southeast Asia or both. HLA studies on the Taiwanese indigenous population have found several intriguing genetic information showing one or two relatively frequently observed alleles and a small number of relatively less frequently observed ones. We report here a relatively frequently observed HLA-C*07:359 allele in the Taiwanese indigenous population, its linkage with HLA-B*39:01, and its probable associated HLA haplotype in two Taiwanese indigenous families. HLA-C*07:359 is a rarely observed allele in the HLA-C locus in the world populations. The objective of this study is to report the allele HLA-C*07:359 that is more frequently found in the Taiwanese population, especially in the Taiwanese indigenous people, to demonstrate that it has a close linkage with HLA-B*39:01 allele in the HLA-B locus and to show the plausible deduced HLA-A-C-B-DRB1-DQB1 haplotypes in association with HLA-C*07:359 in two families of Taiwanese indigenous unrelated individuals. The samples were peripheral whole blood, with dipotassium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and/or acid citrate dextrose anticoagulation additives. The sequence-based typing method was employed to confirm the low incidence of the allele of HLA-C*07:359 observed in Taiwanese. Polymerase chain reaction was carried out to amplify exons 2, 3, and 4 of the HLA-A,-B,-C,-DRB1 and-DQB1 loci with group-specific primer sets. Amplicons were sequenced using the BigDye Terminator Cycle Sequencing Ready Reaction Kit in both directions according to the manufacturer's protocol. C*07:359 is an uncommon allele in the HLA-C locus in the world general population, according to our literature review. However, in this study, it is observed in the general Taiwanese population (frequency 0.41%), especially in the Taiwanese indigenous people at a frequency of 0.23%. In addition, we deduced two probable HLA haplotypes in association with C*07:359 in two indigenous families: A*24:02-C*07:359-B*39:01-DRB1*04:36 and A*24:02-C*07:359-B*39:01-DRB1*04:04. The two deduced HLA haplotypes associated with the uncommon C*07:359 allele that we report here are valuable for HLA tissue typing laboratories for reference purposes and for stem cell transplantation donor search coordinators to determine the likelihood of finding compatible donors in unrelated bone marrow donor registries for patients bearing the uncommon HLA allele. Since C*07:359 was found mostly in the Taiwanese indigenous population, we think the allele and its haplotypes we report here are important in population and anthropological studies.

Among Independence, Sovereignty and Autonomy: The Dutch Caribbean

This paper critiques the structure and functionality of the 21st century nation-state through analysis of emancipatory decisions in the former Dutch Caribbean colonies of Aruba, Curaçao, and Suriname.Suriname, the most culturally Dutch of the Caribbean territories, was the first of the former colonies to secede from the Netherlands. Although Suriname achieved independence in 1975, the economy remained heavily reliant on the policies of the United States. As such, the Surinamese government prioritized the interests of NATO and struggled to reconfigure its preexisting relationship with the suzerain. This dynamic strained Surinamese relation with Latin American nations more actively resisting US imperialism and isolated Suriname politically.Aruba became a constituent country in 1986; however, this shift was not contemporaneously reflected in Curaçao. Curaçao had headed the former Colony of Curaçao and Dependencies, and independence would have weakened its influence on the other islands whose governing structure would have remained unchanged. While Aruba had the opportunity to claim equal status with Curaçao, it instead pursued emancipation. Demographically Mestizo unlike neighboring islands, Aruba was eager to distinguish itself from Curaçao, where advocacy for decolonization arose with support from regional Black Power movements. Aruba and Curaçao had a long history of human exchange with Latin American continent from the pre-Columbian period. The inhabitants, especially those of African descent excluded from citizenship on the basis of race, moved to Spanish colonies where citizenship was granted upon conversion to Roman Catholicism. The people could use religion to obtain citizenship. They had no loyalty to the European empire nor a sense of belonging to any European kingdom. What they wanted was citizenship and human rights.Around the time Suriname declared independence, European governments began to promote neo-liberal policies that advanced smaller or limited government function. The former Dutch empire was itself abandoning its role as sovereign of a nation-state. Aruba, which had witnessed Suriname’s predicament post-independence and where sense of belonging within the nation-state was historically weak, finally elected to retain within the Dutch Kingdom. To become an independent nation would have entailed severing preexisting ties with Europe and rendered the territory more vulnerable, since globalization often facilitates interference from supranational institutions and military alliances such as the EU and NATO. The trajectory of Aruba prompts questions regarding the true definition and function of the 21st century nation-state.Today, even independent nations comply with international regulations and belong to multinational free trade spheres and military alliances. Due to Dutch disinterest, Aruba and Curaçao enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy. Thus, dependent territories such as Aruba that are capable of maintaining intercontinental and supranational affiliations do not immediately necessitate full independence

La memoria saharaui de la visita de la misión de Naciones Unidas al Sahara Español en mayo de 1975. Una indagación en base a testimonios

The article addresses the memory of the visit of the United Nations Decolonization Committee to the then Spanish Western Sahara in May 1975 and the demonstrations for independence that were organized. The research uses documentary, newspaper and graphic material, but above all oral testimonies of Sahrawi actors involved. This allows us to maintain that the Sahrawis have formed a particular and counterhegemonic memory of that moment, which is not limited to the elements that have always prevailed in the conventional historical reconstruction of the end of Spanish colonialism.

The Sharing of the Profits of theCarrera de Indias: The Actors of the Hispanic Colonial Trade and Their Monopolistic Practices in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

AbstractThe Carrera de Indias, considered as a set of circuits connecting Hispanic America to world markets, does not appear as a “monopoly” reserved solely for the Spanish merchants of Cadiz, but rather as a complex commercial system, structured into three autonomous segments, each of them dominated by a mercantile corporation, more or less formalized. In the central part, which linked the two shores of the Atlantic, the merchants registered in the Consulado of the Indies of Cadiz (cargadores) obviously dominated the market. However, these were in turn dominated by the merchants from the consulates of Mexico and Lima in the inland trade (comercio de tierra adentro), which linked the great American ports and fairs with the markets of the interior of the continent, and by the foreign merchants of Cadiz, structured into “nations,” in the exchanges that linked the Andalusian port with the rest of Europe and the world. Thus, the beneficiaries of the Spanish colonial trade in the second half of the eighteenth century were neither only cargadores, nor foreign “smugglers” enjoying the weakness of the Spanish empire as the historiography of the Carrera de Indias has traditionally postulated, but those three groups of traders.After highlighting this singular structure of colonial trade in the Spanish Atlantic, we will consider the different institutional and relational factors that could explain it. Obviously, it is because the different groups of actors involved in these exchanges had a specific social, relational, cultural, and institutional capital that they had a comparative advantage over their rivals in certain segments of the Carrera de Indias circuits, and that they were able to obtain the dominant position that we observe.

Royal Decrees and the Construction of the Spanish Empire - We The King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish New World. By Adrian Masters. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp 319. $110.00 cloth; $110.00 e-book.

Royal Decrees and the Construction of the Spanish Empire - We The King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish New World. By Adrian Masters. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp 319. $110.00 cloth; $110.00 e-book.

Испанская конкиста как культурная травма: легитимация травмирующего события в испанской прессе

The article examines the process of legitimation of the conquest in the Spanish mass media political discourse. The study appears to be relevant due to the recent intensification of controversy surrounding the justification of Spanish colonization, as well as the process of delegitimization of this historical event in the Latin American media. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in that it provides an analysis of cultural traumatization and legitimation as interconnected sociological processes that are linguistically represented in the Spanish political media discourse. The study is carried out on the basis of written and oral discourse of Spanish politicians and public figures legitimizing this traumatic event. In the course of the work, it was established that the process of legitimation of the conquest is most clearly manifested at the stage of theorization of the object of legitimation aiming to objectify its adequacy and is implemented through the strategy of moral assessment and the substrategy of analogy: the unpleasant facts of Aztec imperialism are described, there are references to the British, Arab and Dutch conquests, the expediency of which is not questioned by society. Where the Conquest is rationalized with the use of a predictive substrategy and a result-oriented substrategy, there are indicated potential negative consequences of the absence of Spanish conquest as well as the benefits of civilization that appeared in the conquered territory after the arrival of the colonizers. At the promotion stage, a strategy of appeal to authority is implemented – there are presented opinions of authoritative political and public figures and historical figures legitimizing the conquest and denying all accusations as well as the need to apologize to the former colonies. At the stage of final rooting, the conquest becomes a habitual social context.

Accessing the Divine: Indigenous Medical Specialists, Catholic Priests, and Nonorthodox Methods of Healing in Colonial Mexico

Abstract This study examines forty-six colonial records spanning over two centuries (ca. 1581–1802), the majority of which consist of Mexican Inquisition and criminal trials. The article illuminates how Indigenous medical specialists, alternatively labeled ritual specialists, maintained communal solidarity by accessing the divine using sacred rituals. From New Spain’s southern extremity in Chiapas to its northern frontier in Santa Fe, devout commoners made votive offerings to combat disease and recalibrate the cosmos. Indigenous medical specialists such as curanderos and midwives remained influential locally because commoners perceived their ceremonies to be efficacious. Ritual specialists used their advanced knowledge of medicine and spirituality to alleviate illnesses like dysentery, fever, and typhoid. Concern for ailing family members prompted Natives to take an inclusive approach to the treatment of disease, which could conflict with church doctrine. Case testimony reveals that diverse, nonorthodox methods of healing persisted in the face of Spanish colonization. Faith in the efficacy of Indigenous cosmologies helped the infirm to envisage a better life, instilling hope. The study’s focus on the spiritual and material illuminates how ancestral knowledge produced political and social ramifications centuries after inception, demonstrating how the past reverberates into the present.

Features of Formation and Functioning of the Spanish Colonial Administration in America During the 16<sup>th</sup> and 17<sup>th</sup> Centuries

The problem of revising the colonial past of countries and continents sparks great interest due to the «left-wing» agenda in international relations and the ever-increasing role of territories that were formerly dependent, such as India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, etc. Anticolonial narrative is again in the focus of scientific discussions. The controversy around the increasing demands on the former metropolises, including Spain, about «repentance», return of cultural property and compensation for abuses committed by the colonizers in the distant past is particularly acute. During the exploration of new lands during the 16th and 17th centuries the Spanish faced the challenge of managing vast territories with heterogeneous indigenous populations. The solution to this problem lay in the creation of an effective system of authorities, which throughout the 16th and 17th centuries was continuously modified and became more complex. Seeking to create a bureaucracy similar to that of Castile, the colonizers brought to America not only its advantages, but also its faults. Indigenous peoples’ traditional systems of government were either replaced by European systems or incorporated into the new pyramid of power as the lowest echelon. The administrative situation of that period can be classified as juridical pluralism. The administration and management of overseas territories was carried out by specially established government agencies, i.e. the Council of the Indies and Casa de Contratación. Local administration was entrusted to viceroys, captain-generals, governors, and Audiencias. The basic unit of the Spanish living in the New World was the urban municipality around which everyday life was built. Creoles became an increasingly influential and ambitious political force in society. The 16th and 17th centuries formed the premises that brought about the creation of independent states in the Americas after the collapse of Spain’s colonial rule.

Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500–1540, written by José M. Escribano-Páez

Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500–1540, written by José M. Escribano-Páez

Globalne przemiany jako promotorzy nowych kreacji: narodziny tożsamości latynoamerykańskiej w pedagogice misyjnej

This article presents the results of a historical-pedagogical investigation, which objective was to establish the main features of hybrid pedagogy and missionary-educational system developed in the Spanish colonies in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as to ascertain how they contributed to cultural hybridization and the construction of Latin American identity in tremulous conditions of meeting of two very different, even opposite ones, worlds and cultures. The authors found that despite the very complicated situation in which the first evangelizing missionaries found themselves, taking into account, among other things, their total ignorance of the local languages and cultures, they were able to devise innovative didactics using improvised means and all their ingenuity to be able to fulfill their duty: “to save the souls of sinners” by converting them to the Christian faith. Thus, they created the missionary-educational system, which the aspects of pre-Hispanic education with the elements of the European conventual schools joined in itself. This educational model contributed to cultural hybridization and the construction of Latin American identity from the first years of the conquest

Loyalty, Subjecthood, and Violence: Veracruz’s Afro-descendants in the Early Mexican War of Independence, 1812–1813

Abstract: This article is centered around the experiences of Afro-descendant men in the 1812–1813 period of the Mexican War of Independence as it occurred in the port-city of Veracruz and it Sotavento (Leeward) hinterland. It argues that Black men had complex, active, and essential roles in providing the backbone of regional royalist and insurgent armies. It pieces together the fragmented military and political agency of Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as reflected in published and unknown archival sources of the colonial and national archive, such as military reports and correspondence, constitutions, decrees, 19th Century published accounts, and a lengthy court case. This article sheds light on how Afro-descendant men were pushed to participate by their individual and collective needs, reacting to localized, and transatlantic, conditions that promised, or excluded them from, social, economic, and political advancement. By centering Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as instrumental players of the war, even in leadership roles, this article seeks to problematize traditional narratives of the struggle that negate and erase Black History in the Mexican struggle for liberation. This article also places their experiences within the backdrops of Atlantic World politics during the Age of Revolutions. It examines the ways by which they reacted to limiting frameworks of citizenship influenced by localized, and transatlantic, Anti-Black stereotypes and fears, along with the adoption of the 1812 Cádiz Charter. This article argues that these men found themselves amidst the paradox of being militarily wanted but politically rejected by nineteenth century Spanish colonialism. This led Afro-descendant men to seek new opportunities of belonging and empowerment, joining the insurgency to improve their sociopolitical status. This article seeks to humanize voiceless Afro-descendant historical actors placing them as essential players of Veracruz’s, and the Greater Caribbean’s, early-nineteenth century regional dynamics.

Incantations, Comedias , and Epigenetics: The Ruiz de Alarcón Brothers Cast an Eye on Magic in the Seventeenth-century Spanish Empire

Abstract: In 1623, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, a parish priest in Atenango, Mexico, was commissioned by his archbishop to record Nahua beliefs and healing practices for the purpose of denouncing their superstitions and demonic magic. His Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629 underscores Spanish prejudice against diversity in religion, preserves the idolatrous and magical practices it discredits, and reveals the author's colonial mindset. Raised in the same restrictive Spanish colonial environment, Hernando's brother Juan was classically trained in Civil and Canon law. He became one of the major authors of the Spanish Golden Age, writing comedias that focused on loyalty, friendship, and honesty. His work often reveals a disparate view of magical practice. This article explores how applying epigenetics, the study of environmental influences on gene activation and its effects on physical and emotional behavior, to their circumstances can provide a tool for exploring their sibling differences in relation to magic. Colonial Mexico, Spain, the Catholic religion, the university, and personal physical challenges acted on genetic factors to form the essential nature and works of Hernando and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón.

Housing the King’s Enslaved Workers in the Spanish Caribbean

The construction of military edifices in Spanish Caribbean was overseen by engineers, as previous studies have largely shown, but forced labor played a key role in the processes, an understudied aspect. Hundreds of enslaved workers in San Juan de Puerto Rico or San Juan de Ulúa (Veracruz, Mexico) and thousands in Havana (Cuba) helped create the built environment of the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century yet both their significant physical presences and housing situations have not been discussed at large. Furthermore, general maintenance of these structures was one of the duties of military engineers serving in Spanish Caribbean and, thus, archival material should be rich in describing this aspect, yet very few plans or reports offer any information concerning enslaved workers’ habitations, apart from Havana’s galeras and some sections of San Juan de Ulúa, both unpublished until now. Recognizing that Spanish authorities paid little attention to the lodgings of their enslaved workers, this paper considers the forms of structures created by enslaved peoples for their lodgings. Through examples discussed in Havana and for San Juan de Ulúa, this study demonstrates that European architectural traditions were eschewed in favor of native and, likely, African customs. These examples offer unique insights into enslaved peoples’ living environments and expand our discussions into how race contributed to the diversity of architectural practices in the early modern Iberian world.

What did Christopher Columbus once mean to Haiti? Émile Nau’s Histoire des Caciques d’Haïti and Irving’s Columbus in the nineteenth-century Atlantic World

ABSTRACT This essay responds to scholarship on nineteenth-century representations of Christopher Columbus, by reinscribing Haitian writing on Columbus into transnational approaches largely focused on the US and Latin America. Throughout this essay, I contend that Émile Nau’s Histoire des caciques d’Haïti (1854) was profoundly influenced by Washington Irving’s A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). In particular, I show how Nau reframed Irving’s text in nationalist terms to reimagine Columbus as the catalyst of modernity while asserting the centrality of Haiti to his life. To do so, I compare key passages in Nau and Irving to reconstitute Nau’s enigmatic methodology and to show how Nau adapted Irving’s text to inscribe Columbus within his vision of Haitian history that included the Spanish colonization of Hispaniola. This analysis reveals the ways in which Haitian cultural nationalism drew from and spoke back to the larger network of nineteenth-century Atlantic nationalisms.

Severing the Sinews of the Spanish Empire: British Naval Policy and Operations Regarding the Silver Fleets during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, 1737–1740

ABSTRACT In studies on the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires, historians tend to focus on colonial expeditions, such as those against Porto Bello and Cartagena. On the other hand, operations against Spanish silver fleets, the mainstay of the Spanish imperial trade system, have attracted far less attention. This article examines these somewhat undervalued operations against the silver fleets as well as those concerning other Spanish shipping during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, giving their political and diplomatic backgrounds. This analysis demonstrates the significance of the issue of the silver fleets in Anglo-Spanish relations at the time. It also indicates the deep involvement of France in this issue and its influence on British naval operations. Finally, this article describes the development and implementation of British naval policy to put economic and financial pressure on the Spanish empire, arguing that the naval operations during this period were one of the earliest attempts at using blockades on both sides of the Atlantic, which Britain further developed in later imperial wars that took place during the long eighteenth century.

Sick Time: Medicine, Management, and Slavery in Louisiana and Cuba, 1763–1868

Capitalist ideas of productivity became central to medicine under slavery. They shaped how physicians treated enslaved patients, crafted a scientific basis for medicine, and conceived of themselves as professionals. Between the late-eighteenth-century and the mid-nineteenth-century, white male physicians in Louisiana and Cuba distinguished themselves from other healers: first, by aligning with Spanish colonialism, and then, by making themselves essential to a new form of plantation management that used clock-time discipline, hierarchical divisions of labor, and complex accounting systems. These technologies helped planters track the hours and days each enslaved person spent working, eating, sleeping, birthing, suffering from sickness and injuries, and recovering. This in turn enabled precise interpretations of enslaved health in terms of productivity, which was primarily measured in work time and the number of commodities produced. Physicians, who were seeking a rigorous intellectual foundation for medical knowledge production, latched onto planter methods of calculating and controlling enslaved health. One of those methods was what planters and physicians called “sick time,” which was an allotment of time away from work intended to manage illness enough for enslaved people to return to work. However, as physicians used plantation management to cast an air of scientific accuracy over their knowledge, enslaved people reconfigured their own medical practices to make themselves less visible and countable. Fugitive practices involving trees, animals, and natural springs helped enslaved people to heal by taking their own forms of sick time.

Milpa ecologies: Transgenerational foodways in Tlaxcala, Mexico

Through a case study born from archaeological fieldwork in Tlaxcala, Mexico, this article provides an example of place-based foodways that have been used to transmit belief systems and ways of life that resist dominant frameworks of power across time. Foodways, as a site of daily engagements with the full food cycle, can be used to concretize dominant systems of power (e.g., industrial agriculture) but can also be used to build countersystems. Using the example of milpa agriculture and “Maíz Culture,” this case study demonstrates how key ecological philosophies have served as effective and resilient adaptive strategies from which to respond to shifting threats across time—from Aztec and Spanish colonialism to contemporary resistance to neoliberalism. Although agroecology is rooted in indigenous origins, the global adoption of agroecology often focuses heavily on what is planted but fails to center the how—the relationships and values that indigenous ecologies embody. To adopt the planting principles of agroecology without centering indigenous philosophies results in food systems that replicate colonial extraction. While these philosophies are rooted in locally defined practices, they also serve to support a broader unlearning of colonial worldviews within the systems that overshadow the day-to-day experiences of researchers. Using foodways to bridge the time between the archaeological past and agroecological present unmasks normalized worldviews, such as capitalism, neoliberalism, and industrialism to show that, while they are dominant, they are not inevitable nor singular. Please refer to Supplementary Materials, Full text Spanish version of this article, for a full text Spanish version of this article.

<em>The Business of Conquest. Empire, Love, and Law in the Atlantic World</em>, by Nicole D. Legnani. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. 282 p.

In The Business of Conquest, Nicole Legnani outlines the links and contradictions between caritas (Christian love) and cupiditas (the desire for things) during the Imperial Spanish dominion. Legnani wants to show how the Spanish Empire advocated its monetary objectives through Catholic discourses.