Viceroyalty Of New Granada Research Articles

Credit networks and business dynamics in a viceregal capital: Santafé de Bogotá in the age of Charles III

This article provides aggregate data on credit flows in Santafé de Bogotá, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador and western Venezuela). By perusing a thorough report submitted to Bourbon authorities on notarial transactions, which included both ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical loans in the city, the article estimates the volume and size of lending activity while exploring how distinct types of credit interacted and shaped the business milieu of the region. It argues that by the late 1770s, Catholic Church lending had ceased to be the main source of investable funds in the region, with merchants and other non-ecclesiastical investors injecting growing funds into sectors traditionally avoided by ecclesiastical lenders such as commerce, mining and manufacturing. Network analysis suggests that merchants became brokers between different credit sources, alleviating information asymmetries and opening the credit market to borrowers with collateral and institutional restrictions willing to pay higher interest rates. Finally, by focusing on New Granada, the largest gold producer of the Spanish Empire, the article identifies some distinctive credit patterns that are different from those developed in silver-driven economies such as New Spain and Peru. Thus, the article provides new paths to study Latin American financial history.

Political Economy and Knowledge Production in the Making of the Viceroyalty of New Granada

Objective/Context: During the eighteenth century, officials from different colonial powers attempted to turn the viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada—present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama—into an economically viable territory. The Spanish Crown embraced its most radical jurisdictional reform in centuries to exercise effective state control, extract more revenue, and defend the colonies from foreign incursions. This article explores the particularities of New Granada’s economic governance and argues that colonial officials produced local discourses of political economy to turn unfamiliar spaces into familiar places for economic, political, and military ends. In doing so, producing knowledge about the land and its resources became a key bureaucratic practice that shaped the imagining of a paradoxical territoriality in Northern South America. First, I detail the impact of political economy frameworks on imperial governance and bureaucratic practices. I then showcase how administrative narratives, mapping projects, and fiscal networks reveal the workings of Bourbon economic governance and the search for regional integration. Methodology: This article is built from an analysis of archival documents consisting of a selection of evidence from chorographic texts about New Granada and its provinces produced between 1720 and 1808. Originality: Reflecting on the ways in which the pursuit of knowledge for wealth creation affected the creation of territorialities contributes to uncovering how the imperial political economy was never a top-down imposition. Local officials negotiated it vis-à-vis singular geographical realities and knowledge production practices. Conclusions: Chorographic texts were central devices of imperial reform. The search for wealth production and territorial integration occurred in colonial outposts, not in intellectual treatises in Europe. In forging New Granada as an integrated, potentially rich place, bureaucrats’ experience of moving across the territory and inscribing the landscape on paper shaped perceptions of cohesion and difference, economic dependence, and regional fragmentation.

Letters and economic routes in the Spanish empire in the 18th century with GIS

The postal service was one of the main channels through which letters, goods and actors circulated via fixed maritime and land routes, which favoured the circulation of postal communication between the most influential Spanish-American centres. This paper will examine the spatial organisation of maritime mail between Spain and America after the creation of the Maritime Post in 1764, as well as overland mail in the viceroyalty of New Granada, especially the Cartagena de Indias - Santa Fe de Bogotá route. It is based principally on the document Reglamento Provisional del Correo Marítimo de España a sus Indias Occidentales of 1764 for maritime mail. And the handwritten report of the commissioner José Antonio de Pando, which he produced around 1774. Both documents contain detailed information on postal routes, which have been reconstructed using a geographic information system (GIS). Through the use of GIS, a dynamic visualization of postal routes which made up the circulation of information, goods and agents in the 18th century is made possible.

The Mechanics of the Alcabalas: Reform, Local Bargaining, and Dwindling Taxation in New Granada, 1750–1810

AbstractThis article studies the mechanics of sales taxes in the viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and western Venezuela) during the second half of the eighteenth century. Advocating a careful examination of the accounting, institutional, and fiscal practices of North Andean customs houses, it provides an extensive discussion on how tax records can be harnessed to study the scope and nature of Bourbon reforms and to measure trade flows. The article pursues three interrelated goals. First, it studies the impact of local negotiations and jurisdictional fragmentation on local rates and revenue collection, providing new insights into the concrete mechanisms of tax bargaining. Second, the study reinterprets data on the main North Andean entrepôts of trade to measure fiscal cycles, real tax pressure, and tax incidence. Proposing a new method for examining customs records, this research shows how fiscal concessions and economic cycles led to diminishing fiscal revenues. Finally, the research places the viceroyalty within the broader context of fiscal change in the Spanish Empire, arguing that the region collected fewer revenues not only because of its comparatively smaller economic activity but also because the combination of custom and reform yielded lower taxation rates and unique fiscal structures.

José Celestino Mutis and the gestation of ichthyology in the Viceroyalty of New Granada

José Celestino Mutis, mostly known for his contributions in the botanical field, however; made significant, if little known, scientific additions in fields from mathematics to zoology. In this paper, I present to the public, for the first time, Mutis’ work on ichthyology in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, the colonial Spanish denomination for the northern part of South America that includes the present-day countries of Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, work that, as Linnaeus himself stated, will immortalize Mutis for future generations.

Management of “stone pain” between the 18th and 19th centuries: A brief history of a medical prescription in the Viceroyalty of New Granada

IntroductionThe presence of stones in the urinary tract is a condition that has accompanied humans since ancient times. In colonial times, this condition was known as “stone pain” and its non-surgical management was based on the use of medicines derived from plants, animals and minerals. ObjectiveTo contextualize a medical prescription used to modulate stone pain in the 18th century in the New Kingdom of Granada. Additionally, to analyze its components and evaluate the basis of its possible phytotherapeutic effects on the disease and pain. Material and methodDocument search in the Cipriano Rodríguez Santamaría Historical Archive of the Octavio Arizmendi Posada Library at Universidad de La Sabana. The document entitled “Prescription for bladder or kidney stone pain” was analyzed, and a complementary review of current scientific literature and original texts was performed with no time limits, in order to compare this prescription to related findings in the history of medicine. ResultsThe transcription of the source document revealed several phytotherapeutic agents such as chamomile (Matricaria recutita), lilies (Lilium lancifolium), clover (Trifolium pratense), and mallow roots (Malva sylvestris), accompanied by a large amounts of water. ConclusionsThere is scientific evidence that could explain the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of all plant-derived medicines used in this prescription. Abundant water intake to increase urine volume was an essential part of treatment. However, the lack of more precise data related to the prescription and the evolution of the patients makes it difficult to analyze its therapeutic efficacy.

Sobre médicos, piaches y teguas: Una historia particular de la persecución, expropiación y transculturación de la medicina prehispánica en el Virreinato Del Nuevo Reino de Granada durante la conquista y la colonia

Los procesos que se llevaron a cabo luego del contacto de los pueblos originarios con el conquistador español, en términos de saberes médicos en el territorio conocido como Virreinato de Nueva Granada, influyeron en las relaciones de conquistador-conquistado en procesos como la estigmatización y persecución de saberes ancestrales, las diversas formas de transculturación y el proceso de expropiación de algunos elementos de la cultura prehispánica.

El proyecto de Juan Jiménez Donoso para la construcción del palacio virreinal de Bogotá

La ciudad de Santafé en el Nuevo Reino de Granada nunca contó con una sede digna para la representación del poder real. Esta carencia se hizo aún más evidente después de su designación como capital de un nuevo virreinato y de la elección del inmueble que se convertiría en palacio de los virreyes. Construido de tapias y con pisos muy bajos, la apariencia de este edificio era modesta y amenazaba ruina, por ello, se ordenó la ejecución en diferentes momentos de diversos proyectos para su reconstrucción. Uno de ellos será el realizado por el ingeniero Jiménez Donoso, proyecto muy desconocido que encierra numerosos datos inéditos sobre el edificio antiguo y la nueva obra, datos que consideramos de enorme interés para la historia constructiva de Bogotá.

Newtonian medicine and its influence in José Celestino Mutis's General Plan for Medical Studies.

This paper presents the development of a Newtonian approach to medicine in the eighteenth century by studying the case of its appropriation in the Viceroyalty of New Granada by the Spanish botanist and savant José Celestino Mutis (1732-1808). First, I briefly depict the academic milieu in which Mutis presented his ideas on modern medicine in his General Plan for the Medical Studies in 1804, claiming that they were greatly influenced by Boerhaave's appropriation of Newtonian medicine. Next, I explain in detail the emergence of this approach to medicine by considering the works of Archibald Pitcairne, George Cheyne and James Keill. Afterwards, I characterise Boerhaave's use of Newtonian physical principles for explaining both physiological and chemical phenomena. Lastly, I lay the foundations for explaining that Mutis's introduction of Newton's ideas was a complex enterprise, encompassing Newton's mathematics and physics not only as strict theoretical elements related to natural philosophy but also as they were related to the medical and chemical fields.

Ordenanza de Matrícula para Cartagena de Indias (1777)

La presente transcripción corresponde a una copia de un reglamento cuyo original se encuentra en el Archivo General de Simancas, sobre el ordenamiento y función de la provincia marítima de Cartagena de Indias y la condición civil y militar de la gente de mar y maestranza dentro del sistema de reclutamiento naval llamado Matrícula de Mar en dicha provincia. El documento es rico sobre información relacionada con la producción de documentos, funciones burocráticas, competencias institucionales, actividades económicas y obligaciones de artesanos y pescadores que habitaban las costas del virreinato neogranadino a finales del siglo XVIII.

De “un rey nuevo en Santa Fe” y otros “cismas”. Negros, mulatos y zambos en la Rebelión de los Comuneros (1781)

Entre marzo y noviembre de 1781, el virreinato del Nuevo Reino de Granada experimentó una de las insurrecciones más grandes de la América española. Cerca de 20.000 hombres y mujeres conformaron un movimiento que amenazaba con marchar sobre la capital y exigía la revocación de las reformas implantadas por el visitador general enviado por Carlos III. Este movimiento pasaría a ser conocido como la Rebelión de los Comuneros. A pesar de las numerosas referencias encontradas en el archivo con respecto a la intervención de negros, mulatos y zambos en este movimiento, su rol no ha sido analizado. Este artículo identifica las referencias a levantamientos que involucraron sujetos esclavizados y libres de origen africano ocurridos, sobre todo, en las provincias del Alto Magdalena, y analiza sus contextos, motivos y objetivos. A partir de este análisis se revela que la “negridad” —es decir, aquellas experiencias y discursos articulados alrededor de lo negro, que durante el periodo colonial se expresaron sobre todo en el marco de la esclavitud y de las ideas sobre limpieza de sangre y linajes— constituyó un factor central en la expansión y consolidación del movimiento comunero.

Comercio en las “tierras de oro”. Circulación de bienes de la tierra en un circuito comercial de la Nueva Granada: Zaragoza (1789-1811)

Este artículo describe el mercado de bienes animado por la circulación de oro en polvo en el nordeste de la provincia de Antioquia entre 1789 y 1811. El documento aporta al polémico debate entre quienes sostienen la predominancia de una economía “natural”, o de trueque, durante todo el periodo colonial dada la permanente escasez de moneda para realizar las transacciones y quienes explican, para la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, un proceso de formación de un dinámico mercado, apoyado por la circulación monetaria resultante de la producción de la mercancía dinero en la misma provincia, principalmente oro en polvo. Esta última posición es la que sostiene el presente texto, el cual, a partir de una amplia revisión documental de los libros manuales de alcabalas, expedientes y material cuantitativo disponible, mide el comercio de bienes de la tierra entre el bajo Magdalena y la provincia de Antioquia y estudia los flujos resultantes de la monetización de los excedentes agrícolas y la especialización regional promovidos por el aumento de la producción de oro en la región. De esta manera, el metal amarillo creaba todo un circuito comercial entre varias regiones del norte del virreinato de la Nueva Granada.

Ingenieros militares en la Nueva Granada durante el siglo XVIII. Movilidad, proyectos y expediciones

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar el grado de movilidad de los ingenieros militares entre las principales ciudades del litoral caribeño del virreinato de la Nueva Granada durante el siglo XVIII. A partir de los resultados obtenidos, se podrá valorar la trascendencia de los desplazamientos entre las regiones en función de las distintas misiones que los ingenieros debían afrontar. Asimismo, se comparará el caso neogranadino con el de otros territorios caribeños.

El compadrazgo de esclavos en el siglo XVIII en la parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Socorro (Nuevo Reino de Granada)

El artículo analiza los lazos de parentesco establecidos por los esclavos a través del sacramento del bautismo en la parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Socorro (virreinato de la Nueva Granada), en el período comprendido entre 1700 y 1779. Se busca llenar un vacío en la historiografía de Colombia en lo referente al tema. El objetivo es mostrar la diversidad de los vínculos de compadrazgo en la población cautiva estudiada, la cual privilegió a los padrinos y madrinas de condición libre. La hipótesis central consiste en que los esclavos fueron los protagonistas de su propia existencia, haciendo del compadrazgo el mecanismo para mejorar en la vida.

José Celestino Mutis' appropriation of Newton's experimental physics in New Granada (1761-1808).

This paper characterizes José Celestino Mutis' (1732-1808) appropriation of Newton in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. First, we examine critically traditional accounts of Mutis' works highlighting, on the one hand, their inadequacy for directing their claims toward the nineteenth-century independence from Spain and, on the other, for not differentiating between Newtonianism and Enlightenment. Next, we portray Mutis' complex Newtonianism from his own statements and from printed sources, including a variety of works and translations from British, Dutch, and French authors, in addition to a wide range of Newton's writings, unusual for an eighteenth-century reader in the Americas. Finally, we analyze a salient claim of Mutis' Newtonianism in order to depict his appropriation and transformation of Newton's ideas: the characterization of Newtonian experimental physics as a useful science. In so doing, Mutis further developed metaphysical and methodological positions not present in Newton's works.

Eye decoction due to smallpox complications in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the 18th century

Eye decoction due to smallpox complications in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the 18th century

MÁS ALLÁ DE PAMPLONA (NUEVA GRANADA): CIRCUITOS CACAOTEROS DEL SUROCCIDENTE DURANTE LA TRANSICIÓN, 1790-1821

AbstractThis article seeks to analyze the cocoa circuits during the final years of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, the transition towards independence and the beginning of the world cocoa crisis in 1820. Added to the traditional circuits of Guayaquil and Maracaibo linked with Pamplona, the article identifies circuits that were speculated to exist in the southwest of New Granada, but because they did not move large volumes, they were not considered for production statistics. These small productions supplied the domestic market, also exported or integrated into circuits from other places that had better interactions in international markets. It is not a microhistory of cocoa in remote regions, it is the history of a cocoa overshadowed by the visibility of others.

Bullion and Monetary Flows in the Northern Andes: New Evidence and Insights, 1780-1800

Este articulo examina la direccion, la magnitud y la dinamica de los flujos monetarios y de lingotes en el Virreinato de Nueva Granada (actualmente Colombia y Ecuador), el mayor productor de oro del imperio espanol durante el periodo colonial tardio. El articulo entreteje registros notariales y cuentas de las oficinas de correos poco exploradas, para elaborar una geografia monetaria preliminar pero novedosa de la region. Identifica tambien las ciudades y regiones que aglomeraron los flujos de oro y plata en forma de lingotes y monedas. Este articulo tiene un objetivo mayormente empirico: busca proporcionar materiales y perspectivas para estudiar mas a fondo la mecanica del bimetalismo en la region. El articulo sugiere que los mercados de lingotes alcanzaron a llegar a regiones mas distantes de las que se pensaba anteriormente, y por consiguiente, apoya la afirmacion de academicos jovenes que han estudiado el flujo de bienes demostrando que los Andes septentrionales estaban mucho mas integrados. Por lo tanto, es necesario abandonar el marco actual de las fronteras nacionales para analizar las economias de los Andes septentrionales.

Determinantes del precio de los esclavos en el caribe neogranadino en el siglo XVIII

In this paper, a simple model is estimated through ordinary least square to explain the price of slaves in the Caribbean region of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the 18th century and first decade of the 19th century. The price is explained by age, age squared, gender, degree of qualification, if the person worked in a mine, and if the slave was sick or in good health. The statistical data was obtained from the Archivo General de la Nacion in Bogota, Colombia, and it includes 1.064 persons who worked in haciendas, mines and tile workshops.

Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750–1850 ed. by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood

theme of compromise in the face of need provides one way to look at German practice as a whole. However, with Kuss, as with discussion of the response to the Resistance during World War Two, so with Stoltzfus, it is necessary to consider the ideology at play and the extent to which there was a brutal and overriding determination to ensure control and remould society. In each case, this is apparent. Being exposed to a policy of tactical expedience was not probably the first thought of those being slaughtered or tortured. JEREMY BLACK University of Exeter Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750–1850. Edited by PATRICK MANNING and DANIEL ROOD. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. xii + 401 pp. $49.95 (hardcover). The past several decades witnessed a “global turn” in the field of history of science. The master narrative centering on the rise of modern science within Western Europe and its subsequent diffusion around the world is being increasingly effaced as more scholars joined in the search for a polycentric, inclusive framework for studying the “global histories” of science.1 The volume under review is a timely and welcome intervention in this rapidly growing discourse. Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, published by the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh as the inaugural volume in a planned series dedicated to starting a conversation between historians of science and scholars working in world/global/transnational history, invites all to contemplate seriously the possibility of a “world history of science.” The essays collected here were first presented in 2012 at the conference convened by the center titled “Linnaean Worlds: Global Scientific Practice during the Great Divergence.” The temporal focus, 1750 to 1850, is chosen because of the profound worldwide transformations taking place during this time in the realms of economy, 1 For some methodological explorations in this regard, see Lissa Roberts, “Situating Science in Global History: Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation,” Itinerario 33 (2009): 9–30; the essays in Sujit Sivasundaram, et al., “Global Histories of Science,” Special Section of Isis 101 (2010): 95–158; and Fa-ti Fan, “The Global Turn in the History of Science,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 6, no. 2 (2012): 249–258. 256 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, JUNE 2019 society, politics, and culture. Particularly, this period witnessed the “Great Divergence” in economic life between Europe and China that was observed by Pomeranz and others, at the same time when what came to be known as “modern science” gradually crystalized. The bulk of this science, the thematic focus of these essays, consisted of the bioand field sciences that take the earth, natural species, humans, and their immediate environs as their subjects. The diffusionist narrative about this science spotlights the works of great European minds such as Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc (Comte de Buffon, 1707–1788), and German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). In contrast, contributors to this volume, through their richly documented case studies and bold yet judiciously enunciated syntheses, deconstruct that neat and heroic narrative by highlighting the multifarious origins of modern science in and outside Europe, its complex itineraries, its spontaneous, fragmentary, mobile, and incongruous nature, and its deep embedment in networks of power of varying scopes crisscrossing the (early) modern world. The book consists of five parts, preceded by an insightful introduction by Patrick Manning. Part I explores the dynamics of knowledge exchange in the Americas between Europeans and other local inhabitants. Matthew James Crawford’s study of the Spanish Crown’s failure in maintaining a royal reserve of quina (with the active ingredient quinine) in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the 1790s reveals how the power of the empire was circumscribed by the way of knowing of their distant colonial subjects. Eleonora Rohland tells how early French settlers in Louisiana and other Europeans in North America struggled to comprehend the formation and patterns of hurricanes, and how the knowledge they gained through exchanges with Amerindians, inhabitants in the Caribbean, and Atlantic sailors helped them launch a meteorological discourse and eventually a largescale knowledge infrastructure for hurricane prediction spanning North...