Mark A. Burkholder

Spain’s America: from kingdoms to colonies

During the rebellion against Columbus begun in Española in 1497, its leader Francisco Roldán rejected the idea that he and the other settlers should be considered ‘colonists,’ a term whose multiple meanings included laborers working on rented land. Instead, he demanded recognition as ‘vecinos,’ municipal householders and citizens who enjoyed the rights of Castilian law (see Elliott 2006, 9). His point held. For more than three centuries, Spaniards who lived in the western hemisphere eschewed identification as ‘colonists’ in favor of terms that included conquistadors, settlers (pobladores), their descendants, and, by the late eighteenth century, American Spaniards, or simply Americans. Similarly, the word ‘colonies’ failed to win acceptance in Spain’s America before 1808– 1811, despite immigrants’ understanding that it typically denoted settlements [of Spaniards] outside their homeland. Accompanied by a reduction of the Indian population to a minority in many locations, the almost complete absence of ‘colonies’ in the nomenclature of Spain’s possessions attests to Jorge Klor de Alva’s (1992) proposition that independence in Spanish America was not decolonization nor did postcolonialism follow it. His conclusion strengthens the argument here that the Spanish-descended population recognized the validity of ‘kingdoms’ but not ‘colonies’ as an appropriate identification of their American homelands into the nineteenth century. Scholarly references to Spain’s American dominions as ‘colonies’ are commonplace, as is the use of ‘Colonial Spanish America,’ a conventional identification for the Indies from Columbus to Independence. Even historians who explicitly note that Spain’s realms were not officially colonies, subsequently refer to them as such. In doing so, they follow an Anglophone tradition that has termed these lands ‘colonies’ since at least the early seventeenth century (Smith 1632, 148). Spain’s American ‘kingdoms’ with rich mines, large subject populations, and settlements extending from the present United States to Chile evoked envy among its European rivals. In response, the English, French and Dutch started in the early seventeenth century to found ‘colonies’ or ‘plantations’ in the Caribbean islands and on the mainland of the western hemisphere. While these less auspicious terms satisfied other European governments, native sons in Spain’s America proudly emphasized the regal label attached to their patrias. With the crisis resulting from the abdications of 1808 as well as the American deputies’ 1811 loss in the Cortes of Cádiz over immediate implementation of

Administrators of empire

A collection of articles originally published during the 1960s through the 1990s, illustrating the variety of imperial administrators and administrations of European expansion in the New World. Topics include the decline of royal authority in the viceroyalty of Peru, 1633-1700, government and elites

Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico, 1702–1710 (review)

Historians have paid remarkably little attention to most viceroys of colonial Spanish America. Similarly, the study of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been relatively slight. In this thoughtful examination of the rule of grandee Duke of Alburquerque in New Spain (1702-1710), historian Christoph Rosenmiiller gives overdue attention to a viceroy that served during the War of , Spanish Succession. He focuses particularly on Alburquerques use of patronage to benefit himself and retainers (criados) he brought from Spain and clients or allies he cultivated in Mexico and the interplay between the viceroy and local elites that occurred in the viceregal court.

Marqueses, cacaoteros, y vecinos de Portoviejo: (cultura politica en la Presidencia de Quito) (review)

beyond the standard accounts to present a more nuanced portrait of Cuba in the heyday of its economic and social transformation. In this it succeeds admirably. One serious drawback of this work is its totally inadequate select bibliography, which includes little material published on or off the island after 1959, a shortcoming that is only partially overcome by the author’s footnotes. Written in Spanish, the book will be of limited use in most undergraduate history courses. On the other hand, for scholarly purposes it can be valuable, especially if combined with recent works by Luis Martínez Fernández and Louis A. Pérez Jr. Although this book engages none of the historical debates, it tempts the serious historian to ferret out these tantalizing accounts in manuscript repositories such as Tulane’s Latin American library and in other rare book collections.

To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla. By Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 199. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

A reliable supply of water was necessary to sustain human and animal population and to grow crops in the semi-arid region of Puebla in highland Mexico. Lacking adequate rainfall for productive dry farming, indigenous farmers turned to communal supervision for distribution of water and development and maintenance of irrigation. Since Spanish settlement and the introduction of new crops, notably wheat, in the sixteenth century overlapped with native depopulation of the region, allocation of water long posed no major problem. Expanding native population as from the late seventeenth century, however, created growing conflict over irrigation systems. In the absence of effective centralized authority over the irrigation systems, by the early nineteenth century, large landowners had achieved domination over water in Puebla.

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THE BIBLIOGRAPHY WHICH FOLLOWS is designed as an aid in preparing lectures, assigning essay topics, and giving preliminary orientation to graduate students who are filling out their courses and fields with an outside interest in eighteenth-century Latin America. Since, at some levels, library holdings of historical works may be limited to English-language items, and as teachers charged with a lecture unit on this field may lack facility in Spanish, only works in English are provided. In addition, references are limited to monographs and journals commonly found in college libraries. These are supplemented by references to those major foreign Latin Americanist reviews which regularly publish articles in English, and to chapters drawn from a selected number of edited works. The intent is to limit the amount of searching required. Despite these limitations, however, we are convinced that the literature cited will prove useful to the anticipated non-specialist audience. The bibliography is divided into three sections: an introductory overview, selected topics, and major regions. The introductory materials on eighteenth-century Spain provides a necessary background to the colonial experience.

Colonial Spanish America, The Bourbon Period

Little has been written on society in the Spanish Indies during the sixteenth century, although it was during those formative decades that the Latin American class structure evolved. The Spanish conquest of the Indians produced profound social dislocations as many Spaniards of a low station found themselves members of a new aristocracy and native lords were often reduced to servitude. This book presents the first comprehensive investigation of the primary issue of the first century of Spanish American colonization: the massive system of Indian forced labor, ranging from outright slavery to the encomienda, upon which Spanish colonial society rested. Focusing on the fate of the natives under Spanish rule, the author traces in graphic detail the rupturing of Indian traditions and the fate that befell the Indian people. While demonstrating the excesses of the conquistadores and unscrupulous crown officials, he also emphasizes that Central America was the scene of the first attempts to apply the famous New Laws. Although that legislation was not fully implemented, the reformist judge Alonso Lopez de Cerrato made significant improvements in labor conditions, in the face of furious opposition from the Spanish settlers. Aside from its discussion of labor practices, this account deals with population figures and the extent of the slave trade, and corrects a number of errors in traditional sources. In addition, Spanish Indian policy, particularly at the local level, is examined in combination with character studies of individual officials, providing a much needed new look at the way in which Indians were affected by the conquest. Based primarily on documents in Spanish and Central American archives, the book includes chapters on the treatment of Indian women and the decline of the native nobility which made valuable contributions to the ethnology as well as the history of Central America.