by Hugh Thomas
Cloth was made in Seville on some three thousand looms. But what was produced came nowhere near satisfying the demand, so the citizens of Seville, like those of the Indies, sought northern European imports. English woolens, for example, had been sold in the city since the fourteenth century, the powerful merchant Prato Francesco Datini being concerned as a middleman.49 By 1500, most of the sellers of English textiles in Seville were in fact Englishmen, such as Thomas Maillard and John Day. Black cloth from the rich Flemish center of Courtrai was also popular. Small supplies of cloth derived from Rouen, Milan, and Florence, as well as some from Valencia, Segovia, and Baeza. These commercial connections with northern Europe make it understandable that one or two men from there would appear from time to time on expeditions bound for the Indies: “Master Andrés,” for example, from Bristol, whom we have met with Magellan.
Another product of Seville was cochineal for coloring, arriving especially from the lands of the Medina Sidonia, such as, for example, Chiclana and Chipiona, near Sanlúcar, though it was inferior to that of Crete and Corinth. Mexican versions would soon make their mark. Other dyes, as we have seen earlier, derived from the Azores and the Canaries (orchil). In marketing these, adventurous merchants from Burgos now mixed happily with those of the south.
Seville was also full of small workshops producing for the local markets. Thus, there was an important leather factory, using not only Andalusian material but some from the Barbary coast. Boots and leather clothes were in demand in the Indies, as were light leather shields. The Genoese had a monopoly of the import of goatskins, their warehouse being in Cadiz. There were some craftsmen who were also merchants, such as Pedro López Gavilán. Piero Rondinelli of Florence was active in this business. The most sought-after fabric was probably camlet, an elegant mixture of camel’s hair and silk. It came from Egypt, being made with the hair of goat as well as camel. Cyprus had long been a center of production, and Genoese families interested in cotton had sold it in Chios. In Seville, sellers of camlet were again almost all Genoese, Luca Battista Adorno being the most prominent.50 Velvet was also a product where the Genoese were dominant. A workshop that was almost a factory, that in Triana producing gunpowder, was evidently another linked to the needs of the New World.
Triana had been a center of ceramics and pottery since Roman days, as it is today. There were in the early sixteenth century fifty ovens there, producing glazed earthenware, bricks, tiles, and dishes. But there were also clay plants in San Pedro, San Vicente, and Tablada. The techniques were ancient, but a new impulse had been given to them by a brilliant Tuscan, Francesco Niculoso. As with soap, gunpowder, and cloth, the Indies soon became a big market for earthenware; the exports to the early settlement of Caparra, near San Juan, in La Española, for example, were especially impressive.
After clay, gold: Seville, because of its long connection with Islam, had been the Castilian capital of the gold trade in the fifteenth century. Its importance was Europe-wide: much of the gold of that time, all originally from West Africa (Bambuk, Bure, Lobi, Akan), came in bars or dust via Seville.
The book trade had its importance, too. Many of the famous romances, many of which have been discussed earlier, had been printed by the skillful Jacob Cromberger, a native of Nuremberg who had been living in Seville since 1500. His fine volumes could be bought on the Arenal in Seville or in the Calle del Mar (today, the Calle García de Vinuesa), leading to the Arenal from the cathedral. Customers included many adventurers before they set out for the Indies; for them the printed romance was often a cargo more intoxicating than manzanilla, almost as delicious as brandy.51 Another literary success was the collection of ballads compiled by Hernando del Castillo and published in 1511, known as the Cancionero General. From this, Bernal Díaz could have learned of the significance of the River Rubicon, and Cortés would have been reminded of Sulla and Marius—references that, as their writings show, meant much to them: Bernal Díaz wrote that Cortés “crossed the Rubicon” when he entered the Mexican interior, and Cortés said in a lordly manner that the rivalry between Gonzalo de Sandoval and García Holguín as to who really captured the Mexican emperor Cuauhtémoc reminded him of a similar dispute between the Romans Sulla and Marius as to who captured Jugurtha, King of Numidia.
As important in the Atlantic trade, perhaps, was the demand for holy pictures and portable altars, reredoses and altar screens, depictions of the Virgin or of St. Martin, Christ, and St. Christopher—on such a scale that many indigenous people, on coming into contact with the Castilians, supposed that Christianity worshipped a positive pantheon of deities.
There were already many shops in Seville in the early sixteenth century. The sellers, from leather dressers to silk dealers, hatters to tailors, usually associated in guilds, half trade union, half religious brotherhood, which were established in certain “workshop streets” (calles talleres). Many did not have a special association and were, like the powerful sellers of gypsum, tied in with others (in this case, the builders and stonemasons). Still, walking through the city, one would have found breeches and doublets on display in the Calle Genova, hats and crossbows in the Calle de la Mar, horseshoes in the Calle de Castro, caps and shoes on las gradas, perfumes, haberdashery, and adornments for women in the Calle Francos, underwear in the Calle Escobar, and wooden, iron, steel, and golden objects, as well as light arms, in the Calle Sierpes. The consequence was that by 1526 the Venetian Navagero could say that Seville was sending to the Indies not only all the cereals and wines that they needed, but also all the necessary clothes.52
We are talking still of an age of wood. Timber was used for houses in Seville, for carts, for boats, for bolstering the strange bridge across the river, for barrels, and also for fires in ovens. Wood was thus the basis of many undertakings. But the local oak was almost used up—even the oak groves of Constantina were depleted. Pine was thought to be inferior, and so wood was imported from England, Galicia, Germany, and even Scandinavia. Another change had been the great increase in the production of hemp for rope-making, mostly along the banks of the River Guadalquivir.
So it was that in the early 1520s, Spain had not only a language ready for empire, as the philologist Nebrija had insisted was desirable, and not only a large number of people ready for the adventure of emigration, but also in Seville a city ready to be the capital of a New World. Here Columbus had returned after his great journey in 1493, here Elcano came back after his circumnavigation of the earth. Here Cortés’s representatives—and, later, Cortés himself—would arrive after conquering the extraordinary monarchy of the Mexica. Pedrarias set off from Seville, as did Bobadilla, Ovando, and the poor Jeronymite priors. From here would leave for the Indies, and to here would come back, countless viceroys, governors and captains-general, commanders, explorers, missionaries, and settlers, on thousands of ships over the next few hundred years. They would bring with them gold and silver, chocolate and turquoise mosaics, sugar and coffee and, even more, astounding memories of conquests and improbable adventures that could scarcely have been dreamed of a generation before—except perhaps by assiduous readers of that great romanticist “Sir John Mandeville.”
But the conquistadors did not seek only glory and gold. Most of them believed that the long-term benefit of their discoveries would be the acceptance by the natives of Christianity, with all the cultural consequences that that implied. They believed, as the Spanish Crown put the matter in 1504, that they were “ennobling” the new lands with Christians. They made their conquests with a clear conscience, certain that they were taking with them civilization, believing that they would in the end permit these new people to leave behind their backward conditions. Who can doubt now that they were right to denounce the idea of religion based on human sacrifice or the simple worship of the sun or the rain? As a twentieth-century French general wrote in the wake of his country’s retreat from North Africa, “Every epoch has a way of looking at things that differs profoundly from what came before or comes afterward. Fashion in this domain i
s fickle and usually influences us more than we suppose. We believe ourselves free and reasonable beings. But we are all of us, whether we like it or not, the playthings of great waves of ideas that carry us forward.”53
So it was with the generation of 1500 in Spain. They knew that their mission was to seek new Christian souls. Gold and glory were the supporters of their coat of arms, on which Christianity dominated the face of the shield.
One cannot read much of any work written in the sixteenth century without realizing that the wheel of fortune was a constant preoccupation. Dürer designed a handsome wheel in an engraving in about 1515. “Oh, with what affronts and buffetings is our time tormented by Fortuna,” reflected the erudite Peter Martyr in a letter to the chancellor Mercurino Gattinara in January 1521.54 The previous summer, in 1520, to commemorate the forthcoming coronation of the then so promising young hero of Europe, Charles V, as emperor, tapestries entitled “Honors” were ordered on the basis of cartoons designed by van Orley, then the best-known painter in the supremely civilized court of the Netherlands. One of these tapestries, now in the Spanish palace of La Granja, outside Segovia, represents the wheel of fortune. The goddess Fortune is to be seen throwing stones to one side, roses to the other; and among those to whom she is throwing roses we see Caesar in a boat; he might easily have been Hernán Cortés, the most remarkable of the conquistadors. Fortune had now begun to throw roses to Spain and would do so for several more generations, during which time the Spaniards—from Castile and Aragon, Galicia and Asturias, the Basque country as well as Granada—would establish themselves throughout the New World and, at home, make of their newly united country a great nation second to none.55
Appendix A: Family Trees
The Albas and the Columbuses
The Spanish Royal Family
The Mendozas
The Ponces de León
The Fonsecas
Appendix B:
The Costs of Becoming Emperor, 1519
The balance was: Rhine Florins
Gifts to the Archbishop of Mainz 103,000.00
his councillors 10,200.00
Gifts to the Archbishop of Cologne 40,000.00
his councillors 12,800.00
Gifts to the Archbishop of Trèves 22,000.00
his councillors 18,700.00
Gifts to the Elector of Saxony 32,000.00
his councillors 8,000.00
Gifts to the Elector of Palatine 139,000.00
his councillors 8,000.00
Gifts to the ambassadors of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary 41,031.18
Expenses of Chancellery (Brandenburg) 100.00
Gift to Count Frederick of the Palatine (negotiator) 31,108.00
Gift to Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg 25,843.28
Gifts to counts, barons, chevaliers, nobles, and representatives of the cities 31,029.00
Costs for commissioners, councillors, secretaries 39,965.00
Costs for couriers, messengers, etc. 3,542.11
Costs for councillors of Emperor Maximilian 5,600.21
Costs in Switzerland 29,160.00
Costs for the purchase of Württemberg 171,359.47
Diverse costs 55,760.52
Bank charges 17,493.24
These sums were raised thus:
Jacob Fugger (Augsburg) 543,585.34
Bartolomé Welser (Augsburg) 143,333.00
Filippo Gualterotti (Florence) 55,000.00
Benedetto Fornari (Genoa) 55,000.00
Lorenzo de Vivaldi (Genoa) 55,000.00
TOTAL 851,918.34
Source: Léon Schick, UN GRAND HOMME D’AFFAIRES AU DEBUT DU XVIÈME SIÈCLE: JACOB FUGGER, Paris 1957.
Appendix C:
Registered Vessels
Sailing to and from the Indies, 1504–22
Year Outgoing Returning
1504 (from Aug. 14) 3 —
1506 22 12
1507 32 19
1508 46 21
1509 21 26
1510 17 10
1511 21 13
1512 33 21
1513 31 30
1514 30 46
1515 33 30
1516 42 10
1517 63 31
1518 51 47
1519 51 41
1520 71 37
1521 33 31
1522 18 25
Suggested Reading
Book One. Spain at the Crossroads
Several admirable books in English need to be mentioned. First there is John Elliott’s Imperial Spain (London 1963), still as fresh and interesting as when it was first published. The last chapters of Angus Mackay’s Spain in the Middle Ages (London 1977) and of Jocelyn Hillgarth’s The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516 (2 vols., Oxford 1976–78) are excellent introductions. I much enjoyed John Edwards’s more recent The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1520 (Oxford 2000).
The main work in Spanish is that of two immensely learned historians, Manuel Fernández Álvarez and Luis Suárez Fernández, La España de los Reyes Católicos, in the series Historia de España, edited by Ramón Menéndez Pidal (Madrid 1978). There is also the excellent La España de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid 1999), of Miguel Ladero Quesada. Edward Cooper’s Castillos señoriales de la Corona de Castilla (4 vols., Salamanca 1991) is of great value to all seeking the relationships between the masters of Spain in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Among biographies, it is hard to decide between Luis Suárez’s Isabel I, Reina (Barcelona 2000) and Tarsicio de Azcona’s Isabel la Católica (Madrid 2002). I also enjoyed Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra’s very different Isabel la Católica (Madrid 2002). I have now had the benefit of Manuel Fernández Álvarez’s Isabel la Católica (Madrid 2003). Peggy Liss’s Isabel the Queen (Oxford 1992) is the best biography in English and particularly good on the influences on Isabel. King Fernando is less well served, and the only works from which I derived any benefit were Ernest Belenguer’s Fernando el Católico (Barcelona 1999) and the essays in Fernando el católico, pensamiento politico, V Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón (Saragossa 1956). There is, though, also José María Doussinague, El testamento político de Fernando el Católico (Madrid 1950). The war in Granada is well analyzed in Ladero Quesada’s Castilla y la Conquista del reino de Granada (Valladolid 1967). Prescott’s description of this war, The Art of War in Spain: The Conquest of Granada, 1481–1492 (London 1995) is still most readable. The best book about the last days of the Moorish emirate is that of L. P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 (Chicago 1990). The works of Felipe Fernández-Armesto on the Canary Islands are excellent: Before Columbus (London 1987) and The Canary Islands After the Conquest (Oxford 1982).
I avoid bibliographical recollections of the many works that I have read about the expulsion of the Jews. But the best seems to be Luis Suárez’s Documentos acerca de la expulsión de los judíos de España (Madrid 1991). I found B. Netanyahu’s The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York 1995) rewarding. I greatly benefited also from Juan Gil’s Los Conversos y la Inquisición Sevillana (8 vols., Seville 2000–03).
Book Two. Columbus
The collection of Columbus’s writings edited by Consuelo Varela and Juan Gil, Textos y documentos completos (Madrid 1992), is essential. Lives of Columbus from which I derived benefit include those by Consuelo Varela, Cristóbal Colón, retrato de un hombre (Madrid 1992), Jacques Heers’s Franco-Genoese interpretation, Christopher Colomb (Paris 1981), and Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s elegant Columbus (Oxford 1991). Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea (2 vols., Boston 1942) shows its age. In the vast literature on Columbus, who does not recall with pleasure the heroic Alice (“Miss Alice”) of B. Gould’s Nueva lista documentada de los tripulantes de Colón en 1492 (Madrid 1984)? Antonio Sánchez González’s Medinaceli y Colón (Madrid 1995) was useful, and Juan Manzano’s Colón y su secreto (3rd ed., Madrid 1989) absorbing. I enjoyed my dear friend Mauricio Obregón’s excellent Colón en el Mar de los Caribes (Bogotá 1990). See, too, Consuelo Varela’s fasc
inating Colón y los florentinos (Madrid 1988) and Manuel Serrano y Sanz’s Los amigos y protectores aragones de Cristóbal Colón (Barcelona 1991).
On the first stage of Spanish rule in La Española, there is Demetrio Ramos’s El conflicto de las lanzas jinetes (Santo Domingo 1992). For a negative if interesting study, there is Kirkpatrick Sale’s The Conquest of Paradise (London 1991). On the expansion of Spanish rule, there is Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Cambridge 1966). On the later voyages of Columbus, there are Samuel Eliot Morison’s The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (Oxford 1971) and The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, 1491–1616 (New York 1974).
On the Tainos, the best introduction is Irving Rouse, The Tainos (New Haven 1992). Sven Lovén’s Origins of the Tainan Culture (Göteborg 1935) still has much to commend it.
Book Three. Bobadilla and Ovando
Juan Pérez de Tudela’s Las Armadas de Indias (Madrid 1958) is the best general introduction to this period. On Ovando, Ursula Lamb’s Frey Nicolás de Ovando (Madrid 1956) holds the field.
Book Four. Diego Colón
On the slave trade in indigenous Indians, see Carlos Deive’s remarkable La Española y la Escalavitud del Indio (Santo Domingo 1995); Enrique Otte’s Las Perlas del Caribe (Caracas 1977) is very interesting. See also Luis Arranz’s unfortunately unfinished life of Diego Colón, Don Diego Colón, vol. 1 (Madrid 1982) and the same’s Repartimientos y encomiendas en la Isla Española (Madrid 1991). With Diego, we approach the question of the Spanish treatment of the Indians, and here the Historia de las Indias (3 vols., Mexico 1986), the great work of Bartolomé de las Casas, is the best beginning. Nothing written by Las Casas is irrelevant. But see also the works of Lewis Hanke, All Mankind Is One (De Kalb, Illinois 1974), Aristotle and the American Indians (London 1959), and, above all, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia 1949). The best life of Vespucci is that by Frederick J. Pohl, Amerigo Vespucci (London 1966).
