by Hugh Thomas
Book Five. Balboa and Pedrarias
Here the best original source is that of the enemy of Las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias (5 vols., vols. 117–21 in BAE, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela, Madrid 1959, 2nd ed. 1992). Balboa needs a new biography. On Pedrarias, this field has now been illuminated richly by Carmen Mena, on whose books everyone writing of this era on Darien must now rely. See her Pedrarias Dávila (Seville 1992) and her excellent Sevilla y las flotas de Indias (Seville 1998).
Book Six. Cisneros
On Cisneros there is J. García Oro, El cardenal Cisneros, Vida y Empresas (2 vols., Madrid 1992–93). Here again Las Casas’s history is essential; the life of the same by Manuel Giménez Fernández (Bartolomé de las Casas, 2 vols., Seville 1953, 1961) is an extraordinary achievement even though it essentially deals only with a few years (1516–21) of Las Casas’s long life. It guided me through the work of Las Casas himself and also pointed me to relevant legajos in the Archivo de Indias. I have quoted a great deal from Las Casas because the conversations that he reports seem so vivid.
Book Seven. Charles, King and Emperor
On Charles V, the best life still seems to me to be that of Carl Brandi, Carlos V, Vida y Fortuna de una Personalidad y un Imperio (Madrid 1937). On Spain of the intellect of these years, see Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España (new ed., Mexico 1998). On the election of Charles V, see Hermann Kellenbenz, Los Fugger en España y Portugal hasta 1560 (Salamanca 1999). On the economic life of Spain, see Ramón Carande, Carlos V y sus banqueros (3 vols., 3rd ed., Barcelona 1987). On bureaucracy, see Hayward Keniston, Francisco de los Cobos (Pittsburgh 1959). On literary life, see Irving Leonard, Books of the Brave (New York 1949). (Eschew the edition of 1992.) Few will escape being moved by Earl Hamilton’s statement in the preface to his American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1934) that the author and his wife worked jointly for 30,750 hours on the book, carrying out 3 million computations. The book still has its uses.
Book Eight. New Spain
On Old Mexico, the bibliography is enormous. I recommend as a start the catalog to the Royal Academy’s excellent exhibition on the subject in 2002–03. On the Spanish conquest, I venture to recommend my own The Conquest of Mexico (London 1993). See also my Who’s Who in the Conquest of Mexico (London 2000). There are now also several modern lives of Cortés, of which José Luis Martínez’s Hernán Cortés (Mexico 1990), with its four volumes of documents, is the most thorough. Bartolomé Bennassar’s Hernán Cortés (Madrid 2002) has many merits.
Book Nine. Magellan and Elcano
There is no alternative to Pigafetta’s account, Primer Viaje alrededor del mundo, which can be most easily read in the Spanish edition of Leocio Cabrero (Madrid 1985), but the Hakluyt translation edited by Lord Stanley of Alderley is also excellent. I have a weakness for any book by Stefan Zweig. See his Magellan (Barcelona 1955).
Book Ten. The New Empire
For Chapter 38, on Seville in 1522: the main books I consulted on this little piece of microhistory were Miguel Ladero Quesada’s La Ciudad Medieval, Historia de Sevilla (Valladolid 1980); Francisco Morales Padrón’s Historia de Sevilla, La Ciudad del Quinientos (Seville 1989); Ramón Carande’s Estudios de Historia, 2; Sevilla, fortaleza y otras temas sevillanos (Barcelona 1990); Carlos Martínez Shaw’s Sevilla, siglo XVI (Madrid 1993), which includes some excellent essays; Eduardo Trueba, Sevilla marítima (Seville 1990); and Enrique Otte, Sevilla y sus mercaderes a fines de la Edad Media (Seville 1996).
Glossary
adelantado: an official who, like a Roman proconsul, had both military and political functions.
alcaide: commander of a fortress.
alcalde: mayor or judge who presided over a town council.
alcalde mayor: chief justice.
alguacil: constable.
alhama, aljama: district of a town allocated to either Jews or Moors.
arroba: weight equal to 11 kilograms and 502 grams.
asiento: contract.
asistente: the equivalent of a corregidor in Seville.
audiencia: high court.
bergantín/brigantín: a low, small vessel, usually with two masts, capable of taking a sail or being rowed; easily maneuvered along coasts.
bozales: black slaves straight from Africa.
brazilwood: hard red wood (Caesalpina echinata) used for red dye.
caballero: knight.
cabildo: cathedral chapter; also town council.
cacique/cacicazgo: chief/chieftaincy, in Taino, often used in Spain for a political boss.
camarera mayor: lady of the bedchamber.
camarero: steward.
capitulación: agreement of a serious kind between two parties.
caravel: light round ship with three masts, usually carrying lateen sails.
castellano: a gold coin worth 485 maravedís.
cédula: decree.
comendador: commander, but used to indicate a senior official of a knightly order.
comitre: a captain who serves under an admiral; sometimes a royal captain.
comunero: rebel councillor.
contador mayor: chief treasurer/accountant.
contador mayor del reino: treasurer of the kingdom.
continuo: courtier.
contramaestre: boatswain.
converso: Jew or Muslim who converted willingly to Christianity.
corregidor: co-councillor appointed by the Crown in municipalities to control spending, etc.
criado: member of the household, royal or otherwise.
ducado/ducat: gold coin worth 375 maravedís. Cortés paid Alfaro 11 ducats for his passage to the Indies in 1506. Also used as a weight.
encomienda: In the Indies a number of Indians were allocated to a settler (the encomendero) who would use their services and their land in return for looking after them and teaching them Christianity. In Spain an encomienda was more to do with land than with people.
entrada: an expedition into the interior.
escribano: notary.
escudero: infantryman.
fanega: a dry measure equal to 55 liters.
fundador: foundry worker.
fundición: melting down.
galeón: a large ship with three masts.
hermandad: police.
hidalgo: a man of good birth but not a nobleman.
judería: a Jewish ghetto.
justicia: magistrate.
lateen: a triangular sail often used on the mizzenmast of a vessel, allowing the ship to tack more easily.
letrado: educated man.
libra de oro: ancient Castilian weight divided into 16 ounces and equal to 460 grams. Other parts of Spain had their own equivalents.
maestresala: steward.
maravedí: a copper coin that was the smallest measure of Castilian money and the most used. Ovando, the Governor of La Española in 1502, was paid 360,000 maravedís a year; Piñelo, the factor of the Casa de Contratación, 100,000 in 1503; and Vespucci, a chief pilot, received 75,000 in 1508. About 1492, the Charterhouse of (Cartuja de) las Cuevas had an annual income of about 1,111,000 maravedís.
marrano: a converted Jew who secretly practiced Judaism (vulgarism).
mayorazgo: entailed grant.
mestizaje: mixed-race group.
montañés: native of Cantabria.
monteros de Espinosa: royal bodyguards.
morería: Muslim ghetto.
morisco: A Muslim who has become Christian.
mozárabe: a Christian who survived in Muslim territory.
mudéjar: a Muslim who stayed in Christian territory; also the work he might carry out there, especially building.
naboría: an Indian recruited as a servant in the Caribbean, but not a slave.
peso: a silver coin supposed to be worth 450 maravedís.
procurador: a representative, as in a parliament.
reconciliado: anyone castigated or fined by the Inquisition.
regidor: a council member.
relación: report.
repartimiento: a division of territory.
repostero: chamberlain; one who looked after the royal plate and linen.
residencia: an inquiry into the actions of a departing magistrate or governor, so called because that official had to remain in residence for thirty days after his successor had arrived for the inquiry to be carried through.
tierra firme: mainland.
veedor: supervisor.
vega: cultivated valley.
veinticuatro: one of the twenty-four regidors of Seville and one or two other places in Andalusia.
vihuela: an early version of the guitar.
Spanish currency c. 1500:
The Spaniards at the time of the conquest of the New World employed many denominations with no clear rules of practice. Pesos, castellanos, ducats, and maravedís were all used. The usual coin was a maravedí, a copper coin equal to a ninety-sixth part of a Spanish gold mark, which in turn was equivalent to 230.045 grams.
1 real = 34 maravedís
1 ducat = 375 maravedís
1 peso = 450 maravedís
1 castellano = 485 maravedís
A sueldo (from solidus) was a tiny sum (sou), perhaps no more than a way of saying that.
A marco was a measure of about 11 ounces used for weighing both pearls and gold.
Bibliography
For a list of abbreviations, see this page.
Manuscript Sources
Archivo Ceramelli Papiani (for Berardi, Rondinelli)
Archivo General de Indias
I used the following sections:
Contratación
Indiferente General
Justicia
México
Panamá
Patronato
The documents concerned are indicated in the references.
Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid)
Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla
Archivo del Stato, Florence
Archivio Mediceo avanti il principe Fondo Guerra de Piccolomini de Aragona, Rondinelli papers
Other Primary Sources
Printed documents, firsthand accounts, sixteenth-century books
Aguilar, Fr. Francisco, Relación breve de la Conquista, written c. 1565, 1st ed. Mexico 1892; new ed. Germán Vázquez in La Conquista de Tenochtitlan, Historia 16, Crónicas de América, 41, Madrid 1988. Eng. tr. Patricia de Fuentes, intr. Ross Hassig, Norman, OK, 1993.
Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas, ed. Francisco López Estrada, Madrid 1992.
Anales de Tlatelolco, Mexico 1948.
Andagoya, Pascal de, Relación de documentos, ed. Adrián Blázquez, Crónica de Américas, Madrid 1986.
Baeza, Gonzalo de, Tesorero de Isabel la Católica, 2 vols., ed. Antonio and E. A. de la Torre, Madrid 1956.
Bergenroth, Gustav Adolf, Calendar of Letters … Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain, London 1862.
Bernáldez, Andrés, Cura de Los Palacios, ed. Manuel Gómez-Moreno and Juan de M. Carriazo, Historia del Reinado de los Reyes Católicos, 2 vols., Seville 1969.
Catálogo de los fondos americanos del Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla, ed. Fundación Rafael G. Abreu, 8 vols., Madrid and Seville 1930–2000, most reprinted recently.
Chacón y Calvo, José María, Cédulario Cubano, 1493–1512 (Los origenes de la colonización), Madrid 1929 (Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de Hispano-América, vol. 6).
Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista, y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar [CDIU], 25 vols., Madrid 1880–1932.
Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista, y organización de las posesiones españolas en américa y oceania [CDI], ed. Joaquín Pacheco and Francisco Cárdenas, 42 vols., Madrid 1864–89.
Collection des voyages des souverains de Pays-Bas, ed. M. Gachard, 4 vols., Brussels 1876 onward (vol. 1 covers the journeys of Philip the Fair and vol. 2 those of Charles V).
Colón, Cristóbal, Autógrafos de Cristóbal Colón y papeles de América, Madrid 1892 (papers from the Palacio de Liria).
——, Diario de libro de la primera navegación, ed. Francisco Morales Padrón, Seville 1992.
——, The Four Voyages of Columbus, tr. J. M. Cohen, Harmondsworth 1969. Includes extra material such as the will of Diego Méndez.
——, Libro de las profecías, Madrid 1992.
——, Textos y documentos completos, ed. Juan Gil and Consuelo Varela, 2nd enl. ed., Madrid 1992.
Colón, Fernando, Historia del Almirante, ed. Luis Arranz, Madrid 2000. There is a translation by Benjamin Keen, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son Ferdinand, New Brunswick, N.J. 1959.
Córdoba, Fray Martín de, Jardín de las nobles mujeres, Valladolid 1500; also ed. H. Goldberg, Chapel Hill, NC, 1974.
Cortés, Hernán, Cartas de relación, ed. Angel Delgado Gómez, Madrid 1993. Eng. tr. Anthony Pagden, New Haven, CT, 1986, with introduction by Sir John Elliott.
Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos de León y Castilla, vol. 4:1476–1537, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid 1882.
Cota, Sancho, Memorias, ed. Hayward Keniston, London 1964.
Cuevas, Mariano, S. J. Documentos Inéditos del Siglo XVI para la Historia de México, Mexico 1914.
D’Ailly, Pierre, Ymago Mundi, ed. Antonio Ramírez de Verger, Madrid 1992.
Díaz, Fr. Juan, Itinerario de la armada del Rey Católico a la Isla de Yucatán, en la India, en el año 1518. (See Aguilar, above.)
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, Historia Verdadera de la Nueva España, 2 vols., Madrid 1982; The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, tr. A. P. Maudslay, 5 vols., Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, 23–25, 30, 40, London 1908–16. Abbreviated ed. for the twentieth century, tr. J. M. Cohen.
Documentos de los Reyes Católicos, 1492–1504, ed. Antonio Gomáriz Marín, Murcia 2000.
Fernández Álvarez, Manuel, Corpus documental de Carlos V, vol. 1: 1516–39, 5 vols., Salamanca, 1973.
Fernández de Navarrete, Martín, Colección de viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles, Carlos Seco Serrano, 4 vols., Madrid 1954.
Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo [Oviedo], Libro de la Cámara Real del Príncipe Don Juan, Madrid 1870.
——, Las Quinquagenas de la nobleza de España, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid 1880, vol. 1 (the only one published).
——, Historia general y natural de las Indias, 5 vols.; 117–21 in BAE, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela, Madrid 1959, 2nd ed. Madrid 1992.
Fita, Fidel, Fray Bernardo Boyl, and Cristóbal Colón, Nueva colección de cartas reales, BRAH, vols. 19–20, 1891, 1892.
Gachard, M., Correspondance de Charles V et d’Adrien VI, Brussels 1859.
Galíndez de Carvajal, Lorenzo, Anales Breves de los Reyes Católicos, in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. 18, Madrid 1851, 237ff.
García Icazbalceta, Joaquín, Colección de documentos para la historia de México, new ed., 2 vols., Mexico 1980.
García Mercadal, J., Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal, 3 vols., Madrid 1952–59.
Gil, Juan, and Consuelo Varela, Cartas de particulares a Colón, Madrid 1984.
Gómez de Castro, Alvar, De las hazañas de Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Madrid 1984.
Guevara, Antonio de, Epistolares Familiares, BAE, Madrid 1850.
Guicciardini, Francesco, The History of Italy, tr. Sidney Alexander, New York 1969.
Lalaing, Antoine de, Relation du premier voyage de Philippe le Beau en Espagne, en 1501, Brussels 1876. (See, too, García Mercadal above.)
La Marche, Olivier de, Le Chevalier Délibéré, new ed. Paris 1946.
Landa, Fray Diego de, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, ed. Miguel Rivera, Madrid 1985.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, Apologética Historia Sumaria, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela, 2 vols., Madrid, BAE, vols. 95, 96, Madrid 1957.
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��—, Historia de las Indias [Las Casas], 3 vols., ed. Agustín Millares Carlo, intr. Lewis Hanke, Mexico 1986.
——, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, ed. Consuelo Varela, Madrid 1999.
La Torre, Antonio de, Documentos sobre relaciones internacionales de los Reyes Católicos, 3 vols., Barcelona 1949.
León-Portilla, Miguel, La Visión de los Vencidos, Madrid 1985. Eng. tr. The Broken Spears, New York 1992.
López de Gómara, Francisco, Hispania Victrix, Historia General de las Indias, in BAE, 22, Madrid 1852.
——, Anales de Carlos, Spanish with Eng. tr. and intr. by R. B. Merriman, London 1912.
—— La conquista de México, Saragossa 1552, new ed. José Luis Rojas, Madrid 1987. Eng. tr. L. B. Simpson, Berkeley, CA, 1964.
López de Mendoza, Íñigo, Count of Tendilla, Correspondencia del Conde de Tendilla, vol. 1, Madrid 1974.
Macchiavelli, Niccoló, The Prince, tr. and ed. George Bull, London 1961.
Mandeville, Sir John, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. A. W. Pollard, London 1900.
Marco Polo, El Libro de, ed. Juan Gil, Madrid 1992.
Marineo Siculo, Lucio, “Don Hernán Cortés,” in De Rebus Hispaniae memorabilibus libri, vol. 25, Alcalá de Henares, 1530, new ed. Miguel León-Portilla, Historia, 16, April 1985.
Martorell, Joanot, and Martí Joan de Galba, Tirant lo Blanc, first pub. in Catalan 1490, first pub. in Castilian 1511; Eng. tr. David H. Rosenthal, London 1984.
Martyr, Peter, Epistolario, Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vols. 9–12, Madrid 1953.
