Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

by John H. Elliott

  69. Hayward Keniston, Francisco de Los Cobos. Secretary of the Emperor Charles V (Pittsburgh, PA, 1960), p. 64; Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pp. 361-3.

  70. Lockhart, Spanish Peru, p. 171.

  71. Bowser, The African Slave, p. 28.

  72. Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 135 and 140.

  73. For the figures, see David Eltis, `The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: a Reassessment', WMQ, 3rd set., 58 (2001), pp. 17-46, modifying the statistics given in Philip D. Curtin's standard work, The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census (Madison, WI, 1969). For the Gomes Reinel contract, Vila Vilar, Hispano-America y el comercio de esclavos, pp. 23-8; Thomas, The Slave Trade, pp. 141-3.

  74. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, 0 trato dos viventes. Formacdo de Brasil no Atldntico Sul. Seculos XVI e XVII (Sao Paulo, 2000), ch. 3.

  75. Vila Vilar, El comercio de esclavos, p. 209.

  76. Carmen Bernand, Negros esclavos y libres en las ciudades hispanoamericanas (2nd edn, Madrid, 2001), p. 60.

  77. William Alexander, An Encouragement to Colonies (London, 1624), p. 7.

  78. For the importance of the African population in Spanish American cities, for long a neglected subject, Bernand, Negros esclavos y libres, and, for New Spain, Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico. For slaves as a percentage of city populations, Bernand, p. 11.

  79. Bowser, The African Slave, ch. 6; Lockhart, Spanish Peru, pp. 182-4.

  80. Bowser, The African Slave, pp. 272-3.

  81. Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World, ed. J. Eric S. Thompson (Norman, OK, 1958), p. 73. This is a modernized edition of Thomas Gage, The English-American his Travail by Sea and Land (London, 1648).

  82. Palmer, Slaves of the White God, p. 67.

  83. Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, p. 147; Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, p. 179.

  84. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society, p. 122.

  85. Bowser, The African Slave, p. 13.

  86. Ibid., chs. 3 and 6.

  87. Vila Vilar, El comercio de esclavos, p. 228.

  88. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, p. 19; Bowser, The African Slave, p. 75.

  89. Main, Tobacco Colony, p. 100.

  90. Craven, White, Red and Black, p. 73.

  91. For South Carolina and its slave trade, see Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade. The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (New Haven and London, 2002). Statistics on pp. 298-9 and 346.

  92. Ibid., pp. 302-3; Margaret Ellen Newell, `The Changing Nature of Indian Slavery in New England, 1670-1720', in Colin G. Calloway and Neal Salisbury (eds), Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience (Boston, 2003), pp. 106-36; and, for a good general survey, Joyce E. Chaplin, `Enslavement of Indians in Early America. Captivity Without the Narrative', in Mancke and Shammas (eds), Creation of the British Atlantic World, pp. 45-70.

  93. Oscar and Mary Handlin, `Origins of the Southern Labor System', WMQ, 3rd ser., 7 (1950), pp. 199-222, at p. 103. For the Vagrancy Act, C. S. L. Davies, `Slavery and Protector Somerset: the Vagrancy Act of 1547', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 19 (1966), pp. 533-49.

  94. See above, p. 55.

  95. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 120.

  96. Philip D. Morgan, 'British Encounters with Africans and African-Americans circa 1600-1780', in Bailyn and Morgan (eds.), Strangers within the Realm, pp. 169-70.

  97. Kuppcrman, Providence Island, pp. 165-75.

  98. Ibid., p. 177.

  99. Alden T. Vaughan, `Blacks in Virginia: a Note on the First Decade', WMQ, 3rd ser., 29 (1972), pp. 469-78.

  100. Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint. Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 1998), p. 58; Morgan, 'British Encounters with Africans', p. 171; Kupperman, Providence Island, p. 176; Galenson, White Servitude, p. 153.

  101. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 71-3.

  102. Ibid., pp. 75-6 and 224.

  103. Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 258.

  104. See Richard R. Beeman, `Labor Forces and Race Relations: a Comparative View of the Colonization of Brazil and Virginia', Political Science Quarterly, 86 (1971), pp. 609-36.

  105. Watts, The West Indies, pp. 123-6; Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 138-9; Kenneth R. Andrews, The Spanish Caribbean. Trade and Plunder 1530-1630 (New Haven and London, 1978), pp. 76-9.

  106. Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society. Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge, 1985), chs 2 and 3.

  107. Watts, The West Indies, p. 183.

  108. Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 309; and above, p. 9.

  109. Canup, Out of the Wilderness, p. 9.

  110. Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 55.

  111. Thomas, The Slave Trade, pp. 433-4.

  112. Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud, ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid, 1987), pp. 236-7.

  113. Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, p. 91.

  114. Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 139; Bowser, The African Slave, ch. 8.

  115. Las Siete Partidas del Sabio Rey Don Alonso el nono (Salamanca, 1555), partida 3, tit. 5, ley iv. See also Palmer, Slaves of the White God, p. 86.

  116. For laws and ordinances relating to slavery in Spanish America, see Manuel Lucena Salmoral, La esclavitud en la America espabola (Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, University of Warsaw, Estudios y materiales, 22, Warsaw, 2002).

  117. See the numerous examples provided by Bennett in Africans in Colonial Mexico.

  118. Palmer, Slaves of the White God, pp. 62-3.

  119. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (London, 1970), pp. 290-1.

  120. Magnus M6rner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston, 1967), p. 117.

  121. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 297; Morgan, `British Encounters with Africans', pp. 167-8.

  122. MBrner, Race Mixture, pp. 116-17; Palmer, Slaves of the White God, pp. 172-8.

  123. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, p. 19.

  124. Bernand, Negros esclavos y libres, p. 46.

  125. Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, p. 96; Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, p. 258.

  126. Pierre Chaunu, Conquete et exploitation des nouveaux mondes (Paris, 1969), p. 286.

  127. Eastward Ho (1605), Act III, Scene 3, in The Plays and Poems of George Chapman. The Comedies, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott (London, 1914), p. 499; Chaunu, L'Amerique et Les Ameriques, p. 88, and map 6.

  128. Antonio Garcia-Baquero Gonzalez, Andalucia y la carrera de Indias, 1492-1824 (Seville, 1986), p. 28.

  129. Jose Maria Oliva Melgar, `Puerto y puerta de las Indias', in Carlos Martinez Shaw (ed.), Sevilla siglo XVI. El corazon de las riquezas del mundo (Madrid, 1993), p. 99.

  130. For the Consulado, R. S. Smith, The Spanish Guild Merchant (Durham, NC, 1940), ch. 6; Guillermo Cespedes del Castillo, La averla en el comercio de Indias (Seville, 1945); Antonio-Miguel Bernal, La financiacion de la Carrera de Indias, 1492-1824 (Seville and Madrid, 1992), especially pp. 209-22; Enriqueta Vila Vilar, `El poder del Consulado y los hombres del comercio en el siglo XVII', in Enriqueta Vila Vilar and Allan J. Kuethe (eds), Relaciones del poder y comercio colonial. Nuevas perspectivas (Seville, 1999), pp. 3-34.

  131. For the Portuguese, see above, p. 100; for the Genoese, Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure. The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World (Ithaca, NY11966); for Corsicans, Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Los Corzo y los Manara. Tipos y arquetipos del mercader con America (Seville, 1991); for the community of foreign merchants in Seville, Michele Moret, Aspects de la societe marchande de Seville an debut du XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1967), pp. 34-58; and for foreign participation in Spanish commercial life in general, Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, Los extranjeros en la vida espanola durante el siglo XVII y otros articulos (Seville, 1996).

  132. Enriqueta Vila Vilar and Guillermo Lehmann Villena, Familia, li
najes y negocios entre Sevilla y las Indias. Los Almonte (Madrid, 2003).

  133. Studnicki-Gizbert, `From Agents to Consulado'; Margarita Suarez, Comercio y fraude en el Peru colonial. Las estrategias mercantiles de un banquero (Lima, 1995), and Desafios transatlanticos. Mercaderes, banqueros y el estado en el Peru virreinal, 1600-1700 (Lima, 2001).

  134. Eduardo Arcila Farias, Comercio entre Venezuela y Mexico en los siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico City, 1950), pp. 52-3.

  135. Woodrow Borah, Early Colonial Trade and Navigation between Mexico and Peru (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954). Inter-colonial trade in Spanish America needs further investigation. See Fisher, Economic Aspects of Spanish Imperialism, ch. 5.

  136. Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675-1740 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 78-9.

  137. Cressy Coming Over, p. 156; Steele, English Atlantic, pp. 90-1 and 45.

  138. Steele, English Atlantic, pp. 42-3.

  139. Below, pp. 117-18.

  140. Robert M. Bliss, Revolution and Empire. English Politics and the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Manchester and New York, 1990), p. 20.

  141. OHBE, 1, pp. 20-1.

  142. R. W. Hinton, The Eastland Trade and the Common Weal in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1959), p. 95.

  143. OHBE, 1, p. 423.

  144. George Gardyner, A Description of the New World (London, 1651), pp. 7-8.

  Chapter 5. Crown and Colonists

  1. Cited in Bliss, Revolution and Empire, pp. 19-20, from Clarence S. Brigham (ed.), British Royal Proclamations Relating to America, 1603-1763 (American Antiquarian Society, Transactions and Collections, XII, Worcester, MA, 1911), pp. 52-5. See also Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, p. 330, for the move to royal rule.

  2. John Robertson, `Empire and Union', in David Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 18-20.

  3. David Armitage, `Literature and Empire', OHBE, 1, pp. 114-15.

  4. See John H. Elliott, 'A Europe of Composite Monarchies', Past and Present, 137 (1992), pp. 48-71.

  5. Andrews, The Colonial Period, 2, p. 250.

  6. Ibid., 2, pp. 197 and 282.

  7. Kupperman, Providence Island, p. 327.

  8. OHBE, 1, pp. 22-3, 25-6, and 113. Nathaniel Crouch published in 1685, under the pseudonym `R. B.', a tract entitled The English Empire in America. The figures for publications containing the term 'British Empire' are given in John E. Crowley, 'A Visual Empire. Seeing the Atlantic World from a Global British Perspective', in Mancke and Shammas (eds), Creation of the Atlantic World, pp. 283-303. Against the 124 references to `British Empire' in titles published before 1800, he finds over 4,000 containing the words `colony' or `plantation', or their cognates.

  9. John M. Headley, `The Habsburg World Empire and the Revival of Ghibellinism', in Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, p. 51.

  10. Maria Jose Rodriguez Salgado, `Patriotismo y politica exterior en la Espana de Carlos V y Felipe IF, in Felipe Ruiz Martin (ed.), La proyeccion europea de la monarquia espanola (Madrid, 1996), p. 88.

  11. Above, p. 23.

  12. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, ed. Jose Miranda (Mexico City and Buenos Aires, 1950), p. 272; Gongora, Studies, pp. 45-6.

  13. Pagden, Lords of All the World, p. 32, and n. 12 for examples, to which others could be added.

  14. Elliott, A Europe of Composite Monarchies', pp. 52-3, citing Solorzano Pereira.

  15. Juan de Solorzano Pereira, Obras varias posthumas (Madrid, 1776), pp. 186-7. For Solorzano and his views on Alexander VI and the papal bulls, see Muldoon, The Americas in the Spanish World Order, ch. 7.

  16. Jose Manuel Perez Prendes, La monarquia indiana y el estado de derecho (Valencia, 1989), pp. 85-6.

  17. Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias (facsimile of 1791 edition, 3 vols, Madrid, 1998), lib. III, tit. 1, ley 1.

  18. See Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Orlgenes de la domination espanola en America (Madrid, 1918).

  19. For this much debated question, see R. Konetzke, `La legislacion sobre inmigracion de extranjeros en America durante el reinado de Carlos V', in Charles-Quintet son temps, pp. 93-111, and, more recently, Roma Pinya i Hems, La debatuda exclusio catalano-aragonesa de la conquesta d'America (Barcelona, 1992), for a close discussion of the relevant legislation.

  20. See Alfonso Garcia-Gallo, Los origenes espanoles de las instituciones americanas (Madrid, 1987), pp. 715-41 ('El pactismo en el reino de Castilla y su proyeccion en America').

  21. Luis Sanchez-Agesta, `El "poderio real absolute" en el testamento de 1554', in Carlos V.• Homenaje de la Universidad de Granada (Granada, 1958), pp. 439-60.

  22. Guillermo Lehmann Villena, `Las Cortes en Indias', Anuario de Historia del Derecho Espanol, 17 (1947), pp. 655-62; Woodrow Borah, `Representative Institutions in the Spanish Empire in the Sixteenth Century', The Americas, 12 (1956), pp. 246-57.

  23. Gongora, Studies, p. 79.

  24. For a hostile account of Fonseca and his activities, see Manuel Gimenez Fernandez, Bartolome de Las Casas (2 vols, Seville, 1953-60). A more sympathetic treatment can be found in Thomas, Rivers of Gold.

  25. Gimenez Fernandez, Las Casas, 2, p. 369.

  26. Demetrio Ramos, `El problema de la fundacion del Real Consejo de las Indias y la fecha de su creation', in El Consejo de las Indias en el siglo XVI (Valladolid, 1970), p. 37, supplementing the information given in the standard work on the Council, Ernesto Schafer, El Consejo real y supremo de las Indias (2 vols, Seville, 1935-47), 1, p. 44, who considered 1524 as the date of its foundation.

  27. Martinez, Hernan Cortes, chs 18-20; Rafael Varon Gabai, Francisco Pizarro and his Brothers (Norman, OK and London, 1997), pp. 47-51.

  28. Bakewell, History of Latin America, pp. 113-16; Perez Prendes, La monarquia indiana, pp. 206-19; J. M. Ots Capdequi, El estado espanol en las Indias (3rd edn, Mexico City, 1957), pp. 64-5.

  29. CHLA, 1, p. 293.

  30. Jose Ignacio Rubio Mane, Introduction al estudio de los virreyes de la Nueva Espana, 1535-1746 (3 vols, Mexico City, 1955), 1, p. 13.

  31. Recopilacion, lib. III, tit. 3, ley 1.

  32. Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (3rd edn, Mexico City, 1985), pp. 195-201. A vivid contemporary account of a viceregal progress through New Spain in 1640 is to be found in Cristobal Gutierrez de Medina, Viaje del Virrey Marques de Villena, ed. Manuel Romero de Terreros (Mexico City, 1947). For comparable, if smaller-scale, ceremonies, on the arrival of a new governor of Chile, see Jaime Valenzuela Marquez, `La reception publica de una autoridad colonial: modelo peninsular, referente virreinal y reproduction periferica (Santiago de Chile, siglo XVII)', in Oscar Mazin Gomez (ed.), Mexico en el mundo hispanico (2 vols, Zamora, Michoacan, 2000), pp. 495-516.

  33. Konetzke, La epoca colonial, p. 121.

  34. For royal symbolism and viceregal rituals, see Victor Minguez Cornelles, Los reyes dis- tantes. Imagenes del poder en el Mexico virreinal (Castello de la Plana, 1995); Inmaculada Rodriguez Moya, La mirada del virrey. Iconografia del poder en la Nueva Espana (Castello de la Plana, 2003); Alejandro Caneque, The King's Living Image. The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (New York and London, 2004).

  35. Perez Prendes, La monarquia indiana, pp. 232-7.

  36. Peter Marzahl, Town in the Empire. Government, Politics and Society in Seventeenth Century Popayan (Austin, TX, 1978), pp. 123 and 165.

  37. Gongora, Studies, pp. 68-9.

  38. Borah, Justice by Insurance, pp. 253-5.

  39. Cited by Juan Manzano, `La visita de Ovando al Real Consejo de las Indias y el codigo ovandino', in El Consejo de las Indias, p. 116. For Ovando's career see Poole, Juan de Ovando.

  40. Javier Malagon and Jose M. Ots Capdequi, Solorzano y la politica indiana (2nd edn, Mexico City, 1983), ch. 1; Antonio de Leon Pinelo, El Gran Canciller de Indias, ed. Guillermo Lehmann Villena (Seville, 1953), introduction.

  41. Ruggiero Romano, Conjonctures opposees. La `Crise' du XVIIe siecle en Europe et en Ameriq
ue iberique (Geneva, 1992), p. 187.

  42. Above, p. 68.

  43. CHLA, 1, p. 518; Konetzke, La epoca colonial, p. 207.

  44. Bakewell, History of Latin America, p. 138; Konetzke, La epoca colonial, p. 217; and see below, pp. 198-9.

  45. Sanchez Bella, Iglesia y estado, pp. 71-4.

  46. Konetzke, La epoca colonial, p. 223.

  47. Cited in Gongora, Studies, p. 71, from Juan de Ovando's Gobernacion espiritual.

  48. The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding (14 vols, London 1857-74), 7, pp. 130-1. Antonio de Mendoza moved in 1551 from the viceroyalty of New Spain to that of Peru, where he died in the following year. I have not found the source for Bacon's story.

  49. Cortes, Letters from Mexico, p. 146 (second letter, 30 October 1520).

  50. For the coincidence, see Manuel Gimenez Fernandez, Hernan Cortes y la revolution comunera en la Nueva Espana (Seville, 1948).

  51. Victor Frankl, `Hernan Cortes y la tradition de las Siete Partidas', Revista de Historia de America, 53-4 (1962), pp. 9-74 (reprinted in Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, ch. 5).